Diet for a Large Planet: Industrial Britain, Food Systems, and World Ecology 9780226705965

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Diet for a Large Planet

Diet for a Large Planet

Industrial Britain, Food Systems, and World Ecology

Chris Otter

The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2020 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2020 Printed in the United States of America 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20

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ISBN-13: 978-0-226-69710-9 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-70596-5 (e-book) DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226705965.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Otter, Chris (Christopher James), author. Title: Diet for a large planet : industrial Britain, food systems, and world ecology / Chris Otter. Description: Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019046573 | ISBN 9780226697109 (cloth) | ISBN 9780226705965 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Diet—Great Britain—History—19th century. | Diet—Great Britain—History—20th century. | Food consumption—Great Britain—History. | Nutrition—Great Britain—History. | Food supply—Great Britain—History. | Human ecology—Great Britain—History. | Human ecology—History. Classification: LCC TX360.G7 O88 2020 | DDC 363.80941—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019046573 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48– 1992 (Permanence of Paper).

For Tina

Contents

Introduction

1

1.

Meat

21

2.

Wheat

48

3.

Sugar

72

4.

Risk

101

5.

Violence

132

6.

Metabolism

167

7.

Bodies

193

8.

Earth

222

9.

Acceleration

259

Acknowledgments

273

Notes

275

Index

399

Introduction

The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 millions took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts. —Mahatma Gandhi, “Discussion with a Capitalist” (1928) I think it could be plausibly argued that changes of diet are more important than changes of dynasty or even of religion. —George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)

“

F

ood systems have the potential to nurture human health and support environmental sustainability,” announces the report of the 2019 EATLancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems. “However,” it continues portentously, “they are currently threatening both.”1 The commission’s second report outlines today’s “global syndemic” of obesity, undernutrition, and climate change.2 Diets “high in calories, added sugars, saturated fats, processed foods, and red meats” are causing surging rates of metabolic disorders, greenhouse gas emissions, and extinction.3 These reports are the latest in a series of studies arguing that giant global food systems and meat-rich diets are inching us toward crisis. The 2014 UN Report on the Right to Food concluded that global food systems are causing dangerous levels of phosphate and nitrate leaching, soil erosion, and greenhouse gas emissions.4 Tim Lang, a professor of food policy at City University, London, put it bluntly in 2009: “The world cannot eat as the United States or UK eats.” “There are,” he argues, “not enough planets to feed the world with the volume or range enjoyed by Americans or Europeans.”5 The language of “not enough planets” echoes Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet (1971), which firmly blamed a diet rich in meat 1

2

Introduction

and refined carbohydrates for manifold environmental and health problems. Lappé urged people to eat “low on the food chain” and touted the revolutionary potential of a plant-based diet. She also firmly blamed the emergent food crisis on the post-1945 American world food system, which had helped “create a world of hamburger and wheat bread lovers.”6 Dramatic change in planetary food systems, the UN and EAT-Lancet reports agree, is a consequence of tremendous shifts in the global economy, technology, and geopolitics over the past fifty years.7 This global dietary transition aligns neatly with the proposed 1945 birth of the Anthropocene and the “Great Acceleration,” a historical phase when “every indicator of human activity underwent a sharp increase in rate.”8 Acceleration is real. Global rates of meat consumption are rising, as are the rates at which food systems devour nitrogen, water, and fossil fuels. If we are to understand such acceleration, however, we must explore how such food systems were formed and how and why diets rich in meat, wheat, and sugar became so cheap and desirable. To understand the logic behind Lappé’s “diet for a small planet,” we need to understand how a “diet for a large planet,” with little regard for ecological limits, was created in the first place. Almost all humans who have ever lived have eaten predominantly locally produced, plant-based food. The diet for a small planet is the historical norm, not the exception. Abandoning this small-planet diet was one of the most fateful processes in our planetary history. This book argues that, in order to understand the deeper history of today’s global food situation, it is necessary to explore post-1800 Britain. The British world food system usually makes little more than a passing appearance in histories aiming to comprehend today’s compound food crisis.9 Diet for a Large Planet contends that, more than anywhere else, Britain laid the foundations for contemporary food systems. It was the nineteenth century’s dominant world power, controlling immense global resources, and creating long-distance food chains to supply vast quantities of meat, wheat, and sugar. Its precocious industrialization, urbanization, and population growth, combined with abundant fossil fuels, a vast empire, and liberal political economy, created the conditions under which the idea of using the entire planet as a food source became thinkable, viable, and systemically embedded. The “Western diet”— rich in animal proteins, processed grains, and sugar— became inseparably associated with power and progress. The British diet appears less an object of ridicule than something worthy of serious, critical historical inquiry. This book does not assume any kind of firm break dividing past from present. Many of the phenomena it studies— atherosclerosis, the anthropogenic

Introduction

3

nitrogen cycle, food processing, meat love, metabolic disorders, tooth decay, economic development, climate change— have no precise point of emergence. They unfold slowly within bodies and across planetary space. Their effects are incremental and cumulative, and they take decades, even centuries, to become fully apparent. They cannot be straightforwardly categorized as belonging to modernity, the Anthropocene, or the Great Acceleration. The focus, instead, is on food systems as material, spatial, and temporal phenomena. These systems connect animals and plants, laborers and consumers, agricultural technology and transport, information networks and processing plants, eating habits and dietary desires. They did not emerge fully formed. Constructing them was hard and sometimes violent. As they became established, the arrangements between these various elements created what Keller Easterling has called “disposition.” British food systems formed a massive, semioccluded set of infrastructures disposed toward increasing fossil-fuel and fertilizer use, rising consumption of meat and processed foods, inequalities of consumption, and emergent health issues. Another important concept is that of the “multiplier.”10 When systemic elements are multiplied, their effects become recursive. A planet with 1.5 million cows is one thing, a planet with 1.5 billion quite another. Many seemingly trivial new technologies— roller mills, hydrogenated fats, milk chocolate, tractors— have tremendous long-term multiplying effects on human populations when articulated within large-scale food systems. Over time, such systems acquired what Thomas Hughes called “momentum”: they come to have “mass, velocity, and direction.”11 Reversing their course appears increasingly difficult. They appear autonomous and inescapable. Eating large quantities of meat, wheat, and sugar became remarkably easy, even effortless. The bodily and ecological effects of this diet became harder to escape. These three concepts— disposition, multiplication, momentum— help explain the enduring influence of the British food systems discussed in this book. The remainder of this introduction outlines four key aspects of these systems: outsourcing and distance; meat, wheat, and sugar; power and violence; and ecological costs. These general themes are explicated in much greater detail in the rest of the book, demonstrating how today’s multifaceted food crisis has a deeper history than we might imagine.

THE LARGE-PLANET PHILOSOPHY Urban development has always necessitated command of agrarian hinterland and the mobilization of food across distance. Some ancient cities, like

4

Introduction

Rome, drew basic resources from overseas via tightly coordinated supply chains. During the medieval and early modern periods, the growing power of multiple imperial cores— Portugal, Russia, the Netherlands, China— was expressed through the exploration and control of more distant agrarian zones.12 The province of Holland imported grain from at least 1350, while sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Dutch commercial power utilized large quantities of Polish land and labor and large numbers of fluyt ships.13 The Netherlands became “much more than marginally dependent on foreign grain,” and, by the seventeenth century, around one-third of Holland’s grain was produced from heavily cerealized overseas landscapes.14 By 1300, London’s grain came from as far afield as eastern Oxfordshire, and, by the later sixteenth century, the city had a well-developed coastal grain trade.15 Although Britain was largely dietarily self-sufficient in the seventeenth century, it became reliant on Baltic and eastern European imports thereafter, a phenomenon most evident in the urbanizing parts of England.16 The English also practiced “internal outsourcing,” using Scotland and Ireland as a contiguous agrarian hinterland, and they drew salt cod and sugar from their Atlantic commodity frontiers.17 By the 1790s, population growth was straining domestic resources, and, during the Revolutionary Wars, Britain suffered from food shortages and rising prices.18 What happened next was not predetermined. There was nothing inevitable about the radical shift to outsourcing that followed. Fredrik Albritton Jonsson has shown how in the late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth many influential figures proposed more ecologically cautious and autarkic systems: cultivating wastelands, growing new crops, or encouraging emigration.19 While the naturalist Joseph Banks was cautiously supportive of using imperial territory for staple production, he expressed mercantilist concerns about capital leaving Britain to purchase food.20 Malthus was apprehensive about food imports and worried that rising meat consumption would undermine British self-sufficiency.21 The consequences of growing Europe’s grain in America, he said, “ought justly to be dreaded” and would produce evanescent prosperity, culminating in “a long period of retrograde movements and misery.”22 In 1791, John Sinclair argued: “If we cannot supply ourselves with bread we are not an independent nation.” Free trade was an unpatriotic Pandora’s box from which would cascade insecurity, unscrupulous mercantile profits, and “an almost perpetual scarcity of grain.” Protection and high prices, conversely, encouraged more productive agriculture.23 In 1801, James Anderson described grain importation as “insanity,” adding: “What wickedness ought it not to be deemed in any man or body of men, to contrive plans, and adopt measures that have a direct tendency

Introduction

5

to render us dependent on other nations for our support!!”24 Six years later, the anti-Smithian William Spence evoked Berkeley’s notion of a “wall of brass” surrounding Britain in urging independence from international commerce.25 Other parts of the world, facing similar problems, made different choices. Japan, for example, pursued a considerably more self-sufficient pretwentieth-century trajectory.26 These views, however, became marginalized over the nineteenth century. Steven Kaplan has argued that the dismantling of what he calls this “subsistence mentality” was a monumental collective transformation, at the psychological, economic, and political levels.27 That dismantling involved abandoning the fears of Sinclair, Anderson, and Malthus and embracing an opposing argument: that opening Britain to free flows of food from overseas would power industrialization and progress. The political economist Robert Torrens urged that importing grain would generate lower domestic food prices and overseas markets for manufactured goods.28 The result would be “a mutually beneficial territorial division of employment” between industrializing Britain and its manifold dispersed agricultural provinces.29 This was a highly historical and frequently willfully conjectural reading of political economy, one that routinely evoked the Dutch model and suggestions that Britain could develop this system much further.30 Another political economist, James Wheatley, argued that exploiting long-distance agricultural surpluses was a revival of ancient Roman practice, terminating “the long and despotic reign of the theory of the balance of trade,” although critics suggested that Roman outsourcing presaged decay and collapse.31 With the Dutch and Romans as models, the focus was on boundless exchange, which would cover the globe just as the globe itself converged on the Great Exhibition.32 This model was not imperial: there was no Seeley-style unity of “blood and religion.”33 It was structured by what I call “the largeplanet philosophy.” By this I mean the premise that the entire earth was a potential source of material wealth and capital investment. As Mill observed, England “no longer depends on the fertility of her own soil to keep up her rate of profits, but on the soil of the whole world.”34 Britain’s “overflowing capital” moved easily around the world to fund agricultural infrastructure: between just 1907 and 1913, Britain invested over a billion pounds overseas.35 An anonymous 1899 writer argued: “The English people nowadays keep . . . many of their fields, factories, mines, railways, &c., in foreign countries.”36 Karl Polanyi noted that it was through British political economy that “the industrial-agricultural division of labour was applied to the planet.”37 Classical liberals saw no fundamental problem with the ensuing decline of British agriculture. In 1881, the liberal economist Robert Giffen suggested

