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5 Elite Families Who Made Their Fortunes in The Opium Trade
5 Elite Families Who Made Their Fortunes in The Opium Trade
5 Elite Families Who Made Their Fortunes in The Opium Trade
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There's a lot of money in the dope business, and there always has been.
figuring out with our current drug prohibition, and as China's emperors
found out when they attempted to ban the importation of opium into the
military force, humiliating and humbling the empire, and getting rich
number were American, and the profits they made were the
business. If they get caught, they lose everything. But if they don't,
there's nothing like time and money to wash the dirt off their
fortunes.
Here are five prominent American families that got rich in the
Astor, joined the opium smuggling trade in 1816 when his American
Canton. Seeking other sources of profit while faced with woes in the
fur trade, he became the first American known to have entered the
2. The Forbes Family. John Murray Forbes and Robert Bennet Forbes
worked for Perkins & Co. in its China trade. While the former's main
job was to secure quality tea for export, that latter was more
more of a direct role in the opium trade. Their father, Ralph Forbes,
had married into the Perkins family. It was the brothers' activities in
the 1830s and 1840s that led to the Forbes family's accumulated
traders, and eventually founded Russell and Co., the most powerful
American merchant house in China for most of the second half of
fortune in the opium trade. His mansion, now known as the Samuel
Society.
Delano Roosevelt, was chief of operations for Russell & Co., another
Boston trading firm which did big business in the China opium trade
home that opium had an "unhappy effect" on its users, but argued
that its sale was "fair, honorable, and legitimate," akin to importing
wine and spirits to America. Delano lost his fortune in the Great Panic
US military with opium to treat Union soldiers in the Civil War. The
Delanos don't like to talk about the opium connection much. As FDR
young man trading slaves in Haiti, then peddled furs to China from
the American Northwest before amassing a huge fortune smuggling
Turkish opium into China. Although he got rich off the trade, he
avoided mentioning it, and his official biography, written by his son-
England Institute for the Blind, which was renamed for him. The
nephew, John Perkins Cushing, who was active in the trade himself.