November 20, 2023

The Fur Connection: New England Opium Smuggling Outfits, Astor, American Fur Company, Ramsay Crooks, & the Weight of Familial History—An Interview w/ Jacob Everett

2 hours 30 minutes

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Today 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 rape-y dolphins, which kinda connects to the last one.

Songs:

| The Velvet Underground - "Venus in Furs" |

| The Psychedelic Furs - "Here Come Cowboys" |

...more