MODERN PERIOD / AGE OF DISCOVERY / RENAISSANCE (1300 AD – 1600 AD)

LECTURE 4: MODERN PERIOD / AGE OF DISCOVERY / RENAISSANCE

(1300 AD – 1600 AD)

Asia

China: Tang and Song Dynasties

During these two periods of time, China’s population grew and became increasingly urban and

sophisticated. It was the only place in the world that knew the secret of how to make silk. Even back

then China was known for its advancements in fine porcelain (the West still calls it ‘china’ today),

gunpowder, the printing press and tea.

It was during the Song Dynasty, that distinctive regional cuisines emerged in three regions: north; south

and Szechwan. Cantonese came later. Northern cuisine was dominated by the city of Beijing. Millet, meat

and dairy products were a large part of the total food consumed. Wheat was also grown and the flour

used for dumplings, fried dough strips, and noodles. It was blander than southern cuisine, which was

based on rice, fish, pork, vegetables and fruits. Szechwan cuisine was also based on rice. Tea was poplar,

too. It was missing two foods that characterize it now, hot peppers and peanuts, because they were from

the New World and had not been introduced to China yet.

Among the upper classes, polished white rice was the standard, just as refined white bread was the

standard in Europe. There were “seven necessities” that people had to have every day: firewood, rice,

oil, salt, soybean sauce, vinegar, and tea. The wealthy went far beyond these mere seven necessities. In

butcher shops, five butchers at a time lined up at tables, cutting, slicing, and pounding cuts of meat to

order. During the Song Dynasty upper-class diners moved from sitting on the floor to chairs. Multicourse

dinners were brought to lacquered tables set with porcelain dishes and sometimes silver chopsticks and

spoons. Household staffs that could number in the hundreds prepared meals.

For the lower classes, there were street vendors, noodle shops and smaller restaurants that provided

prepared food. Some snack shops specialized in one kind of food, like ping - cakes that were sweet or

savoury, stuffed or plain, steamed or fried. All of the chefs who prepared these foods were male, with

perhaps only a few female exceptions.

The Mongols

In the 13th century, across the vast, dry, flat grasslands of Asia – the Steppes – and into Eastern Europe,

galloped the Mongols. The Mongols’ merciless tactics terrified their enemies. They would surround a city

and demand its surrender. If the city didn’t surrender, they killed everyone. If the city did surrender, they

killed everyone. Soon, the Mongol empire stretched from China in the east to Poland in the west – the

largest land-based empire the world has ever seen.

Horsepower fuelled the Mongols. They ate horsemeat; they drank mare’s milk, which unlike cow’s milk is

high in vitamin C; they even made an alcoholic drink called kumiss from fermented mare’s milk. When

there was nothing else to drink or when they were riding and couldn’t stop to rest, they drank their

horse’s blood. They made a slit in the horse’s neck and knew just how much blood to suck without

hurting the horse.

The Mongols sometimes rode for days, switching horses without ever getting off. They invented stirrups

to make themselves bipedal while riding a horse, for the same survival reason early man became bipedal:

it left their hands free to use weapons. They could stand up in the stirrups without falling off the horse

and still be able to guide it with their knees and feet. They could also twist and shoot to the side or

behind them. Standing, they were higher than the horse’s head, so they could shoot arrows over it. Their

ruthlessness and efficiency earned them the rule of China.

Europe

Bubonic Plague – the Black Death, 1348 - 1350

The newly re-opened trade routes to Asia brought more than silk and spices to Europe. In 1348, rats

covered with fleas spread plague quickly by land and by sea, aided by poor nutrition and the absence of

personal hygiene or public sanitation. In two years it killed one-third of the population of Europe, about

25 million people. In some places in Europe, there was chaos. If all the members of a noble landowning

family were dead, there was no one left to inherit their land legally. Squatters moved in and fought over

it.

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Italy: The Renaissance

Almost one thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire, Italians rediscovered the cuisines and

cultures of the classical Greeks and Romans. Renaissance – “rebirth” – of civilization began in Italy in the

14th century. The Renaissance was characterized by an increase in trade and in learning, with an

emphasis on humanism – the importance of the individual, as the opposed to the Church or the state.

Italians rediscovered the cuisine of ancient Rome and along with an interest in Roman cooking, came a

revival of Roman excesses. In the 16th century, Italy was wealthy and powerful, at the height of the

European world. And the Medici family was at the height of power in the wealthiest, most powerful city-

state in Italy: Florence. They had accumulated wealthy by being merchants, the middlemen between

Arab traders in the east and Europe in the west. They had so much money they started loaning it out and

became the bankers of Europe, with branches in major cities. The Medici family was the new royalty, not

born nobles, but merchant-class city residents. This new class of people had money and wanted to show

it off. Fashion and food were two ways of doing just that.

