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ABSTRACTS
Adrian R. Bailey, University of Exeter, UK, ‘Regulating
the supermarket in 1960s Britain: exploring the changing relationship of
food manufacturers and retailers through the Cadbury archive’
The paper explores changes in the
relationship between manufacturers and retailers in the late 1960s and
1970s, following the abolition of Resale Price Maintenance (RPM)
legislation in the UK. The liberalisation of pricing and its implications
for manufacturers and retailers is explored through a case study of
Cadbury Brothers Ltd in the wake of the RPM abolition, which impacted
chocolate and confectionery in 1967. The aims of the paper are, first, to
outline the marketing strategy at Cadbury prior to, and following, the
change in legislation and, second, to examine the changing relationships
between Cadbury and its distributors. The details of the Restricted Trade
Practice court hearing, fought by Cadbury have previously been described
by Harold Crane, who acted as the legal advisor to Mackintosh during the
case. Crane’s summary of the case is detailed and gives due weight to the
arguments for and against the Act in the context of the confectionery
market, but the account is selective and conceals the historical
development of the ‘Four Firms’ arguments leading up to the court hearing
(i.e. Cadbury, Rowntree, Mackintosh and Bassett). The research presented
here has been funded by a small grant from the Business Archives Council (BAC)
and makes reference to overlooked materials held at the Cadbury archive in
Bournville. The materials, held in 31 large boxes and recently catalogued
by the author, relate to internal communications between Cadbury directors
and managers; communications between Cadbury and other confectionery
manufacturers; and correspondence with retailers and retail trade
associations during the late 1960s. The Cadbury catalogue indicates that
there is limited archival information relating to Cadbury post-war
distribution, which makes these materials of significance for researchers
seeking to build upon existing management histories of the firm.
Lucy
A. Bailey, University of Northampton, UK, ‘Squire, shopkeeper and staple
food: The reciprocal relationship between the village shop and the country
house in the early nineteenth century’
Rural communities have historically
been viewed as synonymous with agricultural processes and a dependence
upon the land. This tendency to filter rural life through the perspective
of agricultural interest has obscured the vital role of rural retailers
within such communities. They have been similarly obscured in studies of
retailing by their urban counterparts. We therefore know very little about
rural supply networks and, more specifically, the interaction and flow of
goods between the country house and the village shop. The notion of rural
self-sufficiency further disguises the role of the village shopkeeper in
the provision of necessities, particularly perishable goods like food, the
purchase of which is too often presumed and rarely expanded upon or
quantified. Drawing on a wealth of evidence left by a rural lesser gentry
family in the early nineteenth century, themselves a rather neglected
social group, this paper aims to reveal the reciprocal and mutually
beneficial relationship between the country squire (in the daily process
of sustaining a large household) and his village suppliers (eager to
fulfil his requirements and retain his patronage). An analysis of the type
of goods, frequency of purchases and the amounts spent, along with a
consideration of the convenience of shop location, indicate a reciprocal
dependency. Significantly, on occasion, not only were servants sent to
purchase goods, which suggests strong and mutually trusting relationships,
but surplus farm produce was sold back to the village shop for credit,
which further bonded buyer to seller. This exposes the complexity of rural
retailing and the central importance of the village shopkeeper to the
provision of food in their communities
Sabina Bellofatto,
University of Zurich, Switzerland, ‘ “Buon appetito Svizzera!” The
consumption history of the Italian cuisine in post-war Switzerland’
In the 1960th,
simultaneously to the second wave of Italian migration, Italian dishes and
goods like wheat pasta, Italian canned tomatoes, fruits and
parmigiano-reggiano cheese found widespread diffusion and acceptance in
Switzerland. Italy was the most important holiday destination and Italian
restaurants
were very popular.
Yet, the Italians immigrants, who in
1964 accounted 474’300 - 68,8 % of the total number of foreigners in
Switzerland -, certainly influenced the consumer demand. But as the
xenophobic discourses of that time illustrate, the Swiss didn’t appreciate
the eating habits of the Italians. In my sources I found letters to the
editor in journals and periodicals, in which writers make a point, that
Italians and Swiss will never get used to one another because of their
apparently different eating habits. The success and widespread acceptance
of the Italian cuisine can’t therefore be explained only with the presence
of the Italian immigrants, but has to be contextualized with the process
of consumerism and mass consumption.
My dissertation examines the
consumption and diffusion of the Italian cuisine in post-war Switzerland,
as a means to investigate how the Italian immigrants functioned as
cultural mediators. And on the other hand I propose to trace the
“distributors role” of supermarkets chains and their marketing policies,
Italian food stores and restaurants.
This approach enables me to explore in
which way the absorption and diffusion of a particular cuisine is a matter
of transculturation and how this process is grounded in the changing
patterns of needs and wants driven by economic changes.
Matthias Blum, Technical University Munich, Germany, and
Justus Wesseler, Technical University Munich, Germany, ‘A brief economic
history of beer brewing and consumption in Southern Germany’
This
contribution picks up the argument that early brewing and beer consumption
was regulated and add an economic perspective of this case. While the lack
of information on the early history of beer brewing and consumption makes
an economic investigation difficult, this study starts with the
developments after the 11th century and concentrates on southern Germany,
which has been well known for its tradition in beer brewing. Food
security, competition with Northern Germany, climate change and changing
comparative advantages are of particular interest. In the course of the
analysis, average height is used as a proximate variable for nutritional
resources - and the availability of raw materials for brewers - during the
past 2 millennia. It is argued that nutritional sources in Northern
Germany exceeded Southern standards until the 12th century; the opposite
is true from then on.
Kristen D. Burton,
University of Texas at Arlington, USA, ‘The citie calls for beere: the
introduction of hops and the foundation of industrial brewing in London,
1200-1700’
This paper examines the impact of
hopped beer on the brewing trade in London between the years 1200-1700.
