A Global History of Ginseng: Imperialism, Modernity and Orientalism

Sul’s history of the international ginseng trade reveals the cultural aspects of international capitalism and the impact of this single commodity on relations between East and West. Ginseng emerged as a major international commodity in the seventeenth century, when the East India Company began trading it westward. Europeans were drawn to the plant’s efficacy as a medicine, but their attempts to transplant it mass produce it or extract its active ingredients were unsuccessful and so it was disparaged in the process of modernization. In the meantime ginseng was discovered on the American continent and became one of the United States’s key exports to Asia and particularly China, but never cultivated a significant domestic market. As such, studying the ginseng trade provides a unique perspective both on the impact of culture, as well as economics, on international trade. A compelling interdisciplinary history over five centuries of east-west trade and cultural exchange, invaluable to students and scholars of transnational history, and a fascinating read for anyone interested in the history of international trade.

Heasim Sul is Professor in the Department of History at Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea.

Source: publisher’s website

Contents

Part One: Ginseng Meets the West

1. The Arrival of Korean Ginseng in Europe
2. Ginseng Studies by the English Royal Society and French Royal Academy of Sciences
3. The Discovery of Ginseng in North America
4. The Classification and Medical Use of Ginseng

Part Two: The World System of Ginseng

5. Korean, Chinese and Japanese Policies and the Ginseng Trade
6. The East India Company’s Private trade in Ginseng
7. Ginseng, America’s First Export Item
8. Ginseng and Circumstances in East Asia

Part Three: Crisis and Response

9. Expunction from Pharmacopoeias?
10. Western Medicine’s View of Ginseng’s Efficacy
11. Reform of Pharmacopoeias and Challenges to Extracting Active Ingredients
12. Ginseng’s Slow Entry into the Modern Pharmaceutical System
13. The Depletion of Wild Ginseng and the Beginning of Farmed Ginseng

Part Four: The Orientalism Surrounding Ginseng

14. Analogizing and Ostracization
15. Mysterious Orientality
16. Ginseng Diggers in the East and West
17. Ginseng Diggers’ Image and Internal Colonialism