With the growth of cities, came an urban population that did not produce their own food. It needed food

that was preserved and for that they needed spices and salt. “At no time in European history did spices

play as great a role as in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries.” Now there were more people in classes that

could afford them. But which spices were used changed. French upper-class cooking began to consider

spices like black pepper unrefined and lower-class. Each class had its own food habits. “Delicate” meats

like partridges became increasingly important to the upper classes, who thought they increased

intelligence and sensitivity and that spices made them easier to digest. At the same time, bread occupied

a larger percentage of the diet and budget of the lower classes, which might spend more than half of

their income on it. The breadbasket of Europe was Poland and Ukraine in the east, which meant the

grain, had to be shipped, which created another wealthy class of shippers. The lower classes sent their

children, as early as age 7 or 8, out to be servants in the homes of the new wealthy upper class.

Portugal: The Rise of World Trade and the Search for Spices

Portugal’s Prince Henry the Navigator was in love with the idea of exploring. He set up a sailing school

where the latest ideas and technology could be exchanged and improved upon. If the Portuguese could

find a way to bypass the Arab caravans and the Italian fleet, they could lower the prices of spices and

other precious items and increase their own profits. Just as three important technological developments –

the wheel, the plough, and the sail – had helped trade 4,500 years earlier, three new technological

developments helped the Europeans.

The magnetic compass, invented by the Chinese, always pointed north and helped ships’ captains get

their bearings on the open sea. The astrolabe, an Arab invention, made navigation using the stars

possible. And the new triangular sails allowed ships to sail against the wind, not just with it. The

Portuguese ships sailed down the west coast of Africa around Cape of Good Hope and up the east coast

of Africa. They continued across the open sea east of India and arrived in the East Indies in what is now

Indonesia – what they called the Spice Islands. They had just found a way to cut out the middlemen.

Spain: Christopher Columbus

Almost exactly 200 years after Marco Polo published his memoirs, another Italian read his stories,

believed them, and was inspired to look for that shortcut. He was known to the Italians in Genoa, where

he was born as Cristoforo Colombo, to the Spanish who financed his expedition as Cristóbal Colón, and to

the English as Christopher Columbus. He was an experienced sea captain and had seen the maps of the

world. They had three continents – Europe, Asia and Africa. Jerusalem was at the centre of all of them.

But some people at the time believed that going west would be the fastest route to the Indies. In

Germany, a man named Behaim was building a globe, which portrayed a round world. Columbus trusted

his own observations that the horizon never got closer no matter how long he sailed toward it, and he

was not going to fall off the earth. Columbus was petitioning the royalty of Europe to finance his trip to

look for spices in the east by sailing west, but he was not having much success. The Medici weren’t

interested because if he did find a new route, it would cut out their moneymaking position as middlemen.

The situation in Spain was tense, as the new king and queen revived the Inquisition as part of their

campaign to purify Spain and save its soul. In 1474, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella began their

reign. They vowed to unify Spain by making it a completely Spanish, completely Catholic country. To

achieve this, they had to cleanse the country of two segments of the population that had been living

peacefully in Spain for hundreds of years, the Islamic Moors and the Jews. In order to survive, the Jews

left Spain. Some went west to Portugal, but a great many went much farther away from the Inquisition

and from Catholicism altogether; they went north to the only country in Europe that practiced religious

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toleration, the Netherlands. They took their knowledge of banking and business with them. Ferdinand

and Isabella were aware of the economic and intellectual drain on their country but insisted that they had

to persevere with their religious cleansing to save the souls of the Christians in Spain.

Waiting to see Queen Isabella was Christopher Columbus, and waiting for Columbus were two new

continents, North and South America as Spain gave the money to sail west wards!

The American Empires

Before Columbus arrived in 1492, not one person in North or South America had ever had measles or

been scarred by smallpox; nor had they ever had mosquito-borne malaria, or typhus (spread by lice).

Those diseases didn’t exist. There were also no weeds like crabgrass and dandelion and kudzu. There

were no rats. American bees buzzed and made honey but they had no stingers.

The people native to North and South America had arrived between 40,000 B.C. and 12,000 B.C. by

walking across the Bering Strait between northern Asia and Alaska when the glaciers receded and dried

up the Bering Sea, creating a land bridge.

Before Columbus arrived, South America, North America and Central America each had one dominant

culture:

1.) The inhabitants of Cahokia, located near present-day St Louis on the Mississippi River in North

America.

2.) The Inca, in their capital city of Cuzco, in the Andes Mountains of Peru in South America.

