Groundbreaking research from the University of St Andrews has created a unique visualisation identifying, charting and exploring the colonial connections of over 900 students who were at the University in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The findings, published in the History of Education, offer fascinating insights not only into the student lives but also into the scope and entwinement of empire in both St Andrews and in British universities more widely.
Researchers from the Schools of History and Computer Science identified 901 individuals who came from or later lived or worked in the colonies of the British empire and who studied at (or were accredited by) St Andrews between 1700 and 1897. They developed a custom-built, web-based and interactive visualisation to better understand the chronological, geographical and career trends within the records.
The visualisation reveals that the emigration patterns of St Andrews graduates were different from those of the wider Scottish diaspora. Some alumni went to Canada, Australia or New Zealand in the 19th century but far more went to British India, largely the sons of Scottish merchants, ministers, soldiers and administrators working for, or with, the East India Company.
However, it was not just students who had been born in India who returned there: over 90% of the alumni who had colonial careers did not appear to have pre-existing colonial connections.
It makes clear that colonial careers were broadly attractive to educated Scotsmen.
The research also found a few medical students of Indian heritage, who chose to come to St Andrews to get their Indian medical training formally recognised.
So far, we the research team have has only found one student of African heritage, William Broughton Davies from Sierra Leone, who studied at the University before 1897 - also for an MD.
The study also threw up mysteries hidden in the records. It's currently unclear why 40 women from South Africa registered for the LLA (The Lady Literate in Arts degree, available to women from 1877) from 1885 onwards, whereas no other part of the British colonial world was numerically comparable.
This collaboration was made possible because of The Biographical Register of the University of St Andrews, which exists through the efforts of previous generations of archivists and librarians at the University of St Andrews, who collectively, over more than a century, transcribed, collated, gathered and published biographical records for over 20,000 individuals associated with the university between 1579 and 1897. The core information comes from the hand-written matriculation and graduation lists that survive in the university archives.
These colonial connections had various impacts on St Andrews. Some of the internationally mobile alumni would later donate money, natural history specimens or art works to the University. These are tangible ways in which the University has, and still does, benefit from wealth associated with British colonial activities. There are also less tangible ways in which the University, and the town, was affected: the presence in St Andrews of students with personal or family circumstance of the British colonial world brought their own experience and world views to this small Scottish University town.
Follow-up studies by historians at St Andrews are exploring the ways in which the social and intellectual culture of St Andrews was shaped by the presence of sons of East India Company officials, or by the arrival of visibly distinctive medical students from India and Africa.
Lead Author of the study, Aileen Fyfe, Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews said: "The new visualisation vividly illustrates how our small university was entangled with British colonialism in different parts of the world. It also offers fascinating insight into what 'international St Andrews' meant in an earlier period. It is already stimulating new work: we have a team of student researchers currently working on historic student records from the early twentieth century, where we hope to find even more international students, and connections to more parts of the globe.
This project came out of a larger piece of work, Legacies of Empire ,which was commissioned by the University and led by Professor Fyfe. The new research also highlights the vast potential of an interdisciplinary collaboration, showing how disciplines push their own boundaries by engaging with new research approaches emerging from other fields.
