Manuel Incra Mamani never visited our area but we can see evidence of his work in Kennington Park.He met Charles Ledger from Stockwell in 1842 and helped him find the chinchona trees which Europeans needed to protect them from malaria.
When Mamani and Ledger were returning to Puno, in Peru after an arduous expedition, Mamani told Ledger "The trees here about do not see the snow-capped mountains."
Europeans at this time had limited botanical knowledge compared to Amerindians, and Ledger had failed to understand that chinchona trees, whose bark can be used to make quinine, only grew at a certain latitude. He had been looking in the wrong place.Several foreigners from outside the Americas were seeking fortunes and glory by stealing the secrets of chinchona. Generally the newly independent governments of Peru, Bolivia, Colombia and Ecuador attempted to stop this theft but had limited powers.
Richard Spruce had links with Kew Gardens, developed as a nursery to supply British plantations. These plants were eventually grown in India, while Mamani's seeds were rejected by the British and sold to the Dutch who reared them in Java.
The connection with Kennington Park is revealed when we examine the war memorial, at the northern entrance to the park. As we can see, local men fought at Salonika in southern Greece in the First World War, where the use of Dutch-grown quinine was crucial in helping the British to keep control of the area between the Eastern Mediterranean and the Indian Sea - a route to India and the oil-rich territories of what is now Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
Sources:
The fever trail, by Mark Honigsbaum
Kew and the science of colonialism, by Lucille Brockway
See also:
Quinine
Sickle-cell disease.
23 Nov 2004