Global Botanical Networks, Political Economy, and Environmentalist Discourses in Cinchona Transplantation to British India
- Philip, Kavita
DOIAbstract
In the mid-nineteenth century Cinchona plantations were established in British and Dutch colonial territories in an attempt to supply quinine to their troops and to corner the world market in this valuable commodity. I revisit the story of the British transfer of cinchona from the Peruvian Andes to Southern India by Clements Markham, suggesting that narratives about the environment can be read simultaneously for their ideological, political, economic, and scientific significance. Markham's cinchona-transfer narrative gives the historian insights into such questions as : What role did the globalization of botany play in the commodification of local knowledge ? How was scientific rhetoric employed to meet the pressures of environmentalist pro...
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