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.
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.
It’s amazing how
He was a part of his time
And
He was apart of his time
Sound like total opposites. The latter makes no sense though
I thought you were starting a haiku
It’s interesting that our first instinct is to think of cancelling. Cancelling is a way for us to assert that we are not “that”, to affirm our disgust for those people. It’s flushing the shit away, if you will.
Until you realize that it’s all shit, all the way down (cue in Ohio meme). The Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Aztecs, the Incas, the Arabs, the Malians, the Turks, the Babylonians, the Indians, the Europeans, …every civilization until, what, 200 years ago, was a slave owning society.
You can’t cancel all of human history, you can’t flush away the entire earth, even if ultimately, all soil is shit and rotting crap mixed with rocks.
We have to go beyond cancelling. Instead, we have to recon with the fact that we are somewhat woke on the shoulders of giant douchebags. We can’t cancel our history away, we have to sit with the shit and see what it means for us today. Instead of absolving the past, cancel it out of sight and think we’re done with it, we have to wrestle with its legacy.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
America still has slaves, the constitution makes an exception for prisoners, which is just Roman style slavery again.
Shut the fuck up, snowflake. No one was cancelled.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Snowflake
You seem to have gotten offended. How sad. Poor you. Maybe you should stop being a snowflake? /s
This is great news! Calculus is cancelled!
Schoools Out For Summer!
“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.
Slavery was commonplace and normal several hundred years ago.
It’s actually more surprising that Newton is only “connected” to slavery instead of owning a few slaves personally.
I really do believe that people remember historical figures moreso for their achievements and impact on the world and society. Than ever the characteristics of their human personality.
Because let’s be honest, a lot of historical figures - might surprise you - aren’t exactly great people at the whole humanitarian department.
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
Ok, but I think the point is to judge him by the standards of the time. That might still label him a jerk, and so be it.
Maybe he was a neuro-diverse individual who saw little value in “people problems” and was only interested in maths and science. Today, we’d show more understanding to that, but we don’t know. All we can say was he was a jerk in the eyes of those around him.
That is not an excuse for his witch hunt. And it was a witch hunt by the standards of the time, although they wouldn’t have called it that obviously. He ruined people’s lives. He literally got people executed. One was certainly guilty of counterfeiting, but he also just made a list of suspects when he was put in charge of the mint and went after them McCarthy style. You cannot argue that drawing up lists of people and having them rounded up on spurious charges based on a list of people you suspected might have been guilty was the norm then because it really wasn’t.
Also, why should we judge him by the standards of the time? It was essentially “standard” for nobles to rape children who were put into arranged marriages with them because those children were considered property and brood mares all over the place and not just in the Western world. I sure as fuck judge Muhammad for marrying a six-year-old and raping her when she was nine. I don’t care if that was the standard at the time. It’s fucking disgusting.
Newtons part in the slave trade is no less a part of the life and history of Newton then his contributions to science, why would we omit it? Calling him a piece of shit and saying he contributed to an awful system does not alter the fact that modern math and physics are where they are currently due to his contributions. Conversely, his contributions to science doesn’t alter the fact he contributed to one of the worst systems in human history.
I’m not denying it I’m simply tired of the inevitable outcome that this brings
- Remove the statues
- Better not teach his theories in schools
- Someone HAS to apologise
- What about recompense in the form of money
It’s a long fucking list and the guys been dead for a couple hundred years.
Curious for your take on Confederate statues in the US
Watson and Crick are/were giant pieces of shit. We still teach about them. Many biology teachers will openly state that Watson is a terrible person
I see no need to go back over history constantly bringing this shit up.
Bringing what up? The truth?
You might as well say that you don’t see a need to even observe history if you take issue with people discussing the verifiable fact that Newton’s wealth came from slavery.
If anything, it sounds like you might have a vested interest in downplaying information like this. I would be curious to see where your family’s wealth came from.
Ok, but what do you want anyone to do about it? The guy has been dead for hundreds of years and we can’t just pretend that gravity and calculus don’t exist because he was a dick.
People in the past were huge pieces of shit. News at 11
He was a rich dude in the 16 to 1700s, his wealth could only come from the suffering of others. While an interesting tidbit about his life, what does it have to do with his math? Not like we can stop using it due to his moral incompatibility with the present day…
He was a rich dude in the 16 to 1700s, his wealth could only come from the suffering of others.
Nobody gains massive wealth without the suffering and exploitation of others, not the 1700s, not in 800BC and not today.
Have you heard of Elon Musk? …he isn’t nearly as smart, though 😢
Should we now detract from his achievements just like with Columbus?
No one is suggesting this.
What was Columbus’ big achievement if you don’t mind me asking? Because he didn’t discover a new place (millions of people lived there already), he wasn’t even the first European to get to that part of the world (the Vikings did it centuries earlier), he didn’t prove the world was round (since that had been known since the ancient Greeks), and he didn’t even understand where he was. He thought he was in Asia.
On top of that, he was so ruthless to the Taino even by the standards of the time that he was brought back to Spain in chains because of it.
So what was his big achievement?