6

Introduction

that “it would not be a very bad thing for the country generally” if substantially more land went out of cultivation and was used “for residential purposes.”38 British wheat acreage plummeted. The last remnants of an older, self-sufficient way of life were crumbling.39 This was despite Britain being the world’s most capital-intensive agricultural area.40 Writing in 1951, Erich Zimmermann stated that England was the country that had come closest to presiding over the extinction of agriculture.41 As Joel Mokyr concludes, there is no better historical illustration of the Ricardian concept of comparative advantage: the idea that individual countries “naturally” direct their capital and labor toward what is most beneficial to them.42 The results were spectacular. The quantity of grain and meal imported from Ireland into Britain practically doubled between 1820–24 and 1835– 39, by which time Ireland contributed over 85 percent of England’s imports of grain, meat, butter, and livestock.43 Britain also exploited German, Polish, and Russian wheat supplies and, following the loosening of imported livestock regulations in the 1840s, began importing cattle from the same sources. The critical scalar leap, however, was the exploitation of immense tracts of highly fertile New World and Australasian land. The ensuing “New World windfall,” combined with the rapid adoption of coal, allowed Britain to overcome the threat of scarcity and reach economic takeoff, as Pomeranz has shown.44 The British were effectively using the resources of what Donald Worster calls a “Second Earth.”45 The volume of British food imports rose almost eightfold between 1850– 52 and 1910– 12, by which time they represented around two-fifths of all British imports by value.46 Over four-fifths of bread consumed in Britain came from imported grain by 1909.47 Moreover, a strikingly high proportion of food entering world trade went to Britain, which became “the world’s richest single consumer market for food and raw materials.”48 In 1860, Britain received 49 percent of total Asian, African, and Latin American food exports.49 In 1930, with under 3 percent of the world’s population, Britain imported 99 percent of the world’s exports of ham and bacon, 63 percent of its butter, 62 percent of its eggs, 59 percent of its beef, 46 percent of its cheese, and 28 percent of its wheat and wheat flour.50 Outsourcing was, Avner Offer argues, “Britain’s great economic innovation of the late Victorian period.”51 Some European countries— notably Belgium— followed somewhat similar paths, but none imported on a British scale. There were limits and dead ends: late eighteenth-century schemes to develop commercial agriculture in Sierra Leone, for example, failed.52 Production of some foods remained largely localized, notably potatoes, vegetables, and liquid milk, whose perishability provided “natural protection from foreign competition.”53 Milk products, however, were rapidly out-

Introduction

7

sourced. Factory-made American cheese was already cheaper than British cheddar in the 1860s, and it arrived in Britain in increasing quantities thereafter.54 The age of generic, homogenized Anglo-world cheddar was dawning, facilitated by mass production, pasteurization, and standardized rennet. One 1888 Suffolk observer noted: “Foreign cheese, butter, and condensed milk are distributed in every village.”55 By 1913, following the adoption of the “Lurbrand” trademark, 40 percent of British butter came from Denmark, which was becoming Britain’s “butter, bacon and egg factory.”56 In 1935, Britain produced only 9 percent of its butter and 30 percent of its cheese, while two classic industrialized food products— margarine and condensed milk— also arrived in massive quantities, particularly from the Netherlands.57 In 1935, Astor and Rowntree suggested that such startling levels of imports were the result of a system involving massive overseas investment of British capital and export of manufactured goods.58 Relying on domestic agriculture while increasing standards of living would have been “impossible.”59 They were reflecting on a “uniquely ‘British’ pattern of development”— one combining free trade, falling transportation costs, cheap raw materials, and the creation of an industrialized core— that necessitated multiple distinct world food markets.60 Although the British associated free trade with prosperity, continental farmers had, by the 1870s, learned to associate it with depression.61 By 1900, most European countries, with the exception of Britain, Denmark, Belgium, and Holland, were practicing some form of protection.62 Creating markets in beef, wheat, and sugar required what we now call “agro–food systems,” which were multiscalar assemblages binding disparate elements together into enduring spatial arrangements: prairies, ranches, pastures, steamships, railroads, telegraphs, inspectors, paperwork, refineries, warehouses, wharves, mills, abattoirs, and bakeries. As systems expanded in size and material complexity, managing, monitoring, and standardizing predictable flows of carcasses, grains, and sugar became increasingly challenging. Mechanical handling technologies— overhead rails, band conveyors, derrick elevators, self-emptying railway trucks, automatic scales— made such circulation faster and easier.63 The result was a “networked food economy,” a forbiddingly complex structure through which nutritional matter flowed from its site of production to those of processing, sale, and consumption.64 Food chain management was a coherent practice long before the age of pallets, containers, and food logistics software: without it, comparative advantage would never have escaped the pages of political economy texts, and food systems would never have acquired the momentum necessary to become planetarily consequential. The period 1820–1914 is a vital phase in the very long history of agro–food

8

Introduction

systems, involving a palpable rise in neo-European settler societies providing staples through emergent world markets, using extensive agricultural and technological systems. This system was truly international and multilateral, unlike older European trading monopolies.65 Without it, there would be no post-1945 acceleration. It had no single center, but, because Britain absorbed by some distance the most imported food, it was the most important node in the network. These systems linked British consumers with Danish pig farmers, Indian peasants, New Zealand cheesemakers, and Argentinean ranchers. New World and Australasian systems were commodity frontiers: places where long-accumulated soil fertility, abundant resources, influxes of capital, cheap labor, and tenuous state authority allowed the immensely productive and rapid accumulation of nutriment and capital.66 This was thus a new phase of capitalist frontier expansion, as political economists recognized.67 “Waste lands of the greatest natural fertility,” enthused Adam Smith, “are to be had for a trifle.”68 Such “lands cheap and fresh” or “virgin soil” could be mined as effectively as the Tyneside coalfields whose black diamonds powered agroindustrial Denmark’s creameries and bacon factories.69 Uncultivated land would be improved and rendered productive: economic motives merged with religious imperatives to subdue the earth.70 This catalyzed mass migration, significant amounts of which came from Britain: colonization would restore the balance of population between the industrializing metropolis and its agrarian dominions. Between 1841 and 1900, 25 million people left Europe, mostly for American and Australasian commodity frontiers. From 1870 to 1910, the developed arable area in North America, Argentina, Uruguay, and Australia surged from 82 to 185 million hectares.71 This “Golden Age of resource-based development” increasingly mined vertical frontiers too, devouring iron, guano, coal, coprolites, and petroleum.72 In Ecological Imperialism, Alfred Crosby observed how these neoEuropean commodity frontiers (Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and Uruguay) still produce one-third of all agricultural material crossing international borders. These places are to food, he argued, what the Middle East is to petroleum: surplus zones supplying resource-poor industrialized regions with essential energy inputs.73 Their ratio of biomass production to biomass consumption remains the world’s highest.74 This ratio is rooted in Britain’s food history, which produced commodity frontiers specializing in specific foodstuffs that moved over enormous distances: Canadian wheat, New Zealand mutton, Argentinean beef. “The whole world,” concluded the Royal Statistical Society fellow Stephen Bourne in the mid1870s, could “become tributary to our necessities.”75 Colonial economies became particularly closely linked to Britain, and these connections were

Introduction

9

tightening by the early twentieth century.76 Over 70 percent of South African food exports went to Britain in the 1930s.77 This orientation toward export was exceptional: before 1945, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada collectively exported 45 percent of the wheat, 40 percent of the butter, 46 percent of the cheese, and 78 percent of the mutton entering the world market.78 Smith made free trade in food central to The Wealth of Nations, arguing that government intervention in the food supply caused, rather than prevented, famines and that, if commodities could be procured more cheaply from overseas, then Britain should import them.79 During the nineteenth century, agricultural progressives adhered to this Smithian line. The political economist Richard Whately noted how “rational free agents” responding to price signals kept London fed with machine-like regularity.80 The antiprotectionist James Caird celebrated the fact that there was “no Minister of Agriculture in Great Britain . . . no State flocks, or herds, or horse-breeding establishments, nor any State schools of agriculture.”81 Words were matched by policies. The embargo on live animal importation was lifted in 1842. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846. Trade in other foodstuffs was also liberalizing, culminating in the 1874 repeal of sugar duties.82 The Ricardian model of comparative advantage was practiced, vindicated, and perpetuated. Smithian and Ricardian ideas became interwoven with British identity via the experience of cheap food. As Frank Trentmann argues, cheap food, open markets, and “vibrant civil society” composed Britain’s rational and affective version of freedom, pointedly contrasting “with the militarist path of protectionist countries like Imperial Germany.”83 Britain ostentatiously eschewed what Offer called “new intellectual neo-mercantilism.”84 By rejecting protectionism, the narrative ran, and bravely pursuing free trade, Britain escaped the Hungry Forties and feasted on cheap beef, wheat, and sugar. Who wanted to eat black bread and horse meat, the coarse, repulsive diet of autarky?85 Attempts to reintroduce protectionism failed at visceral, imaginary, and rational levels. As Robert Roberts recalled, a Conservative victory in the 1906 election “would mean the ‘little loaf,’ a Liberal win, the ‘big loaf’”: “These were the politics the poor could understand!”86 Free traders constantly argued that economic liberalism maintained low food prices.87 The agro– food systems connecting Argentinean ranching with British dinner tables produced a “cheap meat regime.”88 Cheap fuel and cheap labor on commodity frontiers brought prices down. Wheat prices fell by around 51 percent between 1871– 75 and 1894– 98.89 Cheap food underpinned rising working-class living standards after 1870 (see fig. 0.1), which undoubtedly contributed to domestic satisfaction and quiescence.90 Food prices were generally lower in urban areas.91 Neoclassical and Keynesian

Figure 0.1. The age of cheap food. Falling commodity prices in the late nineteenth century. From Royal Commission on Agriculture, Minutes of Evidence Taken Before Her Majesty’s Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Subject of Agricultural Depression, 3 vols. (London: HM Stationery Office, 1894), vol. 2.

Introduction

11

economics recognized the essential link between cheap food and European prosperity.92 In Germany, everything but potatoes and liquid milk were more expensive than British food.93 French prices were also more expensive than British ones.94 The point here is not that all food was cheaper but that outsourced foods (meat, wheat, sugar) were. In Britain, liquid milk was relatively expensive and its consumption quite low. Cheapness, however, has many hidden labor, ecological, and physiological costs. “Cheap,” argue Raj Patel and Jason Moore, “is a strategy, a practice, a violence that mobilizes all kinds of work— human and animal, botanical and geological— with as little compensation as possible.”95 Cheapness was integral to the disposition created by food systems: it made certain foods particularly appealing. But, by making more calories available per hour of labor, such systems created the conditions of possibility of vast global inequalities, metabolic disease, and ecological collapse, precisely the object of today’s concerns about food system crisis.

