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Hans Derks – History of the opium problem

The Kingdom of the Netherlands, including the House of Orange, has played an important role of in the drug game (even before the British EIC and the opium wars against China)...

I’ve read a relatively short book in Dutch on the VOC, Royal NHM and the House of Orange as opium lords; Hans Derks – Verslaafd aan opium; De VOC en het Huis van Oranje als drugsdealers (2015).
What it lacks in length it more than makes up in shock value! It is really an excellent summary of a much longer book by Hans Derks.
Should I be as “proud” as Hans Derks of the pioneering role the Dutch colonial Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) played in getting the world hooked on drugs?

Arab Muslims were the first to trade hallucinogenic products, including opium, for medical purposes (including for anesthesia).
The Portuguese that controlled Goa learned about opium from the Arabs, but never made it into a mass products (the fools!) and until the 16th-century opium was never a real problem.

The Dutch Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (1563-1611), while serving as the Protestant Archbishop in Goa, copied secret Portuguese nautical maps that enabled the British East India Company (EIC) and Dutch VOC to take over the Portuguese monopoly on trade with the East Indies.
Van Linschoten, together with his friend Paludanus, published a bestseller in 1598, also translated to English, that included information on opium (called “amphioen” or “taryak” at that time).

At first the Dutch continued to trade in opium, starting at the latest in 1620, at the relatively small scale of the Portuguese until 1660. It is estimated that between 1640 and 1652, Batavia received only some 250 kilogram of opium annually from Surat.
In 1642, the VOC obtained a monopoly from the Sultan to import opium, while the population of the Sultanate was obliged to maintain a fixed number of pepper plants. Around this time VOC officials had the great idea to trade opium for pepper - the East India product with the highest priority until the 19th-century.
The VOC labelled their monopoly an “octroy”, which was defended by military force. The VOC introduced a passport system and if others were caught “smuggling” these goods (opium, spices, tin and cloth), they were confiscated and the “smuggler” severely punished.

In 1663, the VOC started trafficking opium as a mass product in the Malabar coastal region. VOC officials were also involved in some private opium selling. In 1676 the VOC got the exclusive opium import rights in Mataram, in 1678 in Cheribon and a bit later in Bantam (before the British EIC).
In the second part of the 17th century (the “Gouden eeuw”), the Dutch exported Bengal opium not only to the Malabar coast, but also to Southeast Asia (Malacca, Manila, Arakan or the East Indies archipelago), Ceylon, Maldive Islands, Gujarat (Surat, Cambay) and the Persian Gulf/Red Sea (Bandar Abbas, Hormuz or Jeddah). Bengal opium was the VOC’s second-largest profit-maker after raw silk.
This led directly to war and from 1680 to 1740 the amount of junkies coming to Batavia doubled from 10 to 20 per year.
According to official statistics, in 1667 the VOC exported only 1,173 kg; 1675 - 13,322 kg; 1691 - 43,500 kg; 1703 - 60,290 kg; and by the year 1715 - 79,968 kg.
The whole of the 17th-century export to the East Indies from Bengal is estimated at 1.1 million kilograms; this rose to some 5.5 to 6.3 million kilograms in the 18th-century.

The new important man in the VOC opium game was Jacob Mossel (1704-1761). After he arrived in Batavia, the opium profits suddenly trebled from 512,000 to 1,415,00 guilders. After this succes, Mossel was chosen as the successor of Governor-General Van Imhofff, and established the Amphioen Society (AS, amphioen was another name for opium) in 1745 that was active until 1794.
Mossel took 40 shares AS for himself. To have been able to buy these shares, he must have “earned” an amazing 160,000 guilders in only 2 years (since he arrived in Batavia) that could only have come from opium. Jacob Cool (the “Court Jew of Van Imhofff”) originally possessed 30 AS shares, but had to leave 10 to his “favorites”.
To exploit the opium to the utmost, the AS introduced a lease on smoking prepared opium (madat) in districts outside Batavia at the end of 1746. But the opium income actually decreased, because corruption increased.
The AS became the “society” that made all the profits, while the VOC did all the work. The VOC-colonial state remained responsible for the import of opium and the military security in the whole archipelago at the cost of the “taxpayer”. The AS received the opium from the VOC for 1125 guilders per chest and could sell it for 1375 guilders (a profit of more than 22%)...

Most of the wealthy AS shareholders lived in the Netherlands.
An important participant in the Amphioen Society was “stadhouder” Willem IV, who had become a Knight of the Garter in 1733 (and called himself Prince of Orange), who acquired 30 shares AS in 1748. He was promised that by taking this share, in 1755 he would already be 200,000 guilders richer, when the octroy of the AS expired.
Every time the octroy was renewed, Willem IV and his “stadhouder” successor, Willem V, would receive an enormous amount of opium money, e.g. 1.2 million guilders in 1795. All shareholders together pocketed a total of about 13 million guilders; an amount comparable to a present value of about a billion guilders. Willem V made a fortune through the Amphioen Society.
See Willem V, who after being born in 1748, became a Knight of the Garter in 1752.


Because of this remarkable construction, the VOC got weaker. This was followed by the Dutch–English war in 1795, in which Ceylon was lost and the Napoleonic wars in which the Netheralands lost its independence. There was even a large opium debt owed to the EIC and the British easily conquered Java and took over the rest of the East Indian archipelago.
To avoid a transfer into British hands, the Dutch government took over all the VOC shares (a nationalisation of the private VOC) at the cost of the taxpayer.

