Cultivating China's Cinchona: The Local Developmental State, Global Botanic Networks and Cinchona Cultivation in Yunnan, 1930s-1940s

Yubin Shen

doi:10.1093/shm/hkz099

Cultivating China's Cinchona: The Local Developmental State, Global Botanic Networks and Cinchona Cultivation in Yunnan, 1930s-1940s

Soc Hist Med. 2019 Oct 23;34(2):577-591. doi: 10.1093/shm/hkz099. eCollection 2021 May.

Author

Yubin Shen¹

Affiliation

¹ Department III (Artefacts, Action and Knowledge), Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Boltzmannstraße 22, Berlin, 14195, Germany.

Abstract

This article reconstructs the history of China's first successful cinchona cultivation programme in Hekou, Yunnan province from the 1930s to 1940s during the Nationalist era (1928-49). I argue that the Hekou programme was initiated by the Yunnan 'local developmental state' to control endemic malaria and achieve quinine self-sufficiency. It was expanded during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) as part of the national defence project in order to develop Yunnan's malaria-ridden southwest frontier to provide more resources for the war, as well as to solve broader wartime epidemic crises in southwest China. A closer examination also indicates that the development of the Hekou programme was closely intertwined with global networks of cinchona cultivation and international politics.

Keywords: Yunnan; cinchona cultivation; global networks; the developmental state.