Abstract
"The table constitutes a kind of tie between the bargainer and the bargained-with, and makes the diners more willing to receive certain impressions, to submit to certain influences: from this is born political gastronomy. Meals have become a means of governing, and the fate of whole peoples is decided at a banquet."--Jean Anthèlme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy The first Thanksgiving at Plymouth in 1621 was a powerfully symbolic event and not merely the pageant of abundance that we still reenact today. In these early encounters between Indians and English in North America, food was also symbolic of power: the venison brought to Plymouth by the Indians, for example, was resonant of both masculine skill with weapons and the status of the men who offered it. These meanings were clearly understood by Plymouth's leaders, however weak they appeared in comparison. Political Gastronomy examines the meaning of food in its many facets: planting, gathering, hunting, cooking, shared meals, and the daily labor that sustained ordinary households. Public occasions such as the first Thanksgiving could be used to reinforce claims to status and precedence, but even seemingly trivial gestures could dramatize the tense negotiations of status and authority: an offer of roast squirrel or a spoonful of beer, a guest's refusal to accept his place at the table, the presence and type of utensils, whether hands should be washed or napkins used. Historian Michael A. LaCombe places Anglo-Indian encounters at the center of his study, and his wide-ranging research shows that despite their many differences in language, culture, and beliefs, English settlers and American Indians were able to communicate reciprocally in the symbolic language of food.
LaCombe explores the interplay of food and diplomacy through close readings of a half-dozen momentous meals, such as Opechancanough’s massacre of English colonists at breakfast in Virginia in 1622 and William Bradford’s wedding feast in 1623. LaCombe uses these meals to offer intriguing interpretations of familiar written and pictorial sources and to suggest the potential of combining food and diplomatic history. Seeing food as a mutually comprehensible middle ground for English and Indians offers an exciting new arena of inquiry. LaCombe’s work differs considerably from the studies that currently dominate food history, such as the history of a single food item or a focus on the culinary practices of middle-class women.1 However, it is often unclear what understanding or insight LaCombe intends the reader to glean from his lengthy examples, as [End Page 553] he rarely discusses how his readings of food exchanges alter our understanding of either diplomatic history or the history of food.
LaCombe begins by examining food availability and distribution in order to recount the tensions among English colonists and the precarious nature of colonization. He reminds the reader that English colonists expected their leaders to arrange for the orderly production, storage, and distribution of food, expectations rooted in English grain laws. When England sent colonists to Jamestown, the settlers quickly deposed four of their leaders, in part, LaCombe claims, because they could not agree on the type of leader they needed, whether military, patriarchal, or aristocratic. In addition, none of the leaders was able to ensure the orderly distribution of food—or even to prevent starvation. Leaders were in a difficult spot, since they had neither the wheat that English bodies were thought to require nor the women necessary to cook and preserve English-style food. LaCombe contrasts the resulting dramatic infighting and starvation at Jamestown with similarly dramatic infighting in the face of plentiful food in Bermuda. When the Sea Venture shipwrecked on Bermuda, the abundance of food there almost derailed the authority of leader Lord De La Warre’s deputy Sir Thomas Gates because he, like the Jamestown leaders, did not control food access.
LaCombe does not address the reasons why English colonists expressed no fear of eating unfamiliar foods in Bermuda as they did about eating unfamiliar foods such as Indian corn (Zea mays) in Virginia. Nor does he, after stating that “the stores [of food brought by De La Warre] would support his claim to lead by guaranteeing the survival of those who followed him” (47), explain what these stores were, or how De La Warre distributed them. Still, LaCombe presents a convincing case that the regular and orderly distribution of food was critical to maintaining a position of leadership in the early English Atlantic.
The potential of LaCombe’s interpretation is suggested in his ruminations on a pair of meals at Plymouth Plantation. These meals reveal what he calls an evolving friendship between English and Indians. He compares the so-called 1621 “first Thanksgiving” (87) at Plymouth to Governor Bradford’s 1623 marriage feast.