Prior to the arrival of beer, traditional, un-hopped ale reigned as the
most popular drink throughout England for centuries, pre-dating the Roman
invasion of Britannia. This brew, though widely consumed, was an unstable
commodity, as it spoiled quickly and brewers could only produce a limited
amount of ale per batch. The addition of hops into brewing resulted in a
more resilient product that lasted for months instead of weeks. The longer
lifespan allowed brewers to export beer to an international market,
resulting in a rapid growth of commercialization against which ale could
not compete. Though the ale brewers of London resisted the arrival of
hopped beer, their product could not compete against the commercial
advantages offered by beer. Once accepted by English drinkers, beer became
a staple supply to the English army, and by the end of the sixteenth
century London became the primary exporter of beer on the international
market. These factors resulted in the greater commercialization of beer in
London, paving the way for the rise of industrial brewing in the
eighteenth century. The durability of hopped beer forced brewers to take
up the new practice of brewing with hops and made ale a drink limited to
the English countryside by the end of the seventeenth century.
Ruth Cherrington, ‘We
are not drinking dens! Working men's clubs and the struggle for
respectability, 1862 -1920s’
Working men's clubs began to appear
around the country from the mid-19th century onwards, as alternative
recreational spaces to pubs and can be considered part of the rational
recreation movement. Many were set up by men themselves, with the early
support of high ranking patrons and religious leaders. They thought that
getting men out of pubs would improve not only their family lives but also
society more generally. The Working Men's Club and Institute Union (WMCIU)
established in 1862 by a teetotal Reverend, Henry Solly, offered support
for fledgling clubs through affiliation and practical help. The 'beer
question', however, soon emerged with club members winning the right to
choose for themselves whether to sell drink. Even with beer available, the
WMCIU demanded high standards of clubs in terms of organisation and
self-management and wanted to gain respectability, constantly drawing a
line between bona fide clubs and disreputable drinking dens. The latter
were set-up purely for drinking with no 'improving' activities and more
often than not failing to pay taxes. The struggle to gain respectability
for WMCIU affiliated clubs involved various strategies including dealing
with their critics who saw clubs merely as private member alternatives to
pubs. These challenges were not short-lived but continued well into the
20th century. This paper will consider the early context of working men's
clubs and the role of the WMCIU, focussing on the issue of respectability
and the continual efforts to distinguish working men’s clubs from the
despised drinking dens. Key social, cultural and economic aspects of clubs
will be outlined within the period from the establishment of the WMCIU to
the 1920s.
Paul Cleave,
University of Exeter, UK, ‘Twentieth century cafe society – eating out on
holiday: a case study of Devon’
Food is a vital component of the
tourism experience. This paper presents Devon, a county in the South West
of England with a long history of food production and tourism as a case
study. It aims to show how the provision of food for tourists ‘eating out’
has evolved through the 20th century. From tea room and cafe to Michelin
Star restaurant and the celebrity chef commercial hospitality has made an
important contribution to Devon’s tourism.
The example of Deller’s, a family
business will be used to demonstrate the significance of the cafe and
restaurant in tourism. Starting as a food retailer, Deller’s Supply Stores
established cafes in Paignton, Exeter and Taunton in the early 20th
century. Deller’s Cafes provided genteel, elegant eating spaces, and good
food, contributing to the social life of many holiday makers. A company
brochure (c1925) describing a tour through Dellerland encouraged those
travelling by car to stop at Deller’s cafes for their meals. They are
fondly recalled by those who visited them as more than a culinary legacy,
a combination of ambience, service, and experience of place.
Utilising qualitative data derived from
archival resources and in depth interviews it may be possible to discover
more about the factors that contributed to their success in terms of,
retail, distribution and consumption. Provincial and seaside cafes such as
Deller’s (and those operated by Lyon’s, ABC and Cadena) appealed to the
tourist market. They provided a treat, something special and sophisticated
yet affordable, in contrast to rustic farmhouse and domestic hospitality
provision.
From the 1970s market for ‘eating out’
on holiday changed. Fast food and nouvelle cuisine presented new styles of
restaurant experience. More recently a return to independent restaurants
and the interest in local food focuses on the creativity of the chef.
However much can be learnt from the culinary experience of earlier
decades.
D'Maris Coffman,
University of Cambridge, UK, ‘Anticipating the state: reassessing the
‘old’ English excises and the development of brewing in England
As David Hume noticed, the excises on
beer and malt served as the backbone of the eighteenth-century British
fiscal system. The excise administration’s corps of professional
collectors provided a model to the other branches and engendered the envy
of the continental European powers. The British state profited from
bureaucratization, transparency, efficiency, and Parliament’s ‘credible
commitment to servicing the national debt (North & Weingast, 1989; Brewer,
1988). According to Gregory King (1695), households spent more on beer and
ale than any other single item, and a significant portion of the
agricultural produce of the kingdom was consumed in its production
(Mathias, 1959 [1992]). As Peter Mathias suggested in his seminal account
of the The Brewing Industry in England (1959 [1992]), changes in
the excise laws, especially the introduction of the Malt Tax and the Hops
Duty, altered traditional recipes for beer and ale, influenced industry
organization and ultimately dictated strategies for the retailing of these
beverages.
This paper explores both the
econometric evidence for these developments and the anecdotal evidence,
drawn from brewers’ accounts and from contemporary polemics at three
critical periods in the 1690s, 1700s and 1750s. Building on work done by
Will Ashworth and Miles Ogborn, this paper also offers novel
interpretations of the role of the excise in the changing
eighteenth-century English economy.
Nancy Cox, University
of Wolverhampton, UK, ‘Don’t let them starve: food for the poor in the
early-modern period’
The authorities developed a two-pronged
attack on the problem of poverty. The first was to make life as
uncomfortable as possible for those out of work and, at the same time,
encouraging the poor to take up useful occupations where cheap labour was
needed, such as (for women and children) in making lace. With the money
thus earned they could buy their own food and avoid being a burden to poor
relief. By contrast, the life of those seen as the undeserving poor was
made as near intolerable as possible, with those classified as beggars and
pedlars, hounded off the streets. This was despite the utilitarian
arguments of those like John Houghton, who argued their street selling
made a useful contribution to society, and kept those thus engaged from
falling onto relief.
The second prong was to see that the
staple foods of bread and beer were reasonably priced and reasonably pure.
The regulations concerning their production and marketing were strict, on
paper at least, but the authorities were relatively relaxed about most
other foodstuffs
Beyond these not very successful
attempts at solving what was seen as a social problem, the poor were
largely dependent on the exertions of philanthropists or on their own
initiatives. Whereas the former were seen as commendable, even if not
always well directed, the latter were less favourably viewed. Some, like
poaching and theft were illegal, but others like tea drinking, which was
often a social activity even among the poor, were seen as possibly
subversive and certainly an unwise use of scarce resources. Curiously
enough, consuming tobacco, which was also often a social activity, though
it more often involved men than women, was both popular with the poor
themselves and sometimes even approved of by their so-called betters,
since it was believed to suppress appetite and so encouraged the poor to
eat less and be satisfied.
