Last saved by: Elsayed Ahmed

2)  What is the relationship between food (and its production, circulation, and consumption) and imperialism, according to both Laudan and Sharma?  Tease out this complex relationship using evidence from both readings.  What insights can we glean about imperialism through time through the lens of food?  What types of primary sources did Laudan use to craft her arguments?
As we have already learned in this course, food is not just the meal we eat but the history and identity of a culture. In turn, imperialism has impacted our relationship to food through its production, circulation, and consumption. Laudan speaks of the introduction of cuisines to “settled lands” by various empires in the introduction of her book, Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History. (5) Laudan noted that “cuisines have tended to expand and contract with empires” which relates to the relationship of imperialism through the spreading and adopting of new cuisines. (Ibid) She also showed how the spreading and adopting of new cuisines came with adopting new culinary philosophies and techniques as well. In chapters six and seven, she speaks of the varying classes of society which dictates the classes of cuisine. According to Laudan, the high cuisine of France drastically changed during the mid-seventeenth century as it went through a culinary revolution that centered around the replacement of Catholic cuisines by modern Western cuisines. (207) The growth of middling cuisines (merge of high and low cuisines) had the largest impact on the production, circulation, and consumption of food through its wide acceptance and accessibility throughout European nations because it helped to close the gap between high and humble cuisines. (Ibid) In chapter seven, Laudan argued that middling cuisines became the predominant cuisines in several countries based upon industrial advancements, the development of new social groups, and citizen involvement within the political process. (248) As more and more food processes were industrialized, high cuisine items became more available to the middling cuisine. (We also see that in this country through the mechanization during the First and Second Industrial Revolutions. It is strongly seen in our relationship to cuisine during the 1960s when the shift from “homemade” to “store-bought” became widely accessible and adopted by all classes.) Laudan showed how imperialism is closely tied to the production, circulation, and consumption of food by bringing colonized foods to new nations and taking back exotic foods to settled nations. An insight Laudan made about imperialism through a lens of food was that so much of our food history is shared or connected from one country to another. Almost every country in the world has its own take on a hamburger and fries which goes to show that we are more alike than different even in our cuisine. 
Sharma stated that “colonial and imperial networks played an important role in the spread and adoption of new foods not only into the metropole but in their trans-migration and into other parts of the empire.” (244) She gave an example of a potato tuber, which is the potato that grows from the stem of a potato plant. (Farm kid, here! My papaw called it a “tater tuber” and I have noticed that over the years, the term is used less and less and they are just called potatoes, spuds, or taters.) She mentioned that the potato tuber of the New World was introduced into England by the Elizabethan buccaneer or pirate colonists and then to Spain by returning Spanish travelers to the New World which would eventually spread the potato tuber throughout Europe. (Ibid) Sharma noted that the potato would not be fully integrated into European cuisine until the late 1700s even though it was introduced much earlier. (Ibid) When Ireland was colonized by England, the potato became a staple for many Irish peasants and the collapse of the potato harvest led to the Great Hunger that began in 1845 and lasted four years. (Ibid) For Ireland, potatoes were produced, circulated, and consumed by the people (mainly poor) because their revenue for the wheat harvests was siphoned off by the English which changed their dietary practices and impacted their quantity. (244)  After being colonized by England, almost one million people died and another million emigrated to America which is one insight of imperialism through the lens of food. Another insight is how the dominant culture of England also pushed the cultivation of potato crops in India which became an addition to their vegetarian, grain-fueled diet unlike the staple in Ireland. (245) This concept of culinary imperialism through the modification and/or transformation of food like the potato shows how the dominant power/culture controlled the production, circulation, and consumption of food accessibility and practices. (245)
Laudan utilized an array of primary sources to argue her thesis. She referenced historical documents, anthropological studies, recipes, and medical papers in addition to many scholarly works from fellow colleagues. 
 
