Last saved by: Elsayed Ahmed

1.  Who are Rachel Laudan and Jayeeta Sharma?  What are their research backgrounds and what other works have they written?
Rachel Laudan is a historian and a senior research fellow at the University of Texas, Austin with research interest in food history and the history and philosophy of science. Her other works include The Food Paradise, The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science, The Nature of Technological Knowledge: Are Models of Scientific Change Relevant?
Jayeeta Sharma is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto, with a wide-ranging academic interest that includes migration, labor, family, gender, and food. Her book is Empire’s Garden: Assam and the Making of India.
 
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, in particular, to craft her arguments?
 
According to Laudan and Sharma, imperialism and food are intertwined. Laudan, who focuses on cuisines rather than the production of raw materials, looks at cooking styles that “tended to expand and contract with empires”. (5) She notes that the success of the cuisine correlated to the success of the empire, while also arguing that cuisines did not have a single origin empire because “migrants, merchants, and missionaries have never been limited by imperial boundaries” (5). Sharma approaches imperialism by looking specifically to the exploits of the European empires, the impact they had on localities, and the role of food in their expansion. Food was crucial for imperialism by either economic reasons such as salt beef that was used as cheap sources of sustenance by the French to feed slaves, or the appearance of power where the wide availability of the exotic ingredients added to the perception of an expanding British empire despite Britain’s colonial possessions being insecure.  
Imperialist expansion of cuisines changed after World War II, where the historic division of high cuisines for an urban minority and humble cuisines for the rest disappeared. Laudan views the expansion of fast food, using McDonald's and its production efficiencies as an example, as American imperialism that transported the “burger, its beef, fries and shake their national meal”. For the middle-class, that could not afford Western fast food, instant ramen noodles, modified to local taste buds as the global expansion of non-Western cuisine. Laudan and Sharma’s works allow us to look at imperialism through time through the lens of food in an immediate and obvious way. That is, one can see firsthand the complex cross-national, regional, cultural influences on the very things we consume daily. Laudan uses a wide range of secondary sources to cover the topic that begins from ancient history.
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.
 
Laudan places humble cuisines of the French, Dutch and British empire building, specifically pointing to “enslaved Africans, ordinary free people in the Thirteen Colonies, and the seamen in the British Navy”. The transformation of diets of the enslaved with New World plants that were less laborious and high yielding, the American landscape that provided for water mills that reduced labor for the free people, and century-long effort by the Victualling board that improved the cuisine through a wholesome diet of the British Navy contributed to their health, and reduced scurvy are some examples of food fortifying imperial regimes. Sharma notes the availability of tropical plants such as “sugar, tea, tobacco or coffee” from all corners of the empire in Britain as an example projecting strength, despite their insecure hold.
 
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, when arguing "Just as food and cooking defined social status, they also served as symbols of social status and political relations" explains the role of cuisines from the beginning of human civilization that stood for something beyond sustenance. In explaining the significance of salt and what it symbolizes, Laudan shows how philosophies and beliefs that are built around it. The historic place of salt from God’s gift to David, through Persian emperors to the Mughal emperor still holds true, in Tamil (my first language) where the symbolism of salt that invokes loyalty is still prevalent today. Culinary determinism also addresses Laudan’s argument of food as symbols of social status or political relation where Japanese, Mexican, Brazilian, Italian, Indian and Chinese elites theorized that Anglo bread-and-beef cuisine was a possible explanation to the Anglo and European political and economic prowess, which stirred the worldwide modernization in the late nineteenth century.(252)       
I believe that Sharma would agree that food and cooking did help define social status in colonial regimes. The economic motivations of using Irish salt beef to feed slaves, Newfoundland salt cod to feed Caribbean sugar laborers, and attempts to introduce breadfruit, as well the availability of tropical fruit as a show of imperial power are examples of economic and social gains through food for empire building.
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.
Science, religion, and politics were at the heart the evolution of culinary philosophy and practice that shifted away from “Catholic cuisines” to middling cuisines that were culinary backwater which was “bridging high and low cuisine”.(208) Laudan places the pivotal moment in the mid-seventeenth century to Le cuisine François and the works that were influenced by it that saw the transformation of savory dishes and the appearance of fat-based sauces. Protestant beliefs that argued that access to the divine was beyond food, the advent of republican political theorists who challenged monarchist high cuisines, and the focus on nutrition and digestion contributed to the evolution of the culinary philosophy.
In “Anything but Beef, Bread, and Domesticity” Laudan expands on counter cuisines with the nutritional theories that favored vegetarianism and whole grains. (297) Critics from religious groups such as Seventh Day Adventists and the Salvation Army, and political groups such as the followers of Leo Tolstoy argued for alternatives to industrialism and urbanization.
 
