John Jacob Astor was a German-American businessman, born in 1763 who made a fortune in the fur business before diversifying his interesting to include the import and export of general merchandise between the United States, China, and Europe. At the time of his death in 1848, Astor was one of the wealthiest men in the country (Youngman, 1908).
Astor, who was born poor in Germany, decided to create a new life for himself in the newly independent United States of America. On the voyage between Europe and the U.S., Astor had the fortune of meeting another passenger who introduced him to the world of fur trading. Once in the U.S., Astor found work with a fur trader and set about to learn all that he could about running and operating his own successful shop. Eventually, Astor set out on his own fur trading operation. By the mid-1790s, Astor fur business had grown to become one of the top fur outfits in the nation. But he still wanted more.
After the signing of the Jay Treaty in 1794 that saw British forces evacuate their positions in the American Pacific Northwest, Astor aggressively moved into the area seeing it as a perfect location to expand his fur business. Astor established the Pacific Fur Trading Company and built a fort and trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River as the base for his new company (Heager, 1988). Soon after its establishment, the fort and trading post would become known as Astoria, in honor of Astor. Astoria is now a quiet town on the Oregon coast of the Columbia River. In starting the Pacific Fur Company and Astoria, Astor on the one hand, helped facilitate the migration of people to the west and Oregon through the expeditions he commissioned to establish trade routes to the Pacific Northwest. On the other hand, he financed the establishment of a vital military location used both against the British prior to 1813; and by the British from 1813 to the mid-1800s (Morris, 1937).
References
Haeger, J.D. (1988, May). Business strategy and practice in the early republic: John Jacob Astor and the American fur trade. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/968394
Morris, G.P. (1937, Dec.). Development of Astoria, 1811-1850. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20611077
Youngman, A. (1908, Jun.). The fortune of John Jacob Astor. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1820664
