Ginseng Comes Full Circle: From Peking to New York

This is a study of the story of ginseng, an herbal supplement in early modern times. In my research, I will examine the unexpected journey of ginseng from Peking through London and Montreal to New York and back to Canton in the early modern period. The Qing dynasty was the only period in China when ginseng was an important commodity. After 1600, with the development and trade of Manchu China's northeastern region, ginseng became the most prominent commodity traded between the borders of East Asia at that time. The Qing Empire made the production and management of ginseng part of its bureaucratic operations. After the middle of the Qing Dynasty, there were six ginseng markets in China: the Huaihe, Changlu, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Jiangning, and Canton. Ginseng was popular in China and in Korea and Japan, where it was sold from China. In 1708, Pierre Jartoux, a French Jesuit, was ordered by the Kangxi Emperor to draw a map of the Qing empire. He was able to see where ginseng grew in northeastern China, which was already popularly valued in East Asia but little known in Europe. In July 1709, Pierre Jartoux drew images of ginseng, and he also sent his detailed description of ginseng to Paris. These ginseng images and reports were printed in 1713. Philosophical Transaction published Jartoux's depiction of ginseng with enthusiasm in the same year. Soon after, Joseph-François Lafitau (1681-1746), a Jesuit working in Quebec and Montreal, learned of the popularity of ginseng in the Chinese market. He discovered a similar plant in his mission at Kahnawake (a Native American territory outside Montreal in New France). Lafitau published his discovery in 1718, which, in turn, triggered considerable interest in the colonial botany of North America. At the end of the American Revolutionary War in 1783, American merchants were eager to sail to Asia to seek a more significant profit outside the purvey of the British East India Company. In the same year, the Empress of China, loaded with a wide variety of commodities, including ginseng, set sail to Asia and reached Canton for the first time as an American ship, which marks the beginning of the sale of American ginseng in China.Ginseng's journey questions some premises in the Sino-Western exchange of scientific knowledge, history of colonial science, and world history of commodities. The history of ginseng will enrich our understanding of these fields.