Rebecca Earle does a great job narrating the history and thus the logicality behind the Spanish colonial project in concerns to food. One could see that in an environment of conquest followed by widespread illness, the Spanish would tend to view the indigenous food culture as one that produces fragility and sickness. The religious element compounds that view considering the Spanish ambivalence to replace bread with maize. That created Spanish anxieties about what local foods would do to their physical bodies. They also had to think about what foods would allow for indigenous bodies to become closer to the European body. Food was then a principal factor on the part of Spaniards to enact a colonization process that dreamt of, "unity combined with an insistence on distance," (712). That distance made me think of the casta paintings, where foods and beverages are seen in portraits of the lower castes but not the upper castes. That distance could be seen in sumptuary laws, food, clothing, religion, among other things. However, the issue I have with Earle's article is that it doesn't present how this "unity with distance" is articulated between mixed-race couples and mixed-race children. What anxieties did mixed-race couples have about their diets, and how did that affect their attitudes towards their children's diet?
I hadn't considered the role of mixed race families and how these would have affected diets, other than it seemed like a lot of the diet choices were based on availability. It's amazing to think about how much food has changed--my grandmother used to tell us about getting an orange in her Christmas stocking because they weren't available all the time, and when the were, the cost was high due to shipping. I think we forget that so much of what we eat is seasonally available, but shipping allows us to eat New Zealand apples and grapes from Chile during our winters. The idea raised in the article about how people felt the food you eat could change the body was fascinating--especially considering that so many of us have a lot of food choices and don't eat mindfully, and many others of us live in food deserts where we are relegated to eating food that is cheap but not necessarily nutritious. Our modern relationships with food are disordered in so many ways. I was left thinking that if we believed we changed our bodies with the food we eat, and in many ways we know this is true but choose to ignore it, how would people mindfully choose food?
I also think Earle did an excellent job of laying out the logic behind the Spanish over time and agree that it was interesting to think about how people would wonder what affect European food would have on the natives. For me I would have also liked to have seen a further explanation of how people, like mixed race families, actually decided approach diet. I also wonder what this would have meant for those on the outside looking at such families. Did they genuinely think it could be possible for someone who was native to become European through taking on a European diet? I would imagine that already there would be those opposed to the idea that they could ever become fully Spanish but in that case what are the characteristics that they actually decided can't be crossed no matter how much mixing or diet changing occurs.
Marcy Norton's deep dive into the roots of how chocolate came to become a European luxury good in "Tasting Empire: Chocolate and the European Interpretation of Mesoamerican Aesthetics" showed me how little I knew about the history of chocolate. I didn't realize it was indigenous to the Americas--all the documentaries I've watched about cacao took place in Africa, and I had assumed the French brought it to Europe after finding it in Africa. (Here's an Infographic from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations about chocolate and cacao production worldwide The use of chocolate as a stimulant fascinates me--I've never been able to drink coffee (although I love coffee ice cream); I drink (mostly green) tea and occasionally hot cocoa. I discovered European drinking chocolate years ago at Book Expo America--a company from Oregon was selling bars of chocolate that can be melted into milk to make drinking chocolate (if you haven't had it, my husband and I tried it: my response was, "Amazing! It's like drinking a chocolate bar!" and his was "Ew. It's like drinking a chocolate bar"). The last time I had it was at a place called Cacao: Drink Chocolate in Portland, Oregon--I went with the cinnamon chocolate [It's across the street from Powell's]. Bandon, Oregon has a chocolate and dessert shop called Coastal Mist that also sells European drinking chocolate. Reading about how people at the time claimed it to be undrinkable, and yet Europeans were drinking it, reminded me of how I feel about coffee, so that makes sense. The description of how it became a multisensory, luxury experience is the way chocolate is still sold--with colors and mixed flavors, even if few Americans drink it the same way. The idea of chocolate as performative of social class is also interesting, especially considering how Godiva and Lindt stores, for example, are set up with lots of glass so you can see who is inside.
I also find her study into how chocolate became widely available in European markets particularly interesting, especially considering the 70 year gap between Europeans first made contact with chocolate and its market penetration as a consumable recreational food. I guess it makes me wonder if the socioeconomic dynamics of the conquest had anything to do with it. Unless I'm mistaken, kings were only meant to drink chocolate through a particular spouted vessel. Then, in the Codex Tudela, it points out that a woman of high social rank is frothing chocolate from pouring it at a high distance. I get the arguments about chocolate as a form of socialization, and its use in religious education or ceremony, but perhaps there is something about the colonization process and socioeconomic class (on either side of the colonizer vs. colonized dichotomy) that Norton may have missed here.
I had never previously considered the order in which drinking chocolate, tea, and coffee were introduced to Europeans, and although Norton makes repeated reference to the role of all three drinks as stimulants, I found myself wondering, given the relatively subtle stimulant nature of caffeine, what evidence she might have for how well-understood the stimulant properties of these drinks were at the time of their introduction to Europe. I do not recall seeing anything in her material that addressed this point — but I might have missed this. Did anyone else wonder the degree to which the stimulant nature of these drinks were known (cf. to alcohol, the effects of which are, to me at least, far more obvious)?
I wondered the same about how stimulating chocolate actually would have been. I got the sense that the ritual of preparing the drinking chocolate (creating the froth, using particular gourds, adding honey or maize...) was a large part of the appeal. I wondered if Europeans had treated other beverages in that same way before chocolate was introduced (maybe only with alcoholic drinks?). The way that chocolate was an acquired taste made sense to me -- the same way I only had milk chocolate and yoohoo as a kid, and now I have dark chocolate and black coffee. Now I appreciate the taste, but I also enjoy the ritual of both.
I picked up Norton's SACRED GIFTS, PROFANE PLEASURES in hopes of finding the answers to these questions. But I think to Katie's point, the ritual of drinking tea has a rich history in Japan and China, which spread throughout the world. I drink a lot of tea (there are two full cabinets of full leaf tea in my house)--there's no question that the ritual of making the tea is part of the experience. I think part of American's love of places like Starbucks is placing the order for hand crafted beverages has become part of the ritual.
