• 1 Lecoq 1930, pp. 4‑5.
• 2 The Times 1930; Courtade 1930.
• 3 The Chicago Tribune 1930.
• 4 Jugement du tribunal de Marseille 1933.

1In June 1930, over a tonne of opium and opiates were seized in Marseille port after disembarkation in cases of dried fruit, gum, and other materials from the Sitmar line ship Italia, marking “le plus gros chargement qui ait pu être décelé depuis le commencement de la guerre de la drogue.”1 A second shipment of 200 kg of opium was seized from another Sitmar company ship, the Bulgaria, on 30 June, just two weeks after the Italia’s arrival. Days later, a further 200 kg was seized onboard the Messageries Maritimes ship Pierre Loti, bringing the total quantity of drugs seized at the port to some 1,500 kg in the space of a few weeks, with an estimated value of 100,000 Fr, as much as 150 times the salary of a mid-ranking sailor.2 While newspapers reported that police investigators Thalamas and Lamblin were “on the track of the leader of an international dope ring,”3 those arrested in connection with the imports were of a lesser stature: Salomon Eskinazi, a well-known Istanbul Jewish opium merchant who had recently arrived in Marseille by train; Georges Orsoni Paugiris, his alleged secretary and an Istanbul-born employee of the Hellenic Compagnie de Navigation Nationale; and Spyros Milios Vlassis, a shipping agent of Greek nationality resident in Marseille.4

• 5 Temime 2007, pp. 24‑25.
• 6 Mandel 2003, p. 49.
• 7 Lewis 2002, p. 88.
• 8 Tsilis 2000, p. 195.
• 9 Temime 1985, p. 42.

2The presence of these merchants and the drugs in which they traded reflected the city’s long-established but intensifying migratory and commercial ties with the formerly Ottoman littoral of the eastern Mediterranean. The destruction witnessed in the final decades of the Ottoman empire had resulted in largescale emigration, among the most significant destinations of which was Marseille.5 In 1922, with fears for their future under the new Ankara Government reaching a highpoint following news of destruction and massacre in Izmir, large numbers of Ottoman Greeks and Armenians set out across the Mediterranean. Arriving on 19 September 1922, the Messageries Maritimes ship Lamartine was among the first boats to reach Marseille carrying Armenian refugees from Istanbul.6 In an apt symbol of the shared human and technological infrastructure of migration and illicit commerce, the Lamartine would several years later be implicated in numerous cases of opium smuggling from Turkey. By 1932, roughly 20,000 Armenians were resident in Marseille alongside 5,000 Turkish nationals of unspecified religious or ethnic affiliation.7 Thousands of displaced Ottoman Greek Christians also arrived at the port, forming a new class of laborers and peasants who overwhelmed the smaller, primarily mercantile Greek Orthodox community established in the city in the course of the 19th century.8 Exiles from Anatolia were far from the only newcomers to the city but joined an urban society in which foreign-born migrants, principally Italian and Spanish nationals, composed some one-quarter of the population,9 while a substantial portion of the city’s French nationals were of Corsican origin.

• 10 Kitson 2014, p. 14.
• 11 Regnard 2018, p. 1.
• 12 Cendrars 1934, p. 1.

3The city’s multifarious kinship connections and commercial and transit links facilitated its development as an entrepôt of illicit narcotics. Although it was Corsican and Italian residents who came to be viewed as the primary agents of narcotics smuggling and other organised crime in the city, symbolised by the partnership between Francois Spirito and Paul Carbone,10 migrants and visitors from formerly Ottoman lands also turned to the expanding black market to sustain themselves in their new-found home, making use of lingering connections with opium-rich Turkey. Efforts to curtail smuggling and track and arrest smugglers became an integral part of the regulation and policing of transit between Marseille and ports such as Istanbul.11 The diverse individuals and distant places implicated in smuggling cases like that of the Italia caught the attention of contemporary writers such as Blaise Cendrars, who described Marseille as “le centre d’un réseau invisible qui s’étend sur le monde entier”.12

• 13 Londres 1927, pp. 43‑45.
• 14 Gingeras 2018, pp. 54‑57.
• 15 Auda 2013, p. 382.

4In explaining the functioning of such a complex and disparate network, commentators, investigators, and some scholars have at times suggested the existence of a grand conspiracy directed by one or more criminal mastermind. Albert Londres’ 1927 study of Marseille describes “la Pere”, a mysterious Chinese figure who acted as “généralissime des contrebandiers de l’opium”.13 The idea of shadowy kingpins was further reinforced, sometimes deliberately, by the press and other media surrounding what came to be known as “The French Connection”.14 The evidence presented in this article suggests that participation in smuggling involved a far wider range of individuals often acting opportunistically and autonomously. Certainly, career criminals such as Carbone and the Aranci brothers played a role in the import of narcotics from Turkey to France, being named in several such cases, and were believed by French police investigators to be directing others from behind the scenes.15 However, illicit transactions were also a part‑time supplement to the incomes of a far larger number of sailors and merchants, who relied on the complicity of their colleagues and low-ranking officials rather than the grand conspiracy typified by the relationship between Paul Carbone and Marseille mayor Simon Sabiani.

• 16 Montel 2024, pp. 12‑15. See also Regnard-Drouot 2009, Auda 2013, Kitson 2014.
• 17 Erdinç 2004; Gingeras 2014; Gürsoy 2013; Evered 2011; Evered 2022.
• 18 Lecoq 1930, pp. 4‑5.
• 19 Montel 2010, p. 18.

