Chapter 01
The Final Judgment on Roosevelt After 80 Years

II. The Roosevelt Family and the Opium Trade

On May 1, 2015, the U.S. website Strategic Culture Foundation published an article titled “Drugs That Once Funded America’s Royal Dynasties,” which claimed that Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Westbrook Pegler — a fierce critic of Franklin Delano Roosevelt — once called out the president’s hypocrisy. Pegler argued that Roosevelt’s condemnation of the wealthy’s ill-gotten gains was ‘shameful hypocrisy,” given that his “pirate” grandfather had amassed a fortune through the opium trade — wealth “plundered from the misery of others,” which allowed his family to live in luxury.

The Obama White House, however, declined to comment. Yet Pegler, the article suggests, was not wrong — and the Roosevelt family was not alone.

In the mid-19th century, the opium trade not only brought the corrupt Qing dynasty to its knees but also made Queen Victoria arguably ‘the most successful drug lord in history.” It simultaneously enriched American merchant families such as Warren Delano Jr., whose descendants, including his grandson Franklin Delano Roosevelt, would rise to power a century later.

By the 18th century, China’s population had doubled to 300 million. As James Bradley explains in The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War, China exported massive amounts of tea and silk to the West while refusing to buy Western goods. In 1793, the Qianlong Emperor famously wrote to King George III of Britain: ‘the Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its borders, hence has no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians.”

To Western powers, this trade imbalance was problematic — until Warren Hastings, a cunning British governor in opium-rich Bengal, found a solution: opium. This substance would trigger one of the largest trade shifts in history. By the early 1800s, the Bengal–China opium trade had become the world’s most valuable commercial route, accounting for 15–20% of Britain’s total tax revenues. Smugglers operated under cover of night, selling the drug from so-called “ghost ships” off the coast of the Pearl River Delta. At its height, the drug addicted an estimated 12 million Qing subjects, siphoning off 11% of China’s silver reserves and devastating the social fabric of the empire.

In letters to his family, Warren Delano Jr. acknowledged the destructive nature of opium, noting the emaciated addicts he encountered. Still, he defended the trade, writing: “As a businessman, I consider it fair, honorable, and legitimate — much like spirits are to Americans.”

China’s repeated efforts to suppress the trade ultimately triggered the First Opium War (1839–1842). Around this time, Delano returned to the United States and settled near the Hudson River, investing in real estate and railroads. Notably, during the financial panic of 1857, Delano lost most of his fortune. At age 50, with a pregnant wife, he sailed back to China hoping to rebuild his wealth. He succeeded — particularly during the American Civil War, when he supplied medical opium to the U.S. War Department for Union troops.

Today, many elite fortunes can trace their roots to profits made in the drug trade — a reminder that, when examining the family trees of great American dynasties, one may uncover deeply troubling origins.