I do find it fascinating, using this example of transnational chocolate to upend the traditional colonial history. I enjoyed reading the article for this purpose but also because I learned so much about chocolate in general. I’m now more curious about other potential examples one might use to support this theory. Not just physicall commodities, but non-material things, as well. How did cultural practices ranging from spirituality to daily lifestyle translate and transfer to Europe and the colonizers? I’m not suggesting indigenous practices were widely accepted by a significant amount of people, but there must be some amount of cultural exportation from the New World that transcends goods, slavery, etc. If anyone has any recommendations for books or articles on this subject, I would very much appreciate them!
I had "concerns" with the Stephanie Wood "Transcending Conquest" piece and how it approached the issue of imperialism/colonialism. I cannot help but think that it was in some way a neoliberal project in its, not justification, but disingenuous, myopic, and unrealistic interpretation of colonialism. This narrative that subjugation, violence, and pre-capitalist intervention is somehow "not so bad," appears to have the same infliction of tone that the modern day neoliberal project promotes. "Sure you may be under the thumb of a foreign entity, (that no matter what way you slice it ultimately ended up with all the institutional and systemic authority,), and your life is now forever changed by this completely foreign "intervention," but you get cool clothes, and 'we' (the colonizer) like some of your food now, and look the new leaders are better than the old ones (if only marginally, and then only circumstantially). I understand that the author was attempting to root out some evidence of agency and determinism among indigenous people during the period, yet what does that kind of agency really amount to? We have all sorts of agency in our society, it doesn't prevent us from getting exploited, experiencing the violence of poverty, or being left behind by previous generations. I do not mean to sound over cynical, however, to suggest that there are some bright sides to imperialism/colonialism is to perpetuate the same form of nonsense we hear from politicians who disingenuously explain why there is no money for education or healthcare, but billions and billions for war. Not only that, there are plenty of mainstream right-wing sycophants who get paid by billionaires like Foster Friess and the Koch brothers to try to make genocide and slavery look like a net-positive experiences in the long run. How is it intellectually productive to suggest that there is something positive in being totally exploited as a people in every way? The mental calculus to achieve this perspective is inherently neoliberal, and again, irrelevant. Indigenous people of this hemisphere were ultimately negatively impacted by colonialism, a fact that is still apparent even today, so why does it mater if a few elements of interpretative data suggest that it wasn't all bad? Aside from giving centrist politician and pundits a talking point I really do not see how it advances a discussion about indigenous people today. Unfortunately, the essay promotes a reductive view of indigenous people. While it may have been an attempt to grant some form of agency and independence to indigenous people during their centuries of Spanish and European rule, the fact remains that, regardless of the positive outcomes of the events under discussion millions of people died, were overtly exploited, and enslaved which should never be presented as an acceptable metric for measurement of human relations regardless the project. Because the fact remains that indigenous people were violently thrust from their self determined way of life, not as equals, but as subjects to a ruling class who among other things supported the perpetuation of race based oppression, worker exploitation/slavery, and as in North America so too in South America, laid the groundwork for the creation of a class based system of exploitation that we all know and love known as capitalism. I don't see how someone with any knowledge of history could think that mining some nugget of positivity out of such barbaric narratives of human atrocity is productive to the education of the masses or other intellectuals, we have Sam Harris for that. Perhaps the use of so many secondary sources allowed this thesis to ask a question that should always possess a very definitive answer?
I totally understand where you’re coming from, Jason. Positvity in oppression is the go-to response for the ruling class (i.e., “some slaves had it pretty good”), and it needs to be called what it is: a distraction from (Western) hegemony. However, I don’t think it’s totally useless to recognize positivity within oppression on the part of the oppressed. In fact, I think it might be historically therapuetic, if that makes sense. (I might be off-base here and if I am, someone please let me know.) To use a more modern example that seems similar in idea is blues/folk music that came out of American slavery. I don’t think showcasing such songs in any way justifies or redeems the evil institution, but it is no doubt powerful and significant historically, culturally, and individually.
I see your point, however, in questioning its contribution to educating the masses. It’s not clear everyone will read it this way, but then it’s the job of the historian to clearly define the purpose of the study. I think one of the purposes of this book was to not only highlight historical agency, but in a way to bolster contemporary and future agency and inclusiveness and action, you know? Revealing the agency of oppressed peoples in historical studies, it seems to me, might help to transform the outlook of the readers, whether they are part of the privileged classes or not.
Hey Jason, I think the intended purpose of trying to provide indigenous people with "agency" in her article is to debunk the accepted notion or perspective from the Spanish that the indigenous saw them as gods and basically allowed themselves to be taken over. I don't believe that by detailing the ways in which the natives resisted the Spanish she's in some way excusing or trying to find a positive light to their colonization. I think that to ignore the efforts of the indigenous would further undermine and silence this exploited minority.
I am seconding Alexandra and would also like to point out that the focus is on recovering indigenous sources as a corrective to a past historiography which further reduced their agency by telling the story only from European perspectives. I would also say that this is a history which should not be reduced to only a Western framework of economic and political power by talking about it exclusively in terms of neoliberal versus other views. I would further challenge the application of neoliberal to this presentation of the history. Liberalism and neoliberalism are ideologies which pretend that economic activity can legitimately be divided from political power for the benefit of "free markets" in a capitalist economy. That is their inherent flaw. This is a history of pre-capitalist societies and even if it were to in some way legitimate imperialism or colonialism that does not inherently mean that it lends particular support to neoliberalism. The equation of all systems of extraction and exploitation risks losing sight of the core flaws in neoliberal ideology.