As for the philanthropists, many had
only a hazy idea of what was useful. For example, it was widely seen as
good works to provide the poor with soup or other food at minimal cost.
The Sussex shopkeeper, Thomas Turner, found a recipe for ‘a cheap kind of
soup’. He tried himself and concluded it to be ‘a very good, palatable,
cheap nourishing diet’. Made with seven pints of water to only half a
pound of meat bulked up with dried peas and oatmeal, it was hardly
adequate nourishment for a labourer, but it was positively luxurious
compared with the ‘noble exilerating meal’ made of water thickened with
flour or oatmeal and flavoured with one onion. This meal, the author
claimed would not cost ‘above a farthing’.
With inadequate poor relief, a hostile
government and only ill-directed do-gooders, the poor ate badly. In normal
times few probably actually died of starvation, but malnutrition was
undoubtedly a factor in many deaths. The wretched survivors lived - just.
Looking well ahead, even in the mid-twentieth century, the subsidised,
minimal rations of the Second World War are believed to have provided a
better diet than most poor people had previously experienced even in the
twentieth century.
Josie Freear, University of Leeds, UK, ‘Marks and Spencer: a
‘revolutionary hygienic code’ in food supply, distribution and retailing?’
In his 1969 history of Marks and
Spencer, Goronwy Rees proclaimed that through its research and development
practices, the company had created an ‘almost revolutionary hygienic
code’. Some evidence for such an assertion is provided by the influence of
the company’s Hygiene Manual, published in 1949, which was heralded by the
NHS and used to improve conditions on hospital wards across the country.
However, little detailed research has been conducted to confirm or refute
the notion that M&S has been at the forefront of setting hygienic
standards in the food retailing industry. Furthermore, the importance of
this ‘hygienic code’ in the wider context of the social history of food
and networks of food supply, distribution and retailing has previously
been overlooked.
This paper attempts to fill this gap in
existing research. It will draw on the approaches of both business
history, with particular reference to concepts of innovation and trust,
and cultural and social history, including contemporary constructions of
cleanliness. Through an exploration of these areas, this paper will begin
to consider the importance of M&S’s hygienic code within the supply,
distribution and retailing of food in Britain. It will use the records of
the company’s food department, including papers of the food research unit
and its director Nathan Goldenberg contained in the M&S archive. This
documentation will be used to assess the role of the in-house research
station and food development team in providing the scientific basis for
innovative hygienic practices and cutting edge technologies. It will
determine the extent to which M&S imposed these exacting hygienic
standards upon supplier practices, thereby gaining control over food
distribution from the supply end. Finally, consideration will be given to
the distribution and retailing of food by analysing the way in which Marks
and Spencer used their hygienic code to influence and shape consumer
behaviour.
Mark Hailwood,
University of Exeter, UK, ‘Rethinking men’s consumption of alcohol in the
early modern English alehouse’
Whilst changes in the actual levels of
alcohol consumption in early modern England remain unclear, historians
agree that the institution of the alehouse came to play an increasingly
important role in the consumption of alcohol. From the middle of the
sixteenth century the numbers of alehouses in early modern England
exploded, more than doubling by the middle of the seventeenth century.
What was driving this increase? Traditionally, social historians of the
early modern alehouse suggested that this rise in alehouse numbers was a
direct response to increased levels of poverty caused by demographic and
economic pressures—the growing ranks of the poor were thought to have
increasingly turned to the consumption of alcohol ‘to blot out some of the
horror of their lives’, craving narcotic relief as they engaged in the
‘desperate pursuit of drunken oblivion’.
This paper argues that this
conventional explanation for the increase in the consumption of alcohol in
alehouses is insufficient. In particular, by favouring a
‘drink-as-despair’ explanation, historians have tended to overlook the
important cultural and social appeal of alehouse-going in the period. By
examining a range of seventeenth-century broadside ballads, this paper
will reconstruct the cultural values associated with the consumption of
alcohol in alehouses. It will argue that far from being a direct response
to poverty, alehouse-going was more often than not seen as an opportunity
for the labouring and artisan classes to engage in a form of conspicuous
expenditure intended to demonstrate a certain distance from poverty.
Furthermore, the paper will argue that this conspicuous expenditure was
central to the articulation of a certain code of plebeian masculinity that
historians of masculinity in the period have failed to acknowledge.
Chris Heal, University of Bristol, UK, ‘Mad with drink: Garnishes and
combinations among the felt hatters’
Well before the hatters were publicly
declared ‘mad’ they were known across the land as inebriates: ‘Drunk as a
hatter’ was the common descriptor and, indeed, from the outside at least
it is difficult to differentiate between one suffering from alcohol or
mercury poisoning. Hatter culture is sodden with alcohol consumption. This
paper explains how and why.
In the feltmakers’ garrets and plank
shops the craftsmen worked by hand amidst clouds of wool or fibre dust or
at a scrubbing board over an acid-filled, coal-heated bason. Windows were
tightly closed in all seasons lest any precious beaver was disturbed.
These were quiet manufactories without power. The men talked the day away
and the johnny-boys were kept busy running for small beer, perhaps two
gallons a day per man.
Around 1800, as the nascent hatter
trade unions sought to escape the strictures of the Combination Acts,
their box clubs, or friendly societies, became a mix of craft headquarters
and smoke-filled drinking den. From simple beginnings there evolved more
complex relationships between workers and their chosen public houses. On
‘club night’, members exchanged trade news and arranged for the jobs
notified to their landlord to be filled in rotation; for masters in
seasonal trades, a necessary evil. A typically hostile view saw that
‘benefit clubs ... naturally lead to idleness and intemperance [and]
afford commodious opportunities to foment sedition and form illegal
combinations’.
Drinking as ritual became embedded in
the hatter’s workplace and in their argot. Garnishes were sought for every
change in circumstance: leaving apprenticeship, getting a job or married.
Imagined slights, weighing out the corker, were invented to relieve the
boredom and settled by mulet, insist or garret fine. All were immediately
followed by a cessation of work and a general move to enjoy the
consequences to the frustration of spouse and employer.
