Reposting because I wasn't able to post all of it on lb on time:
>>9758021 pb
John Jacob Astor's Opium Trade
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Much of what Astor acquired in the U.S. are the same hot points to this day that are centers of subversion in the U.S. The following is but a light touch on what this man had perpetrated.
Astor was of German stock, born Johann Jakob Astor on July 17, 1763, in Walldorf near Heidelberg. His father was Johann Jacob Astor, a butcher, and his mother was Maria Magdalena vom Berg. He worked first in his father's and also sold dairy. In 1779, at the age of 16,he went to Londonto join his older brother George to work for an uncle at his piano and flute factory, Astor & Broadwood. He soon learned English and changed his name accordingly. Around late 1783 or early 1784, Astor immigrated to NYC, staying in the boarding house of Sarah Cox Todd, a widow. He and her daughter by the same name married in 1785. He had gone to NY to work for his older brother Henry in his butcher shop, but on the voyage there he had met a fur trader. While working for his brother, he also bought hides from descendants of Pre-Columbians, tanning them himselfand selling them in Londonfor a huge profit. He soon established his own shop in NY in the late 1780s, while also working as a representative of his uncle's musical instrument factory. The discovery of gold impelled him to branch out around the country. With the Jay Treaty passed in 1794 between Britain and the U.S., he was able to open establishments in Canada and around the Great Lakes, ===and in London, he procured a contract with the North West Company, perhaps with the aid of Alexander Henry.
Astor was recruited by the British/British spies.
Alexander Henry (called "the elder" to differentiate him from another younger relative), was a justice of the peace in Montreal, Canada, and had been since 1794, and would continue to be until 1821. He had previously been a captain in the militia.He was in the habit of entertaining the top merchants in his home,and attended parties. Born in 1739 in New Brunswick, NJ, of a merchant family, he was a relative of the minister Matthew Henry.His father, Alexander Henry, had emigrated to British North America from the West of England. Alexander, his son, was also a merchant in Albany, NY, supplying the British army during the French and Indian War. He was the first Englishman known to have visited the area of Milwaukee, in 1760.
In early 1761, Henry met the one time fur trader Jean Baptiste Leduc, who encouraged him to trade in the area and around Lake Superior.He then got a fur-trade permission at Montreal from the British who had just taken over the New France in Canada.He hired a guide who would be his longtime canoer, Etienne-Charles Campion. In 1765, Henry got a license to trade in the Lake Superior area. ==Backed by British funds, and having had relations with French Canadians, able to deal among both groups, and formed a partnership with Jean Baptiste Cadotte, Sr., a man he had met during that time of adventure. He had the trade monopoly of the area for a few years since he had no competition. He made a killing with overcharging.
In 1767–68 he added to his partnership Sir William Johnson, the Duke of Gloucester, along with others, forming a silver mine around Lake Superior, but it went bust. In 1775, Henry, in canoes, explored with with forty men northwest of Lake Superior, and his partners became rivals of the Hudson Bay Company. He returned to Montreal with plenty of furs, giving the governor, Sir Guy Carleton, a map of the western region through which they had traveled. Apparently, fur trading was really his cover/side job, as he seemed to be gathering intelligence for the British while maintaining contacts with French Canadians. He then was to explore the northwest territories, so he traveled to England in the fall of 1776 with the cover of making a deal with the Hudson's Bay Company, but he was transmitting intelligence to the British.