2026-06-25 –, Room 208 (Seats 40)
This study examines how species native to specific Pacific regions - notably eucalyptus, macadamia nuts, and kiwifruit - spread across the Pacific basin through diverse pathways from the mid-19th to 20th century. Through scientific domestication and selective breeding, these species were systematically adapted to meet environmental conditions and economic demands in their new habitats, thereby integrating both native and introduced ecosystems into global networks of species exchange, commerce, and consumption.
Supported by modern botany and forestry, these species transformed into "plantation biota" - with their reproductive cycles, growth patterns, maturation processes, and biological characteristics progressively overcoming ecological constraints, diverging fundamentally from their original states. While this plantation model generated substantial economic returns, it simultaneously cultivated latent ecological risks.
The Pacific dispersal of eucalyptus, macadamia, and kiwifruit represents more than simple narratives of discovery by plant hunters followed by direct transplantation to botanical gardens and commercial nurseries. Rather, their trajectories embody the complex dynamics of global species exchange since the late 19th century - shaped by evolving medical paradigms, botanical advancements, burgeoning consumer cultures, and competing ideological frameworks that collectively reconfigured the logic of biological transfer.
Qiao Yu is Associate Professor of History at Capital Normal University in Beijing. She earned her Ph.D. in World History from Peking University (2013) and her B.A. from the History Department at Capital Normal University. She has been a visiting scholar at the University of Melbourne. Her research and teaching focus on environmental history, Australian history, and global history. She is particularly interested in agricultural development and drought management in modern Australia, as well as the history of species transmission across the Pacific and global historical methodologies.
She is the author of Agricultural Development and Environmental Change in Colonial Australia (1788–1901) (2024). At the undergraduate level, she teaches courses including "A Concise Global History" and "Modern Environmental History," engaging students with broad historical narratives and the intersection of human societies and the natural world.