Edward Colston (2 November 1636–11 October 1721) was an English merchant, slave trader, philanthropist and Tory Member of Parliament.
Colston followed his father in the family business becoming a sea merchant, initially trading in wine, fruits and textiles, mainly in Spain, Portugal and other European ports. From 1680 to 1692 he was a member of the Royal African Company – which held a monopoly on the English trade along the west coast of Africa – trading in slaves, gold, silver and ivory. He was deputy governor of the company from 1689 to 1690 (the Governor being the Duke of York, brother of Charles II of England).
Colston supported and endowed schools and other public institutions in Bristol, London and elsewhere. His name was widely commemorated in Bristol landmarks, and a statue of him was erected in 1895.
With growing awareness and disapproval in the late 20th century of his involvement in Britain's slave trade, there were protests and petitions for landmarks named after him to be renamed, culminating in June 2020, when his statue was toppled and pushed into Bristol Harbour during protests in support of Black Lives Matter. The city's concert venue, Colston Hall, was renamed Bristol Beacon along with several other locations that held his name.
Colston was born on 2 November 1636, in Temple Street, Bristol, and baptised in the Temple Church, Bristol. His parents were William Colston, a prosperous Royalist merchant who was High Sheriff of Bristol in 1643, and his wife Sarah Batten, daughter of Edward Batten; he was the eldest of at least 11 and possibly as many as 15 children. The Colston family had lived in the city since the late 13th century. Colston was brought up in Bristol until the time of the English Civil War, when he probably lived for a while on his father's estate in Winterbourne, just north of the city. The family then moved to London, and Colston was educated at the Christ's Hospital school. The English Civil War shaped Colston's lifelong support for order and stability in the form of monarchy and High Anglicanism.
In 1654, Colston was apprenticed to the Mercers Company for eight years, and in 1673 he was enrolled into it. By 1672, he had become a merchant in London. Like his father, Colston exported textiles from London while importing oils, wine and sherry from Spain and Portugal. He also traded silk with Virginia and was a regular trader of cod from Newfoundland to Naples. He had built up a successful business trading with Spain, Portugal, Italy and Africa. He also made money from money lending.
In 1680, Colston became a member of the Royal African Company, which had held the monopoly in England on trading along the west coast of Africa in gold, silver, ivory and slaves from 1662. Colston was on the board of directors from 1681 to 1683, 1686 to 1688, and 1691, and was deputy governor of the company from 1689 to 1690. His association with the company ended in 1692. The company was established by King Charles II, together with his brother the Duke of York (later King James II) as the governor of the company, City of London merchants and other investors.
The Colstons were pioneers of the British slave trade and Colston's record of office holding suggests heavy involvement in it. During his time with the Royal African Company from 1680 to 1692, it is estimated that the company transported over 84,000 African men, women and children to the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas, of whom as many as 19,000 may have died on the journey - a number of people roughly equivalent to the size of Bristol's population at the time. The slaves were sold for labour on tobacco, and (increasingly) sugar plantations. Colston's dividends from the Royal African Company amounted to the equivalent of more than £5 million today.
Colston was also a commissioner for, and investor in, the South Sea Company, which supplied slaves to Spanish America, using the Royal African Company to do so. Colston was one of the few people to have got his money out of South Sea Company stock before it crashed, with historians Richard Stone and Steve Cushion suggesting he did so through insider trading.
In 1681 he probably began to take an active interest in the affairs of Bristol, where about this time he embarked in a sugar refinery.
In 1682, he made a loan of £1,800 to the Bristol Corporation and the following year, became a member of the Society of Merchant Venturers. By 1685 he appears as the city's creditor for about £2,000.
Although a Tory High Churchman and often in conflict with the Whig corporation of Bristol, Colston transferred a large segment of his original shareholding to William III at the beginning of 1689, securing the new regime's favour for the African Company. The value of Colston's shares increased and being without heirs he began to donate large sums to charities (see below).
Colston used his money and power to promote order in the form of High Anglicanism in the Church of England and oppose Anglican Latitudinarians, Roman Catholics, and dissenter Protestants. He withdrew from the African Company in 1692, but continued working on his private businesses and with the South Sea Company – including in the slave trade – until he retired in 1708. Colston was then an MP for Bristol from 1710 to 1713. He took little active part in Parliament and did not seek re-election. As an MP, he lobbied for the government to increase its involvement in the slave trade. He was a board member of the High Tory Loyal Brotherhood.
Colston supported and endowed schools, houses for the poor, almshouses, hospitals and Anglican churches in Bristol, London and elsewhere. His name features widely on Bristol buildings and landmarks. Compared to other Bristolians, Colston's philanthropic giving was small and austere.
In 1681, the date of his father's death, he appears as a governor of Christ's Hospital, to which he afterwards gave frequently. During the remainder of his life he seems to have divided his attention equally between the city of his birth and that of his adoption.
In 1691, on St Michael's Hill, Bristol, at a cost of £8,000 (equivalent to $1,700,000 in 2025), he founded Colstons Almshouses for the reception of 24 poor men and women, and endowed with accommodation for "Six Saylors", at a cost of £600, the merchant's almshouses in King Street. He also endowed Queen Elizabeth's Hospital school. In 1696, at a cost of £8,000, he endowed a foundation for clothing and teaching 40 boys (the books employed were to have in them "no tincture of Whiggism"); and six years afterwards he expended a further sum of £1,500 in rebuilding the schoolhouse. In 1708, at a cost of £41,200 (equivalent to $8,000,000 in 2025), he built and endowed his great foundation on Saint Augustine’s Back, for the instruction, clothing, maintaining and apprenticing of 100 boys; and in time of scarcity, during this and next year, he transmitted some £20,000 (equivalent to $3,100,000 in 2025) to the London committee,
to be managed by the Society of Merchant Venturers for its upkeep. He gave money to schools in Temple (one of which went on to become St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School) and other parts of Bristol, and to several churches and the cathedral.
His philanthropic giving often had restrictive criteria for use. From his charitable giving he excluded, for instance, Catholics, Jews, dissenters and people who weren't Tories. Through these conditions, Colston sought to shape society. Historian Sally Morgan argues Colston's intention with the alms-housing and gifts to schools, far from being philanthropic, was to train a small number of boys whom he expected to work for him, and to persuade aging sailors to continue working for him with the hope of accommodation.