MEAT, WHEAT, AND SUGAR This epochal dietary transformation is often called “the nutrition transition,” although other terms, including “the rise of middling cuisines” and “the dietary revolution,” have been used to equal effect.96 This transition has several salient features. First, an increased percentage of protein intake derives from meat and dairy products. This “meatification” involved a global rise in the human trophic level: humans began eating higher up the food chain.97 Second, wheat— particularly roller-milled wheat— became the dominant grain. Third, fiber intake lowered.98 Fourth, sugar consumption increased steeply. Fifth, the consumption of fat (meat, cheese, butter, margarine) rose significantly. Thus, we see the “erosion of complex-carbohydrate consumption [from] . . . two sides— sugars on one, fats on the other.”99 In the 1880s, fats provided around 22 percent of total British calorie consumption. By 1961, this figure was 41 percent.100 Sixth, this cuisine was industrial, typified by mechanization, processing, and packaging. Seventh, the meat-wheat-sugar complex became increasingly available to everyone, particularly in urban areas.101 With the exception of meat, this diet was very different than the diets humans evolved to digest. In the Upper Paleolithic period, cow’s milk, refined grains, and sugar formed no part of human diets, which consisted of water, vegetables, fruit, nuts, roots, fish, and, occasionally, meat. The nutrition transition is a critical watershed in human nutrition history, equivalent in significance, perhaps, to the Neolithic Revolution itself.102 In every developing, urbanizing part of the globe, the nutrition transition unfolds—

12

Introduction

often rapidly— through the adoption of the carnivorous, saccharized norms of Western capitalist society. Latin America is an excellent example.103 The more urbanized the population, the sweeter and less fibrous its diet becomes. Britain was, after the Netherlands, the first place on earth to undergo the nutrition transition.104 By the early twentieth century, it consumed the most meat and sugar in Europe.105 By 1909– 13, meat, wheat, sugar, and dairy were the four most significant contributors to national food supply, together constituting 76 percent of Britain’s total food energy.106 This is why this book focuses on meat, wheat, and sugar and, to a lesser extent, milk: these were the foods that powered nineteenth- and twentieth-century British bodies. These foods (with the exception of liquid milk) were cheap, outsourced, and produced and distributed through long-distance agro–food systems. Meat— particularly roast beef— had become the British diet’s symbolic heart by at least the early modern period.107 By 1800, this was embodied in the Sunday roast, a “sacred meal,” often the only meal at which families dined together.108 Bacon at breakfast was becoming common among middleclass families by the 1880s.109 “The ‘British breakfast’ has long been a source of national pride at home and a byword abroad,” noted Crawford and Broadley in 1938.110 Heavy British meat consumption was from the early eighteenth century noted by overseas visitors, who often connected it to higher levels of industrial output. Not only was meat consumption high, but the idea that meat was culturally necessary was also pervasive. Britain has, it must be admitted, a long tradition of culinary economy and blandness, surely not helped by long-standing xenophobia toward those eating frogs, snails, “bird’s nest soup, or horse-flesh steak.”111 “[The British] have only three vegetables, and two of them are cabbage,” snarled the American diplomat Walter Hines Page, who also disliked British hairdressers, pens, and newspapers.112 British food also acquired a reputation for being overcooked, with oversimmered stewed meat compared to “gutta-percha.”113 Recipes suggested alarmingly long boiling times for vegetables, although small pans, unreliable heat sources, and tougher vegetables probably produced firmer results than we might predict.114 Historical sources discuss culinary indifference, limited repertoires, and kitchen incompetence.115 The British became Europe’s most avid consumers of prepared foods. Some regional variety persisted. Bread assumed different local shapes from saffron dough cakes in Devon and Cornwall to tea cakes in Yorkshire.116 Cakes and confectionery were routinely named after their region of provenance: Chelsea buns, Bakewell tarts, Eccles cakes, Darlington granny loaf, Jedburgh snails, Everton toffee, Doncaster butterscotch.117 Orwell venerated English biscuits.118 Sweets and crisps appeared in endless innovative shapes

Introduction

13

and flavors. Nonetheless, the momentum of Britain’s food systems meant that the British diet was becoming increasingly homogenized.119 The traditional Scottish oatmeal diet retained its adherents, as one writer pungently asserted: “We back the oatcake and the porridge against all the wheaten messes in the world. We swear by the oatcake and the porridge, the substantial bannock and the brose.”120 But, in early twentieth-century Edinburgh, porridge was falling into “disuse,” and a subsequent Glaswegian study revealed that white bread, jam, and tea had usurped oats.121 Wales underwent a similar transition to tea and “emasculated wheat bread and butter.”122 Irish sugar consumption rose around tenfold per capita between 1859 and 1904.123 One consequence is that contemporary Britain has fewer regional food varieties than other EU countries. In 2005, Italy had 149 foods with protected geographical indication status, France 143, and Britain only 29.124 The momentum of the nutrition transition was first apparent in urban areas. Meat eating was more evident in cities: “As life in England becomes more concentrated in towns, more laborious, and more artificial, animal food must become more and more essential to the population.”125 The same was true of white wheat bread and sugary tea. Urban regions siphoned liquid milk from rural ones. “It is an anomalous and disturbing situation,” noted The Times in 1936, “that the countryside which supplies the nation is no longer able to benefit fully by its own product.”126 Lengthening supply chains made urban food more processed, packaged, and adulterated: junk food was urban, which might explain height disparities between rural and urban areas.127 Although immigrant communities— notably Jews— retained many dietary traditions and imperialism stimulated the incorporation of novel flavors into British cuisine, these were relatively small islands of culinary diversity in an ocean of comforting, bland homogeneity. By this date, the average height of Britons was rising, and diet was contributing to resistance to some infectious diseases, notably tuberculosis. The British diet produced bigger, stronger people. But it also produced increasing heart disease, type-2 diabetes, and obesity, along with morbidities from tooth decay to constipation. Blood sugar and cholesterol accumulated more rapidly in urban veins and arteries.128 Such conditions were palpable by the early twentieth century. The nutrition transition thrust the body into a novel dietary ecology, often characterized as overnutrition, a historically remarkable situation for which we are not evolutionarily equipped. This was a reasonably slow, even imperceptible process historically but a very fast one evolutionarily. As Western human beings increasingly succumbed to degenerative diseases, food generated anxiety and health dilemmas.129 Ancient and non-Western human diets became increasingly appealing: development was,

14

Introduction

for some, actually decay and degeneration. But, as British and, later, American power spread across the world, the contradictory complex of effects associated with a meat-wheat-sugar diet became manifest at larger scales.

POWER While dietary inequality is something of a historical constant, it is always inflected by historically specific power relations. Britain’s world food systems articulated inequality along lines of class, gender, race, and species. Within Britain, dietary provision was unequal. The physical strength of the very poor was etiolated by a diet often consisting largely of white bread, margarine, sugary tea, and condensed milk, a nutritionally debased form of the nutrition transition. “The politically powerless,” observed one newspaper, are “badly fed.”130 We now know that being born into poverty can have deleterious, possibly transgenerational effects on stature, long-term metabolic health, and human capacity.131 Women consumed less protein and fewer calories than men, and differential gender roles and experiences had (and continue to have) a pronounced dietary substrate. Despite their veneration by some, colonial populations usually consumed worse diets than did the British elites. Linking their diets to relative powerlessness became a cliché. Winston Churchill noted that “yellow men, brown men, and black men” had not yet “learned to demand and purchase a diet superior to rice.”132 As the nutrition transition unfolded, then, its worst health effects affected the most powerless, whose diets ultimately left them most vulnerable to the emergent diseases of overnutrition, particularly those relating to obesity. The momentum of this process is a critical aspect of today’s global syndemic. Fat undermined and clogged individual power and capacity, something most palpable in the diminished capacities and stigmatization of the overweight poor and obese women.133 The insidious accumulations of blood sugar, cholesterol, and visceral fat are slow, invisible, and desperately hard to reverse. They are examples of what Rob Nixon calls “slow violence”: “Incremental and accretive.”134 These public health disasters are among the slowest and most imperceptible forms of slow violence— metabolic violence— unleashed by the nutrition transition and its manifold, interdigitated agro–food systems. This is not so much a history of the body as history in our bodies. Another dimension of slow nutritional violence is famine. It is now commonplace to regard famines as “entitlement crises,” caused not by absolute lack of food but by lack of purchasing power, by structural powerlessness and economic dislocation that appear natural owing to the slow momentum of food systems.135 Through the control of resource frontiers and agro–food sys-

Introduction

15

tems, Britain came to command, operationalize, and metabolize tremendous quantities of animal and plant food. It could deny food to starving populations or supply it by dictating the terms on which it would be granted. Slow violence was the result in Ireland (1845–50) and India (1876–78, 1896–1902, 1943– 45). Crisis was initially caused by phytopathological or climatic crises striking populations in states of extreme economic precariousness. The British used these crises as opportunities to further marketize, depeasantize, and depopulate such fracture zones and absorb them into their agro– food systems. Hobson noted that importing food allowed some nations to “evade the population question” by “ripening it more quickly in other places.” Famine was effectively outsourced.136 We can conservatively place the death toll in nineteenth-century Ireland and India at around 13 million people. Britain’s command of global food systems also created domestic vulnerabilities. In 1898, Rear Admiral Lord Captain Beresford argued that, by necessitating massive food imports, Britain’s planetary commercial structure created vulnerability “in the very part of our system from which our greatness springs.”137 During both world wars, Britain abandoned economic liberalism and recalibrated its command of global and domestic agro–food systems through numerous techniques, from revived domestic agriculture and rationing to employing convoys and arming merchant ships. The effort was, from a British perspective, extraordinarily successful: in neither war did Britain approach starvation. In the First World War, it mobilized its control of agro–food systems, intelligence networks, and logistic capacities to enforce a blockade that killed around 800,000 German and 400,000 Austro-Hungarian citizens and clearly contributed to Axis collapse. Fears of future starvation underlay Hitler’s genocidal visions of dominion over eastern Europe and the Ukraine. The command of agro– food systems also involved restructuring power relations across commodity frontiers, usually acquired by purchase, occupation, conquest, or treaty or sometimes, as with Australia, through declaration or assumption of legal emptiness, or what became known as terra nullius.138 The idea that land could be claimed by Europeans was justified in various, sometimes conflicting ways, not least via the Lockean idea that those who improved “unassisted nature” radically increased productivity and generated value and, hence, acquired ownership rights.139 In Australia, British settlers found no farms and claimed that hunter-gatherer populations were at the lowest level of socioeconomic development: Aborigines were akin to animals or plants.140 Ownership was inseparable from productive use: merely occupying land did not mean possessing it, a position that, while never totally dominant, hardened during the nineteenth century.141 The imposition of individual property rights was essential for agrarian improve-

16

Introduction

ment and surplus generation. This is most apparent in the forced killing or displacement of first peoples, for which the Highland Clearances provided a blueprint. Indeed, many Highlanders emigrated to Australia, where they displaced native populations who were deemed unproductive.142 Tasmanian Aboriginal populations, replaced by sheep, were swiftly eradicated, many perishing in a Flinders Island camp ostensibly provided to shelter and Christianize them.143 Creating plantations for imperial tea production in Assam involved violent military conquest.144 The resistance of Canadian métis populations was crushed during the 1885 Northwest Rebellion. Argentinean gauchos were subjugated to the Buenos Aires government by the early 1870s.145 From 1879, native Patagonians were moved into restricted settlements and debarred from assuming their previous lifestyle.146 The gaucho’s way of life disintegrated from the 1870s, enclosed within fences and barbed wire. He was subjected to the rhythms of capitalist agriculture, which reduced the amount of labor needed on ranches, and ultimately peonized.147 Human violence toward animals, however, took “faster” and increasingly mechanized form. Before 1800, slaughter was a small-scale, familiar, often social practice, producing relatively small amounts of meat and other animal products. However, as demand for meat rose, traditional slaughtering systems became bottlenecks. The result was industrialized slaughter, a practice distanced from human communities and undertaken at hitherto unimaginable scales. This abattoir system was pioneered in France, expanded in Germany, and reached its zenith in giant New World and Australasian slaughtering plants. These complexes performed a triple act of separation and obfuscation. Killing became absolutely hidden from society, albeit slowly; within the abattoir, killing was occluded from nonkilling activities; and animals themselves were confined to waiting pens partitioned from the slaughtering zone. Meat eating and meat production become spatially and phenomenologically dissevered, making slaughter anonymous and invisible.148 As Rebecca Woods argues, the most successful technique of mass obfuscation was to remove slaughter to distant commodity frontiers: “Slaughter . . . was removed to the outskirts of empire, literally to the ends of the earth.”149 The deepest violence of agro–food systems became largely invisible, something equally evident in the twentieth-century rise in global chicken consumption.