What I found most shocking in the readings were the references to the population destruction following the conquest, largely as a result of disease. Wood (5) writes, “Recognition is growing that if the population of Mexico dropped from more than 25 million to perhaps just over 1 million persons by 1580 (Borah and Cook 1963, 4, 88), it was in large part owing to what we technically call ‘virgin soil epidemics,’ in which diseases spread like wildfire along local populations previously unexposed to such imported germs. Marcy Norton similarly notes (fn 50) “Perhaps 1,500,000 people lived in the Valley at the time of conquest; the Indian population had declined to 325,000 by 1570, and it continued to decrease until the mid-seventeenth century.” To me, given the story of mass casualties told in these numbers, all I wanted to know from all four authors was how the mass casualty events permeated the initial encounter between the indigenous people and the Spanish. It seems to me that thoughtful scholarship of this region and time period and how the cultures understood and interacted with each other (and transmitted cultural practices) would require a focus on what these mass casualty events meant for both the Spanish who brought disease and the indigenous people whose families and communities must have been forever altered by death rates that caused wider-spread decimation than the Black Death. Earle (709) also makes reference to this in her comments about the near-extinction of the Taino people of Hispaniola, and the deaths of the Chichimec Indians when they came to live along the Spanish. It seemed to me that if anything approaching these numbers is accurate, all scholarship of the time must consider the effect of such mass casualties on each of the cultures/communities involved, as well as on their interactions with each other. Although the Spanish would have been generally familiar with the diseases they brought with them, it seems that understanding their incorporation of native foods into their diets must be considered in terms of the mass-deaths of natives they were seeing around them, and not simply in terms of their fear of turning into natives from eating and drinking only native foods (Earle), and that perhaps we need to understand their overwhelming desire to eat European-sourced foods as also warding off death? As for the natives, understanding their relationships to the Spanish even through their own depictions of same (Wood) seems lacking if we are not looking at cultural representations that meditate upon the mass casualties that accompanied the colonists’ arrival.
Sarah, I also found these figures shocking. I teach (English) in a high school, and this prompted me to seek out my colleagues in the history department to ask them how much of the extent of this destruction do we talk about. I've provided them some excerpts from the Wood piece to use in class to help ground discussions of how this shapes interpretations of the Spaniards as warriors--it's easier to "conquer" if all but 4% of the people you are "conquering" are dead from disease, and then who tells their story?
I think this is a really well thought out response, and it certainly made me further explore the idea behind who writes these histories. My guess is that Wood collected a series of secondary sources that relied pretty heavily on bourgeois accounts of colonization. For example, building on your observation regarding the perception of mass casualties caused by disease, what were the poor and working class members of the colonizers doing during this period in terms of subsistence? Did they begin to eat chocolate for the same reason a truck driver drinks a beer at the end of a 12 hour shift, because their life sucks and they look to mask the pain of exploitative labor, or was it about the energy needed in such a precarious environment? I had a whole laundry list of reasons why I felt this essay was problematic, however, your observation was much more insightful. As a result my line of thinking continues down a similar track as a result of your recognizing the slanted perspective on the written account, so thanks, and well done!
Both Norton and Earle discuss the fact that appropriation of culture goes both ways, especially when it comes to food. Norton argues that New World foods spread into Spanish colonial society because both the products and behaviors around them fit into the European ethos at the time. Cultural trends made chocolate popular, although the common misconception that the Spanish doctored the drink to sweeten it to suit their own palates perpetuates the myth that the Spanish tastes dominated the popularization of cacao.
Norton and Earle both portray the Spanish as "seekers" of knowledge about the Americas, even if they only sought that knowledge so that they could better control their conquests. The contradictions in Spanish conquerors' growing fondness for chocolate paired with their fear of becoming too much like the Indigenous by eating their food all centered around their desire for control and how best to achieve it. Should they force their systems and diets on the indigenous cultures, or would they be more dominant if they adopted some of the indigenous ways of life? For example, Norton talks about how women played a role in expanding the Spanish taste for chocolate. As servants or wives, these women were controlled by the Spanish, yet the Spanish men were also dependent on them for their diets or to raise children (677). These women undoubtedly influenced the Spanish diets and mindsets, but I doubt their total autonomy in doing so. I think it's essential to recognize the ways that cultural assimilation worked both ways, and these first two articles offer fascinating discussion of the ways Spanish colonizers adopted some of the tastes or customs of those they colonized. However, parts of Earle's article seem to glance over the destruction of Spanish empire building in favor of showing some positives of the cultural exchange.
Tasting Empire: Chocolate And The European Internalization Of Mesoamercians Aesthetics was truly an interesting read. The debate between appropriation and assimilation i think will be very important in our future discussions. What should be taken into context are biological needs "As Mintz traces sugar's transformation from a medicinal additive to a luxury good among the upper classes, he argues that sugar “embodied the social position of the wealthy and powerful.” He points to “sugar's usefulness as a mark of rank—to validate one's social position. To elevate others, or to define them as inferior.” This statement could be interpreted as humans needing to both biologically and culturally form hierarchy. This supports the idea of assimilation in that both the Aztec and the Spaniards using the obsession of chocolate and human beings desire fore sugar to enhance cuisine and make money. On the contrary the push back and "pagan rumors" about the old world that slandered cocoa as a beverage which only went away when its market value was shown. One question i would have is before the time of extreme native exploitation would colonist trade anything of value to the indigenous people that would be used to enhance chocolate based cuisine?
I think the ideas brought up in "If you eat their food..." pair up very well with the history of cocoa and the Spanish as discussed by Norton. It seems like the sort of lighthearted idea of "you are what you eat" was taken very seriously back then. But seriously, it is very interesting to look at how they thought about the and tried to explain the experiences they were encountering from arriving in the new world world. It raises a lot of questions about what they would have thought about transplanting themselves across the equally varying landscapes within the old world as well, and why these ideas were only being brought up now as they faced illness in the new world. It seems most likely to be the case that they were relying on feelings and in the moment reactions for forming the basis of these theories rather than actual rational thinking an analysis. This would also likely explain why they were willing to look at the man who was shipwrecked for almost a decade and claim he had started to become Indian while it is almost certain that he showed no other signs of undergoing any such process other than a change in the preference of what he was able to eat. Such inconsistencies were also seemed to be caused by the moment to moment need for information to be interpreted in whatever way best suited them. This is where the story of chocolate comes in. It stands as this incredibly unique food that is so tied to the natives that the Spanish don't claim to have truly cultivated an enjoyed it until they could have properly "Europeanized" it first. It is the exact opposite direction of what they feared happening to themselves from native food, that they then impose on native food, to make it more suited to themselves. These stories seem to speak very deeply to the questions being asked at this time of what really makes your identity and what makes you different from someone else. The obvious irony in all of this is that as the Spanish desperately search for the definitive ways of explaining their difference from the natives, they are simultaneously participating in the widening of human contact and exchange of goods which further ties these separated groups together more and more as time moves on. After reading these two readings in particular I'm especially interested to see going forward the other ways in which Europe may continue to absorb things like food from South America and how it then influences their continued interaction with the people there, especially now as it seems the population will become increasing similar to their own as new settlers from their own land arrive.
