FOOD AND DRINK IN WORLD HISTORY Course Goals The goal of this course is to use the lens of food and drink to examine some of the larger themes in world history. Food and drink are a fascinating subject, as they are one of the few aspects of history that are both ubiquitous but also handled in vastly different ways across the globe. Though food and drink will not allow us to deeply examine every trend and event in world history, such a task is not possible in one semester, they will provide students with a sort of world history skeleton on which they can apply future in depth studies of events and civilizations throughout world history. During this semester we will be tracing the effects food and drink have had on civilization, culture, …show more content…
1 - Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, Sidney W. Mintz - A History of the World in 6 Glasses, Tom Standage, Chapter Three: Spirits in the Colonial Period, (pgs. 70-131) Week 10: Colonization pt. 2 -Either The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, Alfred W. Crosby Jr. OR Chilies to Chocolate: Food the Americas Gave the World, Nelson Foster and Linda S. Cordell Section IV: Food and Drink, Modernized Week 11: Industrialization - Food: The History of Taste, Paul Freedman, Chapter Six: New Worlds, New Tastes, (pgs. 197-232), and Chapter Seven: The Birth of the Modern Consumer Age, (pgs. 263-300), and Chapter Nine: Dining Out (pgs. 301-332) Week 12: Current Tastes - Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed our World, Mark Pendergrast Section V: Food and Drink, Considered Week 13: Gender Roles of Food and Drink - More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave, Ruth Schwartz Week 14: When There is no Food - Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World, Mike Davis Section VI: Wrap Up and Leftovers Week 15: Final
"On Food and History." 'On Food and History' N.p., 13 May 2008. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.
World History, itself is a very well complicated topic to discuss. Many other authors have tried to condense many years of history in one book. Subjected to fail, Tom Standage’s attempt was a success. Instead of Standage trying to sum up the history, he simply based the book upon a single topic, in this case beverages.
It is not common that when one thinks of the history of the world that the thought of beer, wine, spirits, tea, coffee, or even Coca-Cola comes to mind. Matter of fact, the thought of a beverage having an impact in history may be the very last thing that comes to mind. But according to Tom Standage in his book A History of the World in 6 Glasses, he argues that these six drinks have had an all-round influence in the history of the world. It is hard to imagine that the drinks we know of today, were the foundation and building blocks of the history that has been engraved in us. As to which beverage has had a greater impact in history, it is a matter of the extent to which each particular drink has contributed to influencing, not just people, but the course of history. Not diminishing the impact of the other beverages, but coffee has had a greater impact in history over tea and the other drinks.
Tom Standage has described the beginnings of six beverages: beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola and has found many connections, and information helpful in finding out history of the drinks themselves but also their impacts on the growth of civilization as a whole. This book connects everything with society both past and present, it makes learning about history and the way drinks connect fun and interesting. Like learning without even realizing you are. A History of the World in Six Glasses is more than just talking about each beverage as a single but as a whole, it’s connections, uses, relations, and growth they started.
Crosby, Alfred W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Company, 1972.
16 Helen McCully and Eleanor Noderer, eds., The American Heritage Cookbook and Illustrated History of American Eating and Drinking, II (n.p.: American Heritage Publishing, 1964), 537.
The Columbian Exchange was a critical episode in history that created the first truly global network between the Old and New Worlds (Green). Many goods were recognized for their value instantaneously while the potential profits that other assets could offer were overlooked (Mcneill). Modest in appearance, the cacao bean would eventually develop into one of the most delectable, sought-after beverages by the elite of Spain, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and eventually France and England. Nonetheless, the history of the cacao bean is a very bittersweet one. Its prominence among Europeans can ultimately be traced to the inhumane labor imposed on Native American captives and African slaves to cultivate cocoa beans as demand in Western Europe augmented by exponential numbers.
Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World (pg. 219). In reading these chapters your immersed with history that brings to light the fact that both climate cycles and the politics of famine played a major role in what happened during this era. It’s refreshing to learn more about how El Nino and La Nina, as well the huge differences between famine, drought, flood, crop failure, and
In Michael Pollan’s “The End of Cooking” shares the message of what we are losing something important in this day and age because of all our pre-made and processed foods. This can be compared with Kothari’s “If You Are What You Eat, What Am I?” and her argument that food is part of one’s own identity. By using the examples from these two texts you can analyze the state of food and culture in the United States today. All of the processed and pre-made foods are causing people all across America to lose their sense of Culture. We no longer know what it’s like to make one of our cultures specialty dishes from scratch which can help people identify with their culture. This process helped newer generations see what it was like for those before them to cook on a daily basis and could help them identify your sense of culture.
Mintz, Sidney W. Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. [secondary source]
Nunn, Nathan, and Nancy Qian. "The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas." Journal of Economic Perspectives. Yale University, 2010. Web. 12 Oct. 2013. .
Lorson, Jennifer R. "A “Brief” History of Peruvian Cuisine." La Vida Comida. La Vida Comida, 13 May 2011. Web. 01 Mar. 2014.
Nunn, Nathan, and Nancy Qian. "The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas." Journal of Economic Perspectives. 2nd ed. Vol. 24. N.p.: n.p., 2010. 163-88. Yale. Web. 15 Nov. 2013. .
Coffee is a truly a mythological treasure. It serves the dual functions of waking one up and providing one with relaxation. It is both acid and base, bitter and sweet, caustic and comforting. It is used for an array of purposes: to soothe, to give energy, to lend fortitude, to bring people together. Sometimes it is ascribed almost supernatural healing properties. In Mario Puzo’s The Fortunate Pilgrim, coffee takes these roles and more: the drinking of coffee is an immensely important ritual that serves a myriad of social functions and responds to a wide range of human emotions.
For instance, public dining, social status and hierarchies are all interconnected. The paper has established the social significance of food with regard to its relationship with status and power by focussing on the different layers of the society. It has established how royalty and nobility wined and dined in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth century. The paper also has questioned the role of foods at courts. Food is very important to every person, yet it is even more crucial to the rich and famous as they act as identification of prestige and display of authority and power. The social nutrition and its connection to social class can be divided into stages. Dietary prejudices increases significantly from 16th century owing to the demographic pressure, social development and economic specialization. By 18th century, culture became more divided and they became aware of their social differences which they expressed especially through