ECOLOGY “There is scarcely a vegetable which we at present employ that can be found growing naturally,” argued the doctor John Paris in 1826.150 Britain’s food systems required novel biological material, forged through selective breed-

Introduction

17

ing, scientific feeding, hybridization, and artificial insemination.151 Such new life-forms included Hereford cattle, Danish Landrace pigs, Corriedale sheep, Red Fife wheat, POJ 2878 sugarcane, and white Silesian beet. These entities were designed to mesh with the imperatives of capitalist agro–food systems, to resist pests and mature quickly, and to extract the most nutriment from the least amount of manure or fertilizer. They produced standard commodities— streaky bacon, gluten-rich wheat— to form the high-energy foodstuffs demanded by the nutrition transition. Britain’s food systems intensified biological control over nonhuman life, and this phase of evolutionary history moved well beyond domestication.152 Concerns about alienation from whatever nature might be appear throughout this history. Livestock were increasingly placed within barns, byres, and, later, batteries and factory farms where their biology, nutrition, and physical surroundings could be closely regulated. “By control of the environmental conditions,” declared the agricultural physiologist John Hammond, “it has been possible to breed and select for early maturity in our domestic animals, which it would have been impossible to do under the natural conditions of intermittent food supplies.”153 This process had unintended consequences, however, including vulnerability to disease or psychological disorders. Food itself has become increasingly processed, from roller-milled white bread and refined sugar to mass-produced frozen ready meals. Fear of the artificial explains the dynamics of nineteenth- and twentieth-century countercultural activity, from movements for wholemeal bread and vegetarianism to the veneration of non-Western dietaries and organic farming. Food thus became perhaps the major axis around which revolved interminable debates about progress, nature, health, morality, and the ultimate viability of the Western way of life. This book mobilizes several distinct critical frameworks to capture these complex processes of artificialization and ecological transformation, the emergence of which is coterminous with dietary transition and marks a reflexive dimension of its history. First, it uses Marx’s concept of “second nature,” as developed by William Cronon. Urban growth, Cronon demonstrated, drove frontier expansion: the story here, however, is not of Chicago and the Great West but of Britain and the globe itself. This was a transcontinental second nature orienting the flow of foodstuffs to Britain.154 Large-planet thinking has created the apparatus through which nature is appropriated and experienced. Second, the book uses Jason Moore’s concept of “world ecology,” which again emphasizes how the relationships living things have with each other and with humans have become increasingly shaped by capitalism over the past few centuries, even if my emphasis here

18

Introduction

is on the industrializing world rather than the early modern Atlantic. “Capitalism as world-ecology,” Moore argues, “is therefore not the ecology of the world, but a patterned history of power, capital, and nature, dialectically joined.”155 Third, the book adopts, again via Marx, the idea of “social metabolism,” which demonstrates how the disposition of food systems generated tremendous ecological imbalances between urban and rural areas, and, on a planetary scale, between developed and underdeveloped regions.156 The large-planet philosophy captured and channeled critical flows of planetary energy. Schandl and Krausmann pithily diagnose this British model as “not a sustainable and generally applicable blueprint for European industrialization.”157 However, it allowed Britons the luxury of behaving as if growth was potentially unlimited and sustainable, not least because advances in chemistry and biology promised endlessly improving crop yields.158 Britain’s diet required an expanded metabolism that was disproportionate to the tiny islands devouring the frontiers’ surplus.159 Powering this expanded metabolism led to rising fossil-fuel use, the accumulation of animal waste, the reconfiguration of nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, and the leaching of fertilizer and effluent into circumambient ecosystems. Fourth, the book utilizes Rockström and Klum’s notion of “planetary boundaries,” the crossing of which threatens irreversible ecological damage. Two of these boundaries’ zones of uncertainty have been exceeded: those relating to biogeochemical flows of nitrogen and phosphorus and the extinction rate.160 Other planetary boundaries in the zone of uncertainty— land-system change and climate change— cannot be disaggregated from the effects of global food systems.161 Fifth, the book uses the concepts of “ecological footprint” and “ecological overshoot.” The ecological footprint simply measures “the area of biologically productive land and water that a population . . . uses to generate the resources it consumes and absorb its wastes under prevailing technology.”162 There is a long history of using such measurements— with varying degrees of accuracy— to conceptualize the ways in which human consumption affects the planet. In 1903, Robert Turnbull calculated that, every day, Britain needed “1000 acres of additional land, equal in productive power to that of the United Kingdom,” to feed its increasing population, and he did not include meat in his calculations.163 Later versions of the concept include Georg Borgstrom’s “ghost acreage” or the environmental sociologist William Catton’s “phantom carrying capacity.”164 William Rees developed the ecological footprint concept in 1992. Britain’s heady combination of capitalism, coal, meat, wheat, and sugar produced Malthus’s worst nightmare: a nation materially requiring far more land area than it actually possessed.

Introduction

19

The country’s demand for dietary resources significantly exceeded its ecological carrying capacity and implanted the large-planet philosophy in greasy, pleasurable everyday dispositions and desires. British growth was built on the thermodynamically implausible premise that growth could continue without biogeochemical consequences.165 Economists, as Kenneth Boulding grumbled, “have failed to come to grips with the ultimate consequences of the transition from the open to the closed earth” or with the shift from large- to small-planet philosophies, a shift that the new images of the earth as a lonely, shiny “Blue Marble” seemed to demand.166 But how much more land was available, and how fertile was it? In 1939, the geographer George Kimble noted that, while there were “still millions of square miles of potential farmland scattered about the earth,” these lands were “essentially marginal zones” battered by rain, frost, and wind. He added, however, that there was “no purely areal reason why every man should not have land enough and to spare on which to feed himself and his family” and urged the technological development of the habitable planet. Crisis was not imminent, even if soil erosion was markedly increasing.167 Carl Alsberg, of Stanford’s Food Research Institute, was less sanguine, arguing that sheer cold made around one-third of global land area practically useless for food production.168 Estimating global carrying capacity, then, became a veritable cottage industry long before Paul and Anne Ehrlich argued, with characteristic hyperbole, that, if everyone on the planet consumes like a contemporary American, we would need five earths.169 Catton thought, straining credibility, we would need ten earths.170 Such views could slide into crude Malthusianism, but they usually emphasized, not population alone, but populations consuming a particular portfolio of resources— red meat in particular— supplied by global food systems. The connection between meat and excessive land use was recognized in The Wealth of Nations.171 The footprint model suggests that we are “currently using at least 50% more of nature’s goods and services than ecosystems regenerate.” The “metabolism of the human economy” now “exceeds the regenerative capacity of the ecosphere.”172 In order to maintain a “safe operating space,” one proposal— the “half earth strategy”— aims to conserve 50 percent of the earth’s ecosystems in a fundamentally intact condition: global food-system expansion would be halted.173 This is considerably more than the 15 percent of the world’s land area currently under some kind of protection.174 Other reports suggest that croplands can be expanded cautiously as long as waste and biofuel production are reduced, management is improved, and soil is regenerated.175 These various models are by no means infallible or necessarily compat-

20

Introduction

ible. Data and conclusions remain contested. The footprint model has been critiqued for reducing all environmental transition simply to a question of land area and carbon emissions and ignoring many other aspects of ecological change or for being insufficiently attentive to capitalist relations.176 Concepts like “wilderness” and even “biomes,” which underpin footprint thinking, are open to epistemological objections.177 In truth, however, no single measure can calculate the human effect on planetary ecosystems, and a multiplication of metrics allows us to approach these giant and complicated questions from various productive angles.178 h The book, then, traces the context, causes, consequences, and experience of Britain’s radical nineteenth-century dietary transition. It is a synthetic work, drawing on many disciplines (history, economics, science and technology studies, nutritional science, ecology, evolutionary biology), and utilizing thousands of primary sources (medical journals, industry textbooks, parliamentary reports, cattle-breeding manuals, newspapers, dietary surveys, organic farming treatises, economic geography guidebooks, cookbooks, foodpoisoning symposia, and working-class memoirs). It focuses on the various systems that provided Britain with cheap and plentiful food. This was the most basic example of comparative advantage and the true realization of economic liberalism, although the logistic complexities of these systems ultimately necessitated multiple schemes of state regulation. The new diet these systems provided was refined, processed, and rich in animal proteins and fats. It delivered sustained calorie input during economic takeoff but produced many novel morbidities and mortalities linked to new forms of nutritional deficiency. This vast apparatus became a geopolitical weapon, an essential element in Allied victory in two world wars and, for those living along its fringes, a sometimes brutal famine machine. It was, finally, a metabolic-ecological system that reconfigured elements of the earth system: its flows of nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon and the gene pools and lifeworlds of flora and fauna from Canada to New Zealand. In short, the book is the result of a quest to explain how and why the hegemonic Western diet came into being and how it is inseparable from political asymmetries, bigger bodies, metabolic crisis, and global ecological degradation.

Chapter One

Meat

Meat we must have if we are to keep up the stamina of the British nation. Beef cannot be banished from our midst without carrying along with it a considerable portion of the national character, and if we cannot get it at home we must have it from abroad. —“The Great Meat Question,” Country Gentleman’s Magazine (1872) We have gradually changed the natural beast into one more or less artificial. —Walter Gilbey, Pig in Health (1907) What the repeal of the Corn Laws has been to the cultivation of grain in this country, the invention of refrigerators is likely to be to the raising of cattle. —James MacDonald, Food from the Far West (1878)

“

N

ext to the Habeas Corpus and the Freedom of the Press, there are few things that the English people have a greater respect for and a livelier faith in than beef,” declared Household Words in 1854.1 Beef powered the great victories of Crecy and Agincourt. Contemporaneous Crimean failings, by contrast, were explained by a lack of quality beef.2 From the early modern period, humoral theories and analogies had been mobilized to explain how beef generated English strength and doggedness.3 Such logic became especially commonplace in the nineteenth century, when meat— and particularly beef— was regarded as a vital source of British power and stamina, a weapon of war and a tool of conquest. British servicemen received a pound or more of meat per day of active service.4 “The conquering Anglo-Saxon” was, according to the diabetic, corpulent doctor John Fothergill, “a meat-eating 21

22

Chapter One

man par excellence.”5 British global power was achieved via unprecedented command over and metabolization of animal proteins. The insouciant use of the masculine should not disguise its significance: meat was the manliest of foods, and its consumption was inseparable from power over women, nonwhite populations, children, and animals. “Meateating man,” however, was increasingly oblivious to the vast system that produced and distributed meat. He was probably unaware that his roasts and chops came from animals whose biological being was undergoing dramatic alteration. He was ignorant of the agroecological transformations and novel forms of food logistics that sated his gustatory desires. The distance (spatial and cognitive) between living creature and meat as eaten had become enormous, even planetary. This vast disjuncture facilitated the intense commodification of meat and the systematic blindness toward its mode of production, a process that allowed cattle to be nonchalantly, but revealingly, described as “man’s most valuable friend in the animal kingdom.”6

MEAT CONSUMPTION: CONCEPTS AND TRENDS Nineteenth-century Britain’s meat consumption was the highest in Europe; only the meat-glutted neo-Europes ate more. In the 1830s, the British ingested around 75 pounds per head annually, a figure reaching 130 pounds by 1912.7 By 1923, the United Kingdom consumed around 1.8 million tons of beef, veal, mutton, and lamb annually.8 Meat became the centerpiece of meals, not an occasional luxury or a basic “flavour enhancement.”9 The correlation between carnivorousness and economic development suggested that meat eating and civilization were intimately— even causally— related.10 Reviewing world protein consumption in the 1970s, Adolf and Ernest Weber concluded that, as soon as basic metabolic needs are met, humans invariably gravitate toward animal proteins if they are available.11 Development followed a seemingly ineluctable “protein vector”: development was “meatification.”12 The physician Woods Hutchinson dismissed nations living almost entirely on starchy staples as “too poor to afford other kinds of food, or too lazy, or too uncivilized, to get them,” and consequently doomed to “live only about half as long” as “civilized races.”13 In 1940, Merrill Bennett, later director of Stanford’s Food Research Institute, listed Britain among a small group of predominantly Anglophone nations that derived less than 40 percent of their calories from cereals and potatoes.14 This became known as “Bennett’s Law”: carbohydrate consumption was inversely proportional to national developmental levels (see fig. 1.1).15 Backwardness and meatlessness became synonymous.

