A Legacy of Invasion

: A History of the Founding of Universities and Colleges in the British Empire in America before the Ratification of the Treaty of Paris in 1784

Abstract

This study explores the emergence and expansion of institutions of higher education in the British Empire in America from 1618 to the ratification of the Treaty of Paris in 1784, a significant period in the history of the development of higher education in the British Empire that has been marginalised and overlooked by historians of the British Empire and higher education in Britain for over three hundred years. Using the historical narrative method, it identifies (1) why these institutions were established, (2) the circumstances that led to their founding, (3) the rationales underpinning their creation and (4) how these changed through history.

Through the production of a chronological survey and reading archival materials against the grain, this thesis challenges and disrupts the received view held in Britain that posits that institutions of higher education were principally founded to train ministers for service in the Church. By tracing and highlighting a complex range of rationales that were shaped by the changing historical contexts in which they were deployed, the study found that the emergence and expansion of higher education institutions were driven primarily to support imperial settler colonial projects underwritten with the principal goal of destroying indigenous people and from the end of the seventeenth century to 1771 to ensure the economic and political success of their colonies and the expansion of the British Empire. It provides unequivocal evidence that they were never founded to train ministers for the Church exclusively.

One of the study’s most significant findings was that not all institutions of higher education established before the ratification of the Treaty of Paris in 1784 were designed to support the expansion of the British Empire in America. This perspective was encapsulated in the founding of Harvard College and the six institutions chartered during the Revolutionary War,* with the former created to support the development of an independent Puritan theocratic state and the latter to promote the overthrow of British rule in the colonies and the formation of an independent American Empire, a phenomenon that is obscured in the literature of the field. Lastly, the findings contribute to lifting the historical silence that has enveloped the emergence and expansion of institutions of higher education in the British Empire in America within British Academia, clarifying and complicating future research into this important area.

*These included The University of the State of Pennsylvania (1779), Washington College (1782), Liberty Hall Academy (1782), Hampden-Sydney College (1783), The Transylvania Seminary (1783) and Dickinson College (1783).

Date of Award	15 Nov 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Robin Shields (Supervisor) & Rajani Naidoo (Supervisor)