Engaging with the complex legacy of Humphry Davy
Online courses and student-run projects show there’s great interest in discussing Davy’s links to slavery and scientific racism
On 9 November 1820, Everard Home’s paper ‘On the black rete mucosum of the Negro’ was read before the Royal Society. Home argued that black skin gave people living in ‘the tropics’ protection against the heat of the sunlight and they could cope better in these climates, an argument widely used to justify chattel slavery.
In the paper, Home calls upon the expertise of the chemist, inventor, poet and soon-to-be president of the Royal Society, Humphry Davy, reflecting his perceived authority on the origins of blackness and black skin colour.