The Fur Connection: New England Opium Smuggling Outfits, Astor, American Fur Company, Ramsay Crooks, & the Weight of Familial History—An Interview w/ Jacob Everett (Apocalypse Confidential)
Added 2023-11-20 22:21:43 +0000 UTCToday we're joined on the show by the inimitable Jacob Everett, editor-in-chief of Apocalypse Confidential, for a wide-ranging & far-reaching conversation that serves as a preliminary materials for a deep dive into the New England opium smuggling outfits & the Sino-American trade in the 19th century.
It's a highly enjoyable parapolitical jam sesh... W/ a particular focus on Jacob's family history, specifically his ancestor Ramsay Crooks, who was a Scottish-born fur trader who would ascend the ranks of the Pacific & American Fur Companies to the very zenith, becoming wealthiest man in America John Jacob Astor's most trusted lieutenant & eventually president of the American Fur Company himself once Astor left the game. We learn about Crooks' involvement in the overland, Lewis and Clark-esque expedition to establish the Astoria settlement, a grand "Chinese" dream of Astor's that is seriously reminiscent of previous fur trading & alchemical colonial plantation schemes that we've covered in previous MasSUSchusetts EPs. We establish how the PNW fur trade was viewed as an essential link in numerous triadic Sino-American trading get-rich-quick schemes, and how Astoria itself would eventually serve as a loading bay for furs to be added to Perkins & Co ships laden w/ contraband cargo (opium) that would then make their way to Canton. We also find time to discuss all manner of things, from Dick Cavett; to Astor enlisting the MasSUSchusetts author Washington Irving in a pseudo-mythologizing psyop project to glorify the short-lived Astoria settlement; to a quick rehash of the PTCave phenomena & recent mass shootings; to Astor's Freemasonry; to the Tonquin incident & the tragic deaths of 100s of indigenous warriors; to white boy familial guilt; to Milk Morgellons; to Ramsay Crooks' Civil War colonel son & "Indian agent"; all the way to Jacob's experiences editing a magazine of the Kali Yuga, and, most importantly, whether he believes humans are ontologically evil or not! Oh, and short fiction about sex pest dolphins, which kinda connects to the last one.
Songs:
| The Velvet Underground - "Venus in Furs" |
| The Psychedelic Furs - "Here Come Cowboys" |
Comments
Oh man, yeah, I hadn't had a chance to do my reading on William Crooks role in the the US-Dakota War & that mass execution before we recorded this. We'd largely set out to cover the Ramsay Crooks & fur trading stuff, but it was only natural that William come up as well. I'm seeing a couple different things about William Crooks's involvement in the Dakota Conflict Trials. Wikipedia is claiming that Crooks was sent w/ orders to reduce the number of condemned from 100 to less than 40, but then I'm also seeing another, more detailed timeline account describing how Col. Crooks was part of the 3-man military tribunal that tried all of the Dakota men who were executed. So yeah, messed up. We'll have to revisit that to make the tragic extent of the execution & Crooks's major role more explicit in the subsequent part.
ParaPower Mapping
2023-11-21 13:38:55 +0000 UTCThough as I understand it Abraham Lincoln was the one who ordered it, I’m not familiar with William crooks involvement
laihall
2023-11-21 01:12:05 +0000 UTC