3) The Aztec, whose great capital city, Tenochtitlán, was built on landfill in a lake where Mexico City

is now, in Central America.

Although these three cultures were thousands of miles apart, they had several things in common. All

were at the centre of complex trade routes. All three civilizations built enormous pyramids, some larger

than the pyramids of Egypt. But none of these three civilizations used the wheel except as a child’s toy or

in games. Everything on these trade routes was carried on boats or on the backs or heads of people or

on pack animals, like the llamas domesticated by the Incas. They didn’t have carts because they didn’t

have strong animals to pull them.

South America: Inca – Potatoes and Maize

The Inca ruled over the largest empire in the Americas. This is a territory of geographical extremes. From

desert at the Pacific Ocean in the west, the land rises steeply almost 20,000 feet to the snow covered

peaks of the Andes Mountains. Like the ancient Romans, the Inca built roads and bridges – 14,000 miles

of them – to connect their empire. Just as in the Roman Empire all roads led to Rome, in the Inca empire

all roads led the capital of Cuzco in what is now Peru. Like the Egyptians, the Inca mummified their dead.

They worshiped Inti, the god of the sun, at their most sacred shrine, the Temple of the Sun in Cuzco.

They were highly skilled at working with the material they called “the sweat of the sun” – gold.

There was no private ownership of land in the Inca Empire. The government controlled land and

economy and decided which crops would be grown where. Under government direction, farmers built

irrigation systems and terraced the hillsides where they grew quinoa, a grain native to the Andes. Inca

meats included deer and an animal called a vizcacha, which had the body like a rabbit and a tail like a

fox. Dried fish fed the army. Another food staple for a majority of the population then, and now, was

guinea pig.

The Inca also cultivated more than 3,000 varieties of potato. They preserved the potatoes by freeze-

drying. Since they were in the Altiplano, a desert at high elevations, the weather was hot and dry during

the day and freezing at night. During the day, they squeezed the moisture out of the potatoes with their

feet, like crushing grapes for wine, and left them out to dry. Then the dry potatoes froze at night.

Corn, which travelled south from Mexico, was another staple of the Inca diet.

Tomatoes and chili peppers were native to Peru, too. Just as corn migrated south to Peru, tomatoes and

chili peppers migrated north to Mexico, where they were domesticated and bred and where Europeans

first encountered them.

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Central America: The Aztecs and Xocolatl

In 1325, a people called the Mexica, or Aztecs, arrived at a valley 7,000 feet above sea level and ringed

by mountains – the site of present-day Mexico City. Like the Inca to the south, the Aztecs worshiped a

sun god. But the Aztec god, Huitzilopochtli, demanded human sacrifice every day or he would not

appear. In addition to the sun god, the Aztecs also worshiped the god of fire, who lived among three

other gods, represented by three stones on the hearth where all the cooking was done. Much of today’s

Mexican cooking equipment and the food cooked on it are directly descended from the Aztecs.

Being an Aztec cook could by a dangerous occupation: when the nobility died, numerous male and

female cooks were buried with then (the higher the noble person’s rank, the grater the number of cooks)

so that they could cook for them in the afterlife.

One of the most important foodstuff, which had more than culinary significance in the Aztec culture, was

xoxolatl also called cacahuatl, or chocolate – made from the seeds of the cacao plant, which means “food

of the gods” chocolate was the beverage of Aztec emperors and warriors. They drank it lukewarm,

frothed on top the same way it is done today, by rubbing a swizzle stick or molinillo between the palms

of the hands. Chocolate was the drink preferred by nobles and warriors and was restricted to them. It

was part of a warrior’s food ration, along with tortillas, beans, dried chillies, and toasted maize.

The cacao beans were stored in the public storerooms, along with maize, but they were much more than

food. They were also money in the Aztec empire. They could be used to pay wages and to purchase

items. A turkey hen or a rabbit cost 100 cocoa beans, an avocado cost 3, and a large tomato 1.

Protein in the Aztec diet came from “deer, peccary, rabbits, jackrabbits, mice, armadillos, snakes,

gophers, opossums, and iguanas” that were caught, kept in cages and fattened up. Also on the Aztec

menu were foods form the surrounding lakes: water bugs and their eggs, frogs and tadpoles, lake

shrimp, and larvae of the Agave redworm, which today resides at the bottom of the mezcal bottle.

Most of the culture of corn, squash, beans, and chillies travelled north on the trade routes form the great

Aztec civilization into what is now northern Mexico and the south-western United States.