Hello all. I want to discuss the about the appearance of Indios in Spain following Columbus' return from Hispaniola in 1493. What I found fascinated from the journal article titled "Seeing Indios in Sixteenth Century Castile" was the appearance of indios in all aspects of society. Van Deusen wrote that most people can recalled indios appearing in royal court as guests from the New World. The larger truth of this "cultural exchange" was that most Indios were brought to Castile as slaves. It is a much darker and gritter reality in this exchange between people from the New World and Castile. What I found interested is the debate about the terms of naturaleza, nacion, and calidades which played a role in determining the status of either liberty and bondage. What I took away from reading the essay is that it is identity is not always fixed (Van Deusen 213). The confusion and debate over identity made it difficult for slaves to win their freedom because of how complex the categories were. I would argue, despite the fact that more reading on the topic, that the complex categories might had played a role in the future to the end of slavery was not only the moral and economic problems that were raised from it, but also an important question; who can be free or enslaved in a society, especially one that was become an empire that spanned both the Old and New World.
Marcy Norton's "Tasting Empire" was an engaging read. I liked that this was a "bottom/up" history of transformation. In the opening of the article, an eighteenth century chronicler said that chocolate was a mixture of "brutish quality and a very savage taste" that was was enhanced by Spaniards using Old World spices largely ignoring that Spaniards were using those spices to come closer to the way chocolate was consumed in the Americas. For this chronicler, and for the colonizing project, to accept that "The Savages" had the ability to produce and enjoy a drink that could please the more 'sophisticated" European taste, undermines the alleged European "superiority" to the Indigenous.
Additionally, unlike Christianity, Spanish language, and other cultural aspects brought by Spaniards, the adoption of chocolate-drinking and its ritual, occurred by means of its virtue and not by force. Or did it? I am (perhaps irresponsibly) merging in the realm of speculation here. What role did the Tlaxcalans played in the adoption of this custom by Spaniards? Norton said that chocolate could be seen in Iberia by the 1590s-- almost seven decades after the fall of Tenochtitlan. It is known that Tlaxcalans (one of the main groups that fought to defeat the Aztecs) and Spaniards fought against and made alliances with each other. If we take that this was a drink of significance for Natives, what would have happened if the Spaniards were to refuse the offering of their Indigenous allies? May be it would've angered them and one can imagine that in the early 1520s, after the fall of the Aztecs, Spaniard rule couldn't have been absolute thus it was better to make a consensus on this tradition than to risk a potential war.
In Rebecca Earle's piece, the reference to Diego Andres Rocha argument (pg. 696) was insightful due Rocha's explanation. Instead of just claiming that the Amerindians were lesser beings compared to the Europeans mainly Spaniards, he made the connection to the ancient world and the possible origins of the early Spaniards. Just that simple, Rocha made the theory that Spaniards can revert back to the ancient more primitive ways after a few generations. Therefore, if the Amerindians saw a demise, the Spaniard in the New World would revert to the same diet and exposure as the Amerindians and also see a early demise as the result of the bad lifestyle. This made for a responsive warning from Spain to all Creoles and Spaniards living in the New America and the Caribbean that eating an approved European diet would protect them from poor health and finally death. this was the fear shared through out the New World for the residing Spaniards that if a proper European diet and protection from the harmful sun rays was not upheld, the would suffer from disease and death. That propaganda made it possible for the Spaniards to explain why the Amerindians were inferior to them and why it was imperative for the Spaniards to contain the diseases that Amerindians would spread across the New World.
Stephanie Wood’s "Rereading the Invasion: Uncovering Indigenous Voices” and “Pictorial Images of Spaniards: The OtherOther,” displayed the ways in which the perspective of indigenous peoples with regards to their own colonization has been ignored, stifled, and watered down. This is done primarily through the acceptance of the colonialist perspective that painted indigenous people as having been “stupefied” by the arrival of the Spanish to the Americas. This narrative is not only false but as Wood emphasizes, it robs the indigenous of their agency in all aspects of the inquisition. This narrative ignores how some indigenous groups resisted their colonization by the Spanish and how others aligned with the foreign force. What I think both Wood’s and Norton's analysis have in common was the detailed description of the ways in which the indigenous, specifically women, were able to influence the Spanish. Indigenous women were able to surpass the social hierarchy naturally instilled by colonization, to the point that they became the primary resources for knowledge and transfer of information.
In the Transcending Conquest reading I was struck by a number of details which taken together deepened my understanding of the invasion, conquest, and occupation (or however you want to label it) of Mexico as a process rather than a singular event. My previous understanding was an abridged narrative of military conquest in a single campaign resulting in the destruction of the Aztec capital followed immediately by total Spanish control expressed as forced conversion, suppression of indigenous culture, pillage, and economic exploitation. This reading caused me to reflect on the size and diversity of Mexico, the time required to expand Spanish control across it and to solidify that control. The depth of time has now become a landscape in which I can accommodate the idea of adaptation to the Spanish invasion by indigenous societies. I was also surprised by the frequency with which ecclesiastics participated in the continuation of the Nahua language and art forms, even when they may be influencing the expression of that art and indigenous histories towards their own aims. It is not the wholesale attempt at cultural eradication I had previously imagined.
