page_title: Warren Delano Jr.
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Warren Delano Jr. / Career
context_page_description: Warren Delano Jr. was an American-born merchant who made a large fortune in the illegal opium trade in China. He was the maternal grandfather of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
context_section_description: Delano made a large fortune trading opium in Canton (now Guangzhou), China. Opium, a highly addictive narcotic related to heroin, was illegal in China. British traders had introduced large-scale opium smuggling into China to gain further access to Chinese export markets to meet skyrocketing Western demand for such Chinese luxury products as tea, porcelain, silk and furniture. The vast increase in opium smuggling into China resulted in millions of people becoming newly addicted to opium in China, and in an unprecedented Chinese trade imbalance with Britain and the U.S., which in turn resulted in the First Opium War of 1840-1843 . Delano first went to China at age 24 to work for Russell & Company, which had pioneered trading with China. John Perkins Cushing – also a Russell & Company partner – had preceded Delano and initiated a close relationship with a Chinese official called Howqua. The two men had established an offshore base – an anchored floating warehouse – where Russell & Company ships would offload their opium contraband before continuing up the Pearl River Delta to Canton with their legal cargo.
  By early 1843, Delano had spent a momentous decade in the China trade. He had achieved his financial competence and risen to become the head partner of the biggest American firm dealing with China. He had witnessed the destruction of the hated Canton system, the humiliation of the Chinese government, and the creation of New China.
  In the 1850s, Delano, along with his brother Franklin and Asa Packer (the builder of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and founder of Lehigh University), headed a land company that purchased several thousand acres and established the town of Delano, Pennsylvania.  
  Delano lost much of his fortune in the Panic of 1857. In 1860, he returned to China, except this time he went to Hong Kong where he rebuilt his fortune.  During the U.S. Civil War, Delano shipped opium to the Medical Bureau of the U.S. War Department.
caption: Delano's daughter Sara and son Philippe in 1865 after returning from Hong Kong
exif: {}