The study was carried out by the Legacies of Enslavement Advisory Group, appointed in 2019 by the university’s vice-chancellor, Stephen Toope.
Prof Toope said it was “inevitable” a university “as long-established as Cambridge” would have links to slavery. The university also received donations from investors in both companies, and directly invested in another company active in the slave trade, the South Sea Company, the study revealed. Following its investigation, the group has made a series of recommendations, which the university said it would implement.