The French psychiatrist Pierre Maréschal presented a paper on “Heroin Abuse in Tunisia” at the 1937 Congress of Psychiatrists and Neurologists of France and Francophone Countries in Nancy. In this paper, Maréschal compared all Tunisians with European addicts and stated that Tunisians excessively consumed all substances, from hashish and tobacco to alcohol, from opium to coffee and tea: “The native is indeed a born addict, but so far he has not yet found his true poison […]”. This “racial” predilection towards overconsumption was described through the alleged “primitive mentality” of all North Africans. Many colonial psychiatric sources claimed that, when it came to alcohol, for example, Muslims either remained abstinent or became dangerous alcoholics; moderate consumption was believed to be impossible among them. While historical research has been conducted on the larger field of French colonial psychiatry in the Maghreb in the past twenty years, the topic of addictions among the colonised has so far been largely neglected. This paper is based on original research of French psychiatric conference papers, dissertations, monographs and journal articles and analyses the psychiatric theory, proposed by French colonial psychiatrists in the first half of the twentieth century, that “normal” colonised North Africans were closer to European addicts than to “normal” Europeans. The paper will give an overview over the history of the “lost” diagnoses of “absinthism”, “teaism” and “coffeeism”, as well as the more conventional hashish, opium and cocaine addictions. The theory of North Africans being “born addicts” will be contrasted with descriptions of the behaviour and consumption of European settlers. From the beginning of the military conquest of Algeria, alcoholism posed serious problems for France, as, much to the chagrin of most psychiatric experts, French soldiers developed a taste for absinthe and other strong liquors. As colonisation progressed, European settler society in Algeria was soon perceived in the Métropole as consisting practically only of alcoholics. French colonial psychiatrists additionally believed that some of the addictions they observed among the North African colonised were new and a direct result of French colonisation. French colonial psychiatrists usually interpreted the French presence in North Africa as a positive force, with colonial psychiatry saving lives and improving the health of the colonised, just as North African civilisation was allegedly saved and improved by the French mission civilisatrice. This worldview was brought into question when the Muslim colonised “started” to drink alcohol or to consume opium and cocaine.

Contrary to historical research on drugs in numerous areas of the world, and more recently in Middle Eastern contexts, the history of drugs in Mandatory Palestine has received no attention by historians. By drawing on a variety of untapped archival sources, literary products, and press reports, the paper demonstrates the extent to which global drug control regimes set up in the interwar era have led, unintentionally, to the evolution of hashish smoking culture in Mandatory Palestine, where previously it hardly existed. Until the interwar period, Greece was the main source of hashish to Egypt, which was/is a major consumer country in the Arab Middle East. Together with other circumstances, the 1925 League of Nations Second Opium Convention, which established greater global controls over opiates, including, for the first time, over cannabis, was a crucial stepping-stone in the eventual abolition of the Greece-Egypt hashish trade. Yet, this disruption of the traditional hashish supply chain to Egypt was soon offset by supplies to the same destination from Lebanon and Syria. This, in turn, ensured that the Levant region – i.e. a weak point in the international drug control system – would become a theater of extensive and audacious border-crossing hashish smuggling operations. Sandwiched between Lebanon and Egypt, Palestine eventually emerged as a critical link in the Levant hashish trade, becoming the largest depot of the drug in the region. With some of the smuggled hashish supplies crossing Palestine being left behind for the local market, hashish smoking by the country's urban working-class Arab population increased dramatically. Hence, by the 1930s hashish smoking spread throughout Palestine's urban centers, and many a person could be seen wandering the streets of these towns in a state of “hashish-induced delirium.” Makeshift “hashish dens,” cafés and brothels were the main sites of this illicit activity. On the other hand, Mandatory Palestine's Jews – both veteran Sephardim and East European Zionist immigrants – tended to steer well clear of the drug, viewing hashish smoking as a regressive Arab vice that would expose Jewish bodies most perilously to the temptations of an alien space. That is why such venues in which Arabs and Jews could potentially commingle and assimilate while sharing a hashish-filled cigarette or a hookah, were construed as a serious national-political threat (in much of the same way that Marijuana was viewed as an “alien” Mexican artifact in the U.S of the era).

