Carey McCormack
Prof. McCormack is a world historian who specializes in the history of the Indian Ocean World with a particular focus on botanical exchanges, indigenous plant knowledge, the professionalization of botany, and natural resource extraction during the colonial period. Her teaching explores the connection between imperialism and the contemporary inequalities between the Global North and the Global South especially when it comes to access and rights to natural resources. Prof. McCormack's pedagogy includes active learning and experiential learning by providing students the opportunity to experiment with historical artifacts and participate in group projects that focus on decentering and challenging Eurocentric narratives of world history.
George Mason University Korea
Session
The Philippines served as the center of Pacific trade during the early modern period and Luzon acted as the gateway to China and Southeast Asia for Spanish explorers and later colonizers. Spanish administrators paid close attention to indigenous plant knowledge on both sides of the Pacific to ascertain the commercial value of plants. Through an analysis of archival materials from Missions and government records, this paper focuses on exchanges of commodity crops between Spanish California and colonial Manila in order to track indigenous plant knowledge exchanged between Asia and California. The Philippines maintained a central role in Pacific transfers which in turn led to exchanges with China and Southeast Asia. Current debates around who produces knowledge and who owns communal knowledge are central to sustainable development plans laid out by the United Nations. The landmark Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge signed in 2024 protects traditional knowledge and biological resources of indigenous people, which alters international patent laws. This treaty is the first international attempt to validate indigenous knowledge and to protect the biological resources of the Global South. This study focuses on historical exchanges, but the power dynamics established in the past influenced contemporary issues.