Rebecca Earle does a great job narrating the history and thus the logicality behind the Spanish colonial project in concerns to food. One could see that in an environment of conquest followed by widespread illness, the Spanish would tend to view the indigenous food culture as one that produces fragility and sickness. The religious element compounds that view considering the Spanish ambivalence to replace bread with maize. That created Spanish anxieties about what local foods would do to their physical bodies. They also had to think about what foods would allow for indigenous bodies to become closer to the European body. Food was then a principal factor on the part of Spaniards to enact a colonization process that dreamt of, "unity combined with an insistence on distance," (712). That distance made me think of the casta paintings, where foods and beverages are seen in portraits of the lower castes but not the upper castes. That distance could be seen in sumptuary laws, food, clothing, religion, among other things. However, the issue I have with Earle's article is that it doesn't present how this "unity with distance" is articulated between mixed-race couples and mixed-race children. What anxieties did mixed-race couples have about their diets, and how did that affect their attitudes towards their children's diet?
ReplyDeleteI hadn't considered the role of mixed race families and how these would have affected diets, other than it seemed like a lot of the diet choices were based on availability. It's amazing to think about how much food has changed--my grandmother used to tell us about getting an orange in her Christmas stocking because they weren't available all the time, and when the were, the cost was high due to shipping. I think we forget that so much of what we eat is seasonally available, but shipping allows us to eat New Zealand apples and grapes from Chile during our winters. The idea raised in the article about how people felt the food you eat could change the body was fascinating--especially considering that so many of us have a lot of food choices and don't eat mindfully, and many others of us live in food deserts where we are relegated to eating food that is cheap but not necessarily nutritious. Our modern relationships with food are disordered in so many ways. I was left thinking that if we believed we changed our bodies with the food we eat, and in many ways we know this is true but choose to ignore it, how would people mindfully choose food?
DeleteI also think Earle did an excellent job of laying out the logic behind the Spanish over time and agree that it was interesting to think about how people would wonder what affect European food would have on the natives. For me I would have also liked to have seen a further explanation of how people, like mixed race families, actually decided approach diet. I also wonder what this would have meant for those on the outside looking at such families. Did they genuinely think it could be possible for someone who was native to become European through taking on a European diet? I would imagine that already there would be those opposed to the idea that they could ever become fully Spanish but in that case what are the characteristics that they actually decided can't be crossed no matter how much mixing or diet changing occurs.
DeleteMarcy Norton's deep dive into the roots of how chocolate came to become a European luxury good in "Tasting Empire: Chocolate and the European Interpretation of Mesoamerican Aesthetics" showed me how little I knew about the history of chocolate. I didn't realize it was indigenous to the Americas--all the documentaries I've watched about cacao took place in Africa, and I had assumed the French brought it to Europe after finding it in Africa. (Here's an Infographic from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations about chocolate and cacao production worldwide The use of chocolate as a stimulant fascinates me--I've never been able to drink coffee (although I love coffee ice cream); I drink (mostly green) tea and occasionally hot cocoa. I discovered European drinking chocolate years ago at Book Expo America--a company from Oregon was selling bars of chocolate that can be melted into milk to make drinking chocolate (if you haven't had it, my husband and I tried it: my response was, "Amazing! It's like drinking a chocolate bar!" and his was "Ew. It's like drinking a chocolate bar"). The last time I had it was at a place called Cacao: Drink Chocolate in Portland, Oregon--I went with the cinnamon chocolate [It's across the street from Powell's]. Bandon, Oregon has a chocolate and dessert shop called Coastal Mist that also sells European drinking chocolate. Reading about how people at the time claimed it to be undrinkable, and yet Europeans were drinking it, reminded me of how I feel about coffee, so that makes sense. The description of how it became a multisensory, luxury experience is the way chocolate is still sold--with colors and mixed flavors, even if few Americans drink it the same way. The idea of chocolate as performative of social class is also interesting, especially considering how Godiva and Lindt stores, for example, are set up with lots of glass so you can see who is inside.
ReplyDeleteHi Jen,
DeleteI also find her study into how chocolate became widely available in European markets particularly interesting, especially considering the 70 year gap between Europeans first made contact with chocolate and its market penetration as a consumable recreational food. I guess it makes me wonder if the socioeconomic dynamics of the conquest had anything to do with it. Unless I'm mistaken, kings were only meant to drink chocolate through a particular spouted vessel. Then, in the Codex Tudela, it points out that a woman of high social rank is frothing chocolate from pouring it at a high distance. I get the arguments about chocolate as a form of socialization, and its use in religious education or ceremony, but perhaps there is something about the colonization process and socioeconomic class (on either side of the colonizer vs. colonized dichotomy) that Norton may have missed here.
I had never previously considered the order in which drinking chocolate, tea, and coffee were introduced to Europeans, and although Norton makes repeated reference to the role of all three drinks as stimulants, I found myself wondering, given the relatively subtle stimulant nature of caffeine, what evidence she might have for how well-understood the stimulant properties of these drinks were at the time of their introduction to Europe. I do not recall seeing anything in her material that addressed this point — but I might have missed this. Did anyone else wonder the degree to which the stimulant nature of these drinks were known (cf. to alcohol, the effects of which are, to me at least, far more obvious)?
DeleteI wondered the same about how stimulating chocolate actually would have been. I got the sense that the ritual of preparing the drinking chocolate (creating the froth, using particular gourds, adding honey or maize...) was a large part of the appeal. I wondered if Europeans had treated other beverages in that same way before chocolate was introduced (maybe only with alcoholic drinks?). The way that chocolate was an acquired taste made sense to me -- the same way I only had milk chocolate and yoohoo as a kid, and now I have dark chocolate and black coffee. Now I appreciate the taste, but I also enjoy the ritual of both.
DeleteI picked up Norton's SACRED GIFTS, PROFANE PLEASURES in hopes of finding the answers to these questions. But I think to Katie's point, the ritual of drinking tea has a rich history in Japan and China, which spread throughout the world. I drink a lot of tea (there are two full cabinets of full leaf tea in my house)--there's no question that the ritual of making the tea is part of the experience. I think part of American's love of places like Starbucks is placing the order for hand crafted beverages has become part of the ritual.