5Smugglers great and small have attracted increasing academic attention within a growing literature that seeks to explain Marseille’s rise to notoriety as the French Republic’s “capitale du crime”.16 The literature on narcotics smuggling into and out of Istanbul is small by comparison with that on Marseille, comprising a limited number of studies focused on the diplomatic and political repercussions of Turkey’s production and export of opium and attempts at its regulation and suppression at national level.17 The present article aims to supplement this literature by extending the study of the opium trade between these cities to the decades prior to the rise to notoriety of the French Connection. The early 1930s marked the birth of the “Guerre des drogues”,18 as the news of the June 1930 seizures was headlined in the French crime journal Détective, and witnessed the establishment of long-enduring smuggling routes and measures for their surveillance and control. It was also a period that gave rise to new conceptions of crime, with the emergence of the term “organized crime”19 and development of an anti-trafficking agenda spanning arms, migrants, and narcotics that continue to frame understandings of smuggling. This article aims to provide a multilateral telling of this history, grounded in French, Turkish, American, and British official reports, police and court records emanating from both cities, and the archives of shipping companies operating between them. Such multi-site analysis is essential in tracing the complex, international journeys of smuggled goods, which followed trajectories that crossed the boundaries of multiple states and their archives.

• 20 MacArthur-Seal 2022, p. 208.
• 21 Commissaire spécial 1913.
• 22 Pelletier 1930, p. 2.
• 23 Clerk 1930.
• 24 Bureau Central d’Informations des Narcotiques 1933, p. 7.
• 25 Montel 2024, p. 286.

6Indeed, the geographies of opium commerce underwent major changes following the rise of prohibition.20 Newspaper columns mistakenly suggested that the drugs on board the Italia had been embarked in China, based on earlier cases of opium smuggling that had principally involved East and Southeast Asian sailors and produce.21 Rather than being Asian in origin, as Eskinazi was quoted as saying in the press, “la marchandise est bien turque”.22 Most of the drugs identified had been manufactured by the Société Anonyme Turque de Produits Pharmaceutique et Chimique,23 a pharmaceutical factory based in the Istanbul suburb of Kuzguncuk that had been founded with capital and expertise from France24 and relocated as a result of tightened imposition of legal restrictions on French pharmaceutical companies. Seizures of such Turkish-origin narcotics clashed with prevailing conceptions of opium and opiates as a far-eastern problem rather than one that linked France with its Mediterranean neighbors.25 While the scale of the Italia seizure would not be matched, large quantities of drugs continued to flow from Istanbul to Marseille throughout the 1930s, propelled by the two cities’ legal, human, and financial entanglements and the uneven imposition of drug laws.

• 26 Retaillaud-Bajac 2019, pp. 29‑35.

7In his comments to investigators, Eskinazi admitted his role in exporting the drugs but protested that his commerce in opium and opiates was in conformity with Turkish law. As will be seen, he was one of many Istanbul opium merchants making use of juridical faults opening across the Mediterranean with the advancement of drug control, as laws limiting the production, sale, and consumption of narcotics spread jurisdiction by jurisdiction in the first decades of the 20th century. France’s establishment of a comprehensive punitive regime for the control of the sale and consumption of narcotics in 191626 and adhesion to international treaties governing opium agreed at Geneva in 1925 and 1931 put it out of step with Turkey. Ankara would not enact narcotics legislation until 1928 and the Geneva conventions remained unratified until 1933, up to which point there was little control on the sale of opium or its derivatives. As a result, the export of narcotics from Turkey to France and elsewhere crossed the bounds of legality and illegality as products transited borders and jurisdictions, while merchants and sailors were recast as smugglers.

• 27 Gutman 2019, pp. 3‑4; Torpey 1999, p. 122.

9The seizures on board the Italia and Bulgaria thrust the Italian Sitmar company into the spotlight, but the more frequent voyages of Messageries Maritimes ships like the Pierre Loti were of greater importance for the maintenance of commercial and kinship ties between the western and eastern Mediterranean and accordingly for the smuggling of narcotics. The regular discovery of drugs on board Messageries Maritimes ships led to the multiplication of the controls and surveillance that governed life at sea, and turned the French authorities’ gaze to Istanbul, the apparent origin of the shipments. Fear of the clandestine import of narcotics joined other concerns, such as the regulation of migration, that contributed to the increasing bureaucratization of travel in the early 20th century and inspired new methods of circumvention.27

• 28 Fawell 2021, pp. 114‑116.
• 29 French Line sailings to and from England, France, Spain 1933.

10Messageries Maritimes, the founder of which had run a private shipping line between Marseille and Istanbul, grew rapidly after winning the concession for the French State’s postal services to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Syria, and Egypt.28 While new lines were added to South America and South East Asia, this Mediterranean route remained a key component of the business, its importance cemented in the post‑war period by the establishment of French control over Syria and Lebanon. The company provided two eastern Mediterranean routes. Typical clockwise, or north-south, trips from Marseille would first call in Naples, followed by Piraeus, Istanbul, Izmir, Rhodes, Larnaca, Mersin, Beirut, Haifa, Jaffa, and Alexandria, before returning to Marseille, a voyage of a little under three weeks, while counterclockwise trips visited the same ports in reverse order. With two or more ships plying the same routes at any given time, departures from Marseille bound for Istanbul were frequent, occurring twice a month in the summer of 1933.29

• 30 Rapport général du voyage 1936.