Figure 1.1. Bennett’s Law: the relationship between declining grain consumption and economic development. From Merrill Bennett, “International Contrasts in Food Consumption,” Geographical Review, vol. 31, no. 3 (July 1941). Image reproduced by kind permission of the American Geographical Society.

24

Chapter One

Meatification was, however, heavily mediated by class, gender, and geography, something discussed later in this book. From Eden to Orr, surveys revealed that the poor ate less meat than the rich.16 A 1904 Royal Statistical Society study concluded that laborers consumed eighty-seven pounds of meat per head annually while aristocrats ate three hundred pounds.17 The poor also ate cheaper cuts of meat and more offal, trotters, tongues, and sausages. Their tastes lacked refinement, “their stomachs the tombs of loathsome carrion.”18 Meat consumption was also heavily gendered, with husbands routinely consuming far more meat than their wives. The prevalent logic, after all, was that “beef makes boys,” not girls.19 By the 1930s, beef was Britain’s most popular meat, although mutton/lamb consumption remained much higher in the United Kingdom than elsewhere in Europe.20 “Great Britain is the mutton-eating country of Europe, the consumption being five times as great as any other European country,” noted Frank Gerrard in Meat Technology (1951).21 Pork consumption remained lower there than in Germany, despite the popularity of bacon, sausages, and pork pies. Game became legally salable in 1831.22 Rabbit remained relatively popular, while taboos around the flesh of certain animals (horses, cats, dogs) tightened, and the consumption of small birds declined, despite the penchant for fulmars and gannets in parts of Scotland and the persistence of rook pie in Yorkshire.23 Chicken consumption, low in the nineteenth century, rose thereafter, a phenomenon discussed in chapter 8.

DOMESTIC MEAT PRODUCTION British meat production initially kept pace with rising demand via high farming and selective breeding. After 1830, the trend toward high farming was discernible through the combination of livestock production and arable farming. The substitution of fodder (cabbage, mangel wurzels, etc.) for fallow allowed animals to graze and produce reliable flows of dung and meat.24 Hippolyte Taine called rural Britain “a fodder-factory, the mere anteroom to a dairy or a slaughterhouse.”25 Meanwhile, biological innovation was equally significant, particularly for British livestock.26 The seventeenthand eighteenth-century introduction of Dutch cattle and their mating with native populations produced the longhorn breed, which internally colonized much of the British Isles.27 John Webster and Robert Bakewell began serious experiments in selective breeding. Through inbreeding and line breeding, Bakewell produced longhorn cattle, shire horses, and Leicester sheep, creating early maturing, fleshier animals. Neither longhorns nor Leicesters were long-term successes, however. Within a century, the longhorn was nearly

Meat

25

extinct as a milk and meat breed, while Leicester sheep were critiqued for excessive back fat and feebleness.28 They were apparently sometimes sold “to make candles instead of food.”29 Selective breeding experiments strongly suggested that heredity was more significant than climate or provenance in breed formation.30 The shorthorn was produced by applying Bakewell’s techniques to Durham and North Yorkshire cattle. In 1822, George Coates produced a shorthorn herd book listing pedigree animals, the first herd book for any farm animal.31 Inbreeding guaranteed a delimited hereditary history, with a pure breed the product of any two parents listed in the book.32 Amos Cruickshank’s short, blocky, easily fattened shorthorn became prevalent after 1850.33 “Early maturity,” noted the breeder Henry Berry, was the “elevating characteristic of the shorthorns.”34 Shorthorns were “dual purpose,” producing meat and milk, and they were geographically adaptable. The agricultural writer Henry Evershed observed that they were “the most widespread of all the breeds, the best adapted for purely artificial systems of farming, the least fastidious in regard to climate, soil, or lodging.”35 By 1908, 64 percent of British cattle were shorthorns.36 The Hereford’s chief characteristics were fixed in the eighteenth century and its white face fully established by the 1860s.37 This face had considerable economic value and functioned almost as a “trade mark of the breed.”38 The Hereford was hardy, thrived on grass, and was primarily bred for beef. By 2000, it had become perhaps the earth’s most widely distributed beef breed.39 The Aberdeen Angus, meanwhile, rose in popularity following the early nineteenth-century work of Hugh Watson, “the Aberdeen-Angus Bakewell,” at Keillor, Forfarshire.40 Its compact body, suggested one writer, “perhaps as nearly approaches to the form of the proverbial gun-barrel as that of any other breed,” and its meat was correspondingly prized.41 By the early twentieth century, the British government increasingly regulated the biological standards of such breeds, aiming to eliminate “scrub bulls” of mysterious ancestry and unidentifiable breed. The 1931 Improvement of Livestock (Licensing of Bulls) Act stated that no bull reaching a prescribed age should be kept without license; licenses would be refused if bulls were unsuitable for breeding.42 High farming and selective breeding made Britain a place of relatively intense livestock farming. Its cattle population rose from about 9.8 million in 1878 to 11.7 million in 1908.43 Yet, as numerous commentators observed, these numbers were not keeping pace with demand: “The meat-producing animals of the United Kingdom have by no means increased in the same ratio as the meat-consuming animal, viz., the human race.”44 By the 1860s, some

26

Chapter One

were grumbling, rather hyperbolically, about a “meat famine,” triggered by rising demand, poor preservation technologies, and the costs of epizootics, which circulated more freely in a globalizing world food economy.45 In the early 1870s, open-air protests about high meat prices were held, for example, at West Bromwich, Pendleton, and Clerkenwell.46 In 1873, the Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette argued that Britain’s “meat supply is becoming the most important problem of the day” and that “its satisfactory solution is almost impossible,” before urging the intensification of domestic production.47 In 1866, Joseph Fisher published a book with the plaintive title Where Shall We Get Meat?48 There were several attempts to diversify British tastes in meat. All, however, failed. The Acclimatisation Society of Great Britain was founded in 1860, partly inspired by reports of successful French yak importation (1854), but also continuing a longer Enlightenment tradition of exploring the possibilities of species transfer.49 David Esdaile argued that, since yak were accustomed to Himalayan climes, they should find the Highlands congenial: “Ere long we shall see the yak browsing on our hill-sides.”50 Lord Hill’s 1867 eland-breeding scheme was equally quixotic: when a Shrewsbury butcher offered an eland carcass for sale, persuading people to eat it was “an impossibility.”51 In 1868, Algernon Sidney Bicknell’s Society for the Propagation of Horse Flesh as an Article of Food held a horse-meat banquet in London. Again inspired by French example, this movement urged the adoption of horse meat as a cheap beef substitute.52 It foundered for multiple reasons, including the failure to form a French-style coalition of butchers and scientists, conservative working-class tastes, and a hardening commitment to outsourcing meat production.53 The “meat famine” would be solved neither by dietary diversification nor by greater self-sufficiency.

LIVESTOCK DIASPORAS AND CATTLE GLOBALIZATION Britain’s solution was to become “the stud farm of the world,” shipping premium livestock to newly opened neo-European pastoral frontiers, and consuming their descendants.54 This was a critical stage in the expansion of Britain’s ecological footprint. In 1929, the Meat and Livestock Digest noted that around “80 per cent. of the aggregate meat trade of the world today is in the products of what were originally English types of live stock” (see fig. 1.2).55 The Aberdeen-Angus, Hereford, and shorthorn triad came to dominate “in parts of the world where there were no indigenous cattle.”56 This global meat trade also centered on the British market: “England alone imports sixty per cent of all meat shipped in international trade.”57 Meat

Meat

27

Figure 1.2. World cattle number, 1919. Note concentrations in Argentina, North America, and Ireland: these were direct results of British bovine outsourcing. From J. Russell Smith, The World’s Food Resources (New York: Henry Holt, 1919).

imports rose from under five pounds per head in 1861– 65 to nearly fortyfour pounds per head in 1906–10, with imported meat particularly vital for Britain’s carnivorous urban populations.58 Such meat, along with that from exhausted dairy cows, became the meat of the poor: the wealthy ate prime British beef.59 Meat consumption was profoundly stratified by class. Britain remained “the world’s largest import market” for meat well after 1945, with one-third of its meat still being imported in 1970.60 In the Americas, the growth in livestock production involved clearing the land of native populations, dwindling bison herds, and older cattle breeds. In Texas, for example, the wide-roaming Texas longhorn was a descendant of cattle originally imported by the Spanish.61 But its “strong, dry, shrivelled-up, ill-mixed flesh” was unsuitable for British tastes.62 Hence the importation of shorthorns from 1783, with numbers rising after 1850. Shorthorns became particularly common as ranching permeated the Corn Belt and the eastern fringes of the Great Plains.63 The Hereford was firmly established in the United States by the 1880s (see fig. 1.3).64 Charles Darwin noted that pedigree English animals “have now been exported to almost every quarter of the world.”65 “America,” observed the agricultural writer Alvin Sanders, “has been a bovine, as well as a human, melting pot into which has been poured from time to time the blood of practically all the leading European breeds.”66 As Cronon showed, the reconfiguration of the ranching frontier involved technological as well as biological transition.67

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Chapter One

Figure 1.3. Hereford cattle, bred by the McAuliffe Cattle Company of New Mexico. Photograph by Frank Reeves. Reproduced with kind permission from the Cattle Raisers Museum, University of North Texas Libraries.

Railways, barbed wire, and feedlots rapidly replaced the Texan-style open range, while new agricultural practices of fencing, sheltering, and winter feeding produced more docile bovine conduct.68 There were nearly 70 million cattle in the United States by the early 1930s. This heavily capitalized industry, with its vast ranches and industrialized meatpacking, operated on a much larger scale than Britain’s. As the population urbanized, an increasing percentage of American meat gravitated to domestic markets. The United States was a meat-importing country by 1926.69 A more durable meat connection was forged with Argentina. Early nineteenth-century Argentina supported many predominantly wild cattle, remnants of the original Spanish colonization, and had a considerable saltedmeat export trade.70 Its pastoral economy, however, was initially constructed around wool exports.71 The first shorthorn bull arrived in the 1820s, with Herefords and Aberdeen Anguses following in 1862 and the 1870s respectively. These imported breeds, especially the latter, became particularly dominant on the Pampa, where improved cattle were concentrated.72 With its mild climate and absence of drought or animal diseases, Argentina was regarded as particularly suitable for cattle ranching: “The cattle roam in herds free and in a state of nature.”73 “The dependence of the outer world upon the meat and cereals of Argentina almost suggests that the country was pre-ordained to be the larder of the human family,” gushed John Fraser in 1914.74 There was, however, nothing natural or inevitable about the