David Hitchcock,
University of Warwick, UK, ‘Fraught refuge? Poverty, mobility and
alehouses in England in the 17th and 18th centuries’
This paper will attempt to nuance our
understanding of one particular social function of the English alehouse;
the provision of its characteristic services such as a room, drink, and
victuals to the poorer and mobile people in English society: the
‘travellers’, ‘strangers’ and ‘outcomers’ of contemporary sources and
literature. Recent scholarship has highlighted public houses more
generally as multifaceted spaces, capable of serving as traditional sites
of conviviality and sociability, as well as places of exchange, contexts
of contractual obligation, and locations of reconciliation. This paper
will explore how one, often socially marginalised or ‘threatening’ section
of English society made use of alehouses, and indeed how contemporaries
perceived them to use such spaces. Pedlars, ballad singers and sellers,
tinkers, and poorer labouring travellers of all sorts used the alehouse as
a refuge for the night, and by interrogating both legal records and
contemporary literary discourses, a much more nuanced picture of the
reception and accommodation of these groups can emerge.
These groups were often taken
collectively to be ‘idle’ ‘vagrant’ and disorderly, but by interrogating
the differences between perception and practice, a more complicated
relationship between mobility and the alehouse emerges. Contemporary legal
records did castigate publicans for the harbouring of undesirable inmates
or vagrants, just as these same proprietors were targeted in the frequent
suppression of alehouses or the prosecution of tippling. However, local
sources such as Parish accounts show a considerable allocation of parish
charity to housing poor migrants overnight, and occasionally we can
determine that the sites which housed poor migrants were indeed alehouses.
Popular literature such as ballads also complicates the traditionally
hostile picture of the relationship between alehouses and vagrants. This
paper will engage with such sources in an attempt to further nuance our
understanding of hospitality, drink, and sites of sociability in the past.
The alehouse can provide a snapshot of the mobile poor at rest, and
perhaps even elucidate additional complexities of their existence.
Claire Holleran,
University of Liverpool, UK, ‘Feeding Ancient Rome’
Ancient Rome was an exceptionally
populous city by pre-industrial standards. At its height, in the late
Republic and the Principate (c.100BC–AD200), Rome was home to around one
million people, a population figure not reached again in any city in the
Western world until London in the early nineteenth century. Given the
pressure on space, population density was high, and the most of the urban
residents lived in multi-storey, multi-occupancy dwellings. Cooking
facilities were limited and access to gardens or land in the vicinity of
the city was restricted to the wealthy. The vast majority of the
population were, therefore, reliant on the market for their food supply,
and a thriving retail trade developed in order to serve this remarkable
spatial concentration of consumers. Bakeries and cookshops were
commonplace, and were supplemented by periodic markets, street sellers,
and ambulant vendors. The expansion of Italian viticulture also resulted
in increased wine consumption in Rome, and the development of an urban
‘bar culture’. Furthermore, as the political centre of a vast
Mediterranean-wide empire, Rome was the place where the elite expended
their wealth, much of which was spent on entertaining and banqueting.
Imported herbs and spices, together with other expensive food items, were
therefore also available, retailed through more exclusive permanent market
buildings (macella) and ‘warehouses’ (horrea); purchasers were prepared to
pay high sums for certain items, particularly rare and desirable fish,
which were auctioned off to the highest bidder. The result was a retail
system unparalleled in antiquity in its complexity; this complexity was
not just a product of the intrinsic differences between the food items
sold, but also of the social and economic diversity of the city’s
population. This paper will discuss some of these different modes of
distributing food in Rome, thus highlighting the complexity of both the
retail network and the population which it served.
Jasmine
Kilburn-Toppin, Victoria and Albert Museum/Royal College of Art, UK,
' "Discords
have arisen and brotherly love decreased": the spatial and material
contexts of the guild feast in early modern London'
The guild feast or dinner was a
significant site for the conspicuous consumption of food and alcohol in
the urban environment. The gifting of silver drinking vessels for communal
use and the sharing of alcoholic drinks were apparently essential for the
forging and demonstration of social and political bonds between members of
the same ‘never dying’ body of ‘artisans’. However, such occasions of
choreographed conviviality were not as straightforwardly harmonious as the
rhetorical language of company wardens would have us believe. Early modern
civic culture - which often involved interaction between persons of very
varied material circumstances - is known to have been, at times, highly
divisive and ridden with conflict. Court minutes of craft guilds
frequently refer to feasting occasions at which ‘brotherly love’ appears
to have been entirely absent: for example when young company members
refused to defer to the livery, or ‘uncivill language’ was exchanged
between liverymen of similar status.
Through an analysis of drink-fuelled
skirmishes within the Carpenters’, Armourers’ and Goldsmiths’ companies of
the seventeenth century, this paper will situate notions of conflict
within specific material and spatial contexts. It will suggest that
disputes between men of the same guild at feasts often centred on issues
of age, social background and relative craft skills: though these markers
of manhood manifested themselves and depended upon where he sat - or
served - within the Company hall or parlour; the clothes he was obliged to
wear; his material contribution to the dinner and his access to the
Company plate and treasures. As company halls were reimagined and rebuilt
and the material culture of interiors changed from the later sixteenth
century, the nature of social relations between guildsmen at the feast
were also transformed.
Beat Kümin, University
of Warwick, UK, ‘Public houses as socio-cultural assets in the long
eighteenth century’
This presentation explores the
‘positive’ socio-cultural functions of ‘drinking dens’ such as inns,
taverns and beerhouses on the eve of the modern period. Drawing primarily
on materials from German-speaking Europe, it will focus on the following
spheres:
Economically, public houses were major
employers in the emerging ‘service sector’. They generated vast revenues
for the state in indirect taxation and provided bases for both job seekers
and rapidly expanding transport networks.
Socially, public houses provided the
principal communication sites in pre-industrial Europe. Rural inns, in
particular, accommodated a near-comprehensive range of patrons and recent
research additionally emphasizes the role of women in the ‘world of the
tavern’.
Culturally, drinking establishments
served as venues for countless musical, dancing and sporting events. As
generally accessible sites conducive to multimedia exchange, furthermore,
they played a major part in the emergence of a ‘political’ public sphere
in this period.
