Fusion Foodways of Africa's Gold Coast in the Atlantic Era

Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-90-04-22412-4
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 26, 216 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 505 g

Reihe: The Atlantic World

As most people in Atlantic-era West Africa—as in contemporary Europe and the Americas—were farmers, fields and gardens were the primary terrain where they engaged the opportunities and challenges of nascent globalization. Agricultural changes and culinary cross-currents from the Gold Coast indicate that Africans engaged the Atlantic world not with passivity but as full partners with others on continents whose histories have enjoyed longer, and greater, scholarly attention. The most important ‘seeds of change’ are not to be found in the DNA of crops and critters carried across the seas but instead in the creativity and innovation of the people who engaged the challenges and opportunities of the Atlantic World.

Zielgruppe

Fusion Foodways describes the agricultural and cultural history of the Gold Coast (now, Ghana) in the Atlantic era, exploring the historical significance of new food crops and culinary techniques from the Americas, Asia and elsewhere in Africa to the farmers who produced them and to everybody who ate.

Autoren/Hrsg.

La Fleur, James D

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Ökotrophologie (Ernährungs- und Haushaltswissenschaften)
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Afrikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Maps, Illustrations, and Word Lists
Preface and Acknowledgements
Notes on Linguistic Evidence and African Languages

1. Finding Food in Early Afro-Atlantic History
Africanist Historiography of Pre-Colonial Agriculture
Themes and Structures

2. Introducing the Land to Culture, 25,000 BCE to circa 1400 CE
Early Foraging to 25,000 BCE
Specialized Foraging, 25,000 BCE to 10,000 BCE
Intensified Foraging from 10,000 BCE
Integrating Crops and Critters into Hunting, Gathering, and Foraging
Initial Farming from 500 BCE
Mature Farming, circa 1400 CE

3. Seeds of Change: Early African Experimentation in the Atlantic Era
The Agro-Historical Milieu
Plantains
Maize
Asian Rice

4. Reap What You Sow: The Profits and Perils of the New Starchy Crops
Going for Gold with Plantains
Allada Communities and Culinary Cross-Currents
Baked Bread and Biscuits
Kenkey
Opportunities Brewing
Sowing and Savoring Wealth
Insecurity and Impoverishment amid Scarcity and Violence
Suffering in Times of Plenty

5. The Porcupine’s Shame: Bearing the Burden of Cassava Culture
Problems in the Earliest Records of Introduction
Introducing Cassava
Africanizing Cassava Culture
Outsiders and Renewed Innovation with Cassava
Colonial Postscript

6. Finding History in Early Afro-Atlantic Foodways

Works Cited
Index

Über Autor(innen)

La Fleur, James D
J. D. La Fleur, Ph.D. (2003), is Assistant Professor of History at the College of William & Mary (USA). He is the translator-editor of Pieter van den Broecke's Journal of Voyages to Cape Verde, Guinea and Angola (Hakluyt, 2000).