Roundtable Conclusion: Food and Hunger in Vast Early America

June 21, 2019 By Rachel Herrmann in Roundtables Tags: Animals, food, Hunger, legal history, Poison, Starvation, Technology, violence, Vocabulary 1 Comment

Today, Rachel Herrmann concludes our food roundtable. You can read Carla Cevasco’s introduction here, Zachary Bennett’s post here, Bertie Mandelblatt’s here, and Rachel Winchcombe’s here. We hope we gave you some things to think about.

This week I spent three days reading three books, and I watched these posts go out into the world while thinking about my comps. I remember my comps year as the year of graduate school when I was more stressed than I can ever recall feeling, for such a protracted period of time, in my life.[1] But I think that it was the state of food history in 2009-10, when I was reading for my comps, that contributed to this feeling of panic.

I don’t mean the state of food studies; that discipline was already healthily expanding. I mean food history. I found comprehensive exams stressful because I knew that I wanted most to speak to early Americanists and early Atlanticists (and I think the distinction was more pronounced back then), but I was not convinced that there were very many early American food histories. There were food histories on other periods and other geographies; there were food studies books on single commodities like sugar and chicken and interdisciplinary food studies collections with foundational essays on method; there was some relevant work on alcohol, and on animals; and it felt like there was no roadmap for my dissertation.[2] Continue reading →

Food and Friendship in Early Virginia

June 20, 2019 By Carla Cevasco in Food and Hunger, Roundtables, Vast Early America Tags: emotions, food, friendship, Jamestown, Native Americans, vastearlyamerica, violence, Virginia 2 Comments

The final post in the Roundtable on Food and Hunger in Vast Early America is by Rachel Winchcombe, a cultural historian of early modern England and America. She joined the University of Manchester in September 2017 as a Lecturer in Early Modern History. Alongside her teaching, Rachel is currently developing a new research project, provisionally titled ‘Emotional Eating in the Early American Colonies’. This project explores the interplay between diet and emotion in English accounts documenting dietary change in the early American colonies. Our food roundtable began on Monday. You can read Carla Cevasco’s introduction here, Zachary Bennett’s post here, and Bertie Mandelblatt’s here.

A few weeks ago, my ten-year-old nephew earnestly declared, “Rachel, sometimes meat makes me really happy!” Whilst this made me laugh, I could not deny the sincerity of the kid, or the veracity of his statement. After all, we all recognise the power of food to improve our mood and to provide comfort in times of sadness and heartache. For our early modern forebears, I would argue that this emotional aspect of food was no less powerful. In this post I will explore one facet of the emotional power of food, illustrating how it had the potential to irrevocably alter Anglo-Indigenous relations in early Virginia.[1] March 1622 marked a watershed moment in the history of the early Anglo-American settlements. On March 22, the indigenous population launched a devastating attack on the English settlements. In its aftermath, hundreds of English colonists were left dead, and a number of settlements razed to the ground. The attack also, unsurprisingly, resulted in the breakdown of positive emotional relationships between the English and the indigenous population, relationships that I will argue had been constructed around food exchange and commensality in the wake of the First Anglo-Powahatan War of 1609-1614.[2] Continue reading →

Q&A with Sowande’ Mustakeem

January 11, 2017 By Rachel Herrmann in Interview, Review / Q&A, Special Features Tags: Archives, First Books, Gender, Maritime history, research, Slavery, Sowande' Mustakeem, Terror, violence, writing 2 Comments

This is an interview with Sowande’ Mustakeem, who is an Assistant Professor in the departments of History and African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Today she speaks with The Junto about her book, Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage, which Casey Schmitt reviewed yesterday. Her previous work has appeared in journals such as Atlantic Studies and the Journal of African American History, and edited volumes such as Understanding and Teaching American Slavery, Teaching Lincoln: What Every K-12 Student Needs to Know, and Gender, Race, Ethnicity, and Power in Maritime America. Continue reading →

Call for Guest Contributors on the Black Atlantic, c. 1400-1860

October 30, 2016 By The Junto Moderator in Administrative Tags: Atlantic History, Black Atlantic, Call for contributors, Call for Papers, Diaspora, Guest Posts, historical memory, memory, Public History, Recent scholarship, Slavery, teaching, violence 1 Comment

Calling all contributors!

December 12-16, 2016. The Junto will host an online roundtable on new scholarship and historical themes that enhance our understanding of slavery and the Black Atlantic, c. 1400-1860. We welcome posts that approach these topics through a focus including—but not limited to—recent scholarship, teaching, public history, or historical memory. Continue reading →

“Terrorism” in the Early Republic

January 6, 2016 By Jonathan Wilson in Commentary Tags: Federalism, France, French Revolution, newspapers, Republicanism, terrorism, violence 12 Comments

Late last week, Americans learned about an armed takeover of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon. It was initiated by a group of men who have an idiosyncratic understanding of constitutional law and a sense that they have been cheated and persecuted by the United States government. The occupation comes during a time of general unease about national security and fairness in policing. As a result, some critics have been calling the rebels “domestic terrorists,” mostly on hypothetical grounds. One of their leaders, on the other hand, told NBC News that they see themselves as resisting “the terrorism that the federal government is placing upon the people.”

