Wizarding culture. Trade with muggles was basically worthless until a single wizard’s lifetime ago, so the prejudice hasn’t had time to evolve away yet.
I recall reading that somewhere (maybe Pottermore?), Rowling said that the Malfoys gained their great family wealth by trade with muggles, until the establishment of the statute of secrecy, at which point they were quick to join the “Yep, we knew those dirty muggles just wanted to exploit and burn us all along!” crowd. I don’t remember if there is any similar detail about other wealthy families in canon or MoR; there’s Flamel with the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Potters with a combination family inheritance/bounty on Voldemort, but the Malfoys appear to be decidedly the richest family in Magical Britain, and I’d imagine that even with a 400 year gap, being those to most thoroughly exploit trade with muggles would be more than sufficient to explain their success.
Muggles had a lot of gold a hundred years ago, too. Certainly if you count in terms of just a few wizards taking possession of it. And it was easier to find because currencies were gold-backed.
If they were unwilling to just steal it (for whatever reason), then spending a few weeks performing services for the richest people in the world in exchange for half their wealth (amounting to many millions of Galleons) would have been a great bargain for wizards.
Wizarding culture. Trade with muggles was basically worthless until a single wizard’s lifetime ago, so the prejudice hasn’t had time to evolve away yet.
I recall reading that somewhere (maybe Pottermore?), Rowling said that the Malfoys gained their great family wealth by trade with muggles, until the establishment of the statute of secrecy, at which point they were quick to join the “Yep, we knew those dirty muggles just wanted to exploit and burn us all along!” crowd. I don’t remember if there is any similar detail about other wealthy families in canon or MoR; there’s Flamel with the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Potters with a combination family inheritance/bounty on Voldemort, but the Malfoys appear to be decidedly the richest family in Magical Britain, and I’d imagine that even with a 400 year gap, being those to most thoroughly exploit trade with muggles would be more than sufficient to explain their success.
Muggles had a lot of gold a hundred years ago, too. Certainly if you count in terms of just a few wizards taking possession of it. And it was easier to find because currencies were gold-backed.
If they were unwilling to just steal it (for whatever reason), then spending a few weeks performing services for the richest people in the world in exchange for half their wealth (amounting to many millions of Galleons) would have been a great bargain for wizards.