We are posting here the correspondence between a group of historians and the director of the Museum.
Letter to the Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, 12 March 2025
Dear Mr Syson,
The catalogue to your exhibition Rise Up: Resistance, Revolution, Abolition contains fundamental historical errors, and on these errors are based unjust and damaging accusations against important University institutions and personalities, and against your founder Viscount Fitzwilliam. The accusations against Fitzwilliam also appear in a notice at the entrance to the Museum where it is clearly intended to be seen by all visitors.
The exhibition programme contains a long series of assertions, some of which we shall quote at length to prevent possible misunderstanding:
Called South Sea Annuities, the company’s repackaged securities paid reliable rates of interest and were traded actively until 1854 … These assets never went away, they merely took on new forms. They remain identifiably ensconced in the financial endowments of Cambridge colleges … Many capital projects, such as the Gibbs Building, were funded with South Sea Capital. South Sea capital also funded major professorships still in existence. In 1728, naturalist John Woodward bequeathed South Sea capital to found the Woodwardian Professorship in Geology. In 1768 Robert Smith, the distinguished mathematician and astronomer who was a Vice-Chancellor (1742-68) and Master of Trinity College (1742-68) bequeathed ‘three thousand five hundred pounds stock, being part of my capital stock in old South Sea Annuities’ to further fund the Plumian Professorship of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy, a post he had held from 1716 until 1760. Smith’s bequest also created the Smith’s Prizes in Mathematics, and added funds to the Lucasian Professorship in Mathematics and the Lowndean Professorship in Astronomy and Geometry. These slave trade financial instruments shaped the intellectual life of the University by supporting the country’s most renowned mathematicians and scientists. For example, Charles Babbage and Stephen Hawking both held the Lucasian Professorship, while Arthur Eddington and George Darwin were both Plumian Professors (pages 13-14).
Where a connection appears to exist between abolitionism and supposedly tainted funding, this ‘irony’ is emphasised. ‘As a Cambridge student, abolitionist Isaac Milner of Queens’ College won the Smith Maths Prize in 1774 and became the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1798; as mentioned above, both were founded with South Sea Company capital’ (page 18). Peter Peckard, the abolitionist Master of Magdalene and Vice-Chancellor, receives particular and sustained attention: ‘Peckard, as master, ironically oversaw and managed the interest income from these slave-trading securities … The relatively consistent £6 in annual interest income from these South Sea annuities was used to pay the Pepysian librarian for the next 150 years’ (page 17). ‘… dividends from these slave-trade assets flowed directly into the administration of one of history’s most prominent abolitionists, Peter Peckard’ (page 18). ‘Nowhere is the irony more obvious than in the case of Peter Peckard, the abolitionist who headed an institution in which South Sea Company dividends were used to run the library of the Royal African Company subscriber and slave-owner Samuel Pepys’ (page 19)
The conclusions put forward on the basis of this ‘irony’ are provocative: ‘England’s most influential abolitionists stood atop a powerful edifice of securitized slavery capital [which] survives intact today’ (page 19).
The individual most strongly condemned is however the founder of the Museum, Viscount Fitzwilliam. He is first found guilty by association, as his Dutch grandfather Matthew Decker invested in the Royal African Company and the South Sea Company, though it is noted that he sold his South Sea Company shares in 1720. The Company indeed traded in slaves, but ceased to do so in 1739, several years before Fitzwilliam was born. Nevertheless, it is clearly implied that ‘a vast sum in South Sea Company assets to found the museum that bears his name’ came from slave trading:
the financialisation processes [transformed] human commodities into financial instruments … The financial ledgers of the University of Cambridge document this key feature of the financial revolution. Through the process of capture and enslavement, slaves were transformed into bonds’ (page 15).
For the Museum, ‘the role of the South Sea Company assets was foundational’ (page 15). Further details are given: ‘in his [Fitzwilliam’s] will he bequeathed to the University of Cambridge “all my capital stock in the New South Sea Annuities” for the purpose of establishing the museum’ (page 16). More generally, ‘institutional financial ledgers use abbreviations such as “OSSA” for “Old South Sea Annuities’, “NSSA” for “New South Sea Annuities” and “EIC” for “East India Company” bonds’ (page 14).
In short, Fitzwilliam, the Museum, Peckard, the University and its colleges are found guilty of direct or indirect complicity in the Atlantic slave trade because of ownership or bequest of South Sea Annuities, or income derived therefrom. With unfortunate conceptual imprecision, the terms ‘South Sea capital’, ‘annuities’, ‘assets’, and ‘securities’ seem to be used interchangeably. The only form of South Sea asset named specifically, however, are Annuities, termed ‘slave trade financial instruments’ and ‘slave-trading securities’. It would appear that these are what are being referred to throughout: ‘Called “South Sea Annuities”, the company’s repackaged securities paid reliable rates of interest and were traded actively until 1854, when the Bank of England exchanged them for other government securities’ (page 14).
