Project Details
Projekt
The Decolonization of Quinine: A Political History of the Pharmaceutical Industry After Empire, 1945-1998
Applicant
Dr. Tristan Oestermann
Subject Area
Modern and Contemporary History
Term
since 2025
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 573092035
By looking at quinine, an antimalarial, heart medication and general tonic, and the raw material cinchona bark, which is necessary for its production, the project writes a political history of the pharmaceutical industry in the “Global South” in the age of decolonization. It analyzes the relationships between Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (or Zaire), the largest producers of cinchona bark, and the European quinine manufacturers. As a result of decolonization, the colonial structures of production, distribution and consumption of quinine, which were dominated by a cartel of pharmaceutical and plantation companies, collapsed: The alkaloid and the position of European pharmaceutical companies became the objects of negotiation processes between a large number of actors. The project examines why European pharmaceutical companies were able to assert their place in the quinine business in this process, even though Congo/Zaire and Indonesia had a de facto monopoly on cinchona bark and had the capacity to produce quinine themselves. The project thus makes an important contribution to the history of Western companies in the post-colonial world, which has so far been the subject of little empirical research - and thus to the question of how global inequalities were actually perpetuated after the end of the empires. The project questions the dichotomous narrative of powerful pharmaceutical companies and the powerless “Global South”. Instead, it makes visible the many producers of global inequality after the end of empires. It innovatively combines research on the history of the pharmaceutical industry, decolonization, development, the Global Cold War, the “New International Economic Order” and the results of business history. It uses pharmaceutical companies as a probe to empirically reconstruct how a multitude of actors negotiated a postcolonial order. In doing so, the project looks at the role of international (criminal) cartels and monopolies, notions of development associated with quinine, and legal and illegal practices of political influence. To this end, the project draws on a broad source base, including archives from pharmaceutical companies, states, development and non-governmental organizations. The working hypothesis is that pharmaceutical companies succeeded in combining their profit interests with the development interests of post-colonial states and international organizations, the strategic interests of Western governments, as well as the political or monetary private interests of local actors.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
International Connection
Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Malaysia
