From Frontier Herb to Global Medicine: Ginseng and the Shaping of Early Modern Geographies of Materia Medica, 1644-1830

My project examines the global circulation and epistemic transformation of American ginseng between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, framed within theories of commodification and the history of science, technology, and medicine. Building on scholarship by Harris, Appadurai, and Nappi, I approach ginseng as an evolving material shaped by practices of observation, classification, and translation. Through archival research in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau, China, I will trace how ginseng’s properties, particularly its “cool-nourishment” (liangbu 凉补) profile in Qing Chinese medicine, were constructed through transpacific trade networks linking the Appalachian frontier to Canton. My project demonstrates how Jesuit missionaries and American merchants redefined botanical substances across scientific and commercial domains. By reconstructing ginseng’s trade routes and epistemic reclassifications, my dissertation contributes to broader debates on the materiality of medical knowledge, the co-evolution of science and commerce, and the role of the geographies of materia medica in early modern global exchanges.