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''The glories of empire — and Britain’s taste for the exotic'', Katrina Gulliver
Imagine yourself a middle-class person in England in the 1870s. You sit down to drink a cup of tea while reading The Spectator. It probably doesn’t cross your mind, but in your hand, you hold products from around the world. Your tea is from Ceylon, the sugar in it from Jamaica, and your porcelain cup was made in China. Your afternoon refreshment is the culmination of global trade developed over centuries.
Over 300 years, British appetites grew to include Newfoundland salt cod, Indian pepper, Caribbean rum, South African citrus and New Zealand lamb. Each advance in farming technology and shipping speed brought more variety into Britain’s pantries.
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This afternoon, when you sit down to drink your cup of Darjeeling tea, sweetened with Madagascar sugar, you might also eat an almond croissant, made with French wheat, Spanish almonds and Danish marzipan (or if you are at a more trendy café, maybe toast with Mexican avocado). Unlike your 1870s counterpart, you have a dizzying array of food imports to buy, thanks to air travel and refrigeration. At dinner, you might be served a seafood salad, featuring Vietnamese prawns and Peruvian asparagus.
It is hard to imagine our diets without international links, while things we imagine as domestic were once new arrivals. Nor is this unique to Britain: the Italians once cooked without tomatoes, and the Indians without potatoes and chilis, before these plants were brought from the Americas. So raise a glass of Californian Chardonnay or South Australian Grenache to the traders, the marketers and the innovators, who gave us the cornucopia of food we have today.
[see full article here]
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