Another interesting opium family are the Van Hogendorps. The patriarch Willem van Hogendorp (1735-1784) first lost his fortune through investments in the EIC. He then went to the East Indies with his own ship and made a substantial fortune by “officially” smuggling opium. On his return trip to a retire in Holland, he drowned near the Cape of Good Hope because he had overloaded the ship with too much gold on board.

In 1802, Willem V made a deal with Napoleon after he escaped to England.
During the French occupation, Governor-General Daendels (1808-1811) rationalised the distribution of opium and tried to stimulate its consumption by establishing government opium dens. The opium income of the state multiplied nearly 10 times in 1804 and more than doubled in less than 2 years (1809-1810).
Willem’s second son, Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp (1762-1834), became a lawyer and a real “hero” of the Dutch monarchy. After the planned defeat of Napoleon, in 1813 Gijsbert Karel and 2 associates staged a coup to establish the Dutch kingdom with Willem VI crowned King Willem I, who had become a Knight of the Garter in 1814, and Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp as his prime minister.
Often overlooked in this “heroic tale” is that Willem’s eldest son, Dirk van Hogendorp, ultimately became a general in Napoleon’s army. Dirk even appears in Napoleon’s testament!

In 1824, King Willem I founded the Koninklijke Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij, NHM (Royal Dutch Trading Company) to take over the looting role of the Amphioen Society. Willem I explained about the NHM:

… its aim is to integrate all branches of industrious activities into one whole, of which the NHM is the nucleus; the Chambers of Commerce, the factories and the agricultural committees are the main branches of this whole …

The Dutch taxpayer had to guarantee a net profit to the NHM of 300,000 guilders annually. King Willem I bought 4 million shares, but was the only one to take his money back quickly, and doubled his investment within 13 years. He also took out 1.3 million too much from the NHM in 1830.
While the NHM initially made a profit of 37 million per year, in a few years’ time only 24 million were left.

The Royal NHM was the state opium dealer for a lease of only 2.6 – 3 million guilders annually and 2/7th of the net profit. From 1847-1849 the total opium income of the Dutch colonial state was 6.7, 6.5 and 6 million guilders respectively. The NHM even reached into China, the largest market for opium. By the 1850s, the opium income constituted 16.8% of the revenue collected in the Indies. Between 1860 and 1910 this level was more or less maintained at an average of 15%.
The NHM under a lucrative contract could also buy other goods (including meat, wheat and flour) and sell them for a profit of 16%.
Until 1921, the head of state King/Queen got a weekly report from the President of the NHM. Later the NHM evolved into the ABN Bank, now part of ABN Amro Bank that still has a warm relationship with the Dutch Royal family.

In 1827, the Netherlands concluded a contract with the Chinese captain Tan Hang Kwee to start tin mining on Billiton, starting with 300 laborers. The Chinese miners were kept enslaved by opium. The House of Orange not only made money from the tin but also from the opium. The Chinese sub-farmer had to buy a fixed quantity of opium every month for much higher than market prices.
In 1852, Prince Hendrik (1820-1879), brother of King Willem III, wanted to invest in the tin mines on Biliton to found the private Billiton Mining Company (BM). John Loudon became Hendrik´s representative. The stupidity of the greedy House of Orange is unbelievable since they already had the highly rewarding 1827 contract from which at least a profit of 100,000 guilders per year would be gained from the Chinese labor.
Many Chinese miners died, in the months of February and March 1860 alone, some 700 Chinese miners died, mainly from beriberi (caused by thiamine deficiency).

In 1884 the Dutch journal for the medical profession was very positive about cocaine with an estimated price of 9,000 Dutch guilders per kilo. The Netherlands started coca plantations on Java around 1885.
A quick calculation shows that this leads to an annual turnover of 1.53 billion Dutch guilders!

In 1898, the German Bayer Pharmaceutical Products also produced heroine.


Parallel to the Opium Factory, a Cocaine Factory was established. In 1900, in Amsterdam the Nederlandsche Cocaïne Fabriek (NCF) was founded by the Koloniale Bank in which the Royal NHM owned a stake.
The NCF became the largest cocaine factory in the world. It even expanded to other products like codeine, benzedrine (amphetamine), efedrine, and developed the fully synthetic cocaine, novocaine. From 1932 onwards, the NCF also processed raw opium into morphine. Around that time several South American countries became large producers of coca leaves.
During the Anglo-American-Dutch funded Nazi occupation in World War II, the NCF received 165 tons of raw opium for free, and it could charge its processing costs to the state. The NCF realised fabulous profits on its morphine during the war. Soon after the war AKZO Nobel bought the company for an undisclosed amount. How much loot went to Queen Wilhelmina?

The performance of this cocaine industry impressed Merck USA so much that it started its own coca plantation on Java with great success in the 1930s.
The American John Cushing, employed in his uncles’ James and Thomas H. Perkins Company of Boston, acquired his wealth from smuggling Turkish opium to Canton (1812). In 1830, the Perkins Company merged with Russell and Co of the grandfather of President Franklin Roosevelt that was “the third-largest opium dealer on the China coast”. In one of those strange coincidences, the Van Rosenvelt family had first come to America from the Netherlands between 1638 and 1649.

Hans Derks – History of the opium problem. The assault on the East, ca. 1600 – 1950 (2012), 39.5 MB: http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=1000347