DeleteI do find it fascinating, using this example of transnational chocolate to upend the traditional colonial history. I enjoyed reading the article for this purpose but also because I learned so much about chocolate in general. I’m now more curious about other potential examples one might use to support this theory. Not just physicall commodities, but non-material things, as well. How did cultural practices ranging from spirituality to daily lifestyle translate and transfer to Europe and the colonizers? I’m not suggesting indigenous practices were widely accepted by a significant amount of people, but there must be some amount of cultural exportation from the New World that transcends goods, slavery, etc. If anyone has any recommendations for books or articles on this subject, I would very much appreciate them!
DeleteI had "concerns" with the Stephanie Wood "Transcending Conquest" piece and how it approached the issue of imperialism/colonialism. I cannot help but think that it was in some way a neoliberal project in its, not justification, but disingenuous, myopic, and unrealistic interpretation of colonialism. This narrative that subjugation, violence, and pre-capitalist intervention is somehow "not so bad," appears to have the same infliction of tone that the modern day neoliberal project promotes. "Sure you may be under the thumb of a foreign entity, (that no matter what way you slice it ultimately ended up with all the institutional and systemic authority,), and your life is now forever changed by this completely foreign "intervention," but you get cool clothes, and 'we' (the colonizer) like some of your food now, and look the new leaders are better than the old ones (if only marginally, and then only circumstantially). I understand that the author was attempting to root out some evidence of agency and determinism among indigenous people during the period, yet what does that kind of agency really amount to? We have all sorts of agency in our society, it doesn't prevent us from getting exploited, experiencing the violence of poverty, or being left behind by previous generations. I do not mean to sound over cynical, however, to suggest that there are some bright sides to imperialism/colonialism is to perpetuate the same form of nonsense we hear from politicians who disingenuously explain why there is no money for education or healthcare, but billions and billions for war. Not only that, there are plenty of mainstream right-wing sycophants who get paid by billionaires like Foster Friess and the Koch brothers to try to make genocide and slavery look like a net-positive experiences in the long run. How is it intellectually productive to suggest that there is something positive in being totally exploited as a people in every way? The mental calculus to achieve this perspective is inherently neoliberal, and again, irrelevant. Indigenous people of this hemisphere were ultimately negatively impacted by colonialism, a fact that is still apparent even today, so why does it mater if a few elements of interpretative data suggest that it wasn't all bad? Aside from giving centrist politician and pundits a talking point I really do not see how it advances a discussion about indigenous people today. Unfortunately, the essay promotes a reductive view of indigenous people. While it may have been an attempt to grant some form of agency and independence to indigenous people during their centuries of Spanish and European rule, the fact remains that, regardless of the positive outcomes of the events under discussion millions of people died, were overtly exploited, and enslaved which should never be presented as an acceptable metric for measurement of human relations regardless the project. Because the fact remains that indigenous people were violently thrust from their self determined way of life, not as equals, but as subjects to a ruling class who among other things supported the perpetuation of race based oppression, worker exploitation/slavery, and as in North America so too in South America, laid the groundwork for the creation of a class based system of exploitation that we all know and love known as capitalism. I don't see how someone with any knowledge of history could think that mining some nugget of positivity out of such barbaric narratives of human atrocity is productive to the education of the masses or other intellectuals, we have Sam Harris for that. Perhaps the use of so many secondary sources allowed this thesis to ask a question that should always possess a very definitive answer?
ReplyDeleteI totally understand where you’re coming from, Jason. Positvity in oppression is the go-to response for the ruling class (i.e., “some slaves had it pretty good”), and it needs to be called what it is: a distraction from (Western) hegemony. However, I don’t think it’s totally useless to recognize positivity within oppression on the part of the oppressed. In fact, I think it might be historically therapuetic, if that makes sense. (I might be off-base here and if I am, someone please let me know.) To use a more modern example that seems similar in idea is blues/folk music that came out of American slavery. I don’t think showcasing such songs in any way justifies or redeems the evil institution, but it is no doubt powerful and significant historically, culturally, and individually.
DeleteI see your point, however, in questioning its contribution to educating the masses. It’s not clear everyone will read it this way, but then it’s the job of the historian to clearly define the purpose of the study. I think one of the purposes of this book was to not only highlight historical agency, but in a way to bolster contemporary and future agency and inclusiveness and action, you know? Revealing the agency of oppressed peoples in historical studies, it seems to me, might help to transform the outlook of the readers, whether they are part of the privileged classes or not.
Hey Jason, I think the intended purpose of trying to provide indigenous people with "agency" in her article is to debunk the accepted notion or perspective from the Spanish that the indigenous saw them as gods and basically allowed themselves to be taken over. I don't believe that by detailing the ways in which the natives resisted the Spanish she's in some way excusing or trying to find a positive light to their colonization. I think that to ignore the efforts of the indigenous would further undermine and silence this exploited minority.
DeleteI am seconding Alexandra and would also like to point out that the focus is on recovering indigenous sources as a corrective to a past historiography which further reduced their agency by telling the story only from European perspectives. I would also say that this is a history which should not be reduced to only a Western framework of economic and political power by talking about it exclusively in terms of neoliberal versus other views. I would further challenge the application of neoliberal to this presentation of the history. Liberalism and neoliberalism are ideologies which pretend that economic activity can legitimately be divided from political power for the benefit of "free markets" in a capitalist economy. That is their inherent flaw. This is a history of pre-capitalist societies and even if it were to in some way legitimate imperialism or colonialism that does not inherently mean that it lends particular support to neoliberalism. The equation of all systems of extraction and exploitation risks losing sight of the core flaws in neoliberal ideology.
Delete-Kurt W.
