
The Andean Wonder Drug
Cinchona Bark and Imperial Science in the Spanish Atlantic, 1630-1800
Hardcover
Description
Praise For The Andean Wonder Drug: Cinchona Bark and Imperial Science in the Spanish Atlantic, 1630-1800…
—Journal of the History of Medicine
"Boldly challenges historiographical consensus. Crawford offers a sweeping counternarrative to any simplified account of the rise of scientific modernity as a tool of empire . . . Crawford's illuminating analysis shows that science and knowledge never worked as an outside, adjudicating arbiter."
—History of Science
“Excellently thought out and clearly written. An excellent book.”
—Choice
“Instead of taking at face value conventional claims that the natural sciences offered an objective method for evaluating natural resources, Matthew Crawford convincingly shows how scientific assessment actively produced political quarrels about who could determine the efficacy of new drugs and how. The Andean Wonder Drug is a model of colonial science studies that makes essential reading for historians of the Atlantic World and early modern science and medicine.”
—James Delbourgo, Rutgers University
“Instead of taking at face value conventional claims that the natural sciences offered an objective method for evaluating natural resources, Matthew Crawford convincingly shows how scientific assessment actively produced political quarrels about who could determine the efficacy of new drugs and how. The Andean Wonder Drug is a model of colonial science studies that makes essential reading for historians of the Atlantic World and early modern science and medicine.”
—James Delbourgo, Rutgers University
“Crawford’s expert account of the Spanish Empire’s struggles to control the cinchona tree and its bark reveals profound links between science, politics, and knowledge production in the Atlantic World. This book is an impressive contribution to existing scholarship on early modern science, early modern Spain, and Atlantic World history. Very interesting, well documented, and fun to read.”
—Antonio Barrera, author of Experiencing Nature: The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution
“The Andean Wonder Drug is an illuminating study of the Spanish Empire’s efforts to secure monopoly control over the cinchona tree and its bark. The project ultimately failed, but Crawford’s deft analysis offers fresh perspectives into the intimate relationship between early modern sciences and empires, local and global knowledge, and the agents involved in the production of knowledge about quina within the early modern Spanish Atlantic World. At its core, this meticulous analysis is a studied reflection on the question of ‘who speaks for nature?’”
—Susan Deans-Smith, University of Texas at Austin
“In this compact volume, Crawford brings together a remarkable array of primary sources, including many previously overlooked late eighteenth-century materials. In the process, he reveals how traditional Andean healers, labourers who harvested the bark, elite creole merchants, European explorers and travelers, Royal pharmacists, scientists and medical practitioners - through their various perspectives and specialized knowledge - all contributed to the epistemic understanding of cinchona. . . . Crawford compellingly illuminates the interconnections, as well as the fault lines, among science, commerce, and empire.”
—European History Quarterly
University of Pittsburgh Press, 9780822944522, 336pp.
Publication Date: May 12, 2016