The Southwest: Three Sister farming

In south-western America, on the edge of the Aztec trade route, efficient native people built communal

dwellings, like apartment houses. The largest had perhaps 600 rooms and 1,000 inhabitants. They also

farmed efficiently. Instead of having fields that were spread out and time consuming to get to and tend,

they combined three crops that grew well together – corn, beans and squash – in a method known as

“three sisters farming” The corn stalks grew straight up and acted as a trellis for the beans that wound

around them. At the bottom of the corn the big, broad leaves of the squash plants kept moisture in the

soil.

In the Southwest, as in Mexico, chili peppers figure prominently in the culture as well as the cuisine.

Peppers are members of the nightshade family, like their other American relatives the tomato, potato and

tobacco, and their Asian relative, the eggplant. The heat of peppers, from large, harmless green bell to

the tiny hellfire Scotch bonnet, is measured in Scoville units.

All of the native peoples in the Americas knew how to farm and preserve their foods efficiently, how to

build roads for trade and temples for worship. They knew how to read the heavens and make calendars,

how to govern vast empires. Their craftspeople knew how to make objects of great beauty out of gold

and silver, and how to cook complex sophisticated dishes. But what the Inca, Aztecs, the Caribes, the

Papago, and all the other native people in the Americas didn’t know was that in Europe, Spain’s King

Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had finally decided to bankroll Columbus’s voyage.

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Columbus sets sail for the Americas: 1492

On August 2, 1492, Columbus and his crew of 90 men attended Mass at the Church of St. George in

Palos, Spain. The next day they set sail in three ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the ship carrying

Columbus, the Santa Maria. Six days later, they arrived in the Spanish-owned Canary Islands off the

northwest coast of Africa, the last stop before heading west with the wind that Columbus hoped would

carry them to the East Indies – the Spice Islands.

When they set sail from the Canary Islands on Thursday, September 6, 1492, Columbus’s men had

enough food to last them for one year. They would have packed standard Spanish food that would last,

mostly dried or salted: rice and dried chickpeas; beef, pork, anchovies, and sardines preserved in salt.

There were surely casks of olive oil and enough wine to provide the one-and-a-half-litre ration that each

man expected every day. There was also that misery of the sailor’s life, the aptly named hardtack – the

unleavened, rock-hard flour, water, and salt biscuits that was more hospitable to parasites like weevils

than to humans. The sailors would supplement this with whatever fresh fish they could catch.

Vegetables, except perhaps garlic and onions, were absent in this diet. There was no cook on board, so

crew members took turns at midday preparing the one hot meal a day on a fogón, an open iron box.

There was no top and no front, only a bottom filled with sand, a back, and two short, curved sides – just

enough to keep the wood fire off the wooden deck. Since the small ships were pitching on the waves

nearly all the time, the food would have been a simple, one pot meal like beans and rice with meat or

fish. Below the deck, the hold was packed with food and water, firewood, gunpowder, rope, and other

supplies, so the men worked, ate, and slept outside on deck. Rats, roaches and lice were also standard

on the ships.

On September 9, when they lost sight of land behind them and there was nothing in front of them but

sea and sky, the crew cried.

Finally, land was sighted for real in what is now the eastern Bahamas on October 12, 1492, thirty-three

days after they left the Canaries. Columbus named the island San Salvador – “holy saviour.”

Ashore, Columbus and his men prayed in thanks, claimed the land for Spain, and put up a cross. Natives

came to greet them. Sure that he was in the East Indies, Columbus mistakenly called these people indios

– Indians. The first thing Columbus noticed about these Indians was that they were naked, good-looking,

and friendly, which he assumed would make them easy to convert to Christianity. And they had only

wooden weapons, which he knew would make them easy to enslave.

The stage was set for one of the greatest holocausts in human history.

The Columbian Exchange

The collision of the East and West – Old and New Worlds – and the foods, plants, animals and diseases

that went back and forth is called the Columbian Exchange. The old world focuses on Europe, Asia and

Africa and the new world focuses on North America, Central America and South America. With this

contact, humans overrode millions of years of natural development in life forms on planet earth.

Only one food animal went from the Americas to Europe at this time – the turkey. Also, one major

disease travelled from the Americas to Europe – syphilis, which spread through Europe like wild-fire and

then came back to the Americas in a more virulent form.

Much of the plant and animal life that arrived in the West from the Old World came as stowaways. Seeds

for weeds might get mixed in with grains, dung or animal feed. Old World dandelions and daisies arrived

this way. So did tumbleweed, Kentucky bluegrass, and the black rat, which carries plague and typhus. So

did the numerous diseases that went from Europe, Asia, and Africa to the Americas – the common cold,

diphtheria, malaria, measles, smallpox, typhus, and whooping cough. Ten years after the Spanish arrived

in Mexico, the native population had dropped by nearly 10 million. A hundred years later, 90% of the

native population was dead – a decline from more than 25 million to about 1 million. People native to the

Americas had no immunity to any of the diseases Europeans routinely got. Why didn’t the people in the

New World have any immunity? Why didn’t they have diseases of their own to give to the Europeans?