Meat

29

Argentinean meat industry’s development. It was built to serve Britain’s demand for meat, with huge pastures, barbed wire, mass alfalfa planting, imported grasses, tenant farmers, and British-funded railroads converging on Buenos Aires. Argentinean meat exports overtook American ones in 1908.75 By 1920, Argentina was “the most important beef-producing country of the world,” with exports including corned beef, beef dripping, and meat extract.76 A decade later, over 90 percent of Argentina’s beef exports went to Britain.77 Beef also became an enormously popular component of the Argentinean diet.78 Ovine history follows a similar pattern. The nomenclature of common commercial sheep breeds— Lincoln, Dorset, Southdown, Leicestershire— betrays their British origins.79 Sheep were first imported into New Zealand in 1841, and the Corriedale, a new “colonial hybrid,” was bred from the Merino, English Leicester, and Lincoln.80 By the 1920s, the hardy, dualpurpose Romney, originally imported from Britain, was New Zealand’s dominant breed.81 Ecological conditions allowed Anglicization of New Zealand’s ecology, with grasses exported for pasturage.82 Like Argentina, New Zealand enjoyed a temperate climate and few animal diseases, and its heavily pastoral economy became even more symbiotic with Britain’s. This “extreme specialization” meant that almost all New Zealand’s exported mutton and lamb went to Britain.83 New Zealand’s “high living standard and ameliorative social services” were unthinkable without the connection to British markets.84 In 1933, around 95 percent of world trade in mutton and lamb was British.85 The engineering of British bacon perhaps represents the apotheosis of this system. Evolving British taste for mild-cured, leaner bacon led to rejection of lardier American pig meat and stimulated the Irish and Danish bacon industries. English Large White pigs (leaner than Small Whites and sometimes called Yorkshires) were Britain’s most important export breed. They were imported into Ireland in the 1850s and Denmark from the early nineteenth century.86 In Denmark, Large White boars were carefully interbred with Danish sows to improve the Danish Landrace.87 “Gaunt creatures of prehistoric type” gave way to meaty but lean animals, with “great length of side and heavy hams” designed for British consumers.88 Pigs were farmed within a state-supported factory system in which dairy plants produced butter and cheese for British consumers and distributed the by-products to pigs. Breeding centers, reduced feed-conversion rates, selection, registration, testing stations, by-product plants, marketing, curing, export slaughterhouses, and a network of sellers in Britain contributed to produce “a standard quality and an even quantity on the British market” via its “streaky bacon.”89 Denmark

30

Chapter One

produced homogenized livestock “with the same precision and efficiency as Mr. Ford produces his motor-cars or Mr. Waterman his fountain-pens,” something lacking in the less-standardized British industry.90 The pigs were processed into “Wiltshire” sides, a style of half-body cut that ultimately became practically synonymous with Danish bacon.91 The “Danish” brand (and posters adorning butcher’s shops) signaled the bacon’s quality, and it was apparently so standardized that you could “buy it with your eyes shut.”92 Through such techniques, British consumers came to prefer foreign to domestic bacon. Denmark’s porcine population rose from 442,421 in 1871 to nearly 2.5 million by 1914.93 In 1930, 99 percent of the world’s bacon and ham exports went to Britain.94 Tiago Saraiva has charted the development of a materially, historically, and geographically specific “fascist pig.” These autarkic Nazi pigs lived on German land, ate only German food (beets, potatoes), were bred to be fat, and were consumed by Germans alone.95 Danish pigs, by contrast, were capitalist pigs, whose being was a product of a completely different biological, spatial, and economic logic. They ate imported feed, they fed overseas stomachs, they predominantly provided protein, and their material existence relied on fossil-powered agromodernization.96 Porcine matter flowed into Britain via different streams: for pig fat, the British tapped into a rising flow of American lard, with imports rising rapidly after 1875.97 Denmark’s porcine export trade to Germany collapsed. If the Danes wanted to market their pigs in Germany, “a different type of hog would be required,” a fatter pig with different feeding and breeding practices.98 Bacon, the centerpiece of the full English breakfast, was a political artifact, proudly embodying the liberal, delocalized, cosmopolitan system that created it. British food was not indigenous but the product of a vast planetary meat system.99 For British livestock, existence was transnational or transcontinental: life unfolded in one country; consumption took place in another. This did not make the whole world a British livestock farm, however. British global bovine dominance was relative, not absolute, and particularly concentrated in the neo-Europes. British breeds were unsuited to tropical areas largely owing to parasite intolerance: Indian zebu cattle were imported into Brazil, parts of Africa, and Queensland.100 Shorthorns foundered in Italy, while the Czechs and Hungarians preferred Swiss cattle. After 1900, new European breeds (Charolais, Friesians) recolonized Britain. However, as Rebecca Woods has shown, the British livestock diaspora was a powerful technique of biocolonization. By breaking the historical link between place and breed, it allowed the implantation and nurturing of British fauna, thus reconceptualizing the entire meaning of nativeness.101 “Wherever Britons colonise,

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the Shorthorn makes its home,” noted John Thornton in 1887, adding: “The Shorthorn undoubtedly is the chief means of transmitting, to other countries and other nations, that great national institution ‘the Roast Beef of Old England.’” The shorthorn made space British: if “its ‘habitat’” was potentially “everywhere,” then, by implication, Britain might extend everywhere too.102 Through its livestock, “Britishness” materially infiltrated Paraguay, Trinidad, Gibraltar, Ascension Island, Rhodesia, Finland, Peru, and Japan. This transcontinental economy generated cheap and plentiful meat, but it also created vulnerabilities in the form of epizootics, food security, the dumping of substandard meat, economic dependency, and ecological overshoot. These issues will be covered in due course. For now, however, let us view this history from a less anthropocentric perspective.

LIVESTOCK BEING The development of this system had evolutionary consequences. Livestock populations rose precipitously in number, while individual animals had their shapes manipulated, their flesh restructured, their biology altered, and their life spans telescoped.103 British farmers practiced various forms of breeding, from very close inbreeding to crossbreeding. This initially empirical practice soon generated evolutionary speculation and paleozoological research. Some breeds, like Somerset Reds, had become extinct during what James Wilson, a professor of agriculture at Dublin’s Royal College of Science, called “bovine historical time.”104 Although Lamarckian ideas persisted, by 1900 the conceptualization of animal breeding generally followed Darwinian-Mendelian lines: inbreeding functioned by “purifying the chromosome content,” which helped fix breeds, whereafter breeding practices could be slightly relaxed. Factors like color were governed by simple Mendelian rules, while economically valuable ones, like meat or milk production, required more statistical forms of analysis.105 Mendelian theories were first applied to animals and plants, not humans, and selection was practiced more enthusiastically and unscrupulously on animals.106 According to the Harvard zoology professor William Castle, undesirable latent characteristics would “have to be eliminated.”107 By the 1920s, livestock genetics had become heavily mathematical.108 In 1900, John Watkins speculated that, by 2000, wild animals would have been eradicated. Further: “Food animals will be bred to expend practically all their life energy in producing meat, milk, wool, and other by-products. Horns, bones, muscles, and lungs will have been neglected.”109 Such comments were obvious hyperbole. Nonetheless, selection for specific traits, the elimination of undesirable ones, and the dramatic reduction in the

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number of bulls involved in breeding significantly reduced effective population size and genetic diversity.110 Livestock were clearly getting bigger, although idiosyncrasies in weighing systems mean that reconstructions of animal size remain approximations. Between approximately 1730 and 1850, the weight of cattle increased from around five hundred pounds to eight hundred pounds.111 Sheer bulk, however, was only one dimension of a wholesale biological reorganization of livestock. Breeders drove up flesh-bone ratios.112 Gone were the wedge-shaped cattle of yore: instead, breeders produced blockier, barrel-shaped animals whose weight gravitated from shoulders to rump, a process eased by the removal of cattle from labor.113 The Hereford became “a balloon-shaped storage house walking on short stocky legs, whose whole mission in life is to turn vegetable food into good solid flesh.”114 The composition of this flesh was also changing, with the trend toward fat meat reversing after 1900. Excessively rotund animals were becoming objects of derision, dismissed as “ball[s] of hairless fat,” as “animated rolls of lard,” or as exhibiting “a pathological state of corpulence.”115 Rather than being layered between hide and muscle as part of its finishing, fat was “distributed among the fibres of the muscles instead of being laid on irregularly in lumps,” producing juicier, less stringy meat.116 This phenomenon— known as marbling— reflects a transformation in meat’s dietary role. Throughout history, meat has generally been used as a source of fat, but today, in much of the developed world, it is generally consumed for its protein, not least because of the rise of plant oils.117 The British joint’s thick strata of fat fell out of favor. Muscle and fat were now produced simultaneously rather than sequentially, meaning that “the animal is both growing and fattening from the period of birth.”118 This was “infinitely more profitable” than developing an animal and then fattening it.119 The science of animal feeding, which developed alongside human dietetics, allowed the conscious crafting of diets designed to produce particular types of meat. Obliging oxen were wedged into respiration chambers. John Lawes and Joseph Gilbert, titans of British agricultural chemistry, emphasized that carbohydrates, not proteins, were the main producers of fat.120 Starches became vital for feeding. Improved American Midwest stock thrived on cheap corn, and corn feeding was expanding over grass by the later nineteenth century.121 However, as tastes tilted away from fatty meat, protein’s role in animal diets was emphasized. In pig feeding, pulses allowed more equal distribution of lean, creating popular “streaked meat.”122 Oil cake, used since the early modern period, grew in popularity. Ground animal meal was introduced in South America in the late nineteenth century, by which time compound feeds were being prepared.123 Soy feeds, linseed,

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oilseed rape, cottonseed meal, fish meal, and high-lysine corn, often pressed into pellets or cakes, further accelerated growth rates: selection increased pigs’ intestinal length to enable grain feeding.124 Feedstuffs circulated freely through the global economy: by 1899, Britain was importing the equivalent of around 6 million acres of animal feed.125 Marbling was a phenomenon peculiar to beef cattle. In dairy cattle, by contrast, fat was deposited around the intestines and kidneys. This differential viscid geography of fat was “a remarkable example of specialization for a definite end.”126 Cattle became granivorous (witness British “barley beef”) and even cannibalistic. The combined use of fat- and flesh-forming foods from an early age produced rapid growth and marbling. Animals no longer underwent seasonal loss of body fat: weight gain was continuous. This was particularly true if they were wintered in covered yards, stalls, or boxes: the role of heat and shelter in efficient meat production was understood from at least the mid-nineteenth century.127 Such “stabulation,” observed Léonce De Lavergne, epitomized English “spirit of enterprise.”128 Livestock growth accelerated. An 1886 Field article observed that, for cattle and sheep, “it is possible to obtain a given weight of carcase in onethird less time.”129 Young animals— particularly those of new breeds— produced lean, marbled flesh more efficiently than older ones, which allowed earlier slaughter. The Aberdeen Angus had particularly “marbleized” flesh, unlike the shorthorn, with its obstinately subcutaneous fat deposits.130 Such animals required proportionally more protein than older ones.131 British and American feeders engineered “baby beef.”132 While regular beef was produced by fattening store cattle and killing at between two and four years old, baby beef was fattened from birth with concentrated feeds and slaughtered at twelve to twenty months.133 But the resulting meat was beef. One farmer pointedly noted that the meat from one of his nineteen-month-old animals was “not at all vealy, as some might suppose.”134 Baby beef was being produced from the 1850s, and, by 1937, 72 percent of the British beef herd was under two years old.135 As Elliott Stewart, a barn-building Cornell professor, noted: “It is simply throwing away food to feed the animals beyond the age producing the quality that the market demands.”136 The speed of bovine metabolism increased well before the post-1945 addition of antibiotics to animal feed. The “store” period was inimical to biological and capital accumulation: “There is no time for such a period and the animal must be kept going all the time.”137 In 1940, Hammond estimated that a contemporary thirteen-month-old Hereford bull was shaped like an adult one from a century previously.138 This phenomenon was equally visible for sheep, where the days of “five-year-old mutton” were consigned to the past.139 In New

