HIS 154 Syllabus MK How Food Made History CSt-Stanford 2016 · Mintz, Sidney W. 1985. Sweetness and Power. The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York, Penguin Books, chapter 2

HOW FOOD MADE HISTORY MARTINA KALLER 2016

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Course Tit le: How Food Made History Course Code: HIS 154 Instructor: Martina Kaller Course Summary: This course offers a fresh understanding of history through the discussion of food. Big questions in and concepts of history are marked by worldwide economic patterns and their changes over centuries. Such questions can be met by focusing on the “biography of foods” — Which kind of food is it , where does it come from, how was it cult ivated, who prepared it how or invented its processing, and when did this take place? When eventually was it turned into a commodity? And, besides becoming part of global desires or simply a means of subsistence, what did it cause in human history? Grading Options

• No Grade Requested (NGR): This is the default option. No work will be required; no credit shall be received; no proof of attendance can be provided.

• Credit/No Credit (CR/NC): Students must attend at least 7 out of 8 class sessions.

• Letter Grade (A, B, C, D, No Pass: Students must attend at least 7 out of 8 class sessions., and complete a piece of written work (to be discussed further in class).

Tentative Weekly Outl ine: 09-26: Chewing Gum and Globalization While around 1900 the manufacture of chewing gum was only a minor industry, yet it was a product with which practically every American were familiar. Regarded originally as a typical American habit, and one on which foreigners frowned, its use had spread until the 1930 and was found in all the important markets of the world. The marked increase has been since 1914. In Europe this increase was brought about by American soldiers. He used it for its quieting effect, its aid to digestion, and for quenching his durst when potable water was unavailable. Soldiers of other countries adopted the habit, and on returning home became important influences in advertising the product. Exports


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increased from less than $200,00 in 1914, to $1.547,000 in 1929. In the 1930s more than 90 per cent of the exports were produced in the United States. The same source from 1935 states that “in 1929, the United Kingdom ranked first as an export market for American chewing gums followed by the Philippine Islands, Japan, China, and France, in the order named. Gum was sent however to almost all of the countries of the world. Gum wrappers are printed in 18 different languages.” (Landon, Charles. “The Chewing Gum Industry”. Economic Geography, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Apr., 1935), p. 190.) Not only did the US-chewing gum industry profit from a habit, which went global. Rather the new trend and its incredible boom lasting until the late 1950 came along with the explicit depreciation of all other kinds of chewing habits and products such as resin from spruce, coca leaf, betel nut, leather, paraffin wax, tobacco, etc. In Fact the American product elaborated from the natural resource chicle, which was imported from Central America, disappeared them from the global market of mastication.

Located in Seattle, Post Alley, under Park Place Market, the Gum Wall has its beginning in the early 1990s, when people, irritated that they had to wait in line to get tickets to the theater, stuck chewing gum on the wall. At first, they would use the gum to stick small coins to the wall, but in time, the tradition of the coins disappeared, and the gum remained. http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/the-seattle-gum-wall-a-sticky-attraction.html Reading: However, the chewing gum history marks more than a wall – it stands for GIs conquering the palate of everyone in the globe devoted to mastication


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10-03: Wheat and Revolution In Egypt, the Arabic word for bread — “aish” — is also the word for life. In ancient Egypt bread was offered to the deities and also was staple of daily live. Egyptians are still the world’s largest consumers of bread and Egypt is the world’s largest wheat importer. The government buys most of the wheat it needs each year from wheat exporters like the U.S., Canada and Australia. In 2009 global wheat prices reached at an all-time high, and other grains and meat prices were up over 20% by the end of 2010. This situation became determined for the outbreak of the 2011 Arab Spring, in which not only Egypt played a central role but bread riots became the sign for revolution in many Arab countries.

Reading Belderok, B., J. Mesdag, and D. A. Donner. 2000. Bread-making quality of wheat a Century of breeding in Europe. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. 3-14 (= chapter 1 “Historical Introduction”). http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0950-7. (08-05-2016 10-10: Sugar and Slavery Sugar slavery was the key component in the so called Trade Triangle, a network whereby slaves were sent to work on New World plantations, the product of their labor


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was sent to a European capital to be sold and other goods such as weapons were brought to Africa to purchase more slaves. By the middle of the 19th century, more than ten million Africans had been forcibly removed to the New World and distributed among the sugar plantations of Brazil and the Caribbean.

http:/ /histclo.com/eco/agr/crops/food/sug/cou/acfsc-cuba.html Reading: Mintz, Sidney W. 1985. Sweetness and Power. The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York, Penguin Books, chapter 2 (Production), 19-73. 10-17: A-Maize-ing History of Corn and Colonization Early Spanish invaders of Mesoamerica were aversive to corn considering it the “bread of Indians”. When corn reached Southern Europe a deadly disease called Pellagra became epidemic. Despite of all, corn played a central role in conquering the world’s desire for profit and health.


