History: Reviews of New Books | 2021
Twarog, Emily E. LB., Politics of the Pantry: Housewives, Food, and Consumer Protest in Twentieth-Century America
Abstract
and Co. 1856], 282). Herrmann approaches the subject of hunger among the various Indian nations from a different perspective than most scholars. The book breaks new ground in this regard, dealing specifically with the manner in which these peoples dealt with the shortage of traditional sources of nourishment. Previous volumes on the subject of the War of American Independence and the Native American population only mention the impact of hunger in passing, if at all. When it is dealt with, it is through the eyes of colonial officials and officials of the new United States. Even the highly regarded Colin Calloway, in his monograph The American Revolution in Indian Country (Cambridge University Press 1995), offers a chapter titled “Fort Niagara: The Politics of Hunger in a Refugee Community,” that explores the problems experienced by British officials and the cost thus incurred, rather than the underlying strategies employed by the Iroquois. Herrmann’s volume, uniquely, offers a Native narrative. The perspectives of the Creek, Iroquois, and Cherokee leaders are not directly available in documentary sources. These views were not recorded in writing by these individuals. The decisions must be interpreted through the correspondence of British colonial officials and American officials and through other official documents, all mined extensively by Herrmann. These same records have also been employed by other scholars, who took the assessments of the colonial and US principals at face value. In No Useless Mouth, an analysis of the types of food typically consumed by Native populations, Native customs and traditions for dealing with famine, and the records of foodstuffs distributed have led the author to a very different interpretation than those of Calloway, Richard Blackmon in The Dark and Bloody Ground (Westholme Publishing 2012), or even the strategic assessment in Eliot Cohen’s Conquered into Liberty (Free Press 2011). Neither the traditional interpretations nor Herrmann’s appraisals are necessarily more correct, but this new narrative does offer a new understanding of the issues. Herrmann also explores the impact of enslaved black populations using these same constructs surrounding hunger. The discussion does begin with a somewhat jarring assertion that might superficially seem credible. The proposition that, “White rebel colonists ... were relatively useless at producing food without enslaved labor” (93) sounds reasonable for a colony like South Carolina, in which the enslaved population outnumbered the free population by more than two to one. A closer look at contemporaneous sources and other analyses reveals that half the free white population did not own slaves; that many owned only one or two slaves; and that the largest proportion of slaves, living under the worst conditions, were employed in raising cash crops. In the case of South Carolina, the labor of two-thirds of the slaves was dedicated to raising rice or indigo for export. (See, for example, Lawrence Henry Gipson’s The British Empire before the American Revolution, Volume II, The Southern Plantations [Claxton Printers 1936], 165–89; John Drayton, A View of South Carolina as Respects Her Natural and Civil Concerns [W.P. Young 1802], 102–104, 115–48.) The assertion becomes more questionable the further north the colony. This point aside, however, Herrmann provides a thought-provoking description of the manner in which these enslaved peoples served as “victual warriors,” in her evocative turn of phrase (90–93). The final analytical segment of the volume considers the changes wrought by the establishment of the United States. Foodand hunger-related dynamics are explored for both Native populations that remained within the boundaries of the new country and for formerly enslaved populations that emigrated. The latter case is, perhaps, the most compelling and well-sourced portion of this monograph, particularly the dynamics of settlements on the African continent. Rachel Herrmann has offered us a unique reinterpretation of the dynamics between various population groups in colonial America during the time of the War of Independence, as well as the legacies of those interactions, all through the lens of food and hunger. The book opens new ground, merging the study of the history of food with the history of the revolutionary era in America and beyond. Though pitched to a specialist audience, the prose is accessible and the subject engaging for anyone interested in the era or, more broadly, in innovative interpretations of history when undertaken from differing perspectives.