New World people didn’t have the livestock that Europeans did, which was where a great many of the

zoonoses – animal diseases that cross over to afflict humans – originated. For example, the smallpox of

the New World was scattered and not concentrated in cities, where normal human interaction would have

exposed people to a variety of diseases and allowed them to develop immunities.

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Old World to New

Columbus’s “discovery” began a land rush to the Americas. Within two years, Spain and Portugal were

ready to fight over boundaries. Instead, the pope mediated, the way the United Nations does now. In

1494, the two countries agreed to an imaginary line the pope drew through the New World from north to

south. Everything west of the line – Mexico and most of South America – belonged to Spain; everything

east – Brazil – was Portugal’s.

The conquistadors who followed Columbus to the New World in the 16th century conquered the cuisines

as well as the cultures of the native people. Spain immediately began to transplant its cultures, especially

its foodstuffs, to New Spain. Columbus returned to the Americas the following year, 1493, and brought

Old World livestock with him: cattle, horses, pigs, goats, and sheep. All except the sheep eventually took

to the wild and reverted to the pre-domesticated state.

“By 1600 all the most important food plants of the Old World were being cultivated in the Americas”

However, the vegetable foods were not readily accepted by the native people. The new animals and the

product they yielded were another matter and changed native cuisines profoundly. Livestock reproduced

at phenomenal rates. In three years, thirteen pigs produced seven hundred.

Mexico: Mole and Carne

Hernán Cortés arrived on the Caribbean shore of Mexico in 1517. He had heard stories about the

fabulous wealth of the Aztecs, and he wanted it: “I came to get gold, not to till the soil like a peasant”.

When word reached the Aztecs about these strange beings that had arrived by ship from the east, they

thought it was their god Quetzalcóatl returning. When Cortés and his men arrived at Tenochtitlán, they

were amazed at its beauty and grandeur; some of them thought it was a dream. The dream continued

when the Aztecs welcomed Cortés and his men as gods. By the time Aztecs realized that Cortés was

human and only wanted gold, it was too late. The fierce Aztec warriors were no match for the Spaniards’

guns or diseases. A smallpox epidemic throughout the capital ensured Spanish victory. Soon the entire

Aztec empire was under the control of Spain.

After hundreds of years of European influence, a modern Mexican cuisine is very different from pre-

Columbian native cuisines. One of the most important changes was that the diet of South American

natives went from heavily vegetarian and very low in fat to heavily meat-based with a great deal of fat.

Tortillas now came in wheat as well as corn, and were wrapped around stuffing’s that included carnitas

(dried shredded pork) and queso (cheese). Chili (beans in a tomato sauce) became chili con carne (chili

with meat)

Contact with the Spanish changed chocolate too. Now Mexican chocolate is a combination of chocolate

(freshly ground from cacao beans, if possible), canela (cinnamon), and granulated sugar.

Mole poblano is still the signature dish of the Mexican city Puebla.

There are spicy moles, red, yellow, and green moles, sweet and sour moles. Other Mexican uses of Old

World animals include pozole (pork and hominy stew), oxtail stew, and tripe stew. There are also many

Mexican cheeses made from cow’s milk, like queso fresco, panela, and ranchero seco (a dried cheese, as

its name says). Desserts, too, were made from Old World foods. Eggs and sugar make flan, Spanish

custard. Wheat treats include churros made of dough like pâte á choux.

New Mexico: The Pueblo Revolt

Where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico come together, native people lived in villages like

apartment buildings – in Spanish, pueblos. Pueblo men irrigated the fields and farmed; the woman

ground corn and cooked in the large, flat common area, the plaza; the adult males retreated to an

underground kiva for religious and tribal matters. In 1540, a Spanish soldier reported that the people in

at typical pueblo were “usually at work.” And efficient workers they were, with very clean buildings for

grinding corn and preparing food. Three women would prepare corn at one time, each with a mano and a

matate, like an assembly line: “One of them breaks the corn, the next grinds it, and the third grinds it

again... A man sits at the door playing on a flute while they grind. They move the stones to the music

and sing together.

