Eucalyptus Acclimatisation for Fighting Malaria: Environmental and Medical Experiments in the Iberian Nineteenth Century

Extract

Portugal on Fire made the headlines of newspapers, journals and TV programs, following the catastrophic fires of 2017.¹ Eucalyptus’ plantations were highly criticiszed and fostered a wide discussion. Against the interests of paper companies, a part of the national community of forest engineers, ecologists and agronomists argued that a eucalyptus plantation is a monoculture which cannot be considered as a forest as it does not support biodiversity. Moreover, one part of this expert community considered the eucalyptus tree as an exotic which is invasive in Portugal.² Although the eucalyptus tree is currently envisioned in Portugal and Spain as the cause to blame for these devastating fires,³ we feel this has to be historically analyzed as in the nineteenth century this tree was seen as the ‘salvation for several problems’.

The eucalyptus tree is one of the world’s most successful plant migrant from Australia.⁴ People have transported eucalypts to every continent, to almost every nation, mingling them with other exotic and indigenous woody plants. Nevertheless, it was in regions with a similar climate to the one of Australia, such as California, Italy, France, Algeria and the Iberian Peninsula, that its dissemination was more effective.