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Opium trade, in Chinese history, the traffic that developed in the 18th and 19th centuries in which Western countries, mostly Great Britain, exported opium grown in India and sold it to China. The British used the profits from the sale of opium to purchase such Chinese luxury goods as porcelain, silk, and tea, which were in great demand in the West.
Opium was first introduced to China by Turkish and Arab traders in the late 6th or early 7th century CE. Taken orally to relieve tension and pain, the drug was used in limited quantities until the 17th century. At that point, the practice of smoking tobacco spread from North America to China, and opium smoking soon became popular throughout the country. Opium addiction increased, and opium importations grew rapidly during the first century of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911/12). By 1729 it had become such a problem that the Yongzheng emperor (ruled 1722–35) prohibited the sale and smoking of opium. That failed to hamper the trade, and in 1796 the Jiaqing emperor outlawed opium importation and cultivation. In spite of such decrees, however, the opium trade continued to flourish.
The civil wars in Iraq and Syria have reshaped drug smuggling routes in the Middle East. Syrian drug traffickers now play a significant role in Turkey’s illegal drug trade.
Early in the 18th century the Portuguese found that they could import opium from India and sell it in China at a considerable profit. By 1773 the British had discovered the trade, and that year they became the leading suppliers of the Chinese market. The British East India Company established a monopoly on opium cultivation in the Indian province of Bengal, where they developed a method of growing opium poppies cheaply and abundantly.
Other Western countries also joined in the trade, including the United States, which dealt in Turkish as well as Indian opium.
Turkish Connection for Opium Trade
1800 The British Levant Company purchases nearly half of all of the opium coming out of Smyrna, Turkey strictly for importation to Europe and the United States.
The Wilcockses sailed for their kinsmen, William Wain and R. H. Wilcocks of Philadelphia, who continued to send ships to Canton consigned to the brothers. See Wilkinson to Madison, January 15, 1806; Despatches from Consuls in Smyrna.
1812 American John Cushing, under the employ of his uncles' business, James and Thomas H. Perkins Company of Boston, acquires his wealth from smuggling Turkish opium to Canton.
1816 John Jacob Astor[1] of New York City joins the opium smuggling trade. Astor's fur trading ventures were disrupted during the War of 1812, when the British captured his trading posts. In 1816, he joined the opium-smuggling trade. His American Fur Company purchased ten tons of Turkish opium, then shipped the contraband item to Canton on the packet ship Macedonian. Astor later left the China opium trade and sold solely to the United Kingdom.
1830 The British dependence on opium for medicinal and recreational use reaches an all time high as 22,000 pounds of opium is imported from Turkey and India. Jardine-Matheson & Company of London inherit India and its opium from the British East India Company once the mandate to rule and dictate the trade policies of British India are no longer in effect.
When the missionary Pliny Fisk arrived there on January 15, 1820, around 100 vessels were in the Smyrna harbor. See Bond, Alvan, Memoir of the Reverend Pliny Fisk (Boston, 1828), 109
1948-1972 Corsican gangsters dominate the U.S. heroin market through their connection with Mafia drug distributors. After refining the raw Turkish opium in Marseille laboratories, the heroin is made easily available for purchase by junkies on New York City streets.
"...The illegal drug trade in Turkey has played a significant role in its history. Turkish authorities claim that Drug trafficking has provided substantial revenue for illegal groups such as the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), particularly through marijuana cultivation in south-eastern Turkey, and the 1996 Susurluk scandal showed substantial involvement in drug trafficking on the part of the Turkish deep state. The French Connection heroin trade in the 1960s and 70s was based on poppies grown in Turkey (poppies are a traditional crop in Turkey, with poppy seed used for food and animal fodder as well as for making opium).
Note: One donüm (2½ acres) produces about four pounds of opium.
Drug production in Turkey is mostly confined to cannabis cultivation for domestic use. While cannabis cultivation exists throughout the country, it is most prevalent in the southeastern regions, where the PKK focuses its cultivation, further elaborated below in the section on the threats and harms posed by the drug trade and drug policies.Until recently, cannabis cultivation was an offense punishable by one to seven years of imprisonment, but in 2014, the penalty was increased to four to 12 years.
In addition to cannabis, small amounts of captagon (a type of amphetamine) are also produced in Turkey.
