Summary
A new book, Ricardo’s Dream by Nat Dyer, reveals that Sir Isaac Newton’s wealth was closely tied to the transatlantic slave trade during his tenure as master of the mint at the Bank of England.
Newton profited from gold mined by enslaved Africans in Brazil, much of which was converted into British currency under his oversight, earning him a fee for each coin minted.
While Newton’s scientific legacy remains untarnished, the book highlights his financial entanglement with slavery, a common thread among Britain’s banking and finance elites of the era.
By our standards he may have been a peice of crap.
At the time he was born in the society he lived in his wealth gained in a largley accepted manner.
I see no need to go back over history constantly bringing this shit up.
Nah, by their standards, he was a colossal piece of crap too. He was very much disliked. He was known to be humorless and just kind of a jerk overall. He was also pretty useless a lot of the time. He was elected to parliament and only spoke one time during his tenure there. He said, “the window needs closing.” Really.
And then when he took over the mint, he was just ruthless in prosecuting anyone he could for any reason he could find. He had a witch hunt for counterfeiters after there was a change in coinage. It was pretty nuts. So yeah, he was always a piece of shit. This just makes him a bigger piece of shit.
Damn, and I thought he was just a piece of shit for inventing calculus
All of the statues that got wrecked would like a word.
“man in charge of money in 17th century found to be LINKED to how money was used in 17th century…”
my god
Yeah, this seems like a strange connection to make. “He was in charge of the mint, and the mint used gold, and a lot of gold at that time came from Brazil, which used SLAVERY to mine it!”
Like, yes, this is true, but it’s a connection to slavery only insofar as every major economic actor at the time was connected to slavery in some way.
Have you heard of Elon Musk? …he isn’t nearly as smart, though 😢
This is great news! Calculus is cancelled!
Schoools Out For Summer!
Dude was smart as hell. He wasn’t nice.
Did anyone bother to read this article?
- No one is calling to cancel him
- Dyer explicitly says an epochal thinker
- Dyer then says he was apart of his time
- And the last third of the article is quotes from other academic all like “That groks.” Or “matches what I researched in this corner.”
If anything, all I can really imagine that’s necessary is to not worship him. Kind of like when you get out of grade school and find out that the US founding fathers were not in fact gods, but disgusting men that were products of their time.
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