Greek hashish trade

The village of Nestani on the edge of the Mantineian plain, in the province where most Greek hashish was grown

The village of Nestani on the edge of the Mantineian plain, in the province where most Greek hashish was grown

Greek hashish trade

Route

From	Mantineia, Argolis, Messenia, Tripoli, Greece
By way of	Kalamata or Nafplio or Piraeus
To	Egypt, Alexandria, Turkey, Tunisia, Tunis
How it travelled	Mixed

Trade

What moved	Hashish
Carried by	Hashish merchants of Tripoli; Greek smugglers to Egypt; groups of Greek traffickers in Tunisia
Scale	About 100,000 okas a year sent from Tripoli (United States consul at Patras, 1908)

Period

Active	1880s to the 1930s
Status	No longer in use
Legal status	Changed over time

Part of a series on

History

History of cannabis·Historical sources

Ancient Origins & Early Use

Domestication·Yanghai Tombs·Jirzankal Cemetery·Pazyryk burials·Scythian cannabis use·Centre of origin·Nikolai Vavilov

Historical Texts & Documentation

Atharvaveda·Sushruta Samhita·Shennong Bencaojing·Ibn al-Baytar·Avicenna·Herbarium Amboinense (1690)·Indian Hemp Drugs Commission·Carl Linnaeus·Historical sources

Trade Routes & Dispersal

Cannabis on the Silk Road·Spread of cannabis to South Asia·Spread of cannabis to Southeast Asia·Spread of cannabis to Africa·Spread of cannabis to the Americas·Hippie Trail·Yarkand charas trade

Traditional Cultivation History

History of cannabis cultivation·Hemp

History by Country

Asia: Philippines·China·Kazakhstan·Kyrgyzstan

Africa: Angola·Kenya·Nigeria·South Africa

Americas: Brazil·Chile·Mexico

Oceania: Australia·Papua New Guinea

Preparations & Their Names

Bhang·Charas·Ganja·Hashish·Cannabis product names

Cannabis in Medicine History

Cannabis in Western medicine·Cannabis in traditional Chinese medicine·Cannabis in Ayurveda·Cannabis in Persian medicine·Cannabis tinctures

Prohibition & Drug War History

Cannabis prohibition·War on drugs·Harry J. Anslinger·Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs·Marihuana Tax Act of 1937·International Narcotics Control Board·Eradication campaigns

Cannabis & Colonialism

Cannabis in colonial India·Cannabis in colonial Burma·Cannabis in the Spanish Empire·Bengal Presidency cannabis trade·Colonial hemp trade

Cultural & Social History

Cannabis legalisation movement·Anti-cannabis propaganda·Cannabis in Hinduism·Cannabis in Sufism·Rastafari·Medical cannabis

Historical Varieties & Genetics

Southern hemp·Genetic erosion·Ex situ conservation·Legendary landraces·Local cannabis names

Portal·Category

The Greek hashish trade was the export of hashish made in the Peloponnese of Greece, above all in the province of Mantineia round Tripoli, to Egypt and to other markets of the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, from the late 19th century to the 1930s. Hashish was legal in Greece until 1920 and banned in Egypt, so goods traded openly where they were made were smuggled where they were sold.^{: para. 11} At the turn of the 20th century Greece was the main supplier of the Egyptian market.^{: para. 30} Under a commercial convention with Egypt, Greece taxed the crop and banned its export to Egypt in 1906; in 1920 it banned growing, trade and use.^{: ch. 1, paras 53, 57; ch. 2, para. 15} Old stocks and weak enforcement kept the smuggling going for several years after the ban.^{: para. 31} The stocks that holders finally handed over to the state, 85 tonnes, were burned near Athens in the autumn of 1935.^{: ch. 2, paras 24–25}

Origins

The first plantation of cannabis grown for its resin in Greece was laid out near Argos early in the 1870s, according to the physician Georgios Papavassileiou, who wrote that Arab workers were brought in for their skill. The sources generally trace the know-how to Egypt and Cyprus.^{: ch. 1, para. 7} By the last decades of the 19th century hashish was grown openly in Greece for local use and for export.^: 313 In 1887 the mayor of Orchomenus, in Mantineia, reported that abroad hashish fetched three or four times its price at home.^: 314 The province of Mantineia, in Arcadia, became the centre of the crop: in 1911 it grew more than 90 per cent of the Greek harvest.^: 366 Hemp for hashish was also grown in Argolis and Messenia.^{: ch. 2, para. 15}

Egypt had banned hashish in 1868 and again in 1879. The British administration made the ban on growing and use final in 1884.^{: ch. 1, para. 31} The historian Kostis Gkotsinas suggests that the crop's arrival in Greece may be connected with the Egyptian ban.^{: para. 9} In December 1892 Alfred Caillard, Director-General of Egyptian Customs, wrote that before the prohibition the hashish imported into Egypt had been grown in Anatolia, but that it appeared "to be manufactured chiefly in Greece".^{: para. 9}