11Besides its state-mandated role in the delivery of mail, the Messageries Maritimes ships bore passengers and import and export cargoes across the Mediterranean. Ships logs that detail the discovery and interdiction of contraband also note the voyages of notable passengers who were integral to France’s diplomatic and colonial presence in the Mediterranean. The January 1936 voyage of the Théophile Gauthier, for example, brought Mr Meyrier, secretary to the French High Commission in Syria to Beirut, and Mrs Kammerer, wife of the French ambassador to Turkey, from Istanbul to Marseille.30 Unbeknownst to them, such distinguished passengers shared voyages with contraband narcotics that their patron in the French State was increasingly anxious to prevent, mobilizing its representatives abroad for the purpose.

• 31 Rapport de mer 1933a.

12The names of other would‑be passengers were recorded as a result of their attempts at clandestine passage to and from the eastern Mediterranean. On a single voyage of the Pierre Loti, for example, a group of Armenians were discovered attempting to embark on departure from Marseille on 19 January 1933 while a Greek national attempted to embark in Piraeus en route to France.31 In response to the regular discovery of such stowaways, inspections were made of staff quarters, storage facilities, and depots every Sunday morning at sea. The high number of attempted clandestine embarkations led to the organisation of preventative measures on evening stops in Izmir, Istanbul, and Piraeus, surveillance that also contributed to the reduction of contraband. The threat of deportation of non-nationals among Marseille residents and the crew of Messageries Maritimes ships was likewise assumed to be a useful deterrent in the prevention of smuggling.

• 32 Rapport de mer 1932d.
• 33 Burley 1932.
• 34 Roberts 1932.

13The difficulty lay in identifying and isolating such contraband materials and clandestine passengers among the mass flows of ticketed individuals and licit goods. A voyage of the Lamartine in July 1932 reported to be carrying illicit opium saw the embarkation and disembarkation of some 500 passengers and over 3,000 tonnes of merchandise at different ports.32 The ship left Marseille with a cargo of industrial products comprising radiators, barrels of zinc, steel tubes, coal, and motor vehicles. Reaching Istanbul on 26 July, some 112 tonnes of goods and 63 passengers left the boat, while 7 passengers and 31 tonnes of goods were embarked, making up part of its return cargo of dry and tinned fruits, cotton and wool, and opium. Indeed, the legally recorded export of thousands of kilos of opium each month to pharmaceutical firms and traders in France and Europe made up a valuable portion of the cargos leaving Istanbul for Marseille, and inevitably became a source of leakage into the black market.33 Before arriving in Marseille on 11 August, a routine search was made of the accessible compartments of the ship during which no contraband was discovered. Nevertheless, a trusted informant alleged that 532 kg of contraband opium had been embarked when the Lamartine had docked in Istanbul, and that its consignors had succeeded in evading searches and disembarking the produce on the ship’s departure from Marseille.34 How such quantities of drugs could disappear on board became a subject of speculation and anxiety on the part of company bosses and national authorities.

• 35 Retaillaud-Bajac 2009, pp. 143‑194.
• 36 Importante saisie d’opium à Marseille 1931.
• 37 Pigeonneau 1933a.

14In such a manner, the regular journeys of Messageries Maritimes ships from Istanbul to Marseille were thought to facilitate the import of huge volumes of narcotics to France, where they were consumed by a growing number of addicts, refined into heroin and morphine at newly established underground drug manufactories, or clandestinely re‑exported to other markets such as the United States.35 When a haul of some 1,000 kilos of opium was uncovered on board the Providence in November 1931, the case appeared to “confirme qu’il existe dans certains ports du Levant une organisation qui en opère le trafic dans de vastes proportions grâce à des complicités parmi les équipages.” 36The continued arrival of Messageries Maritimes ships carrying contraband over the following months alarmed French and international authorities and inspired action. A report prepared by French diplomat Jacques Pigeonneau listed the vast sums of opium confiscated in the last quarter of 1932 and first quarter of 1933,37 as can be seen in Fig. 1.

• 38 Bachmann, Coppel 1989, p. 280.
• 39 Kamerrer 1934.
• 40 MacArthur-Seal 2024, p. 9.

15These shipments threatened to derail concurrent efforts to impose stricter controls on domestic sources of drugs, such as doctors’ prescriptions, in France.38 Ambassador Kamerrer warned of “la quantité inquiétante des poisons ainsi acheminés vers notre territoires, impliquant de très grandes difficultés de répression et constituent un grave danger pour la santé publique.”39 The same concerns would spread to Turkey as the domestic taste for narcotics grew in the early 1930s, until which point the profits of opium and opiates prepared for foreign markets seemed to have had little domestic cost.40 US consuls in both Istanbul and Marseille warily monitored the growing traffic between the two cities, fearful that much of the opium that reached France would be transhipped to the United States, where the price of black-market opium was still higher.

• 41 Fink 2011, p. 45.
• 42 Rapport du Commissaire 1932.
• 43 Cassidy, Griffin, Wray 2020.