Prior to the 1980s, significant illegal cultivation of poppy also existed in Turkey centered around Afyon Karahisar[2], which was effectively addressed through a licensing scheme.
Second, drug trafficking also poses a security threat to Turkey. The country has fought terrorist groups for several decades, some of which are still active today. These groups have been funded by various revenue streams, including human smuggling, extortion, and cigarette smuggling, but drug trafficking constitutes a large share of their income. In particular, the PKK is known to be widely involved in drug smuggling.64 The PKK’s involvement in drug trafficking dates back to the 1980s, when traffickers smuggling drugs from Iran through Turkey were required to pay a tax to the PKK, which controlled both sides of the Turkey-Iran border.65 Drug traffickers arrested in Turkey in 2012 stated that it was impossible to cross the border without paying the PKK. Only traffickers connected to the terrorist organization would be allowed to cross without a payment.
In addition to receiving taxes from drug traffickers, the PKK controls cannabis fields in the southeast region of Turkey. In rural areas near the city of Diyarbakir, where the PKK presence is strong, cannabis cultivation mushroomed after a government truce with the PKK was signed in 1999. Even after the truce collapsed in 2004, cannabis cultivation did not subside. At least 80 villages around Diyarbakir now grow cannabis and derive their principal income from drug cultivation. In fact, cannabis cultivation has only flourished in the parts of southeastern Turkey where there is a strong PKK presence. As was the case with drug traffickers smuggling drugs into Turkey from abroad, the PKK demands that cannabis farmers pay a tax to the group, without which the farmers will not be allowed to cultivate the crop."
Amped in Ankara: Drug trade and drug policy in Turkey from the 1950s through today | Mahmut Cengiz | George Mason University | SOURCE
[1] John Jacob Astor (July 17, 1763 – March 29, 1848) (born Johann Jakob Astor) was a German–American businessman, merchant, real estate mogul and investor who mainly made his fortune in fur trade and by investing in real estate in or around New York City. Born in Germany, Astor immigrated to England as a teenager and worked as a musical instrument manufacturer.
He moved to the United States after the American Revolutionary War. He entered the fur trade and built a monopoly, managing a business empire that extended to the Great Lakes region and Canada, and later expanded into the American West and Pacific coast. Seeing the decline of demand, he got out of the fur trade in 1830, diversifying by investing in New York City real estate and later becoming a famed patron of the arts.
He was the first prominent member of the Astor family and the first multi-millionaire in the United States.
[2] Literally the name means “Opium Black Castle.” The town was originally called Kara Hisar, or “Black Castle,” but the Afyon (Turkish afyun, meaning opium) was added to distinguish it from other Kara Hisars in Turkey. Of course, it was so called because of the principal commercial crop of the surrounding area. See Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden, 1960)
Notes from American Merchants and the China Opium Trade, 1800–1840 By Jacques M. DownsLest there be misunderstanding, it should be abundantly clear that the British trade was very substantial. Indeed, Michael Greenberg states, “Opium was no hole-in-the-corner petty smuggling trade, but probably the largest commerce of the time in any single commodity.” See British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800–1842. (Cambridge, 1951), 104.
Earlier, Greenberg noted, “In the last decade before 1842, opium constituted about two-thirds of the value of all British imports into China.” (Ibid., 50). The American trade was probably about one-tenth as large overall, though the proportion was more sizeable in the dozen or so years following the War of 1812.
Bey, Salaheddin, La Turquie a Lexposition universelle de 1867 (Paris, 1867)48–56.
Scherzer, Carl von, Smyrna (Vienna, 1873), 136–140. Scherzer was Austrian Consul at Smyrna for many years and should know his subject. See also O. Blau, “Etwas über das Opium” in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft (1869), 280–281. The latter article, though very brief, cites several earlier sources in German and French.
Benjamin Wilcocks remained in Canton until 1807 or 1808. He then returned home and established a business in Philadelphia but “was obliged to return … in 1811.” See Latimer, John R. to Mary R. Latimer, March 30, 1830, John R. Latimer Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
See letters from the supercargo, William Read, in the Willings & Francis Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. The brig Eutaw, Captain Christopher Gantt, of Baltimore was in Smyrna from July to November, 1805, and then sailed for Canton with 26 chests and 53 boxes of opium aboard.