The route

In 1908 the United States consul at Patras, Edward I. Nathan, reported that the best hashish was grown in the district of Mantinea and that "the center for export is Tripolitza", the old name of Tripoli. From there it was sent to the ports of Kalamata and Nauplia (Nafplio) "and from thence abroad". Alexandria lies 525 nautical miles from Piraeus. Official documents of the period often noted how close Greece was to Egypt.^{: para. 64} In 1911 the correspondent in Egypt of the newspaper Embros wrote that the nearness of the two countries made traffic between them dense and eased the work of Greek smugglers.^{: ch. 2, para. 67}

George Hunter Pasha, Director-General of the Egyptian Coast Guard, wrote at the end of 1913 that hashish could be exported "from any port of Europe or Great Britain, but the greater quantity comes direct from the small islands in the Greek Archipelago". In his account the large cargoes, of one to two tons, came in smuggling steamers that landed them on the Egyptian coast; smaller parcels came in merchant steamers or were carried by individuals.^{: para. 12} The newspaper Eleftheron Vima later quoted a man it called a former hashish merchant, who told of voyages by sailing boat from Piraeus to the coast near Alexandria; Gkotsinas leaves open whether the man was real.^{: ch. 7, para. 57} The French adventurer Henri de Monfreid, who smuggled hashish from Greece to Egypt,^{: para. 11} went to a village of the Peloponnese to negotiate for a cargo of 400 okas bound for the Egyptian market.^{: ch. 1, para. 7}

Once Greece had agreed with Egypt to stop exports there, Nathan found the drug going to "the various ports of England, Austria, France, and Italy" and judged that from there "much, no doubt, ultimately finds its way to Egypt". A British naval handbook of 1918 states that the whole of the hashish grown in the plain of Tripoli was exported, "the bulk of it going to Turkey and Asia Minor". A report of the Transnational Institute names Greece as a significant exporter of hashish to Turkey and Egypt well into the 1920s.^: 5 The sieved resin that French North Africa called chira^: 111–113 came mainly from Greece. J. Bouquet, writing in the United Nations Bulletin on Narcotics in 1951, found that the contraband in Tunisia had been in the hands of two or three groups of Greek traffickers supplied from Greece; the rest of North Africa drew its supplies mainly from Tunis.

Greek ports also served as stages for other drugs bound for Egypt, from Turkey, the Balkans and central and western Europe, from the late 19th century to the 1930s.^{: ch. 2, para. 66}

Goods and traders

The hashish was made in winter, when the air was cold and dry. The resin was separated from the dried plants by threshing, rubbing, sieving or centrifuging; a tonne of leaves gave about 50 kilograms of powder. The powder was pressed in cloth sacks into slabs of one oka (1,282 grams) or half an oka. In this form it was sold and carried. The slabs often bore the producer's name and mark. Monfreid compared these marks to the vintages of fine wines, with good and bad years for each estate.^{: ch. 1, para. 7}

The smugglers came from many backgrounds, but most were Greek, helped by their nearness to the source and by their own networks.^{: para. 11} Hunter called the Greek "practically always the principal" in the smuggling and credited him with a talent for it.^{: para. 11} Among the major traffickers in all drugs arrested in Egypt, Greeks numbered 142 of 319 in 1931 and 56 of 195 in 1935, in the figures of Egypt's Central Narcotics Intelligence Bureau.^{: para. 37} Bouquet wrote that a few associations of hashish traffickers, "generally directed by Greeks", had troubled the Egyptian authorities for many years.

From 1904 the Greek Chamber of Commerce of Alexandria supported a ban on growing, or at least the prosecution of smugglers and a heavy tax on the land under the crop. As the treaty talks went on, the community's representatives petitioned the Greek foreign ministry to have the import of hashish into Egypt stopped at any cost, in the interest of the Greeks of Egypt and of their trade.^{: ch. 1, para. 55}

Scale

The French economist Edmond Théry estimated in 1905 that Greece had produced more than 700 tonnes of hashish over the previous ten years and that output had reached 90 tonnes a year.^{: para. 10} Nathan put the yearly shipments from Tripoli at about 100,000 okas (265,000 pounds), worth 2,000,000 drachmas. The Greek agricultural census of 1911 recorded a crop of 1,784 tonnes.^: 366

Hashish growing in Greece, from the agricultural statistics^: 367

Year	Area (stremmata)	Output (okas)	Value (drachmas)
1911	18,949	1,393,984	593,412
1914	11,613	645,530	320,811
1915	3,741	148,530	59,348

Gkotsinas suggests that part of the fall in the recorded crop after 1911 came from growers hiding their harvest to escape the tax of 1906.^: 367

Regulation

Greece and Egypt signed a commercial convention in 1884 and renewed it in 1895. In the talks Egypt first sought stronger powers of control and exceptions to the capitulary rights of Greek subjects, then a ban on growing cannabis in Greece and on its export to Egypt. In return it offered favourable treatment for Greek tobacco.^{: ch. 1, para. 54} Tobacco growers and the Greeks of Egypt pressed for the convention; the hemp growers held rallies round Tripoli early in 1906 and telegraphed Parliament against the bill.^{: ch. 1, paras 55–56}