But the Spaniards were looking for gold, and the pueblo people were not Christian. The Spanish soldiers

ignored the line of sacred cornmeal the people laid out on the ground as their boundary; took whatever

they wanted from them, looked for gold and got angry when they found only beans, squash, tortillas, and

turkeys, but took them anyway; told the people if they surrendered they would not be harmed, then

butchered thousands of them when they did. The Acoma pueblo was burned to the ground. Everyone in

the pueblo male and female – over the age of 12 was sentenced to 20 years of slavery; all men over 25

also had one foot chopped off. Enslaved, the Indians took care of the cattle, sheep, horses, goats, and

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pigs and tended the olive groves and the orchards of peach, pear, fig, date, pomegranate, cherry,

quince, lemon, and orange trees.

In 1610, the Spanish founded the city of Santa Fe (the name means “holy faith”) in what is now New

Mexico and forced the Indians to build it. The pueblo people were willing to accept Christianity, but only

along with their own religion, so the Spanish destroyed all the religious items, including the masked

images to the holy spirits who brought rain and taught hunting and farming to humans. Then came

drought and tribes of raider called apachu nabahu – “enemies of the cultivated fields” – which sounded

like “Apache” and Navaho” to the Spanish. The raiders stole from all the stored food and ran off with the

livestock. The Spanish and the Indians tried to survive on boiled or roasted leather and hides. The

Spanish and their god could not help the native people. Starvation was widespread, then disease. Finally,

on August 10, 1680, all the pueblos revolted at once. They got rid of anything connected with the

Spanish including the food. They killed the priests, demolished the churches, slaughtered the sheep,

cattle and pigs, uprooted the orchards, ripped out the grapevines, and turned the horses loose. It was a

great victory for the native people. But 15 years later, the Spanish returned to stay permanently.

Peru: Lima Beans and New World Wine

Francisco Pizarro was the conquistador who came to Peru in 1532. The nightmare that had occurred with

the Aztecs repeated itself for the Inca – the capture and death of the leader, Atahualpa, and the

demands for gold. The Inca, too, died in horrifying numbers from European diseases.

Between 1540 and 1550, Spain transplanted foodstuffs to Peru: Wine grapes, figs, pomegranates,

quinces, wheat, barley, and citrus. This explosion of Spanish food was subsidized by the crown, which

offered a huge prize – two bars of silver – to the first person in each Peruvian town who produced

Spanish foods like wine, olive oil, wheat, or barely on a large scale. There was wealth to be made in

cultivating the new foods, but getting them to survive and thrive in the New World wasn’t always easy.

Of the more than 100 olive tree cuttings that one man imported to Peru, only 3 survive. These were so

valuable that he planted them on a walled farm in a valley and had them guarded by “more than 100

natives and 30 dogs” which were either bribed or distracted, because one of the plants was stolen and

showed up far away in Chile, where it produced numerous trees. Three years later, somebody sneaked

back to farm and replanted the original tree in the exact same spot.

Vineyards of European grapes were established in Central and South America. How did viticulture spread

so quickly? It was the law. Under the encomienda system, Spanish settlers in New Spain (Mexico) were

given land and Indians to work it, and were required to plant one thousand vines “of the best quality” for

every one hundred Indians they owned. Grapevines did not thrive in Mexico because of the climate, but

they did in Peru. There was a ready-made market for wine in Peru too, because the vineyards were near

the silver mines at Potosi and all their enslaved Indian workers. Peruvian wine makers were so successful

after they began producing wine in 1551 that Spanish wine makers protested. Peru had a thriving wine

industry until it was heavily damaged in the late 19th century by an epidemic of phylloxera, a yellow louse

almost impossible to see with the naked eye, that eats the roots of vinifera grapevines.

Argentina: Gauchos and Beef

Horses preceded humans into the flat plains of the area around what is now the capital, Buenos Aires,

because permanent settlers in 1580 found huge wild herds already there. Herds doubled nearly every 15

months. Beef was also plentiful and cheap. Beef provided food for the enslaved Indians working in the

mines. But more important use was for fat – tallow – to make candles, especially to light the mines.

Hides, too, were more important used of cattle than food. A beef cuisine grew in Argentina; especially

using a technique learned from Caribbean natives, the barbecue. True barbecue is pit roasting –

originally, digging a pit or providing some kind of enclosure – and takes hours so the meat can attain a

soft texture and smoky taste. Argentine barbecue is basted with brine. Along with the cattle and beef

cuisine, the Spanish transplanted their gauchos (South American cowboy) culture. Americans didn’t

create the cowboy; Spain did, in the middle ages.

Brazil: Portuguese influence

Brazilian food is heavily influenced by Portugal, its colonial master; and Africa, where a large part of its

population originated. Approximately 38% of the approximately 10 million slaves shipped to Africa to the

New World went to Brazil, mostly to work in the sugarcane fields.

