St Antony's College is one of the constituent colleges 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 is one of the most cosmopolitan of the University of Oxford's colleges and is considered to be a centre of excellence for study and research in the fields of international relations, economics, politics, and area studies. The college's areas of specialist study include Europe, Russia and the former Soviet states, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Japan, China, and South and South East Asia.