Inspired by the last paragraph this review
"Astoria" book cover (
Provided by ECC/Harpercollins)
Astoria By Peter Stark (ECC/Harpercollins)
Just two years after Lewis and Clark returned from exploring the West, wealthy fur merchant John Jacob Astor dreamed up an ambitious plan to establish a trading colony in the Northwest. A string of outposts would acquire furs and send them to Astoria on the West Coast, where they would be set by ship to China. Chinese goods, in turn, would be shipped to New York. Then the ships would return to with trade goods.
Astor "understood the global implications of the Pacific Rim and its role in a future world far more clearly than his contemporaries — that one day it would serve a role equal to or greater than the Atlantic's," writes Peter Stark in "Astoria," an account of the colony.
The two-pronged venture was as exciting as anything in American history. Astor sent a ship around the Horn to the Northwest, where it was to meet up with a contingent traveling overland. The ship's captain, Jonathan Horn, thought nothing of sending sailors to their death or leaving passengers behind when they were late returning to the ship in the inhospitable Falklands. Little surprise that his arrogance led to tragedy.
Meanwhile, the overland force, led by Wilson Hunt Price, underestimated the importance of leaving early in the year to avoid the West's violent winters. Price pioneered what became the Oregon Trail but at tremendous cost to his men.
Both parties did finally establish the Astoria outpost. But ultimately, Astor lost it due to weather, poor judgment on the part of his chosen leaders, the War of 1812 and double dealing by Astor's Scottish partners. Supposedly fearing the British would take over Astoria, they sold out to rival North West Co.
Had Astoria remained in Astor's hands, Stark maintains, the U.S. today might have had a different geography. It's intriguing to think that without the vagaries of weather and the poor judgment, the U.S. west coast today might stretch from California to Alaska.
So what if this had come to pass? What would the differences in history be a how would the map look
