Astoria
Subtitle: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014
Place of publication: New York, USA; London, UK; Auckland, New Zealand; Toronto, Canada; Sydney, Australia
Language: eng
Format: EBook
ISBN-13: 9780062218315
Description: From the Prologue...

ASTOR’S SETTLEMENT, “ASTORIA,” was the first American colony on the West Coast of North America, much in the way that Jamestown and Plymouth were the first British colonies on its East Coast. For John Jacob Astor, the West Coast colony would serve as the epicenter of a global commercial empire that leveraged nearly all the wealth of western North America into one vast trade network that passed through his own hands. For Thomas Jefferson, who had enthusiastically encouraged Astor to start the colony, it would provide the beginnings of a separate country on the West Coast—a sister democracy to the United States that looked out to the Pacific. Both men grasped far ahead of most of their contemporaries that the Pacific would one day take on the central importance in world affairs and trade that the Atlantic held in their day.
Table of contents: title: Dedication; title: Epigraph; title: List of Maps; title: Cast of Characters; title: Author’s Note; title: Map; title: Prologue; title: Part One - The Launch; title: Chapter One; title: Chapter Two; title: Chapter Three; title: Chapter Four; title: Chapter Five; title: Chapter Six; title: Part Two - The Journey; title: Chapter Seven; title: Chapter Eight; title: Chapter Nine; title: Chapter Ten; title: Chapter Eleven; title: Chapter Twelve; title: Chapter Thirteen; title: Photographic Insert; title: Chapter Fourteen; title: Part Three - Pacific Empire and War; title: Chapter Fifteen; title: Chapter Sixteen; title: Chapter Seventeen; title: Chapter Eighteen; title: Chapter Nineteen; title: Chapter Twenty; title: Chapter Twenty-one; title: Epilogue; title: Fate of the Astorians; title: Acknowledgments; title: Notes; title: Selected Sources; title: Credits; title: Index