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The Caribbean: Sugar

For the most part, European settlers were not very interested in New World foods. They were more

interested in seeing if Old World foods with already established markets could be produced more cheaply

and in greater quantities in the New world. One food in particular fit the bill. It quickly rose to dominate

the international market, created huge fortunes on both sides of the Atlantic, cause millions of people to

be enslaved, created new professions, and changed the eating habits of Homo sapiens completely. It was

sugar, from the sugarcane plants.

The introduction of chocolate, coffee, and tea into Europe caused a rise in the demand for sugar, while

the availability of sugar increased the demand for chocolate, coffee, and tea. A sugar spiral developed: as

sugar became plentiful its price dropped; as its price dropped it became more available to more people.

What had been a medicine for the rich in the Middle Ages was a food staple for even the poor by the

middle of the 18th century.

Sugar growing, harvesting, and processing were extremely labour-intensive, and the labour was slaves

from Africa. Boiling the sugar down to crystallize it was particularly gruelling work. Slaves worked in shifts

that could last all day and all night; they got Sunday off. Tired slaves lost fingers as they fed the cane

through the rollers on the grinding machines. The majority of the slaves taken from Africa and

transported to the Americans, 40% - went to the Caribbean sugar islands. Life was so harsh that the

slaves often died within four years, so a new supply was constantly needed.

Slaves on the plantations had to eat too. Their food had to be imported because sugar was grown on all

available land. The mainstay of the slave diet was salted beef until the British settled North America; then

low-grade salted, dried cod was used.

The Caribbean: Rum

One of the by-products of sugar processing resulted in a new alcoholic beverage. Rum first appeared in

the 1640’s in the Caribbean.

There are two different ways of making rum. One, agricultural rum, is made from the fresh-pressed juice

of the sugarcane stalk. The other is made from molasses. In both cases, yeast is added to the liquid,

which is allowed to ferment, usually for 24 – 48 hours. It is then distilled and aged in oak barrels that

formerly held whiskey or bourbon. Most rum are blended after they have aged, but some are blended

first, then aged together. It is the aging process in the oak that produced rum’s rich brown colour.

Rum was first distilled on the island of Barbados, where the Mount Gay label has been in existence for

more than 300 years.

The Caribbean: Slavery

The Caribbean was one of the points on what historians call the “triangle trade”: sugar and rum from the

Caribbean to Europe (later, New England), goods from Europe to Africa, slaves from Africa to the

Caribbean. Portugal had its own triangle trade, which sold “third-grade tobacco soaked in molasses” for

the slaves in Africa. Shipped them to Brazil, and then brought the good tobacco to the European markets.

Why slavery? Why not some other form of labour? Native Americans weren’t suitable because they died –

in some cases became extinct – from European diseases. Africans from the west coast of Africa were

kidnapped by slave traders of African tribal enemies who had guns.

One of the additional ordeals for the captives on the slave ships was the poor quality of food. Sometimes

they were fed their native foods, like yams, rice, and palm oil. Some tried to commit suicide by refusing

to eat at all. But slaves that weren’t eating were valuable cargo in danger of being lost. If whipping or

beating didn’t get them to eat, forcing their jaws open with a metal device that worked like a car jack

usually did. On the other hand, if the voyage took longer than expected and supplies of food and water

were running low, slaves were thrown overboard. Ship owners didn’t care if part of the cargo was lost

this way; it was a business expense and they were insured. The slave trade was very lucrative, producing

profits of more than 100%.

Food & Society

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First years – Lecture notes 9 ICA

New World to Old

It took about 300 years for most of the New World foods to be accepted in Europe. Some, such as maize,

still aren’t fully accepted as human food. Sometimes strange new things can only be described by

connecting them with familiar old ones. So Columbus’s son described cocoa beans as special “almonds”.

In Italy, the tomato became “golden apple,” pomodoro, because some of the original tomatoes which are

heirlooms now, were yellow. The potato became “earth apple” – pomme de terre – in French, and

erdapfel in German.

Two New World items that did find immediate acceptance in the Old World were turkey and tobacco.

Europe, used to eating fowl and accustomed to chicken as a special-occasion centrepiece, was ready for

a big, new, festive, good-tasting bird. Soon, turkey replaced heron, swan, peacock, and other birds that

were nearly inedible but made magnificent presentations.

Beans were also readily accepted, perhaps because they resembled pulses like chickpeas and lentils.

Spain: Chocolate and Paella

Chocolate probably would have caught on sooner in Europe, but the Spanish nobility considered it a

powerful aphrodisiac – and kept the recipe secret by locking it up in a monastery for almost a century.

But something so good couldn’t be kept under wraps for long; other eventually figured out the recipe and

a craze was born. Chocolate was used in different ways in different European countries. Like the Aztecs,

the Spanish consumed chocolate as a beverage, but sweetened it with sugar. The French confined it to

dessert.