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 first hints at the gender role expectations in cuisines as she explores the formation of high and humble cuisines based on serving sizes and the cuts of the meat. As high cuisines were formed, through “written literature, which included hymns, and prayers that laid out the steps for sacrifice of brewing of alcohol, recipe books specifying ingredients and techniques” for the elite few, the humble cuisines represented “80 to 90 percent of the population”.(38-39) Feeding this large populace in every household was the woman’s role in the household that started with gathering scraps for fuel to cook with, pounding or grinding roots or grain and carrying water from the well.
Sharma explores gender and cuisine when addressing tea drinking among English elites in the eighteenth century. English tea, which “belonged to the world of upper-class feminine domesticity”, as opposed to coffee which was viewed as masculine, only succeeded when the beverage transcended gender and class lines. (245)    
Except for this instance that I noted above, Laudan, throughout the book mentions women’s role tangentially in their acceptance or rejection in consuming the cuisine throughout history. For a labor force that fed 80 to 90 percent of the global population, it seems to me like a glaring omission to not dedicate a chapter or even a section that addresses women’s role in the formation of the cuisines. Although it is less visible in the West and is slowly changing around the world, the idea that a woman’s place is in the kitchen is deeply ingrained in many cultures around the world. I believe food history can illuminate exploring the roots of this belief.            
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?
The adoption of religions of salvation by the state that offered a path to enlightenment, away from sacrificial religions and feasts influenced the cuisine of the subjects. Laudan argues that ancient imperial high cuisine was transformed by the monarch and religious institutions. In palaces and courts, monarchs showcased their power through feasts that included meats and alcohol, while monasteries advanced ascetic meals that portrayed intelligence and self-discipline. This also gave rise to an alternate view of “if you are a holy man, eat like a holy man” which countered “if you are a king, eat like a king, and if you are a peasant, eat like a peasant.” (104) These foods, due to the ingredients used and the setting they were prepared in, were still high cuisines accessible only to the elites.
 
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?
“Middling cuisines, rich in wheat bread, or other preferred carbohydrate staples, beef and other meats, and fats and sugars expanded from the bourgeoisie…to salaried middle class and the wage-earning working class.” (248) Laudan argues that the rise in these middling cuisines spread rapidly in industrial economies as the working and middle class grew. Although the high and humble cuisines did not disappear, the middling cuisines had many similarities with the high cuisines through the ingredients and processes of making and the literature describing them. The author also notes the shift away from the cuisine denoting hierarchical power and finds a positive correlation between the political agency of these emerging classes, and the access they had to these foods that were once limited to an elite minority.   
Laudan notes that while the lines blurred between the cuisine and social hierarchy in modernizing states, there were gaps forming in between nations that had distinct cuisines, versus nations that did not. The wave of nationalism, and consequently national cuisines became the new distinction as a response to changing national boundaries and immigrant minorities by the 1920s in the Americas, Japan, and Russia. Sharma addresses the argument of associating dishes to nations, and consequently what they represent tangentially when discussing the transformation of spices in a curry in high cuisine to distancing British from the Raj which “dirt, disease, and backwardness of a tropical colony”.
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?
Laudan and Sharma’s work overlap with Jurafsky’s The Language of Food in their exploring the origins of cuisines and their role in empire-building. The similarity in their works is in their view of the history of food as rooted in power. The three works are complementary in that their focus and the lens through which they look at the history of food is rooted from their background.

 
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 countless things that surprised me. First, the role of religion on the cuisines that were far more influential than I anticipated. The second was the counter cuisine movement towards vegetarianism, and third was the culmination of Laudan’s work in modern cuisines with the stories of modern brands such as Kikkoman that I can recognize, and their role in this long history.  
Sharma’s explanation of how curry came to be understood in the West was enlightening. The practice of eating one curry with rice in most Indian recipe videos on YouTube, versus growing up eating at least three curries per meal with rice as the staple finally made sense to me. Eating one curry with rice is as abnormal to me as drinking sodas with little or no ice is to my American friends. (In most parts of Asia, ice is only added to sodas that are at room temperature. And barely any is added if it's already cold)