Britons and British subjects with family members deeply involved in the transatlantic economy were an important feature of University life. These students, who grew in number due the increasing profits of the slave economy and the underdeveloped state of tertiary education in the colonies, were accepted and nurtured by fellows and masters who, in many cases, owned plantations, held investments in the slave trade, or had family members serving as governors in the North American colonies. In following the experiences of these students, the chapter details the lives and struggles of undergraduates, particularly those who traveled abroad to Cambridge, and the emotional and personal bonds that fellows and their young charges developed. The chapter is a reminder that, when considering institutional connections to enslavement, political economy was but one side of the story – the emotional, social, and cultural bonds between the sons of enslavers and their fellow Britons were also integral.

The end of the American Revolution energised concerns about the political, economic, and moral state of an empire that had become inextricable from the plantation economy and the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans. Intent on forging an empire without slave-trading, some Cambridge students and fellows took a leading role in attacking the slave economy, enslavers, and the consumption and production of goods tied to the plantation economy. Other past and present Cambridge fellows, however, were emboldened by defeat in the Revolution to support enslavers, arguing that enslavement was the principal foundation of Britain’s rapidly growing economy and should remain entrenched in the British Caribbean. The problem of the slave trade was particularly evident in Britons’ engagement with West Africa, where antislavery activists, colonisers, and explorers had to negotiate and collaborate with local slave-traders and imperial companies to achieve their aims. These conflicts reveal the challenges and limitations of idealism when confronted with the realities of Britain’s slave empire.

In this powerful history of the University of Cambridge, Nicolas Bell-Romero considers the nature and extent of Britain’s connections to enslavement. His research moves beyond traditional approaches which focus on direct and indirect economic ties to enslavement or on the slave trading hubs of Liverpool and Bristol. From the beginnings of North American colonisation to the end of the American Civil War, the story of Cambridge reveals the vast spectrum of interconnections that university students, alumni, fellows, professors, and benefactors had to Britain’s Atlantic slave empire – in dining halls, debating chambers, scientific societies, or lobby groups. Following the stories of these middling and elite men as they became influential agents around the empire, Bell-Romero uncovers the extent to which the problem of slavery was an inextricable feature of social, economic, cultural, and intellectual life. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Anglican missionaries took advantage of the spread of the empire to prosleytise to Native Americans and African Americans. Motivated by a desire to bring the gospel to so-called heathens and halt the spread of Catholicism, Cambridge men travelled to North America, the Caribbean, West Africa, and India to spread Protestantism. If they chose not to head abroad, they instead provided donations to missionary organisations, such as the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, or assisted in the administration of plantations owned by these organisations. As Cambridge missionaries and dergymen encountered enslavement, prominent University figures became increasingly interested in debates concerning and morality the efficacy of Indigenous and African slavery. Some fellows were actively sceptical of the moral grounds for slavery, whilst others believed that enslavement was grounded in Christian belief. Rather than emerging in the era of abolition, scepticism and debate about the moral foundations of enslavement were consistent features of British intellectual life for over a century.

The slavery debates at Cambridge did not end with the emancipation of enslaved people in the Caribbean and India in 1843. In fact, undergraduates, fellows, and professors increasingly turned their attention to enslavement in the United States of America. Cambridge-educated abolitionists, such as Edward Strutt Abdy and Alexander Crummell, sought to mobilise opinion in both America and Britain against the persistent power of the enslaver class in the Southern United States. The outbreak of the American Civil War (1861–1865) inspired growing sympathy amongst educated British elites, including those at Cambridge, towards the Confederate cause, with many comparing American enslavers to landed British gentry in order to build camaraderie between British and American elites. The Confederacy, in turn, sought to lobby university men and mobilise student opinion in their favour to further the cause of Confederate diplomatic recognition in Britain.

The growing professionalisation of the law and the natural sciences owed much to the spread of the empire – and Cambridge intellectuals would benefit more than most from these processes. Natural philosophers travelled across the empire amassing botantical, geological, and antiquarian collections and expanding scientific knowledge, with much of the credit for their findings owed to local enslavers or enslaved Africans. Britons with financial investments in slave-trading organisations also donated to found professorships. In the case of the law, experts in international law and treaty-making, particularly Sir Nathaniel Lloyd, applied their expert knowledge to cases concerning piracy, plantation holdings, and imperial companies. As with missionary organisations, the problem of enslavement continued to be a source of debate in the eighteenth century, as philosophers of natural law and rights considered the ethical justifications for racial enslavement.