CAPITALISM, COLONIALISM, AND CUISINE

214
CHAPTER
20
CAPITALISM,
COLONIALISM, AND
CUISINE
In short, Europe’s colonization of Africa had nothing to do with
differences between European and African peoples as white racists
assume. Rather, it was due to accidents of geography and bio-
geography – in particular, to the continent’s different areas, axes,
and suites of wild plant and animal species. That is, the different
historical trajectories of Africa and Europe stem ultimately from
differences in real estate.
Jared Diamond (1997 )
1
ARGUABLY, THE UNITED STATES and Europe benefi ted more than
most of the world’s regions from the quickened tempo of food globaliza-
tion that followed the Columbian Exchange because, by increasing food
supplies, it fueled their respective Industrial Revolutions.
This synergism was fi rst seen in Great Britain, where the calories in sugar
and potatoes from the New World stoked labor.
2
In the towns and cities
where that labor was readily available, and where even more labor could
be accommodated, industries began to arise. Cities and towns, of course,
raised little food so that workers had to be fed from rural areas – the food
reaching urban centers via an increasingly complex network of railroads. As
this occurred, more and more rural individuals were attracted to city life
and factory wages, draining the countryside of manpower. Consequently,
Capitalism, Colonialism, and Cuisine
215

agriculture, too, had to be industrialized, which, in turn, meant even more
migration to the cities because far fewer hands were needed in the fi elds.
Food production also became mechanized, its transportation and dis-
tribution organized, and its processing, capitalized.
3
Railroads, steamships,
and developments in canning, freezing, and chilling foods made their ship-
ment possible over long distances. It was nothing short of a revolution in
transportation and technology – a revolution in which food production,
although of paramount importance for practically all of humankind’s stay
on the planet, came to be taken for granted in the industrialized coun-
tries practically overnight. Food processing and marketing, not production,
lunged to the forefront of the food industry.
Industrialization, coupled with nationalism, also changed approaches to
food and its consumption. In the Middle Ages there were no national cui-
sines but, then again, there was no nationalism either. As nations emerged,
however, peoples and governments went to great lengths to set themselves
apart, and although Europeans all had access to the same ingredients, their
manner of preparing them became distinguishing features as “national”
dishes emerged. The English boasted that roast beef and beer – plain food
but good – was central to their being: “For your Beef-eating, Beer drink-
ing Britons are souls, Who will shed their last drop for their country and
king.”
4
By contrast their French neighbors ate decadent foods dressed up
with poisons so that one never knew what they were eating. The French
counterattacked with the claim that beef was a common food whose fat
was crippling. They also countered with another means of distinction
involving a philosophy of food consumption.
5

The grande cuisine of nineteenth-century French restaurants, for exam-
ple, emphasized the pleasures of eating and drinking. For the diners the
grande cuisine also symbolized the cultural superiority of France over its
more puritanical neighbors, who found less joy at the table. The neigh-
bors, however, were not impressed, and called the French “frogs” because
of their partiality to frog legs; whereas the Germans became “krauts,” and
the English “limeys.” One was, in a very nationalistic way, what one ate.
6
Moving back to the nationalism-free Middle Ages, there were also no
food fads then, save among small elites. Peasants engaged in subsistence
agriculture were a conservative lot with neither the means nor the inclina-
tion to experiment with fashion, and the fashion for all classes was Roman,
at least in principal, with grain on the menu but not much meat. New foods
for the wealthy were spread about gradually; the use of butter radiated out
216
A Movable Feast
from Germany, saffron from Spain, and dried fruits from southern Europe.
But this relatively static situation changed with industrialization. Far fewer
people were tied to the land, and food-marketing techniques were brought
to bear on workers with wages. Demand was created for countless new
products – especially those made from sugar and products that came in
cans and bottles – beginning the food crazes we still live with.
7
Yet, if industrialization meant a better life for the fortunate, it managed
to add to the ranks of the poor. During the second half of the eighteenth
century, English population growth outdistanced grain production creat-
ing, among other things, a homeless class that down to the middle of the
nineteenth century comprised between 10 and 20 percent of the popula-
tion. Prices for wheat and other staples skyrocketed, reducing the quanti-
ties of bread, cheese, and even turnips that could be afforded and putting

meat out of reach for those not among the ranks of the fortunate. For those
that were, such as the eighteenth century canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral in
London, it was an entirely different world. At age 77, he calculated that
over the course of his lifetime he had consumed 44 wagonloads of meat
and drink that could have saved 100 people from starving to death.
8
Life got no better for the poor during the nineteenth century when
industrialization quadrupled the population of London, among other cities,
and bread, potatoes, and tea constituted the bulk of the diet, with perhaps
the addition of a little milk and sugar once a week and a piece of bacon once
a year. And average height fell precipitously during most of the century –
especially for the poor – only taking a pronounced upward turn following
the beginning of the twentieth century. Thus, at the close of the Napoleonic
Wars, the average male worker in Britain was some fi ve inches shorter than
his upper class counterpart, close to half the children born in towns died
before they were fi ve years old, and those who did not were likely to be
badly undernourished, stunted, and deformed by rickets.
9
In light of this it
does not seem surprising that during recruitment for the Boer War (1899–
1902) fully 37 percent of the volunteers were pronounced unfi t for military
duty.
10
This scandal touched off a debate, in Parliament which revealed that
in 1883 the minimum height for recruits had been lowered from 5 feet 6
inches to 5 feet 3 inches and then again, in 1902, to just fi ve feet.
11
As the middle of the nineteenth century drew near, Irish peasants,
despite, or perhaps because of, having dined almost exclusively on pota-
toes for a century and a half, were considerably sturdier than their English

