Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This chapter shows how Ottoman opium evolved from a regional crop into a global pharmaceutical commodity over the course of the nineteenth century. It shows Ottoman merchants, peasants, inspectors, and pharmacists building an export trade that supplied American and European drug markets, even as imperial reformers tried to modernize agricultural practices. The text details the collapse of the early state monopoly, the rise of foreign merchant networks, and the role of the largely Armenian, Jewish, and Greek intermediaries who financed, inspected, and marketed the crop. Ottoman officials pushed cultivation reforms, while foreign pharmaceutical buyers demanded standardization and modern chemical testing. By the early twentieth century, Americans dominated Smyrna’s opium trade, harnessing local production to meet rising industrial morphine demand. The chapter argues that Ottoman opium’s shift from informal trade to scientific commodity brought together agrarian labor, imperial power, and global capitalism in the late Ottoman economy.</jats:p>