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https://files.ctctcdn.com/4a7a7838001/f9dd7a8f-56b7-423f-b41c-6531975f5ad7.jpg Reading: Smith, Andrew 2011 (2009). Eating History. Thirty turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine. New York, Columbia University Press, chapter16 (The Kellogg’s Corn Flakes), 141-152. 10-24: Hot Dogs and Democracy The United States has developed over the years a disarming way to put its foreign guests at ease. It is to offer that most unassuming of American food items, one long associated with baseball, barbecues and occasional gastrointestinal distress. Yes: the hot dog. Hot dog has played a role in American foreign relations since at least June 1939, when the king and queen of England attended a picnic at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s estate in Hyde Park, N.Y., while soliciting American support for England in the war about to consume Europe. The next day, a front-page headline in The New York Times shared the news: KING TRIES HOT DOG AND ASKS FOR MORE And He Drinks Beer With Them


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President John F. Kennedy, eyes glued on the playing field, munches a hot dog during the American League opener April 8, 1963. The president stayed throughout the game, watching the Baltimore Orioles defeat the Washington Senators 3-1. Read more: http://www.politico.com/gallery/2016/07/hot-dogs-politicians-fourth-of-july-002322#ixzz4HesLb2R1 Reading: Horowitz, Roger. 2006. Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Chapter 4: Hot Dogs. 10-29: Vegetables and Industrial ization = Optional field trip to the Steinbeck Museum at Salinas, CA

https://neihtn.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/salinas_mg_1161.jpg?w=1200


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Bruce Church, the founder of Fresh Express, was responsible for popularizing the idea of shipping lettuce across the US continent from Salinas, California to the spots on the East coast. In the 1930s by using ice they carefully covered the heads of lettuce and successfully shipped them. Until today Iceberg salad is more popular than any other lettuce. Eventually it became the epitome of freshness. John Steinbeck adopted this history for the background of his novel “East of Eden” -- a literary piece showing more than anything else the conflicts between the Jefferson ideal of farming and industrial agribusiness, still a very topic in organic farming discourse. Readings: Freidberg, Susanne 2009. Fresh. A Perishable History. Cambridge, MA and London, The Belkanp Press of Harvard University Press, chapter 5 (Vegetables: Hidden Labor), 157-196. EAST OF EDEN. 1955 film, directed by Elia Kazan, and loosely based on the second half of the 1952 novel of the same name by John Steinbeck. Grimes, William 2000. An Offering to the Green Goddess. New York Times: CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK. June 14, 2000. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/14/dining/critic-s-notebook-an-offering-to-the-green-goddess.html?pagewanted=all 10-31: Coffee and Religion Most modern coffee-drinkers are probably unaware of coffee’s heritage in the Sufi orders of Southern Arabia. Coffee drinking spread throughout the Islamic world sometimes between the 13th and 15th centuries CE. By the second wave of the spread of Islam in the 16th and 17th century coffee reached Italy, the Balkans, and Central Europe. In the 18th century coffee became part of European bourgeois urban culture. Thereby it became secularized nevertheless kept serving as a stimulant of mental awareness.


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A Turkish coffeehouse. Jean-Leon Gerome. 17th century. http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/coffee-and-coffeehouses-among-the-ottomans.aspx?pageID=238&nID=76123&NewsCatID=438 Reading: Matthee , Rudolph P. 2005. The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian history, 1500-1900. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. CHAPTER 6 Coffee in Safavid Iran: Commerce and Consumption


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11-14: Citrus Fruits and War

http://floribbean.com/Citrus/History/article2.jpg From a Medical Report “Vitamin C. A number of reports of scurvy and vitamin C deficiency as well as special studies of vitamin C nutrition were made.9 Some reason for concern and a suspicion of the existence of this deficiency were justified because in certain of the rations, particularly in the C, K, and ten-in-one, the source of most of the vitamin C was the synthetic fruit juice powders, which, on the whole, were not well consumed by the soldiers. It was often forgotten, however, that the standard of daily requirements for this nutrient was set at a very high level, 75 mg. per day, an amount three times as great as that actually needed to protect against a state of true physiologic deficiency. It is, therefore, not surprising that in many instances, reported cases and outbreaks of scurvy and vitamin C deficiency could not be substantiated when subjected to careful analysis. There was also some tendency on the part of medical officers to attach too much significance to such signs and symptoms as gingivitis and bleeding gums, which, while suggestive, are not very specific or reliable, especially in mild or early deficiencies.” John B. Youmans, M. D. “Malnutrit ion and Deficiency Diseases” U.S. Army Medical Department. Office of Medical History. P. 165 http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/PrsnlHlthMsrs/chapter5.htm (08-18-2016)


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Reading: Hamilton, Alissa 2009. Squeezed. What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, chapter 2 (The Twentieth-Century Squeeze), 11-27. 11-28: In this last unit students are invited to democratically decide which topic they would l ike to address. The choice is: Banana and Nations Wiley, James. 2008. The Banana: Empires, Trade Wars, and Globalization. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Milk and the Making of the Female Self Freidberg, Susanne 2009. Fresh: a Perishable History. Cambridge, MA and London: The Belkanp Press of Harvard University Press. Chapter 6: Milk -- Border Politics, 197-234. Salt and Governance Kurlansky, Mark. 2002. Salt: a world history. New York: Walker and Co.

Documents

HIS 154 Syllabus MK How Food Made History CSt-Stanford 2016 · Mintz, Sidney W. 1985. Sweetness and Power. The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York, Penguin Books, chapter 2