16Mounting government pressure, extending to the threat of fines and the impounding of ships, led Messageries Maritimes management to increase efforts to prevent the flow of drugs from Istanbul. Merchant ships were already subject to a long-established disciplinary regime aimed at ensuring the timeliness of passage, comfort and safety of passengers, and security of cargo, which was then enhanced by new concerns regarding the clandestine passage of narcotics and the complicity of sailors in smuggling.41 The performance of members of the crew in the carrying out of duties and their attitude towards superiors and conditions of their employment was subject to detailed reporting dispatched to company headquarters.42 These reports both acted as an encouragement to compliant behaviour and were drawn on as character references in trials of sailors accused of smuggling. Such cross-referencing initiated an alliance between the punitive regime disciplining labor at sea and the carceral regime under formation at national level to punish the non-medical use of narcotics.43

• 44 Rapport de mer 1932c.
• 45 Rapport de mer 1932b.
• 46 Pigeonneau 1932b.

17Over the period 1929–1933, ship logs bear witness to the introduction of new measures aimed at preventing the embarkation and disembarkation of narcotics. As a matter of course, ships were searched before their return to Marseille, though opium was rarely discovered in this manner, even on voyages indicated to be carrying contraband. A “minutieuse” inspection of the Pierre Loti, for example, failed to uncover any object of contraband, despite French consul Pigeonneau warning that the ship was carrying 690 kg of illicit opium.44 Likewise, no contraband was discovered after searching the Lamartine, though it was said to have covertly embarked 550 kg of opium from Istanbul prior to its return to Marseille.45 Pigeonneau outlined a range of techniques for the clandestine disembarkation of narcotics that might explain these discrepancies, including throwing drugs from the boat in sealed bottles, transfer to small motor boats at night, or delaying disembarkation until controls laxed or until the ship’s next call in port.46

• 47 Rapport général du voyage 1932a.

18Further efforts were made to prevent the embarkation of opium in the first place. In the early 1930s, extra precautions began to be taken by ships’ captains at Istanbul and Izmir. When ships remained docked in Turkish ports overnight, portholes were kept closed and bright lights illuminated the ship and surrounding waters. While time and energy consuming, these precautions on occasion proved effective. On the Patria’s call at Istanbul on 4‑6 October 1932, the captain reported how he had “organisé une étroite surveillance qui à amené l’arrestation à bord d’un sujet local porteur d’un ballot de ce stupéfiant47”. On its next tour, the captain described taking “toutes les précautions possibles pour éviter l’embarquement clandestin de stupéfiants” when docked in Istanbul:

• 49 Procès-verbal de surveillance 1935.
• 50 Huber 2013, p. 3.

19In an apparent affirmation of success, no contraband was discovered on the ship’s return to Marseille after either voyage. Such measures were formalised in the mid‑1930s, after which a standard “procès-verbal de surveillance” is encountered in the record keeping of Messageries Maritimes voyages that gave an account of preventative measures taken in Istanbul and Izmir. The documents were co‑signed by the cafedji, premier maître d’hôtel, maître d’équipage, capitaine d’armes, officier de quart, commissaire, 2me capitaine, and commandant in the aim of ensuring collective responsibility.49 However comprehensive such surveillance, most shipments of narcotics, rather than being snuck on board, entered the ship hidden among passengers’ luggage and registered cargoes, the quantities of which precluded total control. Extricating and interdicting illicit passage and transit from an increasingly voluminous maritime traffic was a problem characteristic of the broader “channelling of mobility”50 witnessed in the period.

• 51 Chambrun 1931.
• 52 Summary of illicit transactions and seizures 1934.
• 53 Pigeonneau 1932a.

20Clandestine shipments of drugs discovered aboard the ships of the Messageries Maritimes were traced to merchants residing in Istanbul. The city’s opium traders had survived the disruption and destruction of the final decade of the Ottoman Empire, and would retain their prominence until the State’s monopolisation of opium exports in 1933. Their regular status in Istanbul meant such traders initially had little qualms identifying themselves in paperwork attached to shipments or even on the packaging of the exported opium. Shipping records for opium seized from the Pierre Loti in September 1931 listed 800 kilos having been sent by Nesim Taranto and 450 kilos by Marco Theodoridis, two merchants who would be central to the supply of narcotics to Marseille.51 Theodoridis’ distinctive red packaging, bearing a golden lion and his Bankalar Caddesi address, shared with his milliner business, was found in drug seizures around the Mediterranean and further afield.52 He would later boast that he could expedite narcotics “by any which boat”53 he wished.

• 54 AKH 1930.

21Despite these merchants’ legal status at home, the imposition of narcotics controls elsewhere still had a negative effect on their business, as demand for Turkish opium was swiftly curtailed, leading, together with the more general impact of the Great Depression, to a collapse in prices. At the same time, the development of black markets in cities such as Marseille offered a reprieve, promising greater profits for those willing to sell drugs without question to foreign contacts. In 1930, for example, British consular staff suggested that the above-market prices received on sales of opium by merchants Joseph Suma and the aforementioned Salomon Eskenazi indicated they were aware the drugs were destined for the black market.54

• 55 Hyslop 2009, p. 840.

22The growth of a black market for narcotics in Marseille also offered opportunities to the sailors of the Messageries Maritimes as they crossed to and from jurisdictions where opium and opiates remained unrestricted. Sailors had long engaged in such side-businesses, spanning all manner of products the import and sale of which regularly blurred the boundary between the licit and illicit.55 Drug restrictions made opium and opiates among the most profitable commodities that could be bought and sold en route, while at the same time resulting in the intensification of the policing and disciplining regimes to which sailors were subjected.

