Cinchona plantations, Mungpoo

The cinchona plantations at Mungpoo in Darjeeling district, West Bengal, and Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu — the British colonial plantations of South American cinchona trees (source of quinine, the only effective anti-malaria drug before the 1930s) that reshaped tropical medicine. The British government commissioned Clements Markham's 1859 expedition to Peru to smuggle cinchona seeds and seedlings (then under Peruvian monopoly), with the seedlings planted at Mungpoo (1862) and the Nilgiris (1864). The Mungpoo Cinchona Plantation was the central producer of quinine for the British Indian army, Royal Navy, and civilian population. The 1909 Dadabhai Naoroji's writings on 'drain of wealth' estimated that the quinine protection of British Indians allowed the colonial administration to expand further into malarial zones. The Mungpoo plantation remains in operation as the West Bengal Cinchona Plantations under the Government of West Bengal, producing anti-malarial drugs for the Indian pharmaceutical market.