The History of Old Money in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby’s Tom Buchanan and America’s Legacy of Exploitative Wealth
Authors like Fitzgerald created characters who embody the privileges and attitudes of dynasties enriched by generations of wealth, much of it tied to slavery. While not every old family’s fortune came solely from enslaved labor, these profits were foundational to America’s economic development and shaped its culture. Literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries often mirrors this reality, portraying “old money” elites whose power and influence reflect these historical legacies.
Continue exploring literary history and cultural memory in the African Bookshelf Hub .
When F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby in 1925, he gave us Tom Buchanan—a polo-playing, arrogant “old money” heir who believes his bloodline makes him superior. What Fitzgerald never says outright is that Tom’s world of inherited wealth echoes the fortunes of real American families whose dynasties were rooted in exploitative systems, including the slave trade and its profits.
Old Money and the Foundations of American Wealth
In the 1700s and early 1800s, many of the richest “old families” of the East Coast became wealthy through slavery. Some engaged in the transatlantic slave trade directly, others in industries that slavery kept afloat—sugar, cotton, shipping, insurance, and banking.
· The DeWolf Family (Rhode Island): The DeWolfs were the largest slave-trading dynasty in U.S. history, sending over 1,000 voyages to Africa. Their money lasted for generations, supporting banks, shipping companies, and politics.
· The Brown Family (Providence): John Brown, one of the four brothers who founded Brown University, defended the slave trade in Congress. “Old money” families in New England often had similar hidden legacies.
· New York Banking Families: Wall Street’s earliest banks and insurers, predecessors of giants like J.P. Morgan and Aetna, profited from insuring slave ships and financing Southern plantations.
Tom Buchanan: Heir to an Ideology of Privilege
Tom represents inherited, unearned privilege. He doesn’t work, doesn’t innovate, and doesn’t create. He simply enjoys wealth that has “always been there.” This is exactly how dynasties tied to slavery operated in the 1920s: their original fortunes had been made generations earlier, but the legacy of their prosperity still echoed in mansions, polo fields, and old estates.
· Tom’s racist tirades in the novel mirror the white supremacist ideology that slavery-era wealth had always defended.
· His casual violence and sense of entitlement make sense if we see him as standing on a foundation of power derived from exploitation.
Addressing the Geographic Origin of Tom’s Wealth
A nuanced reading must account for the text: Tom is from Chicago, having moved East from Lake Forest, Illinois—a bastion of Gilded Age industrial wealth, not East Coast slave-trading dynasties. This detail does not weaken the argument but refines it. Tom Buchanan represents a broader American phenomenon: the adoption and performance of "old money" aristocracy by any dynasty to legitimize its power.
The immense fortunes of Chicago—from meatpacking to railroads—were built on the ruthless exploitation of industrial labor and immigrant workers. While the original capital source differs from the DeWolfs, the resulting mindset—a belief in racial hierarchy and the equation of wealth with genetic superiority—is identical. By moving East, attending Yale, and immersing himself in the culture of polo, Tom is performing the role of "old money." He embodies the fusion of new industrial brutality with old aristocratic pretension, showing that the corrosive ideology forged by slavery had become the universal bedrock of American elite power.
Gatsby the Parvenu vs. Tom the Dynasty
By contrast, Jay Gatsby’s “new money” fortune comes from bootlegging and hustling. He is an outsider trying to buy into Tom’s old-money circle. But he can never belong, because Tom’s kind of wealth isn’t just about money—it’s about lineage and legacy. And in America, that concept of lineage was profoundly shaped by the historical forces of slavery and the exclusionary systems it created.
In this reading, The Great Gatsby becomes more than a Jazz Age tragedy. It is also a story about America’s unresolved inheritance of exploitation—the unspoken fact that established wealth and privilege were often built on oppressed lives, while outsiders like Gatsby could never break into that aristocracy.
The Hidden Empire in American Literature
Tom Buchanan’s type was not fiction. Families from Rhode Island to New York, Charleston to New Orleans, carried forward fortunes from slavery into the 20th century. Their names lived on in universities, banks, and cultural institutions. Fitzgerald captured the arrogance of this class perfectly, even if he never named its historical roots.
Reading Tom Buchanan as the heir to this legacy turns The Great Gatsby into a sharper critique: America’s gilded mansions and polo fields were built on stolen labor and exploitation, and the shadow of that empire haunted the Jazz Age just as it haunts the present.
Timeline: From Slave Profits to American Literary Tycoons
· 1700s – Early 1800s: Slave Trade Fortunes
· DeWolf Family (Rhode Island) sends over 1,000 slave-trading voyages.
· Brown Family (Providence) profits from both whaling and the slave trade; helps found Brown University.
· New England Triangle Trade: Rum, molasses, and enslaved Africans connect Boston, Africa, and the Caribbean.
· 1800–1860: Slave Economy at Its Peak
· Southern “Cotton Kings” in Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Carolina grow immensely wealthy on enslaved labor.
· Northern banks and insurers (e.g., Aetna, New York financiers) insure enslaved people and plantations.
· Fortunes circulate into shipping, railroads, and estates.
· 1850s: Literature Mirrors Wealth
· Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852): Planter tycoon Simon Legree embodies brutal wealth from enslaved labor.
· The Scarlet Letter (1850): Puritan elites echo merchant dynasties tied to the slave trade.
· Moby-Dick (1851): Ship owners resemble real New England merchants enriched by both whaling and earlier slave voyages.
· Post–Civil War (1865–1900): Slavery Ends, Wealth Remains
· Plantation dynasties lose enslaved labor but retain land, influence, and social prestige.
· New York “old money” families still benefit from earlier investments tied to slavery.
· Freed people denied access to the wealth they created.
· 1920s: Jazz Age and Fitzgerald’s Critique
· The Great Gatsby (1925): Tom Buchanan represents “old money” aristocracy—fortunes that have existed for generations, often with hidden roots in exploitation.
· Jay Gatsby symbolizes “new money” outsiders trying to break in, highlighting the divide between inherited dynasties and self-made men.
· Legacy Today
· Universities, banks, and cultural institutions trace origins to slave-related profits.
· American classics preserve the image of tycoons whose roots, directly or indirectly, stretch back to systems of exploitation.