13. Ottoman Opium and John Astor.

Let's talk about John Jacob Astor and his nefarious tie to Turkey. Name familiar? He was the first prominent member of the Astor family--a German-born American business magnate, merchant, and investor--and a serious opium smuggler.

I'll warn you right now that once I started researching this, my whole blog got twisty and turny and wordy. So, if you hate history, just go ahead and stop reading now!

Between 1789 and 1791, due to his success in the fur trade, Astor started putting his profits into Manhattan real estate. His strategy was to buy land very cheaply beyond the developed area of the city and then wait for the city's rapid growth to reach his lots. In 1803, for instance, he paid $25,000 for 70 acres located more than an hour's ride north of what was then the city's limit. By the 1870s the land was worth $20M to the Astor family, and today the area is known as Times Square!

By 1800, he had amassed almost a quarter of a million dollars and had become one of the leading figures in the fur trade. A quarter million, in 1800? Dang. Anyway, Astor was trading furs, teas, and sandalwood with Canton in China but his fur trading ventures were disrupted when the British captured his trading posts during the War of 1812. So, in 1816, he joined the opium smuggling trade!

His American Fur Company purchased ten tons of Turkish opium, then shipped the contraband to Canton on the Macedonian. (Finally, a tie in to Turkey, right?!) Mind you, the Turks and Indians had been shipping opium to China for centuries, and Astor eventually left the China opium trade and sold solely to England. With the fortune he fast-tracked from dealing in opium, he started to more heavily invest in land in New York City and ended up becoming America's first multi-millionaire.

Interesting side story: Astor's great-granddaughter, Helen Schermerhorn Astor married James "Rosy" Roosevelt, the half-brother of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Incidentally, FDR's maternal grandfather, Warren Delano, Jr., also made his fortune in opium, working for the leading American opium trader--Russell and Company.

In 1823, Samuel Russell had established Russell and Co. for the purpose of acquiring opium in Turkey and smuggling it to China. Russell and Co. merged with Boston's Perkins syndicate and became the primary American opium smuggler. Many of the great American and European fortunes were built on the "China"(opium) trade--how do I not remember this from history class?

One of Russell and Co.'s Chiefs of Operations in Canton was Warren Delano, Jr., grandfather of Franklin Roosevelt. Other Russell partners included John Cleve Green (who financed Princeton), Abiel Low (who financed the construction of Columbia), Joseph Coolidge, and the Perkins, Sturgis, and Forbes families. Coolidge's son organized the United Fruit Company, and his grandson, Archibald C. Coolidge, was a co-founder of the Council on Foreign Relations.

As opium traders before, during, and after the Opium Wars, Russell and Co. were agents of merchant banks like Baring Brothers and N.M. Rothschild. Initially, the merchant banks funded the purchase of the opium, and Russell and Co. sailed to make the purchase and subsequently smuggled the drugs into China, making tremendous fees for their work as operatives in the drug trade. The company's biggest client, Baring Brothers, was agent for the U.S. government between 1843 and 1871, and actually sold the Louisiana Purchase to the U.S. Baring Brothers was later agent for the British government and had a close relationship with the British monarchy from 1891 to 1995.

After reading up on all this, how can anyone take America's "war on drugs" seriously? The drug money and drug trade date so far back, and involve so many politicians, foreign governments, and wealthy business people that I don't think it's remotely feasible to pretend we're even trying. Kind of sadly laughable, really.

Meanwhile, currently in Turkey, all of the opium harvest will be raised under a unique government-sponsored program that lets farmers grow the crop legally. The drugs are then processed for medical use and sold through a U.N. agency that regulates sales. The success of the program here has some wondering if the lessons could be applied in other countries, like Afghanistan, where illegal drug production has exploded over the past several years.

OK, boys and girls, that's the little history lesson for today. There was so much to write about the ridiculousness of the United Fruit Company alone, that I didn't know where to start--or stop! These are the kinds of frustrating issues of greed and debauchery that make my skin crawl. xx