What I found most shocking in the readings were the references to the population destruction following the conquest, largely as a result of disease. Wood (5) writes, “Recognition is growing that if the population of Mexico dropped from more than 25 million to perhaps just over 1 million persons by 1580 (Borah and Cook 1963, 4, 88), it was in large part owing to what we technically call ‘virgin soil epidemics,’ in which diseases spread like wildfire along local populations previously unexposed to such imported germs. Marcy Norton similarly notes (fn 50) “Perhaps 1,500,000 people lived in the Valley at the time of conquest; the Indian population had declined to 325,000 by 1570, and it continued to decrease until the mid-seventeenth century.” To me, given the story of mass casualties told in these numbers, all I wanted to know from all four authors was how the mass casualty events permeated the initial encounter between the indigenous people and the Spanish. It seems to me that thoughtful scholarship of this region and time period and how the cultures understood and interacted with each other (and transmitted cultural practices) would require a focus on what these mass casualty events meant for both the Spanish who brought disease and the indigenous people whose families and communities must have been forever altered by death rates that caused wider-spread decimation than the Black Death. Earle (709) also makes reference to this in her comments about the near-extinction of the Taino people of Hispaniola, and the deaths of the Chichimec Indians when they came to live along the Spanish. It seemed to me that if anything approaching these numbers is accurate, all scholarship of the time must consider the effect of such mass casualties on each of the cultures/communities involved, as well as on their interactions with each other. Although the Spanish would have been generally familiar with the diseases they brought with them, it seems that understanding their incorporation of native foods into their diets must be considered in terms of the mass-deaths of natives they were seeing around them, and not simply in terms of their fear of turning into natives from eating and drinking only native foods (Earle), and that perhaps we need to understand their overwhelming desire to eat European-sourced foods as also warding off death? As for the natives, understanding their relationships to the Spanish even through their own depictions of same (Wood) seems lacking if we are not looking at cultural representations that meditate upon the mass casualties that accompanied the colonists’ arrival.
ReplyDeleteSarah, I also found these figures shocking. I teach (English) in a high school, and this prompted me to seek out my colleagues in the history department to ask them how much of the extent of this destruction do we talk about. I've provided them some excerpts from the Wood piece to use in class to help ground discussions of how this shapes interpretations of the Spaniards as warriors--it's easier to "conquer" if all but 4% of the people you are "conquering" are dead from disease, and then who tells their story?
DeleteI think this is a really well thought out response, and it certainly made me further explore the idea behind who writes these histories. My guess is that Wood collected a series of secondary sources that relied pretty heavily on bourgeois accounts of colonization. For example, building on your observation regarding the perception of mass casualties caused by disease, what were the poor and working class members of the colonizers doing during this period in terms of subsistence? Did they begin to eat chocolate for the same reason a truck driver drinks a beer at the end of a 12 hour shift, because their life sucks and they look to mask the pain of exploitative labor, or was it about the energy needed in such a precarious environment? I had a whole laundry list of reasons why I felt this essay was problematic, however, your observation was much more insightful. As a result my line of thinking continues down a similar track as a result of your recognizing the slanted perspective on the written account, so thanks, and well done!
DeleteBoth Norton and Earle discuss the fact that appropriation of culture goes both ways, especially when it comes to food. Norton argues that New World foods spread into Spanish colonial society because both the products and behaviors around them fit into the European ethos at the time. Cultural trends made chocolate popular, although the common misconception that the Spanish doctored the drink to sweeten it to suit their own palates perpetuates the myth that the Spanish tastes dominated the popularization of cacao.
ReplyDeleteNorton and Earle both portray the Spanish as "seekers" of knowledge about the Americas, even if they only sought that knowledge so that they could better control their conquests. The contradictions in Spanish conquerors' growing fondness for chocolate paired with their fear of becoming too much like the Indigenous by eating their food all centered around their desire for control and how best to achieve it. Should they force their systems and diets on the indigenous cultures, or would they be more dominant if they adopted some of the indigenous ways of life? For example, Norton talks about how women played a role in expanding the Spanish taste for chocolate. As servants or wives, these women were controlled by the Spanish, yet the Spanish men were also dependent on them for their diets or to raise children (677). These women undoubtedly influenced the Spanish diets and mindsets, but I doubt their total autonomy in doing so. I think it's essential to recognize the ways that cultural assimilation worked both ways, and these first two articles offer fascinating discussion of the ways Spanish colonizers adopted some of the tastes or customs of those they colonized. However, parts of Earle's article seem to glance over the destruction of Spanish empire building in favor of showing some positives of the cultural exchange.
Tasting Empire: Chocolate And The European Internalization Of Mesoamercians Aesthetics was truly an interesting read. The debate between appropriation and assimilation i think will be very important in our future discussions. What should be taken into context are biological needs "As Mintz traces sugar's transformation from a medicinal additive to a luxury good among the upper classes, he argues that sugar “embodied the social position of the wealthy and powerful.” He points to “sugar's usefulness as a mark of rank—to validate one's social position. To elevate others, or to define them as inferior.” This statement could be interpreted as humans needing to both biologically and culturally form hierarchy. This supports the idea of assimilation in that both the Aztec and the Spaniards using the obsession of chocolate and human beings desire fore sugar to enhance cuisine and make money. On the contrary the push back and "pagan rumors" about the old world that slandered cocoa as a beverage which only went away when its market value was shown. One question i would have is before the time of extreme native exploitation would colonist trade anything of value to the indigenous people that would be used to enhance chocolate based cuisine?
ReplyDeleteI think the ideas brought up in "If you eat their food..." pair up very well with the history of cocoa and the Spanish as discussed by Norton. It seems like the sort of lighthearted idea of "you are what you eat" was taken very seriously back then. But seriously, it is very interesting to look at how they thought about the and tried to explain the experiences they were encountering from arriving in the new world world. It raises a lot of questions about what they would have thought about transplanting themselves across the equally varying landscapes within the old world as well, and why these ideas were only being brought up now as they faced illness in the new world. It seems most likely to be the case that they were relying on feelings and in the moment reactions for forming the basis of these theories rather than actual rational thinking an analysis. This would also likely explain why they were willing to look at the man who was shipwrecked for almost a decade and claim he had started to become Indian while it is almost certain that he showed no other signs of undergoing any such process other than a change in the preference of what he was able to eat. Such inconsistencies were also seemed to be caused by the moment to moment need for information to be interpreted in whatever way best suited them. This is where the story of chocolate comes in. It stands as this incredibly unique food that is so tied to the natives that the Spanish don't claim to have truly cultivated an enjoyed it until they could have properly "Europeanized" it first. It is the exact opposite direction of what they feared happening to themselves from native food, that they then impose on native food, to make it more suited to themselves. These stories seem to speak very deeply to the questions being asked at this time of what really makes your identity and what makes you different from someone else. The obvious irony in all of this is that as the Spanish desperately search for the definitive ways of explaining their difference from the natives, they are simultaneously participating in the widening of human contact and exchange of goods which further ties these separated groups together more and more as time moves on. After reading these two readings in particular I'm especially interested to see going forward the other ways in which Europe may continue to absorb things like food from South America and how it then influences their continued interaction with the people there, especially now as it seems the population will become increasing similar to their own as new settlers from their own land arrive.
