After several months of research, analysis and public consultation, Trinity decided that “the continued use of the Berkeley name on its library was inconsistent with the University’s core values of human dignity, freedom, inclusivity, and equality”. George Berkeley, as well as being a philosopher, was Church of Ireland Bishop of Cloyne. He was born in 1685 to an English father and Irish mother and grew up in Dysart Castle, Thomastown, Kilkenny. Berkeley went on to attend Trinity College where he was elected as a scholar in 1702. Following graduation Berkeley then remained in Trinity taking on numerous roles including working as a Greek lecturer.
Academically he is most well known for his work on immaterialism, now more commonly referred to as idealism. Publishing his first work in 1709 (An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision), Berkeley proposed that visual objects only exist as a product of the mind.
He went on to publish A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (1713) where he expands on his philosophy arguing that objects do not exist until they are observed and furthermore that we have no reason to believe in the existence of mind-independent objects.
Controversy stems from the fact that George Berkley enslaved between three to five people between 1728 and 1731, to work on his Rhode Island plantation, according to Yale University. In 1725 Berkeley had begun working on a plan to establish a college in Bermuda for the sons of British colonists and for Native Americans. He termed this plan ‘Proposal for the Better Supplying of Churches in our Foreign Plantations and for Converting the Savage Americans to Christianity’. This was a proposal closely tied to Trinity as at least three (William Thompson, Jonathan Rogers and James King) of the nine fellows proposed to oversee the foundation of the new college were Trinity fellows.
Berkeley went so far as to propose that Native Americans could even be kidnapped to be educated at the college. Westminster parliament pledged to support his plan with £20,000 and Berkeley arrived in Rhode Island in 1729. While waiting for the delivery of funds he purchased 96 acres of land which he named Whitehall.
It is from 1730 that Deeds of Sale owned by the British Library (as referenced by the Working Paper on Berkeley’s Legacies at Trinity) can be found of Berkeley purchasing a boy of around 14 years of age named Philip for £76 and a man of around 20 years named Edward for £80. There are records from Trinity Church, Newport of Berkeley baptising his slaves Anthony, Agnes and Philip. Within the Trinity Church records Anthony, Agnes and Philip are referred to as some of his slaves, indicating that even though there exist records of Berkeley enslaving four people, he may have had far more people unrecorded, forced to work on his estate.
Trinity researchers Dr. Mobeen Hussain, Dr. Ciaran O’Neill and Dr. Patrick Walsh also advocated for the decision to rename the library, pointing to documents where Berkeley described Native Americans as “inhumane and barbarous.” In the documents, he also advocated for owning and educating Native Americans and converting them to evangelical Christianity.
By 1732 his plan for a college in Bermuda had failed and he sold his Whitehall property. Berkeley argued strongly in favour of the religious conversion of slaves and that “the gospel liberty consists with temporal servitude, and that their slaves would only become better slaves by being Christian”. Berkeley also possessed clear discriminatory attitudes towards the Irish peasantry, who he described as “a lazy destitute race”.
Berkeley’s time in the U.S. heavily influenced his thoughts on the Irish economy. On his return to Ireland, after living in London for a period, Berkeley wrote reflecting on the benefits of slavery in The Querist (Berkeley’s philosophical treatise on Irish socio-economics) stating it was a question “Whether all sturdy beggars should not be seized and made slaves to the public for a period of ten years”.
After over a year of discussion and submissions, the library was renamed after renowned poet and trailblazer in Irish literature and first woman to have a Trinity College building named in her honour, Eavan Boland. The renaming marks a significant shift for Trinity, which previously banned women from partaking in higher education. It is said that George Salmon, the former provost who is commemorated by a statue next to the Campanile, said, “Women will enter Trinity College over my dead body”. Isabel Marion Weir Johnston was registered in TCD as the first woman student in January 1904 — more than 300 years after the College was established.
Boland attended university at TCD, when she published her first collection, 23 Poems in 1962. Her work reflects themes of feminism, history, myth, love and the rural Irish landscape. 50 of 855 submissions made by the public suggested that the library should be renamed after Boland. Other women were also submitted, including esteemed Irish American queer feminist scholar, Donna Haraway. Mark Cullen, Gillian Lawler and Eve Woods called Haraway “the most important contemporary thinker produced by the Irish diaspora”. Another submission made in the public consultation was by Sarah Mead who said, “It’s 2023, let’s not honour slave owners yeah? What’s about the Greta Library?”
Berkeley continues to have both a city and prestigious university in California named after him, and debate continues as to how Berkeley should be remembered. Berkeley also continues to be memorialised here at Trinity through the Berkeley memorial window in the College Chapel, a philosophy prize awarded by College and portraits of Berkeley that remain in the College Art Collection.
Some disagreed with the decision to rename the library, instead of submitting names. “Please do not – at the whim of a non-representative selection of students – rewrite history, thus eradicating from it important figures and their achievements. Do not rename our Berkeley library,” Aisling Roth submitted. Someone else argued renaming the library is a symbolic gesture that detracts from more pressing issues. “Renaming the library does nothing to advance the liberal cause,” Cormac-Fitzpatrick said.