• 56 Rapport no. 3203 1922.
• 57 Pigeonneau 1932b.
• 58 Commissaire Central 1929.

23Sailors on board the Messageries Maritimes acted as key intermediaries between Istanbul opium merchants and drug distribution networks in Marseille, while at times directing their own efforts to sell drugs on a smaller scale. Earlier cases of opium smuggling by Messageries Maritimes sailors had led to the arrest, dismissal, and expulsion of Chinese and Vietnamese sailors employed on the company’s East Asian lines.56 As sources of contraband opium shifted closer to home, those implicated came to resemble the composition of crews of French, Corsican, Italian, and North African sailors who plied the Messageries Maritimes’ Levant line. A 1932 investigation of Theodoridis’ dispatch of opium on the Lamartine named a stoker, two metalworkers, and a baker among its crew as complicit in the shipment, warning that “il est certain que de pareilles complicités existent sur tous les navires utilisés par les contrebandiers.”57 The Marseille police summarised how “L’opium est importé, d’une façon générale, dans notre ville par voie de mer et ce, avec la complicité de navigateurs qui l’achètent, à l’état brut, en Turquie.”58

• 59 Chauvineau 1932.
• 60 Sarafyan 1932c.
• 61 Sarafyan 1932a.
• 62 Commissaire de la Sûreté 1933.
• 63 Marchant 2018, p. 124.
• 64 Déposition 1933b.
• 65 Sarafyan 1933b.

25A series of such cases was instigated by Artin Sarafyan, an Istanbul Armenian merchant of opium, mohair, and other products based at No. 3 Nemlizade Han in the district of Sirkeci, the center of Istanbul’s opium commerce. Over the period of a year, Sarafyan’s demands for payment led to multiple police investigations and court cases spanning both sides of the Mediterranean that resulted in the dismissal, arrest, and trial of numerous Messageries Maritimes sailors and their alleged accomplices. Sarafyan’s first target was the sailor Michel Antoine Rossi, whom he threatened to denounce if he refused to pay a debt of 20,650 Francs in a telegram sent on 18 November 1932.59 The demand was apparently unsuccessful, and he named Rossi in a letter to the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, claiming he had established a smuggling route between Le Havre and New York.60 In December that year, Sarafyan made another claim for the payment of 3,250 Francs from a sailor named Valette employed on the Messageries Maritimes ship Angkor. He claimed Valette had collaborated with a bar owner in Marseille called Marius in “ses afaires lucratives.”61 The commissaire de la sûreté noted that Leon Valette of Marseille was already known to the police, and had worked as an oiler aboard the Angkor until his discharge in July 1932, a month after close to 100 kilos of opium and 1 kilo of heroin had been seized by customs from the ship.62 It is likely that the bar‑owner referred to by Sarafyan was Marius Aranci, a smuggler implicated in another case of the illicit import of Turkish opium who would be arrested on multiple occasions over subsequent years.63 In March 1933, Sarafyan made private attempts to claim his debts from another sailor, Pascal Salini, who served on board the Pierre Loti. Boarding the ship in the company of Turkish police officers during a stop in Istanbul, Sarafyan demanded the seizure of goods belonging to Salini in lieu of payment, but was told by the captain that the sailor possessed nothing of worth.64 Sarafyan later protested in a letter that the captain had unfairly labelled him a smuggler (“vous m’avez flanqué et affublé de la marque de contrebandier”). On the contrary, Sarafyan reminded him “En Turquie l’achat et la vente de l’opium est aussi libre, n’ayant pas été soumis à aucune loi prohibitive, que la consommation du pain quotidien.”65 He noted that what his customers did with the opium he sold was not his concern and claimed there were some 50 sailors who had made purchases from him.

• 66 İlamsız Takiplerde Odeme Emri 1933.
• 67 Sarafyan 1933a.
• 68 Procureur général 1933.
• 69 Extrait des minutes du greffe 1934a.

26In parallel, Sarafyan was also pursuing debtors among sailors serving with the Théophile Gauthier, centred in this case on Dominique Tafani. Sarafyan initiated two legal demands against Tafani for repayment, one at the Istanbul Second Bailiff’s Office for 1,650 Francs,66 and another to the procurer de la république in Marseille, whom he asked to “le faire condamner en même temps à me payer le montant de ma créance qui est de francs vingt milles six cents cinquante, et le condamner aux dépens.”67 The state procurer instructed the parquet to refuse to pursue Sarafyan’s request for repayment, but instead initiated a criminal investigation into Tafani, who was asserted on the basis of his large orders on credit from Sarafyan to be at the centre of a network of smugglers aboard the Théophile Gauthier.68 An alleged accomplice, the aforementioned Michel Antoine Rossi, who had transferred from the CGT line since Sarafyan’s previous accusation against him, was added as a defendant in the case after Sarafyan produced a purchase order in his name.69

• 70 Ambassade de la République Française en Turquie 1933.
• 71 Malval 1933.
• 72 Sixième bureau d’instruction Istanbul 1933.

