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A Global History of Ginseng: Imperialism, Modernity and Orientalism book cover

1st Edition

A Global History of Ginseng Imperialism, Modernity and Orientalism

By Heasim Sul Copyright 2023
280 Pages 12 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

280 Pages 12 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

280 Pages 12 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
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 the East and the 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... Read more

List of figures

List of tables

Preface

Notes

Prologue

PART I

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 2

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 3

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 Cultivated Ginseng

PART 4

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

Epilogue

Bibliography

Index

Biography

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

"This work constitutes a classic case of microhistory. It reflects the ways in which a seemingly narrow niche study can in fact illuminate all kinds of fields, spreading out into a major exploration of all manner of cultural and economic dimensions. Here Heasim Sul demonstrates how one Korean plant product became a major area of fascination for its medical and biological properties, thus promoting considerable trade and many articles and notices in the western press and other publications. Consequently, the study of the reception of ginseng helps to expose the character of a whole variety of relationships between East and West, thereby contributing to the major study of cultural Orientalism which has been such a major source of scholarly fascination in recent decades. In these ways microhistory can make a major contribution to a much wider scholarly debate, opening up wider discussions of considerable significance."---John M. MacKenzie, Emeritus Professor of Imperial History, Lancaster University

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