Date: 9-10 June 2025

Location: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

In 1873, Henry Kopsch, the Chinese Maritime Customs Commissioner at Jiujiang, a treaty port along the Yangtze River in China, wrote:

“Although it is said that Europe is indebted to the Chinese for the art of making paper-hangings, it would be difficult to find worse specimens of paper-printing than those from this great paper-manufacturing district […] In connection with paper the attention of artificial flower makers is invited to the beautiful substance known as Rice or Pith paper, specimens of which will be found in the Tamsui [in Taiwan] collection. This substance (pith of the Aralia papyrifera) is much used throughout China in the manufacturer of artificial flowers, and it might be advantageously introduced into Europe for the same purpose. A comparison of the European and Chinese-made flowers will show the superiority of the pith-paper over cotton-cloth or muslin. The former appears to take the colour much better than any European materials.”

Economic botany – the large-scale commodification of plants – has played an important role in modern history, yet its impacts in East Asia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is an under-explored area. Kopsch’s perceptive observation hints at the close connections between people, plants, and the practices of daily life. He also draws out hard truths about how plant-based products in the late nineteenth century encountered competition in global markets, and how common perceptions could be challenged and even changed through the discovery and exploitation of new materials. This insight underpins useful approaches for historical study not just in trade and political economy, but also at the intersection of material culture and technology.

For this workshop we welcome proposals for individual papers which consider ‘economic botany’ in its many forms and from various disciplinary perspectives, related to East Asia in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Botanical collections and archives as sources for East Asian history
• Commodities, markets and knowledge exchange
• Colonialism and localism
• Display and exhibitions
• Cultural impacts of material exchange, innovation and exploitation

This will be a two-day event. On day one we will see selected East Asian collections held at Kew Gardens. Day 2 will be dedicated to presentations of papers and discussion. Please send 200-word proposals, with a 50-word biographical note to Weipin Tsai (weipin.tsai@rhul.ac.uk) and Caroline Cornish (C.Cornish@kew.org ) by 30 December 2024. This free event is generously funded by the Lim Pen-Yuan Cultural and Educational Foundation, Taiwan.