Rosângela
Ferreira Leite, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Brazil, ‘The
cocoa trade and transformations in taste: Brazil and England, 1808-1821’
In 1808 the Court of Portugal
arrived in Rio de Janeiro. This Transfer was a celebration of the end of
the colonial pact, initiating the opening movement of the ports to
friendly nations. England, a supporter of the Portuguese crown and
supportive of the transfer of Court Bragantina for parts of
America, was a nation favored by opening of the ports. Since this date,
the British goods began to arrive, increasingly, in the ports of parts of
Brazil, also came plenipotentiaries and commercial agents. Foods products
emerged as the second exportation item of the Brazilian Trade Balance.
Both food
and raw materials gained new momentum in maritime trade between Europe and
the different places to Brazil. Trading venues such as Salvador (Bahia),
Recife (Pernambuco), Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro) remained as bearers
of the movement expanded the ideas and the political practices.
Cocoa
characterized as a typical product of the international market, it became
part listed article indices Balances of Trade. The expansion of
this product indicates to the diversification of export production, and
the gradual establishment of a new external demand. The internal demand
changes in the same rhythm.
The study
of cocoa – With base to relation between England and Brazil – sheds light
on the changes in life forms and the tastes behaviors. This communication
aims to cocoa trade between Brazil and England in the period 1808-1821. I
have concentrated upon the particular trends, discernible in slavery
context for to indicate a possibility of de birth consumer society in the
Brazilian experience history.
The
research
of
Balances
of
Trade
during
the
transfer of the
Portuguesa Court
to Brazil
has a strongly historiography debate. Even so, it is necessary in doing
this to consider in the same approach the changes in the consumer
situation, the individual experience and the social implication.
Phil Lyon, Umeå
University, Sweden, and David Kinney, Plymouth College of Art, UK, ‘What’s
new? The history of new food products’
The presence of new food products on
supermarket shelves reassures consumers about the openness of the market
and the bounty available from manufacturer processes of innovation and
production. This has the capacity to seem true even if the product is new
only in the illusory sense of being a reformulation of an older product
or, even less than this, a repackaging or relaunch of an otherwise
unchanged older product. Being new may be as much an effective fiction as
a genuine quality of the object. Paradoxically, new may also be a matter
of degree. Some things are new in that they represent a paradigm shift in
old product configurations whereas others are new only as fresh examples
of an old paradigm. To further complicate the picture, being new can also
mean being so old that a product has not been on the market for some time
and acquires a ‘newness’ not because of its recency but because it has
been revived after being all-but-forgotten. This is the realm of the
nostalgia food item.
In whatever form, many new or
apparently new products are launched every year. Some find favour and
their sales prosper. Others, perhaps no less technologically innovative or
no less advertised, die the ignominious death of consumer neglect or
antipathy.
What is new eventually, but inevitably,
becomes incorporated in the spectrum of established products. That is to
say, the new is new no longer and acquires the quality of ordinariness. In
this paper we explore the meaning of ‘new’ to the food consumer and look
at the history of novel food products.
Alessia Menghin, St
Andrews University, UK, ‘At the table of Piero, a Florentine civic
employee in the Quattrocento’
The paper wishes to examine the eating
habits of a Florentine civic employee, Piero di Francesco da Vicchio, a
donzello of the Parte Guelfa (one of the governmental bodies of the
commune) in the fifteenth century.
The ricordanze (books of family
records) and especially the memoriale (recollections) in which Piero left
records of his life and activity, will form the basis for the paper which
will first of all identify the basic components of the diet of ordinary
people, and especially of workers in Quattrocento Florence. I will
analyze the cereals used, and above all the bread (omnipresent and
predominant), produce such as meat and lard, and the drinks consumed by
Piero and his family. The records also allow us to trace the daily,
seasonal and annual dynamics of consumption in Piero’s household.
In pre-industrial societies like
Quattrocento Florence out of season and exotic produce imported from far
away was a comfort destined - due to the high cost of the goods imported -
only to the wealthy. The paper will show that Piero, despite not being
rich himself, was nonetheless able to purchase more refined wines,
parmesan cheese (regarded as a delicacy), expensive meat, vegetables, and
even some spices. In fact, Piero’s real income not only allowed occasional
little luxuries, but the records attesting to considerable degrees of
provision show that in contrast to many of his social equals, shopping for
food was for him not just a satisfaction of essential needs. As the
evidence suggests, his and his family’s diet do not seem to have been
affected by a chronic deficit in animal fat and protein for example, and
despite the relatively low agricultural production of the time, a certain
variety of vegetables in his diet seems to have been the norm rather than
the exception.
Montserrat M. Miller,
Marshall University, USA, ‘Gender in the marketplace: selling food and
negotiating personal honor at the commercial nexus of neighborhood life in
20th century Barcelona’
In late nineteenth and early twentieth
century Spain, as elsewhere, we see that gender constructs facilitated
women’s entrance into service-sector jobs. Female
market vendors were familiar to all those who lived in cities featuring
the new market hall-based systems of food distribution, but, with few
exceptions, they have remained elusive in our constructions of the past.
In
the case of Barcelona specifically, market vendors are worthy of
historical attention not just for being cultural icons, but also because
they exhibited considerable economic stability through the consolidation
of a set of gender-neutral legal rights after 1898 and then became a less
gender-segregated population with the maturation of industrial capitalism
in the early decades of the twentieth century.
Female market vendors in twentieth
century Barcelona often took great pride in their work, building close
bonds with other women in the market and with many of their clients. Yet
they were both trusted and reviled; they acted as counselors to the
troubled and as sanctioners of social transgression. In many respects,
they occupied a contested social space in which the mature could be
derided as hags and gossips while the young were celebrated for their
beauty in elaborate civic pageantry and public cavalcades. Beginning
their work days in the early hours of the morning, selling food from
within tight confines, and often living close to the markets in which they
worked, vendors, both male and female created a specific urban sub-culture
that was distinctive from that of either the working classes or the
bourgeoisie. In defining themselves they typically emphasized personal
honor and propriety, high domestic standards of cleanliness and order, and
the lifelong loyalty of their clientele. Working outside the home
throughout their lifecycles, they redefined bourgeois gender ideologies to
better fit the exigencies of lower-middle class life. In studying them we
can see both the complexity of urban social order and the ongoing
importance of the family economy as a key business strategy for the
successful operation of market stall enterprises.
