Abstract
SummaryThis 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.
Highlights
I argue that the Hekou programme was initiated by the Yunnan ‘local developmental state’ to control endemic malaria and achieve quinine self-sufficiency
As its Western counterparts, the Hekou cinchona cultivation programme was not a pure scientific agricultural experiment, but it served for more complicated political and economic purposes rather than a simple colonial or imperial project: it was initiated in the early 1930s by Zhang Banghan and his colleagues, in order to control endemic malaria and save national revenue for building Yunnan governor and warlord Long Yun’s (1884–1962) ‘local developmental state’, which resembled the technocratic central government of Nationalist China (1928–49)
By digging up primary archival sources in Yunnan Provincial Archives, this article reconstructs, for the first time in any language, the origins, developments and the demise of this cinchona cultivation programme between the 1930s and the 1940s, which adds to our understanding of the history of the global spread of cinchona in Nationalist China
Summary
As its Western counterparts, the Hekou cinchona cultivation programme was not a pure scientific agricultural experiment, but it served for more complicated political and economic purposes rather than a simple colonial or imperial project: it was initiated in the early 1930s by Zhang Banghan and his colleagues, in order to control endemic malaria and save national revenue for building Yunnan governor and warlord Long Yun’s (1884–1962) ‘local developmental state’, which resembled the technocratic central government of Nationalist China (1928–49). Recognising the medicinal and economic importance of the plant, some Chinese initiatives had attempted to cultivate cinchona in several southern Chinese provinces during the 1920s, but all of them had failed It was not until 1935 that cinchona trees were successfully cultivated in Hekou County Experimental Farm for Tropical Plants, which was initiated by Zhang Banghan and his colleague Huang Riguang of the Yunnan Commission of Reconstruction. According to contemporary Western scientific experts, cinchona trees with a high proportion of quinine would only grow at latitudes from 10 north to 20 south, at altitudes from 1,200 to 2,000 m, with average temperatures from 18C to 22C, annual rainfall from 2.5 to 3.5 m, with little monthly variation and humus-rich soil. Yunnan’s latitudes were from 20 to 28 north, taking into consideration its particular tropical climate and soil conditions, Zhang and Huang believed that cinchona trees could be cultivated in the province’s south and southwest malaria-ridden regions.
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