livestock « The Junto

In February 2017, our colleagues at Nursing Clio issued a call for a series on nutrition, resulting in a variety of posts on nutrition, food, and hunger over the several months that followed. This call aims to build on that work by focusing specifically on Vast Early America. The co-editors (Carla Cevasco and Rachel Herrmann) welcome posts spanning the fifteenth thru mid-nineteenth centuries that cover a broadly defined Atlantic World. Topics might include (but are not limited to) agriculture, cookbooks, diplomacy, foodways, hunting, livestock, medicinal recipes, markets, pharmacopeias, dietetics, single-commodity foodstuffs, and warfare. Posts should be between 750 and 1,500 words; footnotes are strongly encouraged. We also recommend reading our contribution guidelines. Please send posts to both email addresses (Carla.Cevasco@rutgers.edu and HerrmannR@cardiff.ac.uk) by March 15, 2019. We will aim to respond by early April with an eye toward running this series in late April and early May.

Today, The Junto welcomes guest poster Charlotte Carrington-Farmer, Assistant Professor of History at Roger Williams University. Her current research focuses on framing dissent, deviance, and crime in early America in a wider Atlantic World context.

Image via Ann Holst and Pettaquamscutt Historical Society, Kingston, Rhode Island

Once considered a breed of “no beauty,” the Narragansett Pacer moved fast enough for an 18^th-century rider to cover 50-60 miles a day of rocky New England ground. As a natural pacer, its backbone moved through the air in a straight line without inclining the rider from side to side. Bred in and named for a southern community of coastal Rhode Island, the story of Narragansett Pacer horse is tightly entwined with the history of the early slave trade. Throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries, these horses were traded for rum, sugar and slaves. Often, the horses were raised by slaves on the plantations of Narragansett, then shipped around the Atlantic World to work on sugar plantations alongside other slaves. Continue reading →