ReplyDeleteHello all. I want to discuss the about the appearance of Indios in Spain following Columbus' return from Hispaniola in 1493. What I found fascinated from the journal article titled "Seeing Indios in Sixteenth Century Castile" was the appearance of indios in all aspects of society. Van Deusen wrote that most people can recalled indios appearing in royal court as guests from the New World. The larger truth of this "cultural exchange" was that most Indios were brought to Castile as slaves. It is a much darker and gritter reality in this exchange between people from the New World and Castile. What I found interested is the debate about the terms of naturaleza, nacion, and calidades which played a role in determining the status of either liberty and bondage. What I took away from reading the essay is that it is identity is not always fixed (Van Deusen 213). The confusion and debate over identity made it difficult for slaves to win their freedom because of how complex the categories were. I would argue, despite the fact that more reading on the topic, that the complex categories might had played a role in the future to the end of slavery was not only the moral and economic problems that were raised from it, but also an important question; who can be free or enslaved in a society, especially one that was become an empire that spanned both the Old and New World.
ReplyDeleteMarcy Norton's "Tasting Empire" was an engaging read. I liked that this was a "bottom/up" history of transformation. In the opening of the article, an eighteenth century chronicler said that chocolate was a mixture of "brutish quality and a very savage taste" that was was enhanced by Spaniards using Old World spices largely ignoring that Spaniards were using those spices to come closer to the way chocolate was consumed in the Americas. For this chronicler, and for the colonizing project, to accept that "The Savages" had the ability to produce and enjoy a drink that could please the more 'sophisticated" European taste, undermines the alleged European "superiority" to the Indigenous.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, unlike Christianity, Spanish language, and other cultural aspects brought by Spaniards, the adoption of chocolate-drinking and its ritual, occurred by means of its virtue and not by force. Or did it? I am (perhaps irresponsibly) merging in the realm of speculation here. What role did the Tlaxcalans played in the adoption of this custom by Spaniards? Norton said that chocolate could be seen in Iberia by the 1590s-- almost seven decades after the fall of Tenochtitlan. It is known that Tlaxcalans (one of the main groups that fought to defeat the Aztecs) and Spaniards fought against and made alliances with each other. If we take that this was a drink of significance for Natives, what would have happened if the Spaniards were to refuse the offering of their Indigenous allies? May be it would've angered them and one can imagine that in the early 1520s, after the fall of the Aztecs, Spaniard rule couldn't have been absolute thus it was better to make a consensus on this tradition than to risk a potential war.
In Rebecca Earle's piece, the reference to Diego Andres Rocha argument (pg. 696) was insightful due Rocha's explanation. Instead of just claiming that the Amerindians were lesser beings compared to the Europeans mainly Spaniards, he made the connection to the ancient world and the possible origins of the early Spaniards. Just that simple, Rocha made the theory that Spaniards can revert back to the ancient more primitive ways after a few generations. Therefore, if the Amerindians saw a demise, the Spaniard in the New World would revert to the same diet and exposure as the Amerindians and also see a early demise as the result of the bad lifestyle. This made for a responsive warning from Spain to all Creoles and Spaniards living in the New America and the Caribbean that eating an approved European diet would protect them from poor health and finally death. this was the fear shared through out the New World for the residing Spaniards that if a proper European diet and protection from the harmful sun rays was not upheld, the would suffer from disease and death. That propaganda made it possible for the Spaniards to explain why the Amerindians were inferior to them and why it was imperative for the Spaniards to contain the diseases that Amerindians would spread across the New World.
ReplyDeleteStephanie Wood’s "Rereading the Invasion: Uncovering Indigenous Voices” and “Pictorial Images of Spaniards: The OtherOther,” displayed the ways in which the perspective of indigenous peoples with regards to their own colonization has been ignored, stifled, and watered down. This is done primarily through the acceptance of the colonialist perspective that painted indigenous people as having been “stupefied” by the arrival of the Spanish to the Americas. This narrative is not only false but as Wood emphasizes, it robs the indigenous of their agency in all aspects of the inquisition. This narrative ignores how some indigenous groups resisted their colonization by the Spanish and how others aligned with the foreign force. What I think both Wood’s and Norton's analysis have in common was the detailed description of the ways in which the indigenous, specifically women, were able to influence the Spanish. Indigenous women were able to surpass the social hierarchy naturally instilled by colonization, to the point that they became the primary resources for knowledge and transfer of information.
ReplyDeleteIn the Transcending Conquest reading I was struck by a number of details which taken together deepened my understanding of the invasion, conquest, and occupation (or however you want to label it) of Mexico as a process rather than a singular event. My previous understanding was an abridged narrative of military conquest in a single campaign resulting in the destruction of the Aztec capital followed immediately by total Spanish control expressed as forced conversion, suppression of indigenous culture, pillage, and economic exploitation. This reading caused me to reflect on the size and diversity of Mexico, the time required to expand Spanish control across it and to solidify that control. The depth of time has now become a landscape in which I can accommodate the idea of adaptation to the Spanish invasion by indigenous societies. I was also surprised by the frequency with which ecclesiastics participated in the continuation of the Nahua language and art forms, even when they may be influencing the expression of that art and indigenous histories towards their own aims. It is not the wholesale attempt at cultural eradication I had previously imagined.
ReplyDeleteThis was written by Kurt Weinstein, who has not yet figured out how to sort out his account with this website.
DeleteTesting if my invitation worked.
DeleteYou are now known, Kurt.
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