Tonic, a drink that has an imperial past

Gin and tonic is one of the most common drinks in modern days. Its ingredient is fairly simple, mix up some gin and tonic water and pour it into a glass with ice, et voila! Here is your home-made highball cocktail! However, this easy-to-make drink actually contains an imperial past.

Tonic water has a long history of being an antimalarial drug for the Europeans as it contains quinine. It was known by the Europeans when the Spanish Jesuit missionaries reached Latin America. They saw indigenous Quechua people (who lived in modern days Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador) mixing ground bark of cinchona trees for medical purposes. It was recorded in the 16thcentury that these barks could treat diarrhea.

In 1632, Jesuit Agostino Salumbrino sent a small quantity of cinchona barks to Rome as an experiment to see whether it had the ability to treat malaria. At that time, Rome suffered from malaria because of swamps and marshes surrounding the city. It ended up as a success and soon the cinchona barks became one of the most popular commodities shipped from Peru to Europe. Its popularity even boosted further in London when it cured King Charles II from malaria. Scientists then wondered why this tree had such magic. Soon, the fact that it is the quinine inside the barks that made it so magic and eventually in 1820, French researchers Pierre Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaime Caventou isolated quinine from cinchona barks and named it ‘quinine’ which is chosen from the original Quechua language that means ‘holy barks’.

Quinine was commonly used in the form of powder and then was added into liquid. It was the contemporary tonic water. The powder is bitter, and thus, people added soda and sweeteners to make it taste a bit better. In 1858, tonic water that we know today was commercialized in Britain. In the same year, the East Indian Company took direct control over British India. Since then, the tonic water became the secret weapon for the Europeans to conquer their colonies. It became especially helpful when conquering West Africa which used to be ‘white man’s grave’. Quinine’s ability of preventing and curing malaria made the colonizer stronger. Its importance for the Europeans lasted even until WWII. The supply of quinine for the Allies was cut off when Germany conquered the Netherlands, who had plantations that exported 97% of the quinine at the time, and Japan controlled Philippines and Indonesia which also became key locations for cinchona trees. The lack of quinine eventually caused the deaths of tens of thousands of US soldiers of malaria in the South Pacific and Africa.

After WWII, other drugs that have less side effects than quinine have come out to cure malaria such as chloroquine. The use of quinine has also been regulated in the second half of the 20thcentury when the US Food and Drug Administration received health issues related to quinine use. Since then, the amount of quinine should be given for medical and commercial purposes has been limited.