In social histories of the Middle East, coffee and tea houses long constituted focal points in both artistic representation and scholarly research. These were not the only spaces of congregation and interaction, however, just as caffeinated beverages were not the only drinks on tap. Often located in the more cosmopolitan quarters of port cities, the tavern was also a vital site in the urban landscapes of Ottoman society. Featuring not only alcohol, many of these male-dominated establishments also provided their patrons with food and access to entertainment, recreation, and opportunities for fraternization with fellow citizens. Throughout its varied histories, the tavern served more than a locus for social gathering and drinking; it also served the state and its officials variously through time as a target for levying taxes, policing the empire’s subjects and visitors, and enforcing regulation and/or prohibition. In this regard, the tavern existed as a critical site that facilitated official and unofficial state-society encounters, and thus functioned as a place of contact, collaboration, confrontation, and contestation. This study aims to interrogate the place, purpose, and pertinence of the tavern in Ottoman cities in order to explore it both as a locale of consequence unto itself and as a conceptual vantage for observing and assessing the social, political, and material fluidities evident during the late Ottoman era. Such dynamics, particularly as they implicated people’s identities and identity politics, included modernization, globalization and Westernization, accentuation of religious or secular agendas, and particularization and exclusion of others. In such process, the questions of “who” drank “what” and “where” became markers of identity, politics, and class. Amid ongoing social and political debates that center on the place and legal status of alcohol and its consumption in contemporary Turkey, this research on the tavern in late Ottoman period provides a more nuanced understanding of its diverse history and traditions. For this paper, I utilized Ottoman and republican archival documents, contemporary newspapers and periodicals, and memoirs.

This paper analyses the relationship between the Ottoman State and cannabis addicts during the late nineteenth century. The topic is positioned within broader discussions on the modernisation of the Ottoman Empire, with an emphasis on the government’s response to users, which became increasingly informed by the crucial reliance on the importance of a productive society. I argue that an analysis of cannabis addicts, esrarke?ler, sheds light on a number of dynamics at play in the period surveyed. As addicts consumed their substances in Istanbul’s dimmer cafes, esrarhaneler, my research provides an insight into the dark areas of a city that was displaying the hazards of a 19th century metropolis. In my research, I am interested in assessing how drastically the Ottoman state favoured medical inquiries into the topic of drug addiction and whether this was part of a larger attempt to prevent the population from falling into the non-productive category. Thus, those who came to be designated as “esrarke?ler” presented the state with similar issues as orphans, vagrants, alcoholics, as well as people with venereal diseases. For the state, these individuals embodied not only a moral conundrum but also a political and social problem. As a consequence of the increased interest of the state for the fate of addicts, a rehabilitation centre was set up, possibly to reintroduce addicts into society and, at the same time, sanitise streets and cafes of individuals who would project a backward picture of an idle Oriental. At the same time, the state only leniently punished smugglers and users, while hangouts were closed down only temporarily. Moreover, farming cannabis was at times taken up by the state, possibly as a means to generate much needed revenue. The relationship between the state and esrarke?ler provides a good snapshot of the complicated demands and outcomes of the modernisation drive the Ottoman Empire had embarked on and depicts the complex juggling between morality, finances, and modern ethos, all of which were occupying the minds of late nineteenth century Ottoman state officials. This work, which fills a gap in the secondary literature on cannabis in the Ottoman Empire, is informed by a number of sources: official documents of the Ottoman State, Kad? registers, available nizamiye court records, period literature on morality and drug addiction, Ottoman journals, and pharmacological and biology treatise of the time.

This paper focuses on the history of opium trade between Iran and China in the long nineteenth century. Based on extensive archival research in multiple languages and countries, the paper explains how an opium industry developed in Qajar Iran, how Chinese consumption expanded during this period, and how an international trade across the Indian Ocean took opium from various points of origin to the Chinese market. The paper also deals with the global politics and economics of opium trade with China in the nineteenth century. The presentation demonstrates (1) the fluctuations in the production and export of opium in and from Qajar Iran, (2) how Iranians prepared this export commodity for the Chinese market, and (3) the ways in which they worked with other international merchants to convey opium consignments to their ultimate destination. There were at least two different trade routes used during this time: One was overland through Central Asia while the other one was a maritime route that took opium consignments from the Persian Gulf to various islands of the China Seas. Both of these trade routes were long established and had their origins in the fabled Silk Road. This paper also shows how Iranian merchants, landowners, and government officials worked together to maintain high profit margins in this highly competitive international business. Making use of a variety of techniques, Qajar opium dealers were not only able to maintain their long-distance trade networks with China; they also outcompeted the British, the Ottoman, and the Japanese opium merchants who were also involved in the production of opium in different parts of Asia and in opium trade with China. Much has been written about the importance of opium in the expansion of capitalism and in supporting imperialism in the nineteenth century. In this context, it is often opium production in India that has been considered important for the economic development of the British Empire and its expansion in different parts of the world including Asia and Africa. This paper engages with the scholarly literature on imperialism, the history of capitalism, and the production of opium and its trade in the nineteenth century. The argument here is that the Persian opium trade with China must be a key part of any discussion on the history of recreational drug trade in the nineteenth century because it contributed much to the development of economic change in Iran and the broader Middle East.