Sir Isaac Newtonwhose theory of gravity revolutionized science and who later rose to the upper echelons of London’s banking world had closer financial ties to the transatlantic slave trade than previously understood, a new book has claimed.
The book, Ricardo’s Dream, covers the life and work of David Ricardo, a contemporary of Newton who was a pioneer of economic theory and the richest stock trader of his day. It also examines Newton’s time as master of the coin at the Bank of Englandwhere the scientist exercised political influence and amassed great personal wealth after leaving his academic position in Cambridge.
During the scientist’s 30-year tenure at the bank, the book describes, Newton oversaw an influx of gold mined mainly by enslaved Africans in Brazil. And as master of the mint he took a small fee for each coin minted.
“I show, partly with his own correspondence, digitized by the Newton projectthat he benefited from gold mainly from Brazil mined by enslaved people,” said Nat Dyer, the book’s author.
“Despite losing a lot of money on the stock market crash of the dayNewton died an incredibly rich man,” Dyer added. “Much of it was intimately connected with the transatlantic slave trade.”
The gold made its way to the bank largely through trade with Portugal, which controlled a rapidly expanding gold mining operation in Brazil. Typically, British cloth merchants trading in Lisbon were paid in gold, much of which was converted into currency at the Bank of England.
Before taking up a role at the bank in 1696, Newton earned £100 a year (equivalent to £36,000 today) as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, where he developed his universal theory of gravitation – possibly inspired by an apple falling from an apple. tree. By 1702 he was earning nearly £3,500 a year (£1.26 million today) and his wealth was such that an inventory of valuables at his death included a pair of sterling silver chamber pots, apparently left by male guests behind ‘ a screen was used during dinner.
The book cites evidence that England minted around £14 million in gold coins during Newton’s three decades at the mint, roughly the amount minted in the 136 years preceding this period.
Newton’s own correspondence confirms the origin of the gold, including a note from 1701 stating: “We can have no gold but from the West Indies [South and Central America] belonging to Spain and Portugal.” A letter to the Treasury in 1717 described the west of England as “full of gold” from Portugal, which “brings great quantities of gold into the Mint”.
Dyer said: “He was in the middle of this gold rush. The more gold that poured into the Tower of London, the richer he became.
“I don’t think it should radically change every aspect of what we think about Newton,” he added. “He is an epoch-defining thinker. But even the greatest scientists are part of their time.”
To others, it is no surprise that Newton was a financial beneficiary of slavery, which lay at the heart of the transatlantic trade. At the time, Iberian America was well established as the main source of bullion, according to Prof. Leonardo Marques, a historian at Fluminense Federal University in Brazil.
“You can find it in Locke, in Davenant, and in many other mercantilist writers of the time,” Marques said. “So it is not surprising to me that Newton – apparently unlike many of his biographers – was aware that this gold came from Brazil.
“Everyone involved in banking and finance in early 18th century Britain was in some sense connected to the history of slavery and the slave trade to Brazil.”
Dr Patricia Fara, an emeritus fellow at Cambridge University and the author of Life After Gravity, has previously highlighted separate links between Newton and the East India Company, whose officers commissioned Newton to take tide measurements around the world. and Newton’s fatal investment in the South Sea Company, a slave trading enterprise.
“We cannot apply our own moral criteria to people who lived three or four hundred years ago,” said Fara. “Newton was more guilty than some and much less guilty than others. But it is important to recognize that people standing on a plinth in Westminster Abbey were involved in slavery.”
