Legacy
The transatlantic slave trade involved the enslavement of roughly 12 million Africans, about 3.4 million of whom were transported to the Americas in British ships. Most of the economic benefits of slavery flowed to European investors. Colonies in the Caribbean were particularly valuable to European states, and large populations of enslaved Africans were forced to work on plantations in brutal conditions. Millions died as a direct result of transatlantic slavery, including the dangerous voyages between Africa and the Americas. Those who made it to the Americas alive were subject to deplorable living conditions. All Souls condemns the legacy of transatlantic slavery and enslavement in all its forms, including those forms it takes today.
All Souls condemns the legacy of transatlantic slavery and enslavement in all its forms
Christopher Codrington (1668–1710) was a fellow of All Souls from 1690 until 1697. Born in Barbados, he was educated in England and became an accomplished scholar of Latin and a book lover. Through agents, he eventually amassed an enormous library. His family’s wealth derived principally from plantations at Betty’s Hope, Antigua, and Consett Bay, Barbados. These plantations were worked by an enslaved labour force of several hundred persons, to whose number Codrington was adding until the very end of his life. The family also leased the island of Barbuda where cattle were bred. After an unsuccessful career as a soldier and colonial governor, Codrington retired to his house in Barbados. He hoped one day to return to England, live on his English estates, immerse himself in his library, and perhaps rejoin All Souls. But his health had been broken for some years. He died at the age of 41 in 1710.
His death made public for the first time the terms of a will he had drawn up in 1703. He left the Barbados plantations (valued at £30,000) and a share of Barbuda to the newly founded Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. (For the response today to that bequest on the part of what is now the United Society Partners in the Gospel see: https://uspg.org.uk/codrington-project/.)
Codrington also left £10,000 (several million pounds in today’s money) to All Souls College. There was £6,000 to build a new library, and £4,000 to purchase books, along with his own large book collection. Construction of the library, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, began in 1716, but the statute of Codrington was commissioned from Henry Cheere in 1732, twenty-two years after his death.
Addressing the Codrington Legacy
In the 2010s, amid protests about statues which commemorated historic figures with problematic legacies resulting from slavery and colonialism, attention was focused on the Codrington statue, part of the College's Grade I-listed library.
In 2020, the College discussed the possibility of removing the Codrington statue from the Library. Instead, cracks are now projected onto the statue along with names of enslaved persons who laboured on Codrington’s and neighbouring plantations during his lifetime. The library is no longer referred to as ‘the Codrington Library’. It is now the ‘All Souls College Library’.
The college has adopted a number of academic initiatives in light of the Codrington legacy, including:
- Setting aside, in perpetuity, £6 million of the College’s endowment to provide three fully funded scholarships. These scholarships are named after former Visiting Fellow and Governor-General of Barbados Sir Hugh Springer. Students who are resident in or are nationals of a Caribbean country, and identify as being of Black or Mixed Black ethnicity, are eligible. Learn more here.
- Providing additional financial support to the University’s Black Academic Futures programme (totalling £1 million over ten years) to benefit UK graduate students of Black or Mixed Black ethnicity. Learn more about the Black Academic Futures program here.
- Providing financial support to Codrington College in Barbados, totalling more than £100,000 to date.
- Providing funding and support for the Caribbean Oxford initiative (CaribOx) which has established visiting fellowships and travel grants for Caribbean researchers to visit and conduct research in Oxford. Learn more here.
- Organising, since 2023, an annual lecture on ‘Atlantic Slavery and its Aftermaths’.
- Actively supporting the collection of books on Caribbean history, both in the College Library and the wider university, to make these works more accessible to students and researchers at the University of Oxford.
The College erected a plaque in 2018 at the readers’ entrance to the Library.
It also unveiled a work of art, commissioned from Barbadian artist Versia Harris, in the anteroom of the Library in 2024. The work celebrates Sir Hugh Springer. Ms Harris introduces the work here. You can also read a discussion of the commission and the broader history of the Codrington legacy by Dame Marina Warner, Fellow of the college, here.
The College has also contextualised the Codrington statue with a number of digital displays in the Library’s anteroom. Next to the statue itself, there are also two screens which contain information about the Codrington legacy, and the names of many of the enslaved persons who worked on the Codrington plantations.
The screens projected in the ante-room can be viewed below -
The two additional screens in the main body of the library, located to either side of the statue, carry the explanation of the projected names and the presentations previously displayed in the anteroom; all can be viewed here:
