Amfioensociëteit

The Amfioensociëteit, also known as the Amfioen Society, Amphioen Society, Opium Society (incorrectly translated as Amphibian Society), or more formally the Society for the Trade in Amfioen, was a Dutch colonial empire publicly traded joint-stock company designed to maintain a legal monopoly over amfioen (an archaic name specifically for raw opium, borrowed from the Portuguese language) in territories held and/or operated by the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The Dutch definition of the "East Indies" at this time included all lands between the Cape of Good Hope and the Pacific Ocean – mainly those lands bordering or inside what the Dutch referred to as the Indian Ocean.

While the Society was technically independent, the majority of the stocks were held by members of and those loyal to the VOC, leading some historians to declare the Society to be "a company within a company," while at the same time not legally considered a subsidiary. The Society and its monopoly over opium aided the VOC in their efforts to control and subjugate the populations of Java and its neighboring islands in the years before the creation of the Batavian Republic in Europe. From the VOC port city of Batavia, Java, opium was introduced and distributed into new markets in other areas of Java, Sumatra, Borneo, the Malay Peninsula, and other areas of the archipelago that is today called Indonesia.

Although the Society controlled the official distribution of the drug, a significant amount of contraband smuggling by VOC employees existed, leading to fluctuations in the supply and price. Despite this, the shareholders amassed large fortunes. The charter of the Society – initially issued in 1745 as a 5 year charter and quickly re-issued as a 10-year charter – was renewed several times until 1794, when it was dismantled by the VOC. The Society was replaced by a true subsidiary company of the VOC called the Amfioen Directie, which was in operation for another decade, surviving the initial dismantling of the VOC and the establishment of the Dutch East Indies, until it too was dismantled in the year 1808.