Professor Olivette Otele was appointed in January 2020 to conduct research about the University's past and links with slavery. Shortly after the appointment, the country went on lockdown. That proved to be a major hurdle to access archival material that was held in the University's archives. The Special Collections Team led by Michael Richardson, supported by Hannah Lowery, Karen Anderson and Jaimie Carstairs, provided the material that had been digitised. Some of the material provided led us to look into the University's history of donations and scholarships but also moved the research away from the links between the University and slavery.

Two undergraduate interns, Lillian Waddington and Valuola Ojeme, were appointed in September 2020. They were to support Prof. Otele in identifying key names that were recurrent in the material and that seemed to have played a key role in setting up the University College.

One major drawback was the lack of documents related to finances of the University of Bristol. It was difficult to find accounts, and full details about the amounts and those funded the University of Bristol.

Nonetheless, it became apparent that those who set up the University College played a key role in promoting it and keeping it financially viable. It is therefore likely that some of those individuals and businesses kept their financial commitment to the institution. Understanding how the University College was set up and its context allows us to ascertain that those individuals were committed to education and wanted the city to support the institution. Unfortunately access to key documents related to their links with slavery remained an important issue throughout the research period. Secondary material and Otele's knowledge of the history of Bristol (PhD dissertation on Bristol and slavery) and its links with slavery helped bridge certain gaps in source material available.

Historical context

England's involvement in the slave trade started in the 1550s and officially ended in 1807. Bristol's role was key to that history and its participation in the trade officially started through the Society of Merchant Venturers, a merchant collective recognized by Royal Charter in 1552. The society held significant commercial sway in Bristol, effectively controlling imports and exports for some 250 years.¹

Whilst records don't clearly show how the slave trade became a focus for members of the society, a key figure in Bristol's history, and member of the society, was Edward Colston. Colston had become a member of the Royal Africa Company (RAC) in 1680. A trading company operating along the west coast of Africa, the RAC's original intent was to exploit African gold fields. However, it quickly developed the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans and controlled it in England until its monopoly was dissolved in 1698, opening the doors for port cities such as Bristol to engage in the slave trade.

Colston was deeply involved with the RAC as a member and then as its deputy governor, investing in and playing a key role in the purchase of African captives.² During this time, he also became a member of the society (c. 1683).

As noted by Richard Stone on the society's website:

Whilst the society itself did not invest in slaving voyages, a recent study³ has shown that at some point in the eighteenth century one quarter of the society's members were themselves involved directly in this abhorrent trade, representing approximately one fifth of the 536 slave traders in Bristol.⁴

While not all society members were directly involved in the slave trade, it is well documented that most members (if not all) would have benefitted from it through the associated industries of "...shipbuilding; provisioning supplies to the ships involved; the processing of slave-produced commodities such as sugar and tobacco; the production of commodities used in the purchase of slaves, especially brass; the ownership of interests in plantations in the Caribbean and the Americas; or through the banks that financed both trade and manufacturing".⁵

Bristol's role in the slave trade, the history of the society and individuals such as Edward Colston, his life and his statue, have been the subject of debates for decades. As important as these are, they have also obscured several other stories and in particular the history of the University of Bristol and its complex links with enslavement.

1. ^ Stone, R. (2021, May 20). Transatlantic Slave Trade. The Society of Merchant Venturers. Retrieved November 25, 2021, from https://www.merchantventurers.com/who-we-are/history/transatlantic-slave-trade/
2. ^ David Eltis, Richardson, Bristol Radical History Group. See Bibliography.
3. ^ Böhm, T., & Hillmann, H. (2015). A Closed Elite? Bristol's Society of Merchant Venturers and the Abolition of Slave Trading. In Chartering Capitalism: Organizing Markets, States, and Publics (Vol. 29, pp.147-175): Emerald Group Publishing Limited
4. ^ Stone, R. (2021, May 20). Transatlantic Slave Trade. The Society of Merchant Venturers. Retrieved November 25, 2021, from https://www.merchantventurers.com/who-we-are/history/transatlantic-slave-trade/
5. ^ Ibid