Cambridge said an investigation it commissioned had found no evidence that the university itself ever owned slaves or plantations directly. Those came from university benefactors who had made their money from the slave trade, the university’s investments in companies that participated in it, and fees from plantation-owning families, according to the investigation’s report. Researchers found that fellows from Cambridge colleges were involved with the East India Company, while investors in the Royal African Company also had links to Cambridge — two companies both active in the slave trade. “Such financial involvement both helped to facilitate the slave trade and brought very significant financial benefits to Cambridge,” the Legacies of Enslavement report said. The university said it had also received a donation to commission a Black British artist to memorialize Black Cambridge scholars, and will install explanatory plaques to contextualize older statues of those associated with the slave trade.

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