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Zealand, the new Corriedale breed matured more rapidly than the Merino.140 Through such biological processes, lamb replaced mutton, and, in the United States at least, the term pig supplanted hog, the latter referring to “the really mature animal.”141 Truncated life span and “earlier and ever earlier maturity” allowed more meat to be produced from fewer animals in less time, reducing costs, and “permitting a quicker turnover of capital,” meaning that animals were, according to the Surrey farmer Edwin Ellis, “always ‘beef,’” even at a year old.142 They could be sold when markets were optimally positioned. The form of animals and their meat became more predictable, more standardized, more commodity-like. These new livestock breeds were creatures of capitalism, “living factories” inhabiting an artificial environment designed to maximize their exchange value across global economic space, as countless hackneyed quasi-Cartesian references to their mechanical nature attest.143 In Dickens’s Dombey and Son, Mrs. Skewton wanted to live among cows because she regarded them as natural and herself as an “Arcadian.”144 Her ingenuousness was not shared by all observers. Soft, weak cattle contrasted with wild animals. “Few, if any, would survive when deprived of the protection of the hands that moulded them into the forms that most of them have assumed,” observed Evershed in 1890. “Our poor pigs have neither snout nor leg enough to hold their own in a wild state.”145 Cattle imprisoned in dank barns, inhaling their herd’s recycled breath, were prone to tuberculosis, a disease rare among wild cattle. Since such animals died in slaughterhouses or of disease, their “natural” life span was unknown.146 Bovine reproductive capacities were equally reformed, following the increasing understanding of their sexual cycle.147 Animals not destined to breed were castrated or spayed, and those spared this indignity had their sexual relations increasingly mediated by artificial vaginas, service crates, semen tanks, and insemination guns. Britain’s first commercial artificial insemination center opened in Cambridge in 1942; by 1954, there were 112 such centers.148 Artificial insemination became much more significant in Britain’s dairy industry than in its beef industry, and early artificial insemination was more commonly practiced in Russia and Argentina.149 Cryopreservation of sperm (a British invention) and embryo transfer expanded human control over bovine reproductive physiology: the first calf produced from frozen semen was named “Frosty.”150 The exceptional individuality of famous historical oxen (like the Durham Ox) was to be (ideally) replaced by a system of anonymous, homogenized genetic material.151 “The semen of a few valuable high-quality males, diluted, can father hundreds of cattle,” enthused Victor Cohn in his technophilic opus 1999: Our Hopeful

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Future.152 Aspiring inseminators were encouraged to practice in abattoirs on cows about to be slaughtered.153 E. B. White, meanwhile, adopted a more bovicentric perspective: “I am sorry for cows who have to boast / of affairs they’ve had by parcel post!”154 Livestock numbers were multiplying. By 1929, world cattle population was around 600 million, plus 700 million sheep and goats and around 300 million pigs.155 In areas where cattle grazed outdoors year-round, like South Africa or much of Australia, there were concerns about arduous “natural local conditions” and “unfavourable climate.”156 Bovine life was either harmonized with artificial environments or at variance with less-modified ones. Livestock population cycles were determined by economic forces and technological milieu more than by climate or ecology.157 These biological innovations— rapid maturity and turnover, marbling, artificial insemination, geographic differentiation, patterns of population growth and decline— demonstrate capitalism’s capacity to permeate and reconstruct the “web of life,” making it a powerful vector of accumulation.158 Animals’ DNA and metabolism have allowed humans to intensify their lives and accumulate genetic capital: “Nature, in short, is (re)made to work harder, faster, and better.”159 Let us pause briefly here. The thrust of the argument is that animals became capitalist machines. There is obviously much truth here, but this thesis must be tempered by an acknowledgment of the persistence, if reconfiguration, of affective and empathetic relations. Manuals encouraged “kindness,” “stroking,” and “talking.”160 Rhoda Wilkie notes that “instrumental and emotional” aspects of livestock production “coexist.”161 Genetics had clear limits, and its rhetorical deployment often occluded bungling empiricism.162 Critics decried modern farming’s “monstrosities.”163 More mature animal flesh retained its adherents, with today’s fashion for Basque Txuleta beef an extreme variant.164 A conclusion that modern livestock farming is entirely mechanistic and callous will not suffice. Nonetheless, three distinct trends mark this period as one in which human-livestock relations were definitively recalibrated. First, the scale of industrial livestock production meant that animals became handled as populations, with individuals effectively interchangeable.165 Second, the relationship between humans and livestock became increasingly marked by distance, technological mediation, and transience. The system was increasingly disposed toward the occlusion of livestock. As Erica Fudge has shown, these developments created the conditions of possibility of declining kindness or rising obliviousness. At the heart of the transcontinental meat system is a “lost closeness of humans and animals.”166 Cronon notes how the vast meat

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apparatus of the American West distanced consumers from killing.167 Third, complex transformations in human sensibility were forged around questions of animal slaughter. As Fudge notes, that humans could both nurture and kill an animal was long justified through an “entwined system of practicality, partnership, and symbolism” that allowed kindness and slaughter paradoxically to coexist.168 However, subtle shifts in thresholds of tolerance for blood and rising levels of squeamishness (apparent in other practices like public execution) made it increasingly hard for kind, pet-owning meat eaters to inhabit the same phenomenological world as the livestock that became their meat.169

SLAUGHTER The spatial modality of slaughter evolved in lockstep with these affective changes. The key development was the removal of slaughter from the immediate vicinity of urban populations. British slaughterhouses were traditionally simply houses, sheds, or shops where slaughter happened to take place. There were vast numbers of them: in 1910, Sheffield had 183.170 In the 1920s, the estimated number of slaughterhouses in England and Wales was 20,000.171 Slaughterhouses around London’s Newgate market were situated in butcher’s cellars, accessed via staircases down which animals were routinely hurled before being stabbed, bled, and skinned.172 In 1899, David Samuel Davies, Bristol’s medical officer of health, complained that the city’s slaughterhouses were largely situated behind houses, with chaotic results, including one slaughterhouse approached “through the general sittingroom,” necessitating the removal of furniture on “slaughtering-day.”173 As Fudge argues, desires to remove slaughter from sight were emerging in early modern London.174 Later reformers depicted slaughterhouses as arenas of penumbral cruelty.175 Their proximity to human residences encouraged debased voyeurism: “Children hang about the doors, and peer through cracks in the fence, with the usual juvenile delight in sensational developments, but to their own gradual demoralisation.”176 Watching slaughter might, in extreme cases, generate violence and murder: such connections were occasionally made in court.177 One potential solution was improved municipal and local government control. The 1847 Towns Improvement Clauses Act, incorporated into the 1857 Public Health Act, created an apparatus of licensing and registration, although actually closing slaughterhouses remained difficult and inspection was often ineffective. Reformers urged the adoption of the abattoir system, initiated in Napoleonic France, although more fully developed in Germany and the United States. Abattoirs were larger, purpose-

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built structures, removed from densely populated urban centers, facilitating mass killing, efficient inspection, dressing of carcasses, and utilization of by-products.178 Singular, undifferentiated slaughterhouse space was divided into multiple smaller spaces, each with a precise function: lairs for living animals, slaughter halls, cooling and chilling rooms, spaces for pathological examination. The abattoir was spatially partitioned and directional.179 Living animals entered at one end, and differentiated flows of organic material— meat, offal, skin, waste, dung— emerged at the other. Public abattoirs were widely perceived as efficient, salubrious technologies within which slaughtering would be regulated and rendered invisible. Meat was divested of all remnants of the life and individuality (eyes, face, anatomical idiosyncrasy) and reduced to interchangeable chunks of protein and fat.180 Killing could be forgotten. In 1899, the clergyman-novelist Victor Whitechurch experienced evanescent trauma after visiting Birkenhead abattoirs, remarking that he made a vow never to eat meat again, a vow that lasted until the evening. “Once one’s back is turned on the abattoirs,” he reflected, “there is nothing revolting.”181 Making meat and eating meat were spatially dissevered. Livestock disappeared from the perceptual field into a space beyond human awareness or concern, even for most workers in the industry.182 It is surely no coincidence that, at this precise historical moment, animal sacrifice became “emblematic of primitivity” and the phenomenological fiction of meat without death was firmly established.183 Revealing the secret truths of abattoirs and factory farms would become a primary technique of unconcealment, revealing the cruelty behind the facade of civilization.184 No wonder Upton Sinclair noted that watching killing rapidly made one “philosophical.”185 A 1933 Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries committee report concluded that the Edinburgh abattoir was the closest approximation to a British “factory-abattoir.”186 Industrialized slaughter was far more developed along Britain’s commodity frontiers, where it acted as a multiplying technology greatly increasing the flow of meat. In 1926, there were seventeen meat factories in Argentina, capable of slaughtering 27,500 cattle, 50,000 sheep, and 4,000 pigs daily.187 There were around two thousand American packing plants by 1927, fueling North American carnivory.188 The word biotechnology was coined in 1919 specifically to describe livestock processing since cattle were living entities whose metabolism and reproductive systems were increasingly appropriated and engineered to accumulate capital.189 This entire system was built on a philosophy emphasizing speed, scale, and mass production. Ironically, it was resisted in its place of origin, France, where it became associated with overproduction, deskilling, and poor quality.190

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Britain’s domestic slaughtering network remained less systematic. Cardiff developed municipal slaughterhouses from 1835, and, by the early twentieth century, no private slaughterhouses remained in the city. A public abattoir opened in Manchester in 1872. Port abattoirs were built to slaughter imported animals. Scottish burghs, helped by stricter legislation, moved more rapidly: over half had abattoirs by 1910.191 About 80 percent of Scottish-killed cattle were slaughtered in public abattoirs by 1930.192 This fact was sometimes used to explain why Scottish beef was of “uniformly high quality.”193 In 1933, only around 33 percent of British livestock were slaughtered in public abattoirs, and limited progress was made before World War II, although the 1937 Livestock Industry Act provided loans for three experimental central slaughterhouses.194 Public abattoirs built by progressive nineteenth-century urban authorities soon become obsolete. Liverpool’s public abattoir, which the engineer Richard Grantham considered “the best in England” in 1848, was condemned as “very old” and, “in some respects, inferior to an ordinary private slaughter-house” fifty years later.195 It was located in the city center, its stench permeating residential areas. Butchers often regarded abattoir construction as an assault on their liberty, while urban authorities might complain of the expense. Many abattoirs were very small and technologically modest. Finally, the act of killing remained recalcitrant to total machine control. What Siegfried Giedion called “murder machinery” still requires human accomplices.196 The traditional (Christian) technique involved stunning, throat slitting, and bleeding; Jewish and Islamic methods omitted the stunning. In Britain, animals were first secured (a stressful procedure) before being stunned with poleaxes: a pithing cane was often inserted through the hole to “stir the brain” and prevent reflexive leg thrashing. Killing, however, was often unregulated. Many sheep and pigs were slaughtered without stunning, often incompetently: “The butcher wields his pole-axe with all the complacency of a youth having his innings at cricket.”197 Several reformers suggested that Jewish slaughtering methods— shechita— were superior. Swift application of the knife, they argued, was superior to numerous clumsy poleax blows. Following experiments, Isaac Dembo, of St. Petersburg’s Alexandra Hospital, concluded that this method destroyed consciousness in three to five seconds owing to “anaemia of the brain,” adding that sharp knives produced “almost painless cuts,” particularly in the neck, “where so few sensory nerves of any size are divided.”198 The animal was also more thoroughly bled. This, along with superior inspection, produced healthier meat than that produced by other methods. Such assertions produced lively, inconclusive debate, with the British Medical Journal arguing that animals

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Figure 1.4. Humane slaughtering. From Gerald Leighton and Loudon Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 5 vols. (London: Educational Book Co., 1910), vol. 3.

killed via shechita underwent a longer period of conscious suffering.199 But, aside from a solitary Aberdeen case, shechita proved generally uncontroversial in Britain.200 In Germany, by contrast, Hitler banned the practice in 1933.201 Attempts were made to replace the antiquated apparatus of poleaxes and knives. Techniques that drove bolts or hammers directly through the animal’s skull, such as the Behr pistol, were most successful (see fig. 1.4). In 1913, the animal welfare advocate Christopher Cash and the firearms expert George Accles produced the Cash Captive Bolt Pistol, which became the dominant cattle stunner in Britain and many other parts of the world and is still sold today.202 Others experimented, less successfully, with gassing, shooting masks, guillotines, and electrocution. New techniques, however, spread slowly and unevenly. Sheep were exempt from the 1933 Slaughter of Animals Act, which made stunning compulsory. They regularly had their throats slit and necks broken without stunning, after which the spinal cords were manually severed: “Often the hole thus made is as large as an orange.”203 Humane, automatic stunning systems were easier to introduce in large, well-inspected colonial abattoirs.204 Carbon dioxide slaughtering techniques (using Ferris wheels, conveyor belts, or elevators) were legalized for pigs via the 1958 Slaughter of Pigs (Anaesthesia) Regulations. Stunning boxes, which occluded animals’ sight of slaughter, were increasingly coming into use.205 The 1974 Slaughterhouse Act prescribed stunning for all animals

