This thesis contends that in his 1859 expedition to Peru, Clements Robert Markham wrongly discredited indigenous scientific knowledge, further justifying the colonial logic of his mission, an endeavor he represented as grounded in environmental conservation, health initiatives, economic productivity, and the success of the British colonies. The first chapter discusses the history of the use of the cinchona tree by the indigenous people of South America before European contact. Deliberation between the various explorers, such as La Condamine, Humboldt, and Markham, over the earliest uses of the bark, obscured the South American ability to take advantage of their natural commodities. Markham highlighted the superiority of European science and the names and efforts of individual explorers, disregarding how indigenous discovery preceded European knowledge. However, this chapter shows that long before Markham took interest in the trees, the bark was a natural object of cultural and medical significance to people of the Andes. Chapter Two explores Markham's opposition to the methods of bark collection used in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia, which he viewed as unsustainable and detrimental to his mission of creating a consistent supply of cinchona for the British Empire. Thus, he positioned his mission as one bent on saving cinchona from its looming fate of extinction, though his ambitions remained imperial and predicated on market concerns. Despite the prominent role indigenous science and forestry had played in his mission, Markham's assertions about the cascarilleros' (bark-collectors) incompetence overshadowed his obvious indebtedness towards his indigenous guides. The final chapter of this project brings the earlier discussion about knowledge and production into a larger colonial context. Markham believed that a deliberate assessment and evaluation of his plants would set the British Empire's cinchona experiment apart from the naturally occurring methods used in South America. Ultimately, the goal of establishing an independent cinchona plantation in India was to devise a constant supply of the antimalarial quinine for the British troops, which became even more significant after the transition to the Raj. Finally, I discuss how Markham's claims do not correlate with the historical record. My thesis attempts to close the gap between indigenous knowledge, Markham's hubris, and the practice of extraction that attended colonization.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Author-supplied Keywords","value":["Botany","Colonialism","British empire"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 33840