At the time, the product was called “Turkey opium” or, more simply, “Turkey.” By the late 1820's at least four American commission houses existed. David Offley, of the Philadelphia firm, Woodmas & Offley, established himself there in 1811. Two brothers from Boston, named Perkins, both of whom had been in Smyrna for years, organized another firm, Perkins Brothers, in 1816. See Morison, “Forcing the Dardanelles,” 209, fn 4, and Tibawi, A. L., American Interests in Syria, 1800–1901 (Oxford, 1966), 2
Bates, born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, always credited Thomas H. Perkins with giving him his start in business. He was sent to London by William Gray after the War of 1812 to act as Gray's agent, but from the beginning of his residence in London he seems to have acted for the Boston Concern as well. Samuel Williams of London had acted as the Concern's banker until he failed in 1825. Bates founded a house with John Baring in 1826, and immediately inherited the Concern's business. When he joined Baring Brothers in 1828, that firm became the Concern's agents, with Bates as the partner who handled its affairs. In 1851, by which time Bates was ill and over 60, he persuaded a cousin, Russell Sturgis, to join the Barings. Thus, the Boston Concern's influence in the great London house was preserved for many years after Bates was no longer active. See Heaton, Herbert, “Benjamin Gott and the Anglo-American Cloth Trade,” Journal of Economic and Business History, II (November, 1929), 158–159
Other early settlers were John Walley Langdon and Francis Coffin, both of Boston. Joseph W [alley?] Langdon (of Langdon & Co., Smyrna) was another, although he appears most importantly after the War of 1812. The Boston concern dealt with most of these firms and individuals at one time or another, but Joseph Langdon seems to have been its principal agent at Smyrna in the 1820's. Not unexpectedly, the Perkins' first recorded contact in Smyrna was George Perkins. See J. & T. H. Perkins to George Perkins, December 27, 1796, quoted in Cary, Thomas G., A Memoir of Thomas Handasyd Perkins (Boston, 1856), 282–283.
Morse was far too careful a scholar to have made such a gross error casually. He warned his readers about the inaccuracy of Turkey opium figures and later revised his totals upward. See his International Relations of the Chinese Empire (London, 1910), I, 211
Chronicles of East India Company, III, 323, 339. Central to the problem of obtaining accurate figures on the commerce is the fact that both Perkins & Co. and its successor, Russell & Co., guarded their commercial intelligence very closely, especially information on Turkey opium. Indian opium deliveries on the other hand were promptly and precisely published by a press aboard one of the British storeships at Lintin, Magniac Company's Hercules. Latimer even accused Russell & Co. of giving out short figures deliberately
With resources somewhat better than Morse's we can still judge only roughly. Americans must have sold over 1,000 cases of Turkey opium every year from the early 1820's until the cancellation of the East India Company's charter. This may be low, especially if one believes a letter sent to Stephen Girard by Baring Brothers, who estimated in 1815 that 2,000 chests went to China every year! (letter dated August 17, 1815, Girard Papers). Cf. Phipps, John, A Practical Treatise on the China and Eastern Trade … (Calcutta, 1835), 236, 238 and 240
Forbes, Robert Bennet, Remarks on China and the China Trade (Boston, 1844), 27
T. H. Perkins' Memo Book (Perkins Collection), quoted in Stelle, “American Trade in Opium to China, 1821-39,” 67-68, fn 42. See also miscellaneous figures in letters quoted in Briggs, History of Cabot Family, II, 563–578.
The Smyrna Consular Despatches give the following information on American vessels carrying away opium:
The 1829 report notes that an additional 1,320 cases went to England on American account for shipment to China. Of course, this raises the question of how many had gone by that route in other years (quoted partially in Stelle, “American Trade in Opium to China, 1821–39,” 66). Cases, chests and piculs were used interchangeably. Each contained about 133 pounds of opium.
By 1827 a fourth American firm appears, Issaverdes, Stith & Co. Actually, this enterprise seems to have been an international partnership consisting of two Greeks, John B. and George Issaverdes, and Griffin Stith, nephew of the premier Baltimore China merchant, John Donnell. See Stith's letters in the Dallam Collection, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore. Probably the best source of information on the American community at Smyrna is to be found in the pathbreaking new study of Americans in the Middle East, Finnie, David H., Pioneers East (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 20–35.