I do not propose to address the Oregon occupation directly. However, since the topic keeps coming up lately, this seems like a good opportunity to examine the roles the word terrorism has played in other eras. As it turns out, Americans have been calling each other terrorists a long time.

Continue reading →

Revisiting Red Jacket, alias Cow Killer

September 28, 2015 By Rachel Herrmann in From the Archives Tags: American Revolution, Christopher Densmore, Cows, Creatures of Empire, Domesticated animals, Iroquois, Native Americans, Red Jacket, violence, Virginia Anderson, Warfare 8 Comments

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Lately I’ve been thinking about names and what they mean. The Seneca orator Red Jacket had several of them. Red Jacket lived on the Buffalo Creek reservation, and according to Christopher Densmore, he was less influential than other leaders—though his name increasingly appears in council speeches in the 1780s and 1790s.[1] U.S. Indian commissioner Timothy Pickering recorded his Seneca name as “Saco-que-y-wan-tau,” translating as “Sleeper Wake up.”[2] Usually Red Jacket seems to appear in the records as Red Jacket—but I am interested in a fourth name. According to most historians Red Jacket’s alias, Cow Killer, was derogatory, meant to tease him for “his distinct disinclination to fight during the American Revolution.”[3] Continue reading →

Guest Post: A Series of Fortunate Events: Navigating the Eighteenth-Century World with George Galphin

September 4, 2015 By Christopher F. Minty in Guest Posts, Research Tags: British Empire, colonial America, connections, Creeks, David Library of the American Revolution, Eighteenth Century, Eighteenth-century history, Escotchaby, George Galphin, Georgia, historiography, History, Indians in the American Revolution, Ireland, Metawney, Native Americans, Recent scholarship, Sempoyaffee, Sir William Johnson, sociability, social networks, southern history, violence 16 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Bryan Rindfleisch, Assistant Professor of History at Marquette University. Bryan received his Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma, in 2014, where he specialized in early American, Native American, and Atlantic world history. His book manuscript focuses on the intersections of colonial, Native, imperial, and Atlantic histories, peoples, and places in eighteenth-century North America.

It’s inevitable. At some point, a friendly conversation about my research—with family and friends, colleagues, students, or even a random stranger at the local coffee shop—will take an unfortunate turn. All it takes is that one question: “Who is George Galphin?” Continue reading →

The American Revolution: People and Power

May 22, 2015 By Tom Cutterham in Conferences Tags: American Revolution, Conference, French Revolution, Huntington Library, violence 6 Comments

huntington-gate It’s increasingly clear that, while the era of grand syntheses may be over, there will be no shortage of provocative new work on the American Revolution. Last week the Huntington Library hosted the third major conference on the revolution in as many years, following those organised by the McNeil Centre in 2013 and the Massachusetts Historical Society back in April. The American Revolution: People and Power may have been smaller than its two predecessors, but what it lacked in scale it made up for in intellectual focus and cohesion. In this post, rather than giving a straightforward recap, I’ll report what I took away as the headlines. Continue reading →

The Great Moose Massacre

December 8, 2014 By Mark Boonshoft in From the Archives Tags: Animals, colonial history, Georgia, New England, Print Culture, violence 1 Comment

Southern Connecticut is not exactly moose country. So I had to hide my disbelief when one day my boss claimed that he sat in traffic after a car hit a moose on the Merritt Parkway. How lost would a moose have to be to find itself in suburban Connecticut? Turns out, my boss told the truth. I welcomed any distraction from that boring summer job and followed this story pretty intently. It was a sad story—the moose had to be put down after the accident—but also a memorable one. I thought so at least. (Anytime I give someone directions to take the Merritt, I still warn them to watch for moose). The accident received a bit of coverage in local newspapers, while some outlets reprinted the AP coverage.[1] Every so often a reporter discovers the story when they learn that Connecticut is home to a sizable moose population.[2] Mostly, though, the story is forgotten. Continue reading →

The Problem of Southern Indians’ Allegiance in the American Revolution

December 5, 2014 By Rachel Herrmann in From the Archives, Historiography Tags: American Revolution, Cherokees, Creeks, Deep South, Native Americans, violence 2 Comments

So you know what’s hilarious? Trying to revise your dissertation into a book during the semester. I will admit that I am in the middle of editing my worst dissertation chapter, and am yelling out of a metaphorical pit of despair that’s been dug by a combination of bad prose and end-of-the-semester angst. Part of these struggles have to do with the fact that even after writing the chapter, submitting it, and defending it, I’m still not really sure what this chapter’s argument needs to say. This problem is directly tied to the fact that I found (and continue to find) myself befuddled by late-eighteenth-century Southern Indian affairs. So many factions! So much switching of sides! So many different ways I manage to mis-type Scots-Creek go-between Alexander McGillivray’s last name![1] Continue reading →