Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how calumba root, a healing construct of Africans in Mozambique, was adopted by other medical practices, while in the process of circulating and producing knowledge about the plant its African origins were erased by Western science.

Paper long abstract:

Scholars have highlighted how Enlightened bioprospectors usually appreciated African botanical knowledge and skills, even when European scientists and colonial administrators conceived that Africans were unable to produce universal knowledge. Indeed, they recognized that African peoples knew how to employ plants species, and other environmental means, to healing and adopted their knowledge.

Calumba root was among multiple plants used by Africans in Mozambique to cure, which were adopted by Portuguese settlers. During the 18th century this root was traded around the Indian Ocean rim and was exported to Europe from India, enriching private entrepreneurs and colonial states. Nevertheless, calumba root was known as a commodity from India or Ceylon. In the beginning of the 19th century, scientific exchanges between networks of naturalists in diverse centers of the Indian Ocean expanded the global knowledge about calumba root and traced its origins in Mozambique.

This study examines the circulation and production of knowledge about calumba root, from its origin as a Mozambican healing construct to its incorporation into other medical practices, in India, Europe and America. As will be demonstrated, the increasing information about the plant produced by the laboratories of European modern science during the 19th century gradually erased the role of Africans from Mozambique in producing healing knowledge or underlined a negative representation of African agency.