counterparts. Average potato yields were six tons per acre, as opposed to
Capitalism, Colonialism, and Cuisine
217
less than one ton for grains, and the “conacre” system gave peasants small
plots of land to grow them on in return for agricultural labor to British
(and Irish) landlords.
12
Dreary though their meals may have been, the Irish
prospered demographically, their population almost doubling between
1800 and 1845 (increasing from 4.5 million to 8 million people), thanks to
this New World crop. Not only were the Irish healthy, their potatoes per-
mitted them to marry early because of food security, and younger moth-
ers could more easily nurse their newborn through an always precarious
infancy into childhood.
13
Perhaps the landlords took Irish robustness as a signal that they could be
squeezed even more. Conacres shrank as land planted in grains increased,
impelling many peasants to seasonally migrate to Scotland for the harvest,
their absence reducing potato consumption in Ireland while simultane-
ously generating money to purchase food.
14
It was not that an Irish vulnerability to famine was unappreciated. The
potato crop had failed in 1816, causing much hunger, and again in 1821,
this time leaving perhaps 50,000 dead. The crop failed again in 1831, 1835,
and 1836, but not yet from the fungal disease Phytophthora infestans that
brought on the great famine that began in 1845.
15
It started in the Low
Countries – the fungus apparently arriving with New World potato varieties
imported, ironically, to heighten potato disease resistance – then spread

to England and Ireland. Called “late blight,” the disease caused apparently
healthy-looking potatoes to suddenly rot, turning into a black mush, and
in 1845 Ireland lost 40 percent of its crop. But the worst was yet to come.
Infected potatoes had been left in the fi elds and the spores of P. infestans saw
to it that scarcely 10 percent of the 1846 potato crop could be salvaged.
16
At fi rst the British government turned a blind eye to the Irish plight, and
exports to England of grain, meat, vegetables, and dairy products contin-
ued from that ravaged land, the conservatives in Parliament arguing that
the famine was an act of God, and Irish relief – giving them food – would
not only go against God’s will but would also paralyze trade. Yet, when
America sent relief ships, international embarrassment gave free-traders
their chance to get the Corn Laws repealed, which had restricted grain
imports from other countries to keep prices high, a repeal that did noth-
ing to help out the Irish. Rather it eliminated Ireland’s favored status as an
exporter to the British market, prompting landlords to switch from grow-
ing wheat to raising cattle, an enterprise in which peasant labor was no lon-
ger needed.
17
Eviction from their lands, hunger, and illnesses through 1848
218
A Movable Feast
caused the death or migration of between one and a half and two million
people – a loss from which Ireland, with today’s population less than half
of that of 1841, has clearly never recovered.
18
England’s repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 signaled the triumph of the
industrialists and free trade over landed and agricultural interests, which
meant that much of the food to feed industrial workers now had to be
imported. Australia and New Zealand sent meat and butter, and the econo-

mies of countries like Ireland and Denmark were geared to an English
demand for bacon and dairy products.
19
Fortunately, the nineteenth centu-
ry witnessed ever greater speed in ocean crossings and, consequently, lower
transportation costs that fostered trade expansion and market integration,
and brought on a spurt in food globalization. Much of the latter was con-
nected to colonial economies and not just to that of Ireland.
20
Tea, coffee, and sugar were products that reached European countries
directly from those colonies, and brightened the life of even the poor. After
all, a cup of hot and sweetened tea could make a cold meal seem like a
hot one,
21
and sweetened foods, like preserves that required no refrigera-
tion because sugar is a preservative, became the nineteenth-century con-
venience foods for the harried families of factory workers.
22
Meats (lamb,
mutton, beef ), dairy products, and, later, tropical fruits fl owed into the
British market from Australia and New Zealand after 1870, and especially after
1882, with the beginning of refrigerated shipping, while wheat reached
England from its ex-colony, North America.
23
Iberian imperialism may have opened both Old and New Worlds to an
avalanche of new foods, but other imperial powers were not far behind
in moving foods around the globe. Illustrative is a rice dish on the streets
of Cairo called kushuri made with lentils, onions, and spices – a favorite
that the locals believe to be their own. Yet, it originated in India as kitchri
and was brought to British-dominated Egypt by British forces from British

India.
24
In England, a similar dish called kedgeree had accompanied return-
ees from India with appetites for curries, mulligatawny (a soup made
with meat, dal, chapattis), and chutney. This, in turn, not only created a
British demand for turmeric, curry powders, and gooseberry chutney to
substitute for the mango chutneys of India, but made Indian restaurants
ubiquitous.
25
Similarly a taste for the myriad spicy dishes of a rijistafel (rice table)
and other Indonesian specialties such as nasi from the Dutch East Indian
colonies became epidemic in the Netherlands, and Indonesian restaurants