A very private affair: Opium in Amsterdam, c. 1600 – 1940

This paper investigates the history of opium in Amsterdam, from the rise of the city as a key hub in global and colonial trade in the 17th century to the introduction of a drug regulatory regime in the interwar period. Before the 20th century, opium was as a painkiller, sedative, and sleeping drug used on a regular basis. Opium was abused in incidents of date rape, suicide, and murder. Chests of raw opium were imported from Turkey and Persia and sold at auctions in the centre of the city. The opium was processed for consumption by producing small pills, or by making laudanum, a tincture of opium dissolved in alcohol that became increasingly popular in the 17th century. Opium preparations were prescribed and sold by pharmacists, apothecaries, druggists, and chemists, without regulation by the authorities. Consumption was, unlike that of other old and new intoxicants such as alcohol, tobacco, coffee and tea, very much a private affair. Respectable members of the 18th-century Dutch establishment such as female writer Belle van Zuylen and Dutch East India Company director Ioan Gideon Loten consumed opium in private to sleep or to endure attacks of asthma. The concept of addiction was still unknown, but users reported increasing dependence on the drug.
In the interwar period trade and consumption ‘retreated’ to the harbour district – now also the location of Amsterdam’s Chinatown. Opium was smuggled in through the Chinese sailors of the Dutch steamship companies and smoking (and not eating) opium spread into Chinatown, to Chinese lodgings, opium dens, and gambling establishments, and the occasional white users. Chinese ‘secret’ societies fought each other over control of the Chinese territories and infrastructure. Apart from this fighting, there was no disorder in public spaces caused by opium users. Opium remained very much a private affair.