Jonathan Morris, University of Hertfordshire, UK, ‘Making Italian
espresso, making espresso Italian’
Espresso coffee has become synonymous
with Italy, as have those beverages which employ this as a base such as
cappuccino and caffè latte. This paper will examine the processes by
which espresso became ‘Italian’ over the course of the twentieth century
by investigating the ways that the taste of Italian coffee has evolved,
along with the taste for coffee amongst the Italians. It will analyse the
development of both the domestic and ‘away from home’ markets, and the
evolution of the distribution chains linking coffee roasters and machine
makers to bars and grocery retailers, within the context of socio-economic
changes in 20th C. Italy. This will be combined with a focus on the
changes in the cultural construction of coffee in Italy as reflected in
marketing and communications strategies that have shifted from presenting
coffee as an exotic overseas product to an icon of ‘Italianess’, not least
as a response to the success of espresso outside the country.
Zachary Nowak, The Umbra Institute, Italy, ‘The Fair of the Dead:
Perugia’s autumn market from the 1200s to yesterday’
First mentioned in a record of the city
of Perugia in 1260, the Fiera dei Morti was a typical central Italian
autumn fair which gave farmers the opportunity to exchange their crops.
With the passage of the centuries, though, the fair has changed name (from
All Saint’s Fair to the Fair of the Dead), venue (from the historic center
to the parking lot of the soccer stadium), and “personality.” This last
element includes the fair’s demographics, what is offered for sale, and
the reasons for attending the fair. Though the Fiera dei Morti no longer
has cattle for sale and farmers can buy knives and clothes in malls that
begin where their fields end, there are some enduring elements of the
Fair. Among these are culinary traditions like strufoli and the fave dei
morti, sweets whose “meanings” have been mostly lost but which have
palatal persistence nonetheless. This paper will examine the fair and its
importance as a location of “food remembering” for Perugians.
Rengenier Rittersma,
Saarland University, Germany,
‘Creating gastronomic celebrity: a case study on the role of the Piedmontese family Morra in the marketing of the white truffle of Alba
(1930-1960)’
This paper will be based on the private
archive of the family Morra and the local records of the town of Alba.
This town, nowadays world famous for its white truffle, was once put on
the map by the local restaurant owner Giacomo Morra (1899-1963). From the
1930s onwards, he systematically organised the annual Truffle Fair of Alba
and intensified his promotion campaign after the Second World War, by
presenting the most beautiful truffle of the season to celebrities like
Marilyn Monroe, Alfred Hitchcock, John F. Kennedy and President Truman,
thus turning the local truffle into a gastronomic celebrity. In my paper
(which will contain a lot of visual material, since the archive of the
Morra family has a unique photo collection), I will focus on the
socio-historical, semiotic, and political dimensions of 20th century
consumption and lifestyle history which made the white truffle of Alba
eventually world famous.
Carolina Román Ramos, Universidad de la República, Uruguay,
‘Consumption patterns and its
determinants during the first half of the 20th century: a historical and
comparative approach’
Consumption is an important component
of social welfare and constitutes an aggregate measure of the economic
dimension of standards of living. Food spending, calories consumed,
consumption shifts toward more sophisticated good and services, can be
understood as indicators of the standards of living of a society and may
allow us to compare development levels among regions in the long-run. In
addition, consumption is related to economic growth, income distribution,
urbanization, demographic structure and the modernization of a society,
constituting and interesting ‘pivot concept` to study economic development
in a broad approach. This paper studies the characteristics of the
consumption patterns during the first half of the twentieth century for a
group of countries and explores the relation with some of it main
determinants. We consider consumption patterns as the changes in the
distribution of household expenditure among different categories of goods
and services (food, housing, fuel and light, clothing and miscellaneous).
We based our analysis on the information provided by the studies about
standard living conditions of the working classes that were carried in the
thirties for several regions in the world. These studies bring information
about the family expenses on consumption and distribution among groups of
items. We used two types of sources: the Labour Statistics Yearbook of the
International Labour Organization (ILO) –that survey information about
household expenditure for several groups of countries– and national
studies. We focus on consumption patterns as the share of each type of
expenditure on the family budget (in percentage and current prices), as
well as the calories consumed. In addition, we aim to explain different
consumption patterns among regions considering some of the main economic
determinants such as wages, income per capita, prices, demographic
structure and urbanization. The results are consistent with our
theoretical expectations and motivate new hypothesis to be tested in
following steps of this research.
Fredrik Sandgren, Uppsala University, Sweden, ‘An easy sell? The
introduction of a deep frozen food system in Sweden 1945-1970’
Deep frozen food was one of the most
important technological developments when the distribution system was
modernised and rationalised in the post WW2 era. While the technique of
cold storage and transports was developed and used already in the late
19th century, the boom in consumption of deep frozen food relied on the
development of a unbroken distribution chain of frozen food from the
producer to the final consumer, and this development did not take place in
earnest in Europe until the 1940s and 1950s.
Similar to the case of self-service
Sweden was one the prime movers in Europe concerning the development of a
system for deep frozen food. Pioneers such as Findus, producer of
vegetables and berries, started production of deep frozen food already in
the mid 1940s, while the major actors in the grocery trades started
constructing cold stores in the late 1940s.
The real challenge was however to
convince the retailers and the customers (both private and commercial) to
adopt the new technique and the new products and ultimately to install
freezing equipment in the stores and in their homes or in restaurants and
canteens. This development was more gradual over the 1950s and 1960s,
although there was an explosion of the consumption of deep frozen food in
the 1950s.
Similar to the development of
self-service in Sweden, a number of actors was involved in the lobbying
for and also practical development of the system of deep frozen food. One
important actor was the producers of equipment for deep frozen products.
Other actors involved were of course the producers, wholesalers and
retailers of deep frozen food. Trade associations such as the Bureau for
Deep Freezing was linking all above actors with for instance the The Royal
Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, while also the trade associations
of the retailers and wholesalers were active in the development process.
The aim of this paper is to study the
Swedish discussion surrounding the system of deep frozen food 1945-1970. I
will use journals and possibly also business archives from the actors
involved in the discussion. The study will show what arguments for and
possibly also against deep frozen food that was used in order to further
the development of the system of deep frozen food in Sweden.