27Despite the very different laws then governing opium sales in the two jurisdictions, diplomatic and legal cooperation between France and Turkey facilitated the collection of evidence. In March 1933, the French embassy issued a request to the Turkish Foreign Ministry to have Sarafyan testify in the case.70 The Marseille court dispatched translated notes to Sarafyan requesting him to verify Tafani’s and other sailors’ photographs, the dates and quantities of his sales, and details of how the opium was transported plus the surrender of any evidence of the above.71 Sarafyan testified before Istanbul’s Sixth Court that Tafani and Rossi had arrived at Sarafyan’s depot on 13 May 1930, purchasing 40 and 80 kg of opium respectively. Thereafter, the pair had made their purchases through intermediaries, amounting to 2,000 kg over the entire period.72 His testimony was then transmitted to the Court of the First Instance in Marseille.

• 73 Interrogatoire Pierre Napoléon Franceschi 1933.
• 74 Interrogatoire Jacques Mariani 1933.
• 75 Interrogatoire Pascal Salini 1933.
• 76 Interrogatoire Baptiste Tomi 1933.

28The investigations soon uncovered further sailors on board the Théophile Gauthier and Lamartine alleged to be implicated in the affair. Jean Joseph Martinucci, André Pebre, Dominique and Ange Sisco, and Pierre Napoléon Franceschi protested their involvement and claimed never to have met with Sarafyan.73 A sailor on the Pierre Loti, Jacques Mariani, meanwhile stated that Sarafyan had boarded the ship demanding an outstanding payment of 1,600 Francs for merchandise he had delivered, but that the sailor had refused him, having never seen him before.74 Pascal Salini also noted Sarafyan’s presence on board the Pierre Loti, claiming that he demanded to embark drugs on each voyage, requests Salini said he had refused.75 Baptiste Tomi believed Sarafyan’s accusation against him was revenge for a commercial dispute between the two following his refusal to pay for a supposedly defective batch of animal furs.76

• 77 Mancini 1934.
• 78 Massoni 1933.

29In conformity with prevailing stereotypes regarding the character and behaviour of merchant sailors, police and judges were sceptical of these protestations of innocence. Background checks showed that almost all the sailors named had prior convictions, for theft (Baptiste Tomi), blows and injury (Simon Pebre), violence and assault (Pierre Napoléon Franceschi), or displayed “conduite et de moralité douteuses”77 (Jean Joseph Martinucci, Jacques Mariani, Pascal Salini, Ange and Dominique Sisco). The police report on Tafani noted that, besides his implication in past opium cases, “sa conduite, sa moralité, et ses fréquentations ne sont pas mauvaises”, while Rossi, who had been convicted for the fraudulent disembarkation of non-narcotic goods previously, was “de conduite et de moralité douteuses.”78 Judge Georges Malval determined that the information against these other sailors was insufficient to bring any of them to trial, and so Tafani and Rossi remained the sole defendants in the case.

• 79 Interrogatoire Dominique Tafani 1933.
• 80 Copies de télégrammes 1933.
• 81 Mancini, Laforgue 1933.
• 82 Laboratoire de Police Technique de Marseille 1934.
• 83 Extrait des minutes du greffe 1934b.

30Like other sailors, Tafani protested that he did not know Sarafyan nor had he ever purchased opium from him. He claimed to have ceased his service aboard the Théophile Gauthier in August 1930 after which he had worked on a fishing boat and had not returned to Istanbul.79 Eight telegrams seized by the authorities between Tafani and Sarafyan seemed to contradict this, although they were careful not to name the commodity being ordered and paid for.80 Tafani was implicated by further evidence of money transfers sent from the Marseille branch of the Crédit Commercial de France to the accounts of Spiridos and Jean Halkias, brothers suspected of prior involvement in trafficking, at the Banque Commerciale de Grèce in Galata, Istanbul.81 Confronted with the purchase order provided by Sarafyan, Tafani denied that the signature was his own, and was backed by police analysis that Tafani and Rossi’s signatures differed from other written documents provided by the Messageries Maritimes.82 The tribunal concluded that the handwriting analysis did not clear them of responsibility, however, as “il est courant, dans les tractations de ce genre, de voir les acquéreurs d’opium faisant écrire leur commande ou leur correspondance par des tiers.”83 On 16 May 1934, Tafani and Rossi were sentenced to 20 days in prison and a 100 Francs fine. Their meagre sentences resulted from the fact that the opium, purchased in Istanbul and therefore beyond the remit of the French court, could not be proved to have been smuggled into France, despite France almost certainly having being its destination. This case and others discussed here demonstrate how legal disjunctures complicated prosecution across jurisdictions, creating opportunities for sailors able to exploit cracks in the global governance of narcotics.

• 84 Sarafyan 1932b.
• 85 Sarafyan 1932c.
• 86 Le Saulnier de Saint-Jouan 1933.
• 87 Dubois 1934.
• 88 Schneider 2008, pp. 111‑115.