The fundamental error, on the basis of which such damaging allegations are made, is to confuse South Sea Annuities with the trading activities of the South Sea Company, and specifically with profits from slave trading. The two leading experts on the financial history of the South Sea Company, Dr François Velde and Professor Richard Dale, have shown unambiguously that South Sea Annuities had nothing to do with slave trading, or indeed with any other trading activities. This is because from 1723 onwards the Annuities were solely government securities (the equivalent of today’s Gilts) whose semi-annual coupons happened to be paid out at South Sea House.
As Dr Velde puts it, ‘for all practical purposes, the annuities, both old (created in 1723) and new (created in 1733), were government debt … managed (that is interest paid and transfers registered) by the South Sea Company’ [François R. Velde, ‘Winners and Losers in Britain’s 1722 Debt restructuring’, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 14 December 2022, pp.51-52]. Income derived from the South Sea Annuities came directly from the government and had no connection with trade of any kind. Indeed, by law the annuities were specifically separated from the South Sea Company’s trading stock. Consequently, all who bought or owned Annuities could be confident that they had no connection with slave trading or any other form of trading, past or present.
Moreover, it is perhaps worth noting – though for the reason given above this is not relevant to bequests of Annuities – that the South Sea Company did not accumulate capital derived from slave trading, let alone capital that ‘survives intact today’. The Company’s slave-trading activities were intermittent and volatile due to regular bouts of conflict and disagreement with Spain. The Company in fact made commercial losses, which were eventually compensated by Spain at £100,000 in 1750. Therefore, it is hard to see how the University or the Fitzwilliam museum could have benefitted financially from slave trading even if (which was not the case for the Museum or other institutions mentioned) they had owned South Sea Company trading stock.
In short, given that the only form of investment specified in your catalogue is South Sea Annuities, it is wrong to state that ‘the most enduring financial legacy of the Atlantic slave trade was the South Sea Company securities’ owned by the University and most of its colleges (page 13). This is not a question of opinion or interpretation, but of fact.
While we are sure that the Director and Syndics will be pleased to know that damaging allegations against their Founder and other University institutions and personalities are unfounded, they will doubtless be embarrassed to be the unwitting vehicle of such allegations, which since first made at the prompting of Professor Toope have had a lamentable effect on the University’s international reputation. The Museum’s publicly stated aim is to ‘play an ever more crucial role in the University of Cambridge’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.’ If this is a serious ambition, it follows that the Rise Up catalogue must be withdrawn from sale, inaccurate notices and captions concerning Fitzwilliam and others removed from the Museum, and a corrective statement issued.
Those of us who are senior members of the University are particularly concerned that damage to its reputation should be repaired without delay. We would be grateful for this letter to be acknowledged promptly (via rpt1000@cam.ac.uk), and to be informed what action you intend to take and when. We would be happy to provide informed advice.
Yours sincerely,
Professor David Abulafia, CBE, LittD, FBA, Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Emeritus Professor of Mediterranean History
Professor JCD Clark, sometime Fellow of Peterhouse
Professor Lawrence Goldman, sometime Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; Fellow of St. Peter’s College, Oxford.
Sir Noel Malcolm, FBA, Honorary Fellow of Gonville & Caius College, Peterhouse, and Trinity College, and Fellow of All Souls, Oxford
Professor Lord Roberts of Belgravia, alumnus of Gonville and Caius, distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University
Professor Robert Tombs, CPA, Fellow of St John’s College, Emeritus Professor of French History
Dr Francois Velde, sometime Beaufort Fellow, St John’s College
Cc The members of the Museum Syndicate
Reply from Dr Luke Syson, director of the Museum, 17 March 2025:
Dear Professor Tombs and colleagues,
Thank you again for your letter of March 12th.
You raise what I believe is essentially a question of academic freedom and difference. The Fitzwilliam Museum must be a place where histories and their legacies are investigated and discussed from multiple perspectives. On that basis, we welcome your contribution as we do others. Nonetheless, we have not identified any factual historical errors on the author’s part or from the Museum.
The fundamental issue here is about historical interpretation and approaches to history. This essay was peer-reviewed, and its author is an acknowledged expert who has undertaken significant research, and whose right to publish is a fundamental principle in the University’s public commitment to academic freedom.