Werner Scheltjens, University of Groningen, Netherlands, ‘The
distribution of non-essential foodstuffs via the Dutch Republic,
1595-1795’
In this paper, I present a survey of
the distribution patterns of non-essential foodstuffs from the Dutch
Republic to other European destinations, focusing mainly on wine, exotic
fruits, coffee, tea, cacao, sugar and spices. Rather than exploring the
routes that connected the East- and West-Indies, France and the
Mediterranean with the gateways of the Dutch Republic, I will examine what
happened next. For reasons of manageability of the available source
material, the focus will be limited to sea transportation. Thus, the rise
and decline of trade in non-essential foodstuffs will be examined from the
perspective of the Dutch maritime transport sector.
The main questions of this paper are:
What were the next destinations of non-essential foodstuffs arriving in
the Dutch Republic? Who was responsible for transportation to their final
destination? And how did the rise of foreign competition in the
distribution of non-essential foodstuffs affect the Dutch maritime
transport sector?
The first question addresses the
spatial structure of the distribution of non-essential foodstuffs via the
Dutch Republic. The second question focuses on the operational strategies
employed by the maritime distribution sector of the Dutch Republic and
tackles the issue of specialisation vs. flexibility. The third and final
question addresses the longterm effects of growth and decline of trade and
foreign competition on the maritime distribution sector of the Dutch
Republic.
Abundant source material is available
on the topic of this paper, including primary source editions of VOC
archives and Directory Board of Trade with the Levant, secondary
literature on the maritime transport sector in the Dutch Republic and
serial data sources like Dutch-Asiatic Shipping 1595-1795,
Paalgeldregisters of Amsterdam 1771-1817, Danish Sound toll registers
1497-1857 and others.
Jon Stobart, University of Northampton, UK, ‘Novelty, luxury and the
consumption of groceries in eighteenth-century England’
Food has long played an important part
in shaping behaviour and identity, especially in a domestic setting. It
was, for instance, central to hospitality and largesse in the pre-modern
great house and to notions of magnificence or elegance of table. This
links food closely to the kind of conspicuous consumption discussed by
Veblen as characteristic of the leisured classes: the consumption of ‘more
excellent goods’ being evidence of wealth and status. Defining the precise
nature of these goods is problematic, but they included a range of
groceries which Smith and others have identified as luxuries: most notably
sugar and spices.
Food was also associated with social
distinction: taste could be communicated through fashionable food and
novel drinks such as tea, coffee and chocolate. Berg argues that the
pursuit of novelty is intrinsically pleasurable since it stimulates
arousal by providing variety, complexity and surprise. Drinking tea and
coffee afforded novel physical experiences, whilst the wide range of teas
available by the mid eighteenth century provided variety and complexity.
Yet novelty needed to be accommodated within existing norms and practices
of consumption; it had to be ‘recognizable, and tastes developed to
appreciate it’.
In this paper I draw on these ideas to
explore certain aspects of the consumption of groceries in the home. In
particular, I focus on the way in which certain goods were viewed and
consumed as novelties or luxuries. Here, I begin by considering how
novelty might be defined for the individual consumer and how purchases of
groceries might reflect a pursuit of the new. The trickle down of
novelties such as tea and coffee is then examined alongside the strong
continuities that emerge in patterns of consumption. Next, luxury is
explored in terms of exclusivity and, in more nuanced terms, using
Appadurai’s register, as luxuries. Despite the growing availability of
tea, sugar and so on, some consumers were clearly concerned with the
quality of the groceries being purchased, whether as novel items which
could add new experiences or fashionability to their eating and drinking,
or as luxuries which helped to distinguish them in some way from the
common order.
Deborah Toner,
Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London, UK, ‘Closing time for
machismo? Reassessing the gender dynamics of alcohol consumption in
nineteenth-century Mexico’
Anthropological, sociological and
historical studies of drinking in modern Mexican history have focused on
the concept of machismo, which suggests the preponderance of heavy
drinking, chauvinism, aggression and violence as an extreme, though
common, expression of masculinity. Judgements about the prevalence of a
macho culture of alcohol consumption amongst the lower classes, in
particular, emerged from judicial records and newspaper reports that
provide information about social drinking practices from highly negative
viewpoints, since they deal overwhelmingly with the criminal and
destructive aspects of public drunkenness. A deeper analysis of these
sources, however, reveals a much more complex situation, in which the
consumption of alcohol was involved in the construction of a range of
different, contested masculine identities, and in the negotiation of
different models of gender relations at different levels of society in the
nineteenth century.
Drinking together in all male groups
with a similar social background was an important arena for the
consolidation of lower class masculine identity, and it also gave rise to
opportunities for competition for status. However, the presence of women
in public drinking places and their participation in social drinking
practices alongside men was much more common and harmonious than
contemporary observers and studies of machismo would have us believe. In
some instances, men of low social status, and even some women, faced
censure from their own communities, neighbours, and families (and not just
the authorities) for recurrent, irresponsible or socially disruptive
patterns of alcohol consumption, and these cases are highly suggestive of
the predominance, not of a drunken, violent, chauvinistic machismo amongst
the lower orders, but of the expectation that men act as responsible,
respectable, hard-working fathers, husbands, and role models.
Ilias P. Vlachos, Agricultural University of Athens, Greece, ‘The
history of food preference and its effect on production and markets:
evidence from Greek olive oil’
Food preference is a socially
constructed concept in which both consumers and producers define what is
‘good to eat’. Olive oil is unique in Mediterranean region with references
of their production and consumption in Ancient Greece. Olive oil has a
central role in Mediterranean diet becoming a choice of modern consumers.
Consumer food preferences affect
agricultural systems because farmers’ production choices are based on
social needs in addition to variables such as yield and climate.
Therefore, agricultural economy, markets, and supply chains are largely
affected of the social concept of food preference.
First, we define food preference. Then,
we review textual historical, economic, and cultural evidence, to review
the olive oil (and olives) preference from Byzantine period to the
present. We describe the trajectory of olive oil production in Greek
Regions of Messinian, Crete, and Mytilene as well as its relation to food
preference.
In these regions and elsewhere in
Greece, shared ideologies of food preference resulted in a consensus mode
of agricultural production. . From Byzantine to the present, olive oil
supply chain and markets has evolved. Olive oil is marketed either via
informal networks or via formal contracts, such as in the case of
exporting. Even today, about 40% of olive oil in Greece is sold via
friends and informal networks and the remaining is either exported or sold
by commercial companies or agricultural unions.
