Colonial Agro-Industrialism: Science, Industry and the State in the Dutch Golden Alkaloid Age, 1850-1950

This thesis is about what I call the Dutch Golden Alkaloid Age between roughly the 1850s and 1950s. I follow the historical trajectory of the production and distribution of the anti-febrifuge cinchona bark tree (Cinchona officinalis Lin.) and its most powerful and therapeutically applied alkaloid in the Dutch empire—quinine, an antimalarial medicine. During this period, scientists, planters, traders, industrialists and state officials in the Netherlands and the former Dutch colony of the Netherlands Indies cooperated in the establishment of a profitable and exploitable Dutch transoceanic cinch... Mehr ...