Search results
Warren Delano Jr. (July 13, 1809 – January 17, 1898) was an American merchant and drug smuggler who made a large fortune smuggling illegal opium into China. He was the maternal grandfather of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Jan 23, 2024 · In 1857, Warren Delano Jr. lost much of his wealth in a financial panic—so, like many other American speculators before him, he returned to the opium trade and quickly rebuilt his fortune.
Warren Delano Jr. made a large fortune trading opium in Canton (now Guangzhou), China. [19] Delano first went to China at age 24 to work for Russell & Company, which had pioneered trading with China.
- The Astor Family. America's first multimillionaire, John Jacobs Astor, joined the opium smuggling trade in 1816 when his American Fur Company bought 10 tons of Turkish opium and smuggled it into Canton.
- 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 intimately involved in the importing size of the business and had more of a direct role in the opium trade.
- The Russell Family. Samuel Wadsworth Russell started as an orphaned apprentice to a maritime trade merchant, made his initial investment capital on trading commissions while working for other traders, and eventually founded Russell and Co., the most powerful American merchant house in China for most of the second half of the 19 Century.
- The Delano Family. Warren Delano, Jr., the grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was chief of operations for Russell & Co., another Boston trading firm which did big business in the China opium trade in Canton.
The opium trade is remembered as a British outrage: English merchants, protected by English bayonets, turning China into a nation of addicts. But Americans got rich from this traffic—among them, a young man named Warren Delano. He didn’t talk about it afterward, of course. And neither did his grandson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Jul 14, 2023 · In a letter to his brothers, written at Canton on April 11, 1839, Warren Delano, Jr., rejected the idea that foreigners who participated in the opium business were involved in smuggling a substance into China that had been banned by imperial decree.
People also ask
Who was Warren Delano?
What happened to Warren Delano Jr?
Why did Warren Delano reject opium smuggling?
Why did Warren Delano serve in China?
May 30, 2018 · Astor wasn’t the only American to make his fortune in part through opium smuggling: Warren Delano, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s father, made millions engaging in what he called a “fair ...
