William Munro Tapp
Colonial Investor and Caius College Philanthropist, 1925–1937
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8957286 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nicolas Bell-Romero (0000-0002-1917-8234, SOAS University of London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 66 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 1100-1128 |
| Publication date | 2023-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Historical Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-246X • E-ISSN: 1469-5103 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0018246x23000420 |
| OpenAlex | W4386372963 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 42 |
William Munro Tapp, the largest post-foundation benefactor to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, was a prominent lawyer who directed multiple businesses interested in water utilities, motor car manufacturing, and brewing. That much is acknowledged at Caius today. Yet Tapp was also a director of the sugar refiners Manbré & Garton Limited, and he helped establish a sugar plantation in Kenya. Alongside his involvement in an African estate, he held investments in other plantations and colonial enterprises. He was part of a class of gentlemanly capitalists who participated in imperial expansion and then donated their wealth to British cultural institutions, including colleges and universities. While much public attention has been paid to Cecil Rhodes, this article argues that both Tapp and Rhodes were members of a larger group of men and women who provided their wealth to educational institutions, thereby entrenching the financial legacies of colonialism in universities. By focusing on more minor figures in the British empire, like Tapp, historians can better address the continuities of universities’ financial connections to coerced labour and colonialism across time and understand that private connections and affective attachments between individuals and institutions were as significant as governmental policies in directing the spoils of empire
Colonialism · Corporation · Economic history · Economics · Empire · Estate · Management · Political science · Sociology · African history and culture studies · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Australian History and Society · History · Law
Colonialism and Its Legacies
The Guardians
Coolies and Cane
Sovereign Sugar
Sugar and Civilization
Oxford and Empire
The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia
British Overseas Investment in the Nineteenth Century
Capital and Colonialism
Sugar
Labour Control and the Establishment of Profitable Settler Agriculture in Colonial Kenya, c. 1920–45
Taxing Chiefs
Underdevelopment in Kenya, the political economy of neo-colonialism
Sugar and Settlers
The White Pacific
Government and Labour in Kenya 1895-1963
Slavery and the American university
Sugar Without Slaves. The Political Economy of British Guiana, 1838-1904
The failure of ‘Closer Union’ in British East Africa, 1929–31
Closer Union and the future of East Africa, 1939–1948
Colonial Exceptions
Taxing Colonial Africa
Master and Servant in Colonial Kenya, 1895–1939
The Balance Sheet of Empire, 1850–1914
Gentlewomanly capitalism? Spinsters, widows, and wealth holding in England and Wales, c. 1800–1860
She possessed her own fortune’
Consumption in the Age of Affluence
The Cuban Sugar Economy and the Great Depression
The Export of Capital from Britain, 1870-1914
Kenya from Within
Gendered Labour, Migratory Labour
The Costs and Benefits of British Imperialism 1846-1914
Exogenous Colonialism
The Railwaymen. The History of the National Union of Railwaymen
The Economics of Colonialism
The British empire, 1870-1914
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |