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.