“The Tree of Colonization”: Eucalyptography and Labor Migration on Mediterranean Frontiers (ca. 1860-1880)
Journal title SOCIETÀ E STORIA
Author/s Jackson Perry
Publishing Year 2025 Issue 2025/189
Language Italian Pages 30 P. 619-648 File size 249 KB
DOI 10.3280/SS2025-189005
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The Australian Eucalyptus genus first rose to global prominence in the nineteenth century, when people across the world came to believe that its odors and oils could prevent or cure malaria. Between 1860 and 1880, a Mediterranean eucalyptus boom occurred, in which men of science and laypeople alike seized on the tree for its supposed fever-fighting virtues. This article identifies an entangled history of acclimatization, human and plant migrations, and labor relations between two of the most important hubs of nineteenth-century eucalyptus enthusiasm: Italy’s lowlands and the Mitidja plain outside Algiers. In each malarial environment, landowners sought to change labor migration patterns by planting the so-called “fever tree.” Their efforts to transform the environments and societies of lowland Algeria and Italy drove the transnational, if largely unidirectional, flow of scientific knowledge and the widespread adoption of eucalyptography across the Mediterranean.
Keywords: Agriculture, eucalyptus, malaria, natural knowledge, migration, labor.
Jackson Perry, «L’albero della colonizzazione»: Scienza dell’eucalipto e migrazione di forza lavoro nelle frontiere del Mediterraneo (ca. 1860-1880) in "SOCIETÀ E STORIA " 189/2025, pp 619-648, DOI: 10.3280/SS2025-189005