The Traditional dish of Spain is Paella Valenciana, and it is a mixture of Old and New World foods. Paella

refers to the pan in which it is cooked; Valenciana refers to the region of Spain where it originated. The

classic ingredients are Old World rice, several kinds of meat, olive oil, and saffron, and New World green

beans, tomato, and paprika.

Commercialism and the Spanish Armada defeat against England

Sugar, wine, and other foodstuffs played a large part in an economic system called mercantilism. This

was based on a country having a favourable balance of trade – more money coming into the treasury

than going out. Economically, it was the end of feudalism and the beginning of capitalism, the

accumulation of private wealth. Colonies were an important way to achieve this. They provided the home

country with cheap raw materials that the home country then sold to other counties at a higher price or

transformed into finished goods like textiles and sold back to the colony. So in the 16th century, hundreds

of huge cargo ships, Spanish galleons, sailed across the Atlantic Ocean loaded with sugar, wines, gold

and silver. The heavily laden, slow-moving galleons were tempting targets and an easy way for countries

to accumulate wealth without spending much money. There were some pirates, renegades who belonged

to no country, but most of the pirates were in the service of Spain’s enemies – other European countries,

especially England. Any country that could hijack or smuggle any valuable commodity did. They were all

pirates in the Caribbean.

The piracy reached an intolerable level when sugar cost less in England than it did in Spain or even in the

Caribbean. King Philip II of Spain complained repeatedly to England’s Queen Elizabeth I, who condemned

pirates like Francis Drake in public but rewarded them in private. In addition, Catholic Spain hated

Protestant England and its Protestant shipbuilding ally, the Netherlands, which Spain had owned until the

Dutch revolted. Spain began building a huge armed fleet, an armada, to attack England. The pope

promised Spain a huge cash bonus when it invaded England and brought it back to the Catholic Church.

In July 1588, the Spanish Armada arrived off the coast of England. But the British won. The decisive

factor wasn’t men or ships; it was nature. A violent wind came up and scattered the Spanish fleet.

The British claimed that “the Protestant wind” showed that their god was more powerful than Spain’s.

The British victory broke the Spanish stranglehold on sailing in the Atlantic Ocean and allowed the British

to do something they had wanted to do for a long time: colonize in North America.

Food & Society

101 4

First years – Lecture notes 10 ICA

Old World and New World ingredients OLD WORLD TO NEW WORLD

Animals

Chicken

Cattle

Guineafowl

Honey bee with stinger

Goat (domestic – wild

species already present)

Goose (domestic – wild

species already present)

Pig

Water buffalo

Horse

Donkey

Sheep

Dog

Cat

Black rat

Fruit

Apple

Apricot

Banana

Sweet melon (cantaloupe)

Watermelon

Carambola (starfruit)

Citrus fruit

Dates

Figs

Grapes (eating and wine)

Kiwifruit

Mango

Peach

Pear

Cherry

Grape

Plum

Pomegranate

Quince

Vegetables

Artichoke

Asparagus

Beet

Brassica

vegetables (kale,

broccoli, cabbage,

Brussels sprouts,

cauliflower)

Carrot

Cucumber

Garlic

Lettuce

Okra

Olive

Onion

Pea

Radish

Rhubarb

Turnips

Sugarcane

Yam

Sage

Celery

Cilantro

Eggplant

Ginger

Parsley

Grains and

pulses

Wheat

Rice

Barley

Oats

Rye

Millet

Soybean

Chickpea

Lentil

Sesame seeds

Nuts

Almond

Pistachio

Hazelnut

Spices

Black pepper

Cardamom

Cinnamon

Clove

Nutmeg

Aniseed

Mustard

Other

Tea

Coffee

Hemp (including cannabis)

Opium (poppy seeds)

Diseases

Lavender

NEW WORLD TO OLD

WORLD

Animals

Turkey

Fruit

Avocado

Blueberry

Cranberries

Cacao

Guava

Papaya

Passion fruit

Pineapple

Prickly pear

Strawberry

Tomato

Cherimoya

Vegetables

Green beans

Bell pepper

Chilli pepper

Jerusalem

Artichoke

Cassava (tapioca)

Potato

Pumpkin

Squash

Sweet potato

Grains and

pulses

Amaranth

Quinoa

Corn

Kidney beans

Lima beans

Wild rice

Sunflower

seeds

Nuts

Cashew

Peanut

Pecan nut

Spices

Vanilla

All spice

Other

Arrowroot

Cotton

Quinine

Rubber

Tobacco

Agave (plant Tequila is made from)