The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Yale varsity apologises for slavery links: India connection of its benefactor
THE USA’S Yale University on February 16 issued a formal apology for its historical association with slavery. “Today … we recognise our university’s historical role in and associations with slavery ... and we apologise for the ways that Yale’s leaders, over the course of our early history, participated in slavery,” it said in a statement.
This came alongside the publication of Yale and Slavery: A History, a comprehensive account of Yale’s past, authored by David W Blight along with the Yale and Slavery Research Project.
Among other things, the book talks about the Indian connection of Elihu Yale (1649-1721), after whom the university is named. Yale spent over a quarter of a century in India, mainly in Madras (now Chennai), where he made a considerable fortune from activities including slave trade.
Massachusetts to Madras
Elihu Yale was born in 1649, in Boston, Massachusetts, into a wealthy merchant family. When he was three, his family moved to Britain.
In 1672, Yale arrived in Madras as a junior employee of the East India Company, and ultimately became the governor-president of Madras from 1684-85, and again from 1687-92.
Involvement in slave trade
The East India Company during Yale’s time conducted an enormous amount of commerce from Madras. Apart from trade in spices and textiles, the Company also engaged in the sale and purchase of human beings. Yale “oversaw many sales, adjudications, and accountings of enslaved people for the East India Company” (Yale and Slavery: A History). According to historian
Joseph Yannielli, “in the 1680s, when Yale served on the governing council at Fort St George … a devastating famine led to an uptick in the local slave trade … Yale and other company officials took advantage of the labor surplus, buying hundreds of slaves and shipping them to the English colony on Saint Helena.” (Elihu Yale Was a Slave Trader in Digital Histories @ Yale, 2014).
How many slaves Yale personally owned (and sold) is not known. But, as blight writes, “There can be no question that some portion of Yale’s considerable fortune, amassed while British governor-president in Madras, derived from his myriad entanglements with the purchase and sale of human beings.”
The ‘enslaved child’ painting
A telling piece of evidence linking Yale and slavery is a now-infamous painting, donated to the Yale Center for British Art (YBCA) in 1970. It shows four white men, with Yale at the centre, posing around a table. In the right corner of the canvas is a child pouring wine for the group. Of African or Indian descent (there is some debate about this), the child wears a silver collar, indicating enslavement.
Benefactor of college
Yale was removed from the governor’s post in 1692 due to allegations of embezzlement and came back to England in 1699.
Upon his return, he was one of England’s richest men, and became the biggest benefactor of the Collegiate School in New Haven, Connecticut. The school had been established in 1701, but had struggled for funds till Yale entered the scene. Between 1713 and 1721, he sent hundreds of books, a portrait of King George I, and other merchandise to support the Collegiate School. These commodities were sold and the proceeds put into the building of the college house.
Blight wrote: “In honour of Yale’s contributions, and to entice him into additional donations, the Collegiate School constructed a building called Yale College [in 1718].”