Wishing to end Britain’s self-congratulatory narrative of being the first country to abolish slavery, the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University jointly commissioned a five-year study into the universities’ historical connections to transatlantic slavery. 

The review, a thinly veiled piece of ideological dogma, concludes that the enslavement of Africans greatly enriched the largest donors and therefore the University should act to “remedy the disadvantages and offensive vestiges of transatlantic slavery.”

The problem is, none of these historical conclusions should be considered remotely true. Firstly, the review relies upon the serially disputed Marxist arguments of Trinidadian historian Eric Williams that slavery kick-started the industrial revolution. At best, this is a hugely contested historical conclusion — at worst, as Nigel Biggar points out, it “has been wholly discredited by scholars.” The review accepts the Marxist thesis without explanation.

The bulk of the review examines the source of wealth of major donors to the universities. By far the largest donor was Jesse Boot, the Nottingham-based founder of Boots the Chemist. According to the review, Boot donated 16 times more to the University of Nottingham than any other donor and was financially facilitated by the transatlantic slave economy. How was Boot, born 43 years after the abolition of the slave trade, linked to such a heinous crime?

Well, the review’s alleged link is threefold. First, in the 1880s, while expanding his company, Jesse Boot took a loan from Nottingham Joint Stock Bank (NJSB). The NJSB had early shareholders with ties to transatlantic slavery. Secondly, while building a new factory, he temporarily took over a cotton mill which was “highly probable” to have “at least used some enslaved cotton”, decades previously. Finally, in 1888 Boot rented rooms from a textile factory, which had purchased cotton yarn from the producers of slavery, some 60 years earlier.

If this is evidence of a historical link to slavery then it is clear we are all born with the guilt of original sin. One might as well ask, what could Jesse Boot have done to not be complicit in the sin of slavery? Why not instead exonerate Jesse Boot, who it can clearly be said, had nothing to do with slavery whatsoever. Instead, in an unforced act of self-harm, the university castigates its greatest ever supporter.

The great irony is that Jesse Boot was a great man. Boots the Chemist was established under Christian principles to provide cheap medicine so the poor could help themselves. Their slogan was “health for a shilling” and it transformed the lives of millions of people on lower incomes. Not content with merely aiding the physical health of the poor, Boots established a “Booklovers Library” in half of his stores, furnishing the minds of millions for a small subscription fee.

Today, the benefits of Boots lives on as a chain store we all know and love. University of Nottingham students like me greatly benefited from the £80,000 Jesse Boot gave towards the building of the Great Hall, the donation of the stunning Highfields Estate, or the £45,000 his wife gave towards Florence Boot Hall, widely regarded by students as the best accommodation available on campus.

When I was a student at the University of Nottingham, I told everyone about Jesse Boot, precisely because no-one had heard of him and the brilliant things he had done. As Professors of History at Nottingham, the writers of this report should be the first people to know about Jesse Boot, and it is a great shame that they fail to educate their students about the wonderful history Nottingham has.

Rather than appearing serious, the review adopts ridiculous tropes more akin to the Babylon Bee

Another victim of the review is the Bentinck / Dukes of Portland family. The sixth and seventh Duke served as the President and Chancellor of Nottingham University, family papers were donated and the sum total of £400 was given between 1879 and 1923 by family members. The Bentinck families’ kindness to the university has been met by accusations that their “social capital” and “respectability” was based upon their ancestral wealth. After all, the seventh Duke’s great great great great grandfather invested in slavery, in 1722. As the Bentinck family recently said to the Telegraph, inherited guilt raises “troubling ethical implications of holding descendants accountable for the actions of their ancestors”.

Rather than appearing serious, the review adopts ridiculous tropes more akin to the Babylon Bee. The review’s steering group, for instance, is led by people who “identify as Black”. The university curriculum focuses on the “undertakings of white people” and there is a lack of appreciation for “people of African descent” at the university. 

All of this is unsurprising, given the authors’ leanings. Dr Onni Gust, for example, earns a living specialising in “how the boundaries of the human and non-human animal were constructed in the 18th century” and teaches “Gender, Empire, Selfhood: Transgender History in a Global Context”. I, among others, quietly steered clear of her lectures.

All this comes as the University of Nottingham struggles to provide decent educational services. I didn’t receive in-person lectures for two years because of over-zealous Covid measures. Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is saddled with a trigger warning because of “expressions of Christian faith” and Tony Sewell had his honorary degree revoked because of his Government review which concluded that Britain is not institutionally racist.

Perhaps worst of all, Nottingham has some of the closest links to China of any University in the country. It operates a China Campus, has over 3000 Chinese International students, and in 2013, according to a BBC report, at least 15 per cent of its money came from China. One would expect that figure to be considerably greater now. If Nottingham cared so much about slavery perhaps it would sever ties with a country with over a million Uyghurs in re-education camps. One has to ask whether it is more interested in money.