Opium Smuggling in Interwar Turkey and Beyond | Daniel-Joseph MacArthur-Seal

E293 | The Opium Wars and the massive trade in opium between South Asia and China over the nineteenth century made famous the role of opium within the history of colonialism and globalization. But it is less well known that in the early twentieth century, the Republic of Turkey became the largest producer of opium in the world. In this episode we speak with Daniel-Joseph Macarthur-Seal about how and why opium became an export commodity in Turkey and how Turkish citizens smuggled the substance out once it became formally illegal. Along the way we gain a glimpse into the economic history of the young republic, the legal life of its citizens abroad, and how these smuggling operations built new forms of cosmopolitanism from the ground up as the Turkish republic became less and less accommodating for non-Muslims. More at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/01/opium.html Daniel-Joseph Macarthur-Seal is a research fellow at the British Institute At Ankara and an affiliated post-doc at Middle East Technical University working on smuggling in the inter-war eastern Mediterranean. He was awarded his PhD at Cambridge University in 2014 for his thesis on the British/Allied occupations of Thessaloniki, Alexandria, and Istanbul during and immediately after the First World War, which he is now revising for publication. Nir Shafir is a historian of the Middle East whose research examines the intersections of knowledge production, religious practice, and material culture in the early modern world (1400-1800). He curates Ottoman History Podcast’s series on history of science in addition to being one of the co-founders of hazine.info, a website that explores the archives and libraries of the Islamic world. He is currently an assistant professor of history at UCSD. Credits Episode No. 293 Release Date: 14 January 2017 Recording Location: Rethymno, Greece Audio editing by Chris Gratien Music: from archive.org - Istanbul'dan Ayva Gelir Nar Gelir - Azize Tozem and Sari Recep; Katibim (Uskudar'a Gider iken) - Safiye Ayla Special thanks to Kara Güneş for permission to use the composition "Istanbul" Additional segments: "Smoking Shoes" by Sam Dolbee Images and bibliography courtesy of Daniel-Joseph Macarthur-Seal available at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/01/opium.html