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In this study, we will show how a Dutch pharmaceutical consortium of cinchona producers and quinine manufacturers was able to capitalize on one of the first international public health campaigns to fight malaria, thereby promoting the sale of quinine, an antimalarial medicine. During the 1920s and 1930s, the international markets for quinine were controlled by this Dutch consortium, which was a transoceanic cinchona-quinine enterprise centered in the Cinchona Bureau in the Netherlands. We will argue that during the interwar period, the Cinchona Bureau became the decision-making center of this Dutch cinchona-quinine pharmaceutical enterprise and monopolized the production and trade of an essential medicine. In addition, we will argue that capitalizing on the international public health campaign in the fight against malaria by the Dutch cinchona-quinine enterprise via the Cinchona Bureau can be regarded as an early example of corporate colonization of public health by a private pharmaceutical consortium. Furthermore, we will show how commercial interests prevailed over scientific interests within the Dutch cinchona-quinine consortium, thus interfering with and ultimately curtailing the transoceanic circulation of knowledge in the Dutch empire.

The isolation of quinine from cinchona bark in 1820 opened new possibilities for the mass-production and consumption of a popular medicine that was suitable for the treatment of intermittent (malarial) fevers and other diseases. As the 19th century European empires expanded in Africa and Asia, control of tropical diseases such as malaria was seen as crucial. Consequently, quinine and cinchona became a pivotal tool of British, French, German and Dutch empire-builders. This comparative study shows how the interplay between science, industry and government resulted in different historical trajectories for cinchona and quinine in the Dutch and British Empires during the second half of the 19th century. We argue that in the Dutch case the vectors of assemblage that provided the institutional and physical framework for communication, exchange and control represent an early example of commodification of colonial science. Furthermore, both historical trajectories show how the employment of the laboratory as a new device materialised within the colonial context of agricultural and industrial production of raw materials (cinchona bark), semi-finished product (quinine sulphate) and plant-based medicines like quinine. Hence, illustrating the 19th century transition from 'colonial botany' and 'green imperialism' to what we conceptualise as 'colonial agro-industrialism'.

This study shows how control over delicately balanced supply chains from raw material to the final product shifted from one national industry to another. By 1920, Dutch cinchona producers and quinine manufacturers dominated the international cartel that controlled the worldwide production and distribution of quinine (an antimalarial), quinine sulphate (a semi-finished product) and cinchona (the raw material). Twenty years earlier, however, this cartel had been controlled by the German pharmaceutical industry. How can we understand the shift of power in the world’s first pharmaceutical cartel? We argue that the internal shift of power was largely the result of the following three factors: a global industrial laboratory revolution; the vertical integration of a transoceanic network of cinchona producers, quinine manufacturers, (colonial) scientists and state officials across the Dutch Empire; and Germany’s economic isolation during the First World War.

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 cinchona-quinine enterprise. In this thesis, I show how through a dynamic process of knowledge exchange, innovation, and economic cooperation, a transoceanic network of cinchona planters and traders, quinine industrialists and state-sponsored scientists was established and succeeded in gaining international control over the production and distribution of the raw material cinchona bark. Henceforth, this network came to play a dominant role in the first global pharmaceutical cartel that controlled the industrial production and distribution of the antimalarial medicine quinine. This thesis makes a fundamental contribution to the Dutch historiographies of science and technology, as well as industrialization and colonialism, by showing the necessity of closely connecting Dutch colonial history with Dutch industrial history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and vice versa. By closely looking at how this dynamic process of cooperation, innovation and exchange – branded as colonial agro-industrialism – resulted in establishing a Dutch transoceanic cinchona-quinine network, this thesis provides two new fundamental historiographic insights. First, using the Dutch cinchona-quinine example, this thesis offers a unique insight into the dynamics of the relationships among the pharmaceutical industry, biomedical science, and international public health during an embryonic period for all three fields. Second, with the development of the modern concept of (colonial) agro-industrialism this thesis builds further on the historiographical pre-modern concepts of colonial botany and green imperialism. By connecting the historical narratives of Dutch colonial history with the historical narratives of science and technology and the development of the Dutch nation state we can better understand how colonial and imperial objectives of agro-industrial exploitability and profitability are closely connected with the industrial objectives of creating a profitable and exploitable industry in the motherland.