31Given these limitations, denunciations by sailors and opium merchants that could pinpoint the quantities, time, place, and other details of attempts at smuggling were highly prized by the authorities. Foreign consulates in Istanbul began to offer compensation for information that led to drug seizures, inducing multiple Istanbul opium traders to cooperate as informants. A letter from Sarafyan to the American consul in Istanbul in November 1932 offered intelligence on smuggling operations between Turkey, France, and the United States.84 In it, he noted that he had visited Marseille in 1931 to collect a large debt from a firm engaged in contraband and that the trip had provided him with “the opportunity of studying their activities and their organization very carefully”. He provided detailed intelligence on the operation of smugglers on voyages of the Fabre shipping line’s Providence and Patria from Marseille to New York, and promised that through his contacts in Marseille he would be able to provide details of future covert shipments of drugs to the United States. Later in the month, Sarafyan sent a similar letter promising intelligence on Rossi and others’ smuggling operations to the Bureau of Personnel of the CGT line, requesting they send a delegate to Istanbul to meet him discreetly and unofficially.85 Sarafyan was not the only opium merchant regularly denouncing clandestine traders in the drug. By far the most numerous of such letters to reach the French consul in Istanbul were signed under the name “Roberts”, who was noted to be working as an informant to the US consul as well.86 Roberts’ denunciations were acknowledged to have led to the seizure of some 4,000 kg of opium.87 Such early successes paved the way for the cultivation of informants as a key strategy for the control of narcotics smuggling on both sides of the Atlantic.88

• 89 Roberts 1933.
• 90 Naar 1932.
• 91 Allen 1932.
• 92 Le Saulnier de Saint-Jouan 1932.

32Informants’ motivation to provide such information was largely financial. Sarafyan recalled in his letter to the US consul that he had received 100 dollars as a result of a previous tip‑off in October 1932. Meanwhile, Roberts wrote to the French authorities repeatedly demanding compensation for his past services.89 Another French informant, H. J. Naar, complained that “Il m’a été impossible au bout de huit mois, d’obtenir la moindre satisfaction en ce qui concerne les saisies effectuées sur divers bateaux, à la suite de mes indications.”90 A consular memo accompanying Sarafyan’s letter highlighted a further possible motivation, noting that “Sarafyan is alleged to be himself a trafficker in narcotic drugs.”91 While Roberts was not believed to be directly involved in trafficking, another unnamed source providing information to the French consul was reportedly motivated “par le désir d’exercer certaines vengeances et d’éliminer les plus redoutables de ses concurrents.”92 The criminalization of opium thus offered new ways for Istanbul opium merchants to compete with and potentially eliminate rival traders. Such manoeuvres would come at the cost of Messageries Maritimes sailors.

• 93 Pigeonneau 1932b.
• 94 Pigeonneau 1933b.

33Inevitably, the information provided by informants was not always reliable. The French consul passed on allegations to Paris that 538 kilos of opium would be exported on the Lamartine on 27 July 1932. A follow‑up letter was pleased to note that the opium had been seized, accompanied by warnings regarding the departure of the Pierre Loti on 10 August and Patria on 13 August, but these voyages and an additional voyage of the Lamartine on 24 August indicated to be carrying narcotics did not result in any contraband being seized in Marseille.93 In an effort to track their informants’ effectiveness, the French consulate maintained a tally of denunciations and their result. One such consular memorandum noted that reports of smuggling had become increasingly unreliable in the first trimester of 1933, while the second and third trimesters “ont vu se tarir complétement la source de ces renseignements, soit que nos informateurs habituels.”94 Alarmed, Pigeonneau warned that the failure to compensate informants adequately and promptly risked the collapse of France’s information network.

• 95 Requête d’appel 1934.
• 96 Procès-verbal 1933.

34Denunciations by members of the ship’s crew were still more valuable, but appear to have been rare. Unlike Istanbul’s opium merchants, who operated legally and stood to benefit from interrupting the businesses of their competitors, the apparent solidarity between fellow sailors helped protect their share of the profits and minimised their chances of prosecution, as illustrated by a rare case of denunciation on board the Théophile Gauthier shortly after its departure from Mersin in February 1932. The ship’s captain received an anonymous letter from a member of crew alleging that he had seen master Gurinel and storekeeper Toussaint Palandri hiding opium in the rear capstan. On searching the area, 35 kg of opium was uncovered and surrendered to the Marseille customs on arrival, triggering a police investigation and subsequent trial.95 In interrogation, Palandri denied having had contact with opium merchants during his shore leave in Istanbul, while Gurinel accused the anonymous letter-writer of spreading lies.96

• 97 Déposition 1933a.
• 98 Réquisitoire de renvoi en police correctionnelle 1933.
• 99 Extrait des minutes du greffe 1934b.
• 100 Fawell 2021, p. 289.

35A search of Palandri’s residence, however, uncovered bank bills for large sums of money, leading police to ask how he could have amassed such a fortune “qui ne peut se justifier par votre salaire.”97 His new furniture was likewise of “un luxe qui concorde peu avec la situation pécuniaire normale d’un navigateur.”98 Palandri claimed the funds came from the sale of a business some ten years earlier, but the bank deposits themselves mostly dated from the years 1929-1932, casting doubt on his claims. He also pointed to legitimate commerce he had engaged in at sea, selling hosiery purchased in Marseille on his voyages to the eastern Mediterranean and buying bear cubs in Anatolia that he sold on return to France.99 In such a manner, sailors supplemented their meagre salaries, taking advantage of the mobility intrinsic to their profession. Their engagement in smuggling can be considered a clandestine form of resistance, complementing their overt efforts through strikes and labor disruption to improve pay and employment conditions on the line.100

• 101 Albayez 1938.

