Opium in the Balkans

Cultivation, Processing, and Trade During the Interwar Period

Vladan Jovanović author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Central European University Press

Publishing:31st Jan '25

£128.00

This title is due to be published on 31st January, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

Opium in the Balkans cover

Macedonian raw opium was a highly sought-after pharmaceutical raw material. This book focuses on its cultivation and production, and the trafficking of opium-based narcotics. Vladan Jovanović offers fresh insight into a neglected and marginalized subject, tracing and contextualizing both the licit and the illicit processing and trade of opium alkaloids from the Western Balkans through Turkey, and on to the rest of the world between the two World Wars. 

His approach is to explore the subject both from the top down, involving the League of Nations and politicians and diplomats, as well as from the bottom up, through the analysis of the activities of smugglers, police, and ordinary people who participated in the production and distribution of opium. The author describes the process of relocating the illegal processing industry from Turkey and Bulgaria to Yugoslavia. He insightfully shows the implicit continuity of relations between the former Ottoman Empire and the newly constituted Yugoslav state in the form of bilateral political agreements.

He pays special attention to the illegal activities within the legal pharmaceutical industry and also exposes the role of criminal networks, which he situates in the appropriate political and social context. The exploration of this sensitive historical subject extends to other Balkan countries, along with Turkey, Western Europe, and the United States.

ISBN: 9789633867877

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

330 pages