3) How did the production, circulation, and consumption of food help to fortify imperial regimes?  Conversely, how did the production, circulation, and consumption of food help to de-stabilize imperial regimes?  Provide examples from both Laudan and Sharma. 
As mentioned in the previous response, both authors argued that these imperial regimes utilized all aspects of the production, circulation, and consumption of food in the nations they “conquered.” These regimes used food to control the people through its production, circulation, and consumption which is solidified by Laudan’s comment that food is a “powerful, political unit.” (5) Laudan pointed out that the Romans followed a “plain, Republican diet” until the imperial regime of the Hellenistic empire and would adopt and adapt the Hellenistic high cuisine created by Alexander the Great. (57) In Sharma’s piece, an example of this power structure is seen in the triangular trade of human beings and food production, circulation, and consumption across the Middle Passage that “transported salt cod from Canada and Newfoundland to the Caribbean as it sent rum and sugar to Africa and Europe, and molasses to Newfoundland.” (245) Overtime, molasses was integrated into the Newfoundland diet and the slave laborers on Caribbean sugar plantations were served salt-cod in their rations. (Ibid) Unfortunately, many of these rations were dictated by their output of work which used food to control people. These foods are crucial to a diet in Newfoundland because most candies are sweetened with molasses and many Caribbean people incorporate salt-cod and other salted fishes into their daily diet. 
While salt-cod was incorporated into a Caribbean diet because of imperialism, breadfruit is a culinary example of production, circulation, and consumption de-stabilizing an imperial regime, as seen in Sharma’s piece. (245-6) Caribbean plantation slaves resisted the attempts from British and French colonists to introduce flour made from the Tahitian breadfruit tree into their diet. (245) They wanted the breadfruit to replace wheat flour because it was cheaper, yet the slaves did not know how to produce it, circulate it, or consume it within their culinary culture. (Ibid) As Sharma noted, once slavery ended with the constraints of the British and French empire breadfruit was incorporated into the Caribbean diet in a variety of ways. (Ibid) It has retained its culinary symbol as a “poor man’s food” with the Caribbean culture. (246) 
 
4)  What does Laudan mean when she says, "Just as food and cooking defined social status, they also served as symbols of social status and political relations" (44)?  Provide examples from different time periods.  Would Sharma agree with Laudan that food and cooking helped define social status in colonial regimes?  Why or why not? 
Laudan is saying that the social statuses and political relations of regimes and/or countries were impacted by food hierarchies and philosophies. Just like everything else, cuisines have a highbrow and lowbrow culture. The monarch was at the top of the social status or hierarchy within the food chain so he needed the best food in order to make all the “tough” decisions. (44) It also meant that he received the whitest bread and rice available in addition to the prestigious grain of the time. Laudan noted that your social rank was related to your cuisine and that your diet was linked to your morality and intelligence. (Ibid) So, it was assumed that the lower classes had neither based upon their rank and cuisine during 20,00-300 B.C.E. According to the Greeks, one was locked into his/her place in the social hierarchy and the cosmos, not to mention that you were what you ate. (50) Your culinary rank determined your rank, intelligence, temperament, and social rank. (Ibid) Over time, the middling cuisine would become the national and not imperial cuisine in many countries like America and Russia. (249)  These cuisines would change based upon changes in social hierarchies within each country based upon political or social structures. Instead of high cuisine, the focus was on Anglo cuisine which was the dominant social and political force within America (still is to this day, to be honest) that identified with a beef and bread diet. (Ibid)
Yes, I think that Sharma would agree based upon her own works. In her piece, she uses the example of spices originally credited to Freedman to explain how spices were linked to status in the East and Europe because they were part of a sophisticated palate by the elite. (242) 
 
5) From Laudan:  What role did critics and "counter cuisines" play in the evolution of culinary philosophy and practice? Check out 206 and 207-208, in particular.
In the introduction, Laudan wrote, “Culinary philosophies were always subject to criticism. When those critiques reached a critical point, new cuisines were constructed from elements of the old. Sometimes a new cuisine became adopted as that of a state. Since the states that had the widest reach were empires, this is also the story of the mutual interaction of empires and cuisines, and of how the cuisines of successful states and empires were co-opted or emulated by their neighbors, accounting for their wide dispersion.” (1) This is evident in her example of the middling Western cuisine evolving from the critique of the high and humble Catholic cuisine in France. (207-8) This also allowed for the introduction of a nutrition and digestion philosophy which emerged a new cuisine based upon social, religious, and political critiques to a former cuisine. (Ibid.) 

6)  Laudan hints at the gendered nature of "high" and "humble" cuisines and how the evolution of cuisine impacted gender role expectations and ideals of masculinity and femininity. How did gender factor into the relationship between colonizers and the colonized in imperial settings?  Would Sharma agree with Laudan on this?
Laudan alluded to gender roles throughout this book, but never gave a full synopsis of how they impacted cuisine. The first example given was in reference to women being excluded from Hawaiian feasts where they typically roasted a pig, large fish, or dog because women were not worthy of this high cuisine?! (20) Was it seen as “too rich” of food to be wasted on women because men needed more strength? Another example is found in looking at the grinding of grains by Mexican women. (32) Laudan noted that the grinding labor was reserved for “slaves, convicts, and women” so it was a task that was beneath men. (Ibid) This gender role continues to this day in Mexico. (Ibid) These two examples and more throughout the books show that the women are to prepare the humble cuisine while the European men take these ingredients back to their countries and present them as a part of high culture. It happened quite often during the colonization of many countries. Slaves would prepare high cuisines for their masters like in the Caribbean and then prepare humble cuisines for themselves. 
Sharma would agree since she also wrote of these gender roles in regard to tea vs. coffee. Tea was originally seen as a feminine drink in England and coffee was more masculine. (243-45) Although, most drink tea in England today whether you are male or female. 
 
