St Antony's College, Oxford
college of the University of Oxford
St Antony's College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1950 as the result of the gift of French merchant Sir Antonin Besse of Aden, St Antony's specialises in international relations, economics, politics, and area studies relative to Europe, Russia, former Soviet states, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Japan, China, and South and South East Asia.
The college is located in North Oxford, with Woodstock Road to the west, Bevington Road to the south and Winchester Road to the east. St Antony's had a financial endowment of £55.1 million as of 2021. Formerly a men's college, it has been co-educational since 1962.
History
St Antony's was founded in 1950 as the result of the gift of Sir Antonin Besse of Aden, a French merchant.
In 1947, Besse was considering giving around £2 million to the University of Oxford to found a new college. Ultimately, on the advice of his solicitor, R Clyde, who had attended New College, Besse decided to go ahead with the plan and permitted Clyde to approach the university with the offer. The university was initially unreceptive to the offer, and recommended that Besse instead devote his funds to improving the finances of some of the poorer existing colleges. Eventually Besse acquiesced, contributing a total of £250,000 in varied amounts to Keble, Worcester, St Peter's, Wadham, Exeter, Pembroke, Lincoln and St Edmund Hall.
“St Antony's College, Oxford” enters the record as college of the University of Oxford. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Antony's, College and Oxford can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2035359. VIAF identifies the subject as 139417827. The Library of Congress control number is n83132598. Authority coordinates are 51.763, -1.263. 1 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1950, 2021, 1962 and 1947.
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This entry incorporates text from “St Antony's College, Oxford” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.