Parergon

Food customs are central to many kinds of social negotiations. In this study, historian Michael A. LaCombe offers a detailed examination of the meaning of food in ‘The New World’, particularly the way food informed the early encounters between English settlers and the Algonquian Indians of the Atlantic Seaboard. In a careful and fascinating analysis, LaCombe demonstrates how different aspects of food, such as production (planting, gathering, hunting) and processing (cooking, dining, hospitality), encode social relationships, define social groupings, mark changes of status and role, and symbolise other elements of social structure in the uncertain early modern Atlantic world.

LaCombe argues that food lay at the heart of public assertions of legitimacy in this period, both in the Anglo-Indian encounters, and between the English settlers themselves. LaCombe connects the provision – over or under – of food to leadership, order, and legitimacy in the early English settlements of North America. Settlers needed to be dependent on leaders for food and defence otherwise authority would disintegrate, as is seen in the [End Page 266]examples of the settlement of Jamestown (which almost collapsed during the ‘Starving Time’), and in Bermuda (where survivors of The Sea Ventureshipwreck discovered a land of plenty and almost mutinied).

In the early encounters between Algonquian Indians and the English in North America, food was also symbolic of power. Despite their many differences in language, culture, and beliefs, English settlers and the Algonquians were able to communicate reciprocally using the symbolic language of food. Both sides conveyed and interpreted meanings of food, and manipulated these symbols. This is best seen in LaCombe’s detailed analysis of the complexity of food exchanges. In this early modern Atlantic world, food was an important exchange item: prosperity in the harsh landscape was reliant on the ability to procure and provide food. Although there were clear differences in the way the English and Algonquians approached these exchanges, LaCombe argues that leaders on both sides understood that, when they participated in these exchanges, they were sending messages to their counterparts, although these messages could have conflicting meanings simultaneously, such as is demonstrated in LaCombe’s analysis of the ‘First Thanksgiving’ (pp. 87–88).

Political Gastronomyis a fantastic addition to the growing interest in medieval and Renaissance studies of food, and to early American studies in general. The text is clearly written, and features a number of well-chosen reproductions from early modern maps, travel accounts (by Thomas Harriot, and the Drake MS), and other writings about food, which complement the in-text analysis. While there is no standard bibliography, detailed notes and an index are included.