The catalogue contains multiple approaches, and we believe that scholars, like all of us, are entitled to make their arguments in their own way and to draw their own conclusions, which can then enrich all our thinking. So we are truly surprised by any request that we suppress a publication because the named individuals who have signed such a demand do not agree with the interpretation of a fellow historian. This seems an attempt to cut across the academic freedom that is such an important part of our Cambridge ethos. We will not therefore be withdrawing this publication, nor changing our interpretive materials in the exhibition or elsewhere in the Museum.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Luke Syson
Director and Marlay Curator
Reply to Dr Syson, 20 March 2025
Dear Dr Syson,
Thank you for your letter of 17 March concerning the Rise Up exhibition.
We are surprised by your statement that you have not identified any ‘factual historical errors’, as we provided a list of them. Your reasoning seems to be that we take a different approach to history and to historical interpretation from the Fitzwilliam Museum. This we find puzzling. We can see that in interpreting the meaning of a work of art, for example, there might be an infinite range of possibilities. But to insist on attributing a work to Artist A when you have clear evidence that it is by Artist B would be considered not a matter of interpretation, but of manifest error in need of correction.
In our letter, we identified manifest error. We note that you have not contested or replied to our criticisms. To plead that your programme has been ‘peer reviewed’ or that the author is an ‘acknowledged expert’ does not resolve the problem. Neither peer review nor acknowledged expertise confers infallibility. We have presented unambiguous evidence of error of fact, not of difference of opinion.
Your accusation that we are trying to suppress academic freedom is unconvincing. We all believe in academic freedom, but that does not require acquiescence in the dissemination by a university institution of misleading information. Correcting errors in publications is established academic practice, and is all the more necessary when the publication in question is aimed at a large lay audience.
Your letter states clearly that you are unwilling to make any changes to the content of the exhibition or the catalogue. We presume that you would have no objection to our making the correspondence between us public, in the cause of the academic freedom that you rightly consider ‘such an important part of our Cambridge ethos’.
Yours sincerely,
[Signatories as in previous letter]
Dr Syson sent a final letter on 25 March addressed to Professor Tombs personally, who replied in a personal capacity on the 26th, without referring to the signatories of the earlier letters:
Dear Professor Tombs,
I thank you and your History Reclaimed colleagues for your further letter of 20 March. The account presented by Professor Sabine F. Cadeau in our Rise Up exhibition catalogue is factually correct and, as we have stated before, your challenges are matters of different interpretation. Such interpretive disagreements are of course entirely legitimate, and we welcome any debate that focuses attention on the matters we present and discuss from multiple perspectives in our publication and interpretive texts.
My own perspective is presented in the introduction to the catalogue. I will reiterate here my view that it is profoundly damaging today to ignore or minimise the impact of the Atlantic slave trade as a source of wealth for both individuals and institutions in 17th- and 18th-century Britain, and thereafter. That fundamental ‘source of wealth’ question, which any financial institution would be obliged to ask its customers today, could not have been answered by Matthew Decker or his heirs without reference to the trade in enslaved people. Among the aims of the exhibition and catalogue are to explore the continued complexities of entanglement in historically tainted investments, and to illuminate the contradictions that can be embedded in the biographies of individuals – including some of those people you mention in your first letter, whose lives and actions are considered more fully than has generally been the case. I am therefore proud that the exhibition has been singled out by another historian precisely for its ‘nuance and complexity’.
On that basis, true to the principles of academic freedom and scholarly debate, we are entirely content that, if you choose, you should publish this exchange in full. We only stipulate that, if you do so, you do not quote these letters – yours or ours – selectively. And, true to those principles, we once again decline to suppress the powerful and important analysis of a leading scholar in this field.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Luke Syson
Dear Dr Syson,
Thank you for your further letter.
We have clearly reached an impasse. You maintain that Professor Cadeau’s account is factually correct and that any criticism is merely a difference of interpretation. This is demonstrably not the case. She has made a serious error in claiming that South Sea Annuities were derived from slavery, and your exhibition has made this error the basis of unjustified slurs on individuals. For you to repeat the contrary does not change that fact. To continue to propagate this material compounds the damage already done to the reputation of the whole university.
The question of the importance of slavery and the slave trade to Britain’s wealth — which I do not think one can say has been ignored or minimised in recent years — is of course a matter for interpretation and debate. Might I take the liberty of suggesting that you or future curators of exhibitions on this subject might consult the recent work of David Eltis, Atlantic Cataclysm (CUP 2025), which provides an authoritative assessment of this very question. He is without doubt a leading scholar in the field. Perhaps your bookshop might make the book available to visitors.
Please do not trouble to reply.
Yours sincerely,
Robert Tombs