Health benefits of olive oil have
renewed and refresh the consumer preference. Sustainability and
environmental consensus has created new preferences for sustainable
production.
Ros Watkiss,
University of Wolverhampton, UK, ‘ “Popping to the corner”: grocery
shopping in the post-war Black Country’
Traditionally, for the working classes,
food shopping was a task performed by women on a virtually daily basis, at
corner shops or local markets. In the 1960s the advent of supermarkets,
combined with the accessibility of refrigerators and increasing numbers of
married women in full-time employment, are credited with changing
consumption patterns – affecting the retailer and customer relationship,
frequency of purchasing foodstuff and the length of the shopping journey.
There is a general perception that, between 1950 and the 1970s, shopping
habits underwent a dramatic change as the majority of consumers deserted
local shops in favour of cheaper goods from the ‘self-service’ stores and
supermarkets, which they visited only once or twice a week. However, it
is possible that historians have exaggerated the rate of transformation,
and that the change in shopping habits was not necessarily so marked or
extensive as some have claimed. Oral research within three small Black
Country communities has revealed that the majority of working and
lower-middle class consumers were slow to change their shopping habits,
adhering to pre-war shopping practices into the 1970s. They continued to
patronise local shops, purchasing small amounts of food on a regular
basis. This paper argues that the continuing use of traditional methods
of consumption was due to a combination of long-standing custom, loyalty
to the shopkeeper, the flexibility of payment afforded by the ‘tick’ book
and continuing perceptions that the corner shop remained the social hub of
many communities.
Wendy Williams,
National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland, ‘Varieties to appeal
to every palate’: themes of adventure, exoticism, celebrity and modernity
in biscuit packaging, 1850–1939’
The introduction of industrialisation
to biscuit manufacture in the latter half of the nineteenth century
prompted a hugely accelerated rate of new variety presentation to the
marketplace. In the thirty-two year period from 1858 to 1900 the number of
lines produced by the leading manufacturer increased from forty-three to
four hundred.
Focusing on analysis of labels,
pricelists and other material from the archives of two significant
producers, W&R Jacob & Co in Dublin and Huntley & Palmer in Reading,
supported by secondary sources, this paper considers some of the factors
influencing this dramatic increase in the generation and consumption of
the new food products. The apparent widespread consumer acceptance of, and
demand for these goods and the accretion of a favourable brand value
perception is proposed as an inherited expression of the dominant producer
group’s faith values.
The expansion of the rail network is
considered not only for its influence on production, consumption and
disribution of product but also for its role in triggering the symbolic
association between industrially manufactured biscuits and leisure
pursuits. The extension of themes of symbolic value from travel to
expressions of adventure, exoticism, celebrity and modernity in other
social and cultural fields is charted. Evidence of sustained influences
from the artisan, medical and nautical backgrounds of biscuit making is
attached to both the acceptability of the products and development of
symbolic imagery in labelling.
The study concludes with an appraisal,
from a food sociology perspective, of the role and expression of these
symbolic associations in the proliferation of denaturalised, industrially
manufactured food products and consequently in the formation of a new and
modern visual shorthand for their recognition.
Eva Maria von Wyl,
University of Zurich, Switzerland, ‘Ready to eat! American eating habits
in postwar Switzerland’
Swiss food and eating habits have
changed profoundly in the past 60 years, and the Swiss diet has been
reshaped by globalization, affluence and mass consumption. Also, cooking
has become increasingly quick and effortless due to industrial processing.
Many of the changes and reforms within the Swiss eating habits in the
postwar period originated in the United States, where economy and wealth
had been growing ever since the 1920s.
At the end of World War II, the United
States therefore became a role model for modern consumerism and a new way
of life, the so called “American way of life”. New forms of (mass)
production and (mass) consumption, which were based on improved efficiency
and rationalization, also affected food consumption and eating habits:
convenience foods, ready-to-eat meals and frozen goods now became popular
with both consumers and producers. New, industrially produced foodstuff
meant short and easy preparation for consumers and opened promising new
markets for producers. American influence, and subsequently the concept of
rationalization, can, in fact, be found throughout the entire industrial
food chain, from production, marketing and selling to cooking and eating.
Moreover, American influence, rationalization, and the increasing
popularity of processed foods, can also be identified by considering
common goods such as cola, ice tea, cornflakes, potato chips, ice cream
and chewing gum.
Working on this hypothesis, this paper,
on the one hand, considers the introduction of three distinctive food
products in Switzerland: cornflakes, potato chips, and cola. Each had its
own unique story of “becoming Swiss”. On the other hand, both the impact
of the United States on these chosen examples and the different ways in
which each item became integrated as an everyday food in Switzerland are
examined and discussed.
Richard Yntema, Otterbein University, USA, ‘Brewers, franchising, and
capital intensive brewing in the Dutch Golden Age’
In the 16th and 17th centuries, brewing
was radically transformed into a capital-intensive industry in Holland’s
state-of-the-art brewing centers. While the technological and
institutional changes that underlay this transition have been examined in
the literature, little attention has been directed to exploring the
distribution channels Holland’s brewers developed that were both a
prerequisite for, and a consequence of, large-scale, capital intensive
brewing.
This paper argues that the creation and
development of distribution networks, including early forms of franchising
and the tied trade, played a critical role in the growth of Holland’s
export brewing centers from the late fifteenth century through the Dutch
Golden Age. The paper analyzes the complex and varied distribution
channels employed by individual export brewers in Haarlem and Rotterdam in
the 17th century, since it is only then that the surviving notarial and
probate evidence allows us to examine in detail critical questions
regarding how individual brewers distributed their beer. The paper
details the distribution channels used by brewers; the geographic extent
of brewers’ distribution networks; the contractual terms between brewers
and wholesalers and distributors; and, the amount of capital brewers
invested in beer distribution.
While franchising and the tied trade
developed in Holland’s brewing industry for many of the same reasons it
did elsewhere, they developed in Holland much earlier on than is generally
recognized in the literature. In his study of England’s brewing industry
in the 18th century, Peter Mathias for instance claims that the
development of the tied trade was unique to England and was not practiced
in continental Europe or in the Americas. While the portraits of
Holland’s leading brewers, including those painted by Hals and Rembrandt,
might suggest that these entrepreneurs built their fortunes on their own;
this paper shows that their success required the cooperation of extensive
distribution networks. |
