Call for papers
Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte (Mainz)
6-7 June 2024 | org. Bernard Gissibl (IEG) and Matti Leprêtre (Visiting Fellow at the IEG)
The investigation into the appropriation of indigenous knowledge of medicinal plants has become a focal point for historians and anthropologists in past decades. Contrasting with triumphant narratives on the development of “modern science,” recent works have repositioned the history of knowledge within an economic and social context that acknowledges the asymmetric power relations between the West and colonized worlds. However, most studies on colonial botany have concentrated on the early modern and modern period. The fate of bioprospection in the post-1880 era—a pivotal period marked by the industrialization of drug production —remains underexplored. This oversight might stem from the long-held belief that the years following 1880 marked a shift in Western history from plant-based to synthetic drugs—a perspective only recently questioned, yet without a corresponding reevaluation of how medicinal plants were appropriated thereafter.
In contrast, environmental history has increasingly focused on the repercussions of industrialization for the “unequal ecological exchange” between Europe and its colonies. The inquiry into how the “extractive peripheries” of the West contributed to its economic ascent has emerged as a pivotal question in environmental history, intersecting with the history of commodities. Nevertheless, the historiography on medicinal plants has scarcely benefitted from these scholarly advances, again with rare exceptions.
The aim of this symposium is to explore the specific effects of the industrialization of drug production on the colonial appropriation of medicinal plants. While the focus is on the German Empire, contributions on other imperial formations will provide a transnational perspective. The following topics represent a non-exhaustive list of potential areas of inquiry:
How does the scaling up of drug production, entailed by industrialization, transform the structure of global medicinal plant production? This issue is deeply intertwined with the process of colonial expansion. A facet of this inquiry involves analyzing the pharmaceutical industry’s connection to the plantation economy. However, attempts at domesticating wild plants often failed; thus, it is crucial to consider the non-scalability of certain plants’ production, for which the harvesting of wild specimens remained essential. The agricultural labor regimes that facilitate or hinder the profitability of medicinal plant gathering and cultivation are a critical aspect of this discussion. Labor has become a focal point in both colonial and environmental histories. The transition from agrarian to industrial economies resulted in the near disappearance of the cultivation and harvesting of medicinal herbs in Western Europe. This led to an increased reliance on parts of the world where agrarian economies or specific labor regimes, such as forced labor, persisted. The historical consequences of agricultural modernizations on medicinal plant production warrant thorough examination.
The ephemeral nature of Germany’s colonial endeavors also raises distinctive research questions. Historiographical accounts have extensively detailed the Reich’s emulation of colonial practices from other empires in its overseas territories after 1884. Yet, the efforts made to cultivate and harvest medicinal herbs and thus reduce reliance on plants imported from the Dutch, British, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires, have only been marginally addressed. The failure of these attempts, as well as the loss of the colonies after 1918, led to renewed strategies, such as the building up of alliances with companies operating in other empires or the intensification of German semi-colonialism, particularly in the territories emerging from the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire. All of these dimensions constitute possible venues for research in this symposium.
The impact of the World Wars offers another profound area for research. The “rebirth of phytotherapy” in Germany has been largely scrutinized through the lens of the Sonderweg paradigm, as it has been framed as one dimension of the National Socialist regime’s “quest for autarky,” more specifically as an attempt to avoid the drugs shortages of World War One. Yet, when viewed from the perspective of pharmaceutical firms, the return to German plants supposedly entailed by the “rebirth of phytotherapy” is not as apparent. Despite the revivalist rhetoric, pharmaceutical firms continued to massively import exotic plants, suggesting that the exploration and exploitation of new botanical resources remained a vital component of German medical science post-1933. Echoing recent calls to study the continuities between the imperial practices of the Kaiserreich and those of the Third Reich, a promising line of inquiry could thus be the analysis of the colonial dimension of Nazi ways of bioprospecting and producing medicinal plants, from the SS’s botanical expeditions in Amazonia and Eastern Europe to the building of a medical herb plantation in Dachau.
The role of pharmaceutical companies in bioprospecting for new plants and organizing their cultivation and harvesting in colonies warrants, more broadly, close scrutiny. The pivotal role of company agents as “go-betweens” becomes even more pronounced within the framework of informal imperialism. Furthermore, unlike the period before the industrialization of drug production, the appropriation of indigenous remedies by European scientists now has significant implications only if the plants in question can be utilized in industrial drug production. Reflecting recent scholarship that calls for an integrated approach to the history of science and industrial and business history, this symposium will give special consideration to the synergy between scientific expeditions in the colonies and the research agendas of pharmaceutical companies, including the journey from the initial “discovery” of a plant to its transformation into a mass-produced pharmaceutical.
Lastly, this symposium could explore the ramifications of the “molecular vision of life” as championed by pharmaceutical companies, which emphasizes isolating alkaloids from plants. Pratik Chakrabarti has suggested that the alkaloid paradigm assumes an endless interchangeability among medicinal plants. Yet, given the unique presence of some alkaloids in specific plant families, challenges in plant acclimatization remain. The extent to which this novel epistemological approach to plants has altered the ecology of global medicinal plant production warrants thorough investigation. An examination of how the methods of substitution associated with the alkaloid paradigm diverge from substitution practices in the modern and early modern periods could provide a significant axis of reflection.
Contact information: matti.lepretre@ehess.fr
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