Law 3123/1906 taxed land under the crop at eight drachmas for each stremma of ten ares. It did not ban growing, sale or use. Exporters had to deposit ten drachmas for each oka at the customs house, repaid only on a certificate from the Greek consul in the importing country that the goods had been sold there. An exporter without one paid a fine of 25 to 100 drachmas for each oka. Export to Egypt was expressly forbidden.^{: ch. 1, para. 53} The law and the new convention were adopted in June 1906 and published two days apart.^{: ch. 1, para. 57} The convention allowed the Egyptian authorities to search the ships and homes of Greek subjects.^{: ch. 1, para. 58} The growers' members of Parliament won an article reserving the tax and the forfeited export deposits for public works in the hemp-growing districts.^{: ch. 1, para. 59} By 1911 the tax had brought in 80,000 drachmas, well short of the 250,000 to 300,000 first expected.^: 372 A circular of 1890 had already forbidden the public use of hashish in Greece.^{: ch. 1, para. 58}

From 1915 German submarines struck heavily at shipping in the Mediterranean. Exports of hashish became difficult and growers turned to cereals.^: 372 The convention of 1906 lapsed in 1915. When Greece, Egypt and Britain opened talks on its renewal in 1919, the government of Eleftherios Venizelos banned the growing of cannabis as a sign of goodwill.^{: ch. 2, para. 14} Law 2107/1920 banned the growing, trade and use of hashish throughout Greece.^{: ch. 2, para. 15} The ban on trade was to take effect on 1 January 1921, so that stocks and the last legal harvest could be sold. Law 3070/1924 put it back to 1 January 1926, revived the export rules of 1906 and raised the deposit from 10 to 50 drachmas an oka.^{: ch. 2, para. 16} The transition was meant to let holders sell their stocks abroad.^{: ch. 2, para. 19}

Decline

The stocks held in 1920 were never counted, so nothing stopped their holders from renewing them by import or by illicit growing. Some producers moved their business north and paid for plantations in neighbouring countries,^{: ch. 2, para. 19} among them Albania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Romania.^{: para. 32} At the League of Nations' Opium Advisory Committee in 1928 the Yugoslav delegate said that Greek merchants had "induced" Yugoslav farmers to grow 400 to 500 hectares of cannabis for Egypt.^{: para. 32} In the summer of 1921 the British minister in Greece reported two Egyptian brothers carrying hashish by motorboat from a small port in northern Greece. He also reported that nearly 1,750 kilograms belonging to two Greeks had been seized in the Peloponnese; the case was dropped after "the intervention of interested parties of local influence".^{: para. 31}

A. Ahmed El Hadka, writing in the Bulletin on Narcotics in 1965, counted Greece with Syria and Lebanon among the major sources of Egypt's hashish from 1926. Thomas Russell, known as Russell Pasha, named Greece, Turkey and Syria as the main sources of the hashish supplying the Egyptian market in the early 1930s.^{: para. 34} Bouquet found Greek hashish rarer after the ban of 1920, though it did not disappear: large stocks had probably been hidden; the Greek government passed a stricter law in 1932 that provided for their destruction. Consignments of Greek origin still reached North Africa, but they came from old and often adulterated stocks and disappointed buyers drawn by the drug's former reputation. In his account the ban dealt the Greek traffickers in Tunisia a blow from which their trade did not recover.

In July 1928 sixteen hashish merchants of Tripoli wrote to the League of Nations asking it to press the Greek government to compensate them, in exchange for the stocks that they said they otherwise had to sell in secret. In 1929 they asked the President of the Republic to allow growing again.^{: ch. 2, para. 22} On an official visit to Egypt in March 1930 the Greek foreign minister, Andreas Michalakopoulos, reminded the Egyptian press that Greece had banned the crop despite its growers' protests.^{: ch. 6, para. 57} When the holders of stocks were called on to declare them for destruction, India's delegate to the Opium Advisory Committee, Sir John Campbell, said in 1933 that the measure would end the last important source of Indian hemp in Europe.^{: ch. 2, para. 23} About 160 holders declared 50 tonnes of hashish by 1933. In all 85 tonnes were collected, with a further 5.6 tonnes held in transit in the free zone of Thessaloniki.^{: ch. 2, para. 24} The 85 tonnes were burned in brick kilns near Athens in the autumn of 1935. A law of 1939 capped the compensation at nine million drachmas.^{: ch. 2, para. 25}

The historian Liat Kozma writes that with the Greek ban Egypt lost its most abundant channel of supply and that Lebanon entered the trade mainly after it. For that trade, see Lebanese hashish trade.

See also

• Hashish
• Lebanese hashish trade
• Mantineia
• Moroccan hashish trade