36Sharing in the profits of black-market trade served to bind sailors in collective criminal enterprises. Searches of Palandri’s residence uncovered a document describing the distribution of profits, which included the names “Dominique”, and “Antoine”, presumed to refer to Dominique Tafani, Antoine Rossi, and other sailors on the Théophile Gautier. Called for interrogation in March 1933 while their own investigation was underway, Tafani and Rossi confirmed familiarity with Palandri from their shared time on board the ship, but denied having ever had commercial dealings with him. The denials of many such witnesses, whether motivated by solidarity or self-preservation, made investigations into smuggling rings among ships’ crews exceedingly difficult to prosecute. Numerous cases of opium discovered on board ships of the Messageries Maritimes never went to trial due to the fact that when crews were interrogated “aucun d’eux n’a pu ou voulu fournir le moindre renseignement permettant d’orienter utilement les recherches, dans le but de couvrir le propriétaire de la drogue saisie ainsi que son origine.”101

• 102 Hülüsi 1933.
• 103 Note 1933.
• 104 Extrait des minutes du greffe 1934b.
• 105 Requête d’appel 1934.
• 106 Extrait des minutes du greffe 1936.
• 107 Land 2023, p. 219.

37Istanbul’s aggrieved opium merchants proved the weak link in sailors’ collective denials. On 23 March 1933, Mehmet Hülüsi, established at No. 27 Dördüncü Vakıf Han, not far from Sarafyan’s offices, sent a letter to the captain of the Théophile Gauthier claiming payment of 3,410 Francs from Palandri, accompanied by a photograph of an invoice signed in his name.102 As with Sarafyan, the court contacted Mehmet Hülüsi, asking him to confirm the likeness of a photograph of Palandri and provide further details of his purchases of opium, which he did before a Turkish judge.103 Despite the weight of such evidence, the correctional court acquitted Palandri in its judgement of 30 June 1933.104 The state prosecutor would not let the acquittal stand, however, and the procureur de la République quickly brought the case to the court of appeal. Despite acknowledging that “les renseignements recueillis sur l’inculpé ne lui sont pas défavorables,” the procureur concluded that the original trial had been misjudged and asked the court to confirm Palandri’s guilt.105 Finally, in January 1936, the court of appeal upheld the original judgement, though Palandri was not present to hear of his acquittal.106 As in other areas of shipboard discipline and punishment, the collusion and acquiescence of sailors in money-making schemes made the discovery and prosecution of narcotics smuggling all the more challenging.107

• 108 Malo 1932.

38The discovery of cases of smuggling and their prosecution in the courts thus provides examples of both solidarity and dissention between the merchants, sailors, and smugglers whose informal alliances supplied Marseille with opium and opiates. As investigators were painfully aware, the available evidence with which to determine the direction of these networks was limited given the intentionally clandestine nature of smuggling, a factor likewise complicating the task facing historians of smuggling. As a result, allegations of the involvement of major criminal actors directing lower-level players in the Marseille drug market are difficult to prove. Police inspector Malo believed that Rossi, Tafani, Francheschi, Pebre, and Palandri were being directed by Jean Paoleschi, a wealthy Corsican known for his collection of expensive cars, who could not be located.108 Whatever the impetus, their participation in these networks reveals sailors and merchants’ flexibility and opportunism. Facing the financial precarity that accompanied the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Great Depression, and coincidental rise of narcotics controls, these actors sought to profit from the uneven application of drug laws across the spaces to which they moved and had access.

• 109 François 1938a; François 1938b; François 1938c.
• 110 Çağpar 1936.

39In seeking to disrupt these networks, routine controls and surveillance proved ineffective given the complicity of crew members in smuggling efforts. While denunciations proved more valuable, the incentives for information offered by the authorities to sailors and opium sellers had to compete with the potential profits of a high-value black market commodity, the price of which only increased as a result of efforts at its suppression. Despite their mixed record, enhanced controls on voyages, the criminal prosecution of sailors, and the employment of informants helped to stem the flow of opium from Istanbul to Marseille. Drugs continued to be found on board Messageries Maritimes ships on their arrival in the port throughout the 1930s. By the late 1930s, however, most seizures amounted to a few kilos or as little as several hundred grams, paling in comparison with the quantities seized in the early years of the decade.109 The Turkish State’s monopolisation of the opium industry in 1933 forced those who wished to continue trading in the drug underground. Thereafter, Messageries Maritimes sailors were vulnerable to arrest on both sides of the Mediterranean, further complicating their transactions. In 1936, for example, three sailors from the Theophile Gauthier were arrested with packets of opium strapped to their thighs after the suspicions of the Turkish police had been raised. They had purchased the opium from a local Greek, who, unlike pre‑1933 legal traders in the drug, was also liable for arrest.110

• 111 Pigeonneau 1933b.
• 112 Gingeras 2014, p. 105.

40In responding to these challenges, smugglers exhibited still greater flexibility. French consul Pigeonneau observed a shift in smuggled narcotics from opium to its derivatives like heroin, both more potent and easier to conceal, following the proliferation of clandestine opiate refinement sites in Istanbul the output of which exceeded that of the three licensed factories foreclosed in early 1933.111 While the Turkish Government endeavoured to uncover and interrupt such operations, smuggling networks diversified, incorporating production and transit sites in the Balkans and Levant, as a result of which Marseille retained its position as a key entrepot for narcotics into the latter half of the 20th century.112 Authorities’ suppression of addictive substances only increased black market prices, helping compensate for losses to police operations and the increasing complexity of supply chains, an ever-present dilemma in the enforcement of drug laws, while the conditions of precarity and marginalization that led individuals to engage in smuggling persisted.