7) From Laudan:  How did the rise of "the religions of salvation" beginning in the 3rd century BCE transform ancient imperial high cuisine, and how did that transformation impact the role of food in marking social status? 
According to Laudan, the “religions of salvation” including Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism which changed the imperial high cuisine through the sacrificial feast. (102)  Each state determined the religion and cuisine of its subjects. (Ibid) Laudan wrote, “two different exemplary meals replaced the sacrificial feast. In the courts and palaces, a feast or banquet with sauced meat dishes and alcoholic beverages was designed to showcase the power of the monarch and his nobles and to increase their physical strength. In the temples and monasteries an ascetic collation (a light meal consisting of a number of items), with carefully prepared, often meatless dishes were designed to demonstrate the residents’ self-discipline and enhance their intelligence and spirituality. For all its restraint, this meal belonged to the realm of high cuisine, depending on luxury ingredients such as sugar, white bread, wine, tea, and coffee or chocolate, prepared in professional kitchens, and eaten in specialized settings.” (103) These cuisines shifted away from sacrificial feasts and were followed by other culinary philosophies, a theory of cosmos, and the principle of the hierarchy while being replaced with the new rules of universal religions. (104) The social status may have shifted away from high or humble cuisine, but many of the foods were still enjoyed by the elite based upon new philosophies. (Ibid) 
 
8) From Laudan:  What were the economic and social causes and effects of the advent of "middling" cuisine in the modern era?  Does Sharma speak to this argument?  If so, how?
Laudan spoke of the middling cuisine in chapter seven where she noted that this cuisine was high in wheat bread or other carbs, beef and meats, and fats and sugars that expanded from the elite to two new social groups comprised of the middle class and the working class. (248) This wage-working class and the middle class made up a large part of the population in many industrialized countries like Australia, Japan, and the United States. (Ibid) Although most of the industrialized countries followed a middling cuisine, the high and humble cuisines did not disappear, even though the gap was disappearing. (Ibid) The middling cuisine had more access to foods specific to high cuisine in previous times during this period partly due to campaign ads that encouraged in nourishing one with your national cuisine. (251) Laudan also introduced the theory of culinary determinism, “linked political and economic expansion with cuisine, as a possible reason for the social and economic reasoning behind the middling of the Anglo cuisine. (252) 
I think that Sharma touches on this argument, but not to the degree that Laudan does in her book. Sharma spoke of the “new agro-industrial foods” and the modern canning industry that impacted the middling cuisine. (246-48) Many of these new exotics to domesticated staples (high to middling cuisine) were made accessible due to political and economic European or Anglo power over foreign lands. (246) 
 
9)  How do Laudan and Sharma's works overlap with Jurafsky's Language of Food?  What similar themes, methodologies, sources, and/or arguments do these works share, if any?  How does bringing these works into conversation with one another broaden our perspectives of the role of food in history?
While Jurafsky’s study looked at the linguistics of food and Laudan and Sharma focus more on culinary imperialism, all three authors argue that cuisines are impacted by varying classifications within each distinctive culture. All three wrote about the implications of identity through food/cuisine which was influenced by imperialism. I also think that all three share a relationship in bias based upon their experiences. For instance, Laudan and Sharma focus heavily on countries that were colonized by the British Empire, but they both obtained their Ph.D. degrees in English universities and would be familiar with British history. And Jurafsky had a bias to cuisines and menus in well-known urban areas like San Francisco for his work. Some of the sources overlap between all three scholars with the citation of Paul Freedman’s book in each author’s individual manuscripts and each scholar utilized non-traditional historical primary sources like recipes. These three scholars broaden our perspectives within food history because it shows that the field of food history is interdisciplinary and that many approaches to food history are needed within the field because each origin has more than one food identity. It also gives us more than one framework to research or compare with our personal food histories. 
 
10)  Finally, tell us three things you learned that surprised you in this forum’s readings, two questions you have about what you’ve read, and one way the readings have changed/challenged/broadened your perspectives.       
I learned that much of the French high cuisine was influenced by the Catholic church.
I was surprised to see how similar Laudan’s and Sharma’s viewpoints were because I came into the readings expecting two different narratives. 
It was also an eye-opening learning experience to see how long countries and people have been dependent on processed foods.
Was there a lot of diversity among the foods of each class? 
Do the varied religions prepare foods from high, middling, and low cuisines for their celebrations, today? 
These readings challenged me because I predominately study, research, and write about aspects of American history and culture. I had to research more background materials on some of these subjects to fully understand and grasp what the authors were saying in their works.