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The Food of the Plantation Slaves of Jamaica by Tony Talburt 70 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #04-0244; ISBN 1-4120-2416-1; US$11.50, C$14.50, EUR9.50, £7.00 A simple and concise book about the eating habits and foods of the plantation slaves of Jamaica.
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About the Book
This is a rare and unusual book in that its main focus is centred upon the examination of a large range of eye witness accounts into the lives of Jamaican slaves. What gives this book its distinctive feature is its emphasis on the foods and eating habits of the Jamaican slaves. Drawing upon numerous primary documents, and not withstanding an academic approach throughout, Dr Talburt provides a simple and concise description of an important aspect of Jamaican history. The book focuses upon the varieties of sources from which slaves could obtain their food. These include purchases in the slave markets, crab catching as well as foods from their own provision grounds. The other two main chapters of the book focus upon some of the popular foods eaten by the slaves and also how and when these foods were prepared. The entire study takes place within the context of the sugar plantation system of Jamaica. This book will be particularly useful for students of Caribbean and Jamaican history and the general public who seek to understand more about some aspects of the Jamaican people and their traditional foods.
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About the Author
Dr Tony Talburt has lectured at Fircroft and Bournville Colleges in Birmingham, Walsall College as well as Birmingham University, in African and Caribbean Studies. He has particular research interests in Caribbean politics and history. Talburt was born in England of Jamaican parents and lived in Jamaica for nearly 15 years between 1974-1988. He completed his Cert Ed at Excelsior Community College in Kingston Jamaica and later gained his B.A. degree in history and social sciences from the University of the West Indies in Jamaica in 1987. He gained his M.A in International studies from the University of Warwick (1991) and a PhD from South Bank University in 2001 based on an examination of Caribbean development within the context of the Lomé Conventions
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Sample Excerpts
Introduction
This book examines an important theme in the lives of Jamaican slaves. Whilst there have been numerous studies on Caribbean and Jamaican slavery, very few of these have focused on food. Therefore, this book makes a significant departure by discussing how the slaves on the sugar plantations of Jamaica obtained, prepared and consumed their food. It concentrates on the period from 1750 to the abolition of slavery in Jamaica (and the rest of the British Caribbean) in 1834. The study argues that much of the methods of cooking, the type of foods eaten, as well as the eating utensils and meal times were all influenced in part by the nature of the plantation system that prevailed under slavery. As will also become clear, It was a unique blend of practices from Europe and Africa that helped to influence the history and cultural patterns associated with the foods that came to be eaten by the majority of Jamaican slaves.
Given the scope of this book and the obvious restrictions due to its small size, there are inevitably going to be more questions raised than can be possibly answered. This is all the more reason for being clear, from the outset, as to the specific focus that is adopted. Not only does the book concentrate specifically upon the foods eaten in Jamaica, its main emphasis is set within an eighty-four year period. It is, therefore, first and foremost an historical study drawing largely upon a range of eyewitness accounts and some secondary material pertaining to this period. As a consequence, the relationships between European plantation owners and African slaves receive particular attention. The book does not examine the influences of East Indian culture and foods upon contemporary Jamaican culture. Neither is there any attempt to examine aspects of contemporary Jamaican cooking.
There are three main reasons that gave rise to this study. The first centred on the present practices and customs with regard to eating habits in Jamaica. The second reason has to do with the relative paucity of information in much of the literature on this particular subject area. The third justification is to help clarify some of the misconceptions about the origin of some popular Jamaican foods.
With regard to the first point, a casual observation of contemporary Jamaican society and culture would note the almost religious-like regularity and customs pertaining to the nature of Sunday dinner. From about midday on Sundays a customary feature of many households all over Jamaica, for those who can afford it, is the aroma of fried chicken. Later in the afternoon, It would almost be certain that rice and peas with chicken would be served for dinner. This gave rise to the obvious questions, why rice and peas and why on a Sunday? Another question centred on the fact that a good deal of Jamaican food (especially in the rural areas) tended to consist of 'hard' starchy ground provisions. Although this book does not attempt to answer all these questions pertaining to food, these were, nonetheless the initial issues that stimulated interest in this general area of study.
The second reason for engaging in this study is due to the general paucity of information available in many of the historical studies on the food the Jamaican slaves. When much of this research was initially conducted in 1986-1987, there was very little material that dealt exclusively with the subject of food. Whilst some of the historical accounts of Caribbean slaves made reference to their food, more often than not, these tended to consist of a few paragraphs. There is still a need for more work to be done to begin to redress this imbalance of information. Parry's call for action over half a century ago has still not been adequately taken up. He argued that whilst there is an 'abundance of material on the crops grown in the Caribbean that were exported to Europe, the story of crops grown to feed the West Indians has still to be written' (Parry, 1951, p.29).
One notable exception to this generalisation was Parry's own work (1951) on the introduction of food crops into Jamaica. Here, Parry discussed the main reasons why certain foods were introduced into the island in the 18th century. Christine Mackie's book on food of the Caribbean also provides an excellent overview of popular foods as well as some of the history and customs associated with them. Mackie has also discussed some of the main foods eaten by Jamaicans (Mackie, 1995, pp.66-105). Whilst this work draws upon data from some original historical sources in order to account for many of the foods and the customs behind them, its main aim is not to focus exclusively on the period of slavery.
In the main, this present book, much like large sections of Mackie's work, relied heavily upon the writings of people who lived and wrote during the period of slavery such as Edward Long (1774); Monk Lewis (1816-1818); Bryan Edwards (1819) and Alexander Barclay (1826). Even though there has been renewed interest in the social and cultural experiences of the slaves from leading Caribbean historians such as Brathwaite (1971); Patterson (1973) and Higman (1984), the subject of food has not been a major topic of investigation. This study is important as it demonstrates that the slaves were able to use their ingenuity and struggle to survive on meals very often constituted of poor quality food or lacking animal protein in the form meat or fish.
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