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except those killed by shechita or halal methods.206 Pithing remained legal until 2001 (when fears about infective brain tissue caused its prohibition), and controversy around slaughtering techniques continues.207

BY-PRODUCTS Animal industries traditionally clustered around slaughterhouses. Leeds had a flourishing leather industry, while Hull’s slaughterhouses sent blood in casks to Lincolnshire farmers.208 But much material was wasted. Discarded entrails accumulated on manure heaps, where “half-decomposed guts” swarmed with bluebottles in humid weather.209 Larger-scale abattoirs made possible unprecedented economies of scale for collecting and processing nonmeat substances. The abattoir decomposed an individual animal into its manifold constituent elements, which were then aggregated, producing what Pachirat calls “a haunting image of vast destruction.”210 While hides remained the most valuable by-product, fats became increasingly profitable. Those around internal organs, used for suet, were particularly prized. Lower-quality fats were utilized for margarine, dog biscuits, tallow, soap, and lubricating oil. Glycerin was sold in its crude state or utilized for manufacturing explosives. Gelatin, extracted from bones, skin, tendons, and connective tissue, was used to make archetypal Second Industrial Revolution commodities: photographic plates, canned meat, medicinal capsules, bacterial cultures, and candy.211 Intestines and weasands became sausage casings, airship gasbags, and strings for musical instruments and tennis rackets (see fig. 1.5).212 It took eleven intestines from “strong, healthy, and vigorous lambs” to produce a racket capable of providing resistance to “the stiff volleying and smashing service” of early twentieth-century tennis players.213 Traditional uses for bones remained (combs, toothbrushes), but they were also ground into fertilizer or animal feed, while bone ash was a valuable input in the bone china industry.214 Pigs’ bristles were used for paintbrushes or shaving brushes and hair-filled cushions, upholstery, and mattresses or as insulation.215 Blood found multiple applications, including refining sugar, dying, making fertilizer, thickening paint, and clarifying wine.216 While French invalids drank it and occasionally bathed in it, the squeamish British found such habits “repulsive,” although they occasionally imbibed serum to eradicate tapeworm.217 The science of endocrinology and the developing pharmaceutical industry were indebted to abattoirs for supplies of chilled, packed glands: pancreatic, pituitary, thyroid, testicular, suprarenal.218 Pineal gland extract, for example, was used to treat “cases of retarded mental development.”219

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Figure 1.5. Using animal intestines to make strings for musical instruments and tennis rackets. From Rudolf Clemen, By-Products in the Packing Industry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927). Reproduced by kind permission of the University of Chicago Press.

Insulin was reaped from pancreases. One pound of purified epinephrine required 25,200 suprarenal glands.220 Brown-Séquard’s testicular extract or “testicle stew” was briefly mooted as an elixir of life.221 American abattoirs became heavily interconnected with the pharmaceutical industry, in which scale allowed standardization: in Britain, glands were often sold along with offal.222 German abattoirs pioneered the collection of lymph for vaccines, with large quantities exported to Britain and America.223 The meat industry catalyzed industrial expansion. The carcass became an industrial feedstock, processed into drugs, dog biscuits, margarine, explosives, sweets, and musical instruments. By-products were worth around onesixth of the animal’s total value. By 1932, Britain’s by-product industry generated around ₤97 million annually and employed around 310,000 people.224 New transport connections distended links between slaughter and processing: Aberdeen slaughterhouse, for example, dispatched hooves to Lancashire for gluemaking, intestines to Glasgow for sausage manufacture, and hides to Midlands tanneries.225 Making animal feed from abattoir waste and “meat scrap” raised some disquiet, but sterilization assuaged anxieties. Bacteria were obliterated: prions, alas, were not.226

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MEAT LOGISTICS Livestock traditionally traveled large distances on foot from pasture to market. British cattle droving was long established, with animals driven from the north and west to markets and fairs in the more densely populated south and east.227 By the eighteenth century, up to eighty thousand cattle were moved south from Scotland annually.228 These droves, of between two hundred and one thousand cattle, were sold at northern English markets and driven further south for grazing. By the early nineteenth century, however, this system was heavily strained. Animals’ maximum velocity of around twenty miles per hour, plus overnight stops, limited the system’s speed. The animals also lost weight during the journey. The loss of common grazing grounds, the closure of drove roads, and the various post-1840 epizootics hastened droving’s demise. Steam transportation was even more significant. The first cattle train left Portlethen, eight miles from Aberdeen, on January 18, 1850. There was widespread agreement that meat arriving in London from Aberdeen was often in superior condition to that of London-killed animals, and the Aberdeen trade retained its reputation for high quality thereafter.229 Across neo-European meat frontiers, livestock geographies were remade by steam power. Steamships stimulated Ireland’s cattle industry, particularly following the establishment of a regular Dublin-Liverpool service. Liverpool’s cattle market received mainly Irish cattle in the mid-nineteenth century, with 176,000 cattle and calves imported by sea in 1852.230 Paddle steamers shipped animals from European ports like Hamburg and Gothenburg. The 1865 rinderpest epizootic closed British ports to European animals but stimulated the Atlantic live animal trade, with cattle imported from the United States and Argentina.231 Trial shipments of live Australian and New Zealand animals were also undertaken.232 Large port abattoirs were built, for example, at Birkenhead and Deptford. Incoming animals were inspected and slaughtered there and their meat dispatched by railway, often with preferential freight rates.233 By 1900, nearly 200,000 foreign cattle arrived at Deptford annually.234 In the early 1930s, Britain still imported cattle from Canada, the Irish Free State, the Union of South Africa, Southern Rhodesia, and South West Africa.235 Mechanized transportation of live animals was demonstrably cruel. Railway companies often lacked purpose-built cattle trucks and neglected to give animals water during long trips. These issues became acute on cattle ships, where temporary wooden structures were sometimes erected on upper decks to accommodate extra animals.236 “Pens,” one RSPCA prosecutor at

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Birkenhead noted, “were like birdcages perched on deck.”237 One observer noted how bad weather could transform decks “into a veritable shambles” of gored, broken animals, the scent of which attracted shoals of sharks.238 Fire was another threat: “hundreds of poor beasts were roasted alive” when the Egypt caught fire in 1890.239 In 1886, the Atlantic cattle trade lost 6,467 animals on crossings, most of which were thrown overboard.240 At Wallasey, an ambulance was provided to treat drovers injured by stampeding animals disembarking cattle ships.241 The “floating ocean farm” was a major reverse salient in the international meat system.242 By the mid-nineteenth century, various preservation techniques had been developed to obviate this problem, including antiseptic gases, oleaginous coatings, or mechanical pressure, but, apart from canning, most were unsuccessful.243 “Hundreds of different examples of preserved foods” were displayed at the Great Exhibition.244 In 1865, “jerked beef banquets” were held in London in a forlorn effort to recalibrate working-class palates.245 The solution was mechanical freezing and, later, refrigeration. Railway cars using iceboxes or brine were as essential to the expanding American commodity frontier as grain elevators.246 Mechanical systems of temperature reduction were first used in a Texas abattoir in 1871. Australia had fifty-four export freezing works by around 1925, capable of killing six thousand cattle and ninety thousand sheep and lambs daily.247 In 1882, a breathless New Zealand Herald article declared that frozen meat would make New Zealand “as much a province of England, as easy a source of supply for the London market, as Yorkshire or Devon.”248 The Canterbury Frozen Meat Company’s Belfast Works opened a year later. The company opened a new plant at Pareora in 1904, and, by 1906, a million animals were being killed annually.249 Transcontinental shipping with functional freezing equipment became common from the 1880s (see fig. 1.6). It was also promoted as a technique of ethical consumption, precluding the cruel ocean voyage.250 Britain imported four hundred mutton carcasses in 1880: by 1893, buoyed by successful marketing campaigns, this figure reached 3.9 million.251 Frozen meat, however, was not instantly popular. In 1888, one writer described frozen beef as “sappy and tasteless.”252 Chilling to just below freezing, however, kept meat relatively soft and avoided the accumulation of excess ice crystals. This enabled the Atlantic trade to produce better-quality beef for the British market. In 1907, Professor Rideal of the University of London investigated Argentinean chilled meat and reported that it exceeded fresh British meat in terms of nutritional quality.253 Argentinean chilled beef exports first exceeded frozen ones in 1910.254 Distance meant that the Australasian trade was initially limited to freezing: its chilled beef trade

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Figure 1.6. Frozen carcasses being loaded at Buenos Aires. From Pedro Bergé, “La industria della carne refrigerata nella Repubblica Argentina,” Anales de la Sociedad Rurale Argentina 45, no. 1 (1910): 68.

developed only in the 1930s.255 Ships were equipped with separate holds individually adjustable for frozen or refrigerated meat.256 Other technological developments included airtight doors, calculated carcass spacing to facilitate air circulation, thermographs, and alarms that sounded when temperatures departed from specific levels.257 The mass consumption of chilled and frozen meat was a particularly British phenomenon: French consumers were more skeptical about such products.258 As capital flowed into the refrigerated meat industry, the trade’s “centre of gravity” shifted to the Southern Hemisphere.259 In 1894, New Zealand mutton was reported to be selling “at a much lower price” than the British product at Smithfield.260 Two years later, it was two and a half pence cheaper than the best British produce.261 By 1911, the total “refrigerated fleet” of the Australasian and South American lines could carry a maximum of around 16 million carcasses: this trade was centered on Britain, and the ships— known as reefers— were largely British owned.262 By 1913, the British refrigerated fleet included 230 ships with a cargo capacity of 440,000 tons.263 Britain dominated the world frozen and refrigerated meat trade, taking over

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90 percent of chilled beef by the mid-1930s, when empire food ships further cemented the Australasian connection.264 Refrigeration suffused the distribution system, via refrigerated railway cars, barges, butchers’ coolers, and cold stores, forming a cold chain (a term first used in 1908) through which meat circulated.265 Telescopic conveyors, winches, overhead runways, and elevators maneuvered carcasses into and within stores (see fig. 1.7): at Nelson’s Wharf in London, men were instructed to “handle the carcasses as if they [were] eggs.”266 Britain’s first effective cold store opened in London in 1882: owned by the London and St. Catherine Docks Company, it could hold fifty-nine thousand carcasses by 1886.267 In July 1895, half a million carcasses were being stored in London.268 At the multistory cold-storage structure at Nelson’s Wharf alone, 200,000 sheep could be accommodated.269 London’s cold-storage capacity reached 2.84 million carcasses by 1911 (over one-third of the metropolis’s human population), and, in the 1930s, the majority of chilled beef and frozen mutton was imported via London.270 These frigid necropolises multiplied: by 1902, fifty British towns had cold stores.271 Air locks helped maintain cold temperatures.272 Containers, allowing easy transfer from railway to road, were adopted by British railways from the mid1920s: within a decade, almost one thousand refrigerated meat containers were in use.273 Frozen meat trucks appeared in Britain around 1921, predating British ice-cream trucks by at least five years.274 By 1850, British urban meat markets were often viewed as anachronisms. London’s Newgate market, for example, had a single nine-foot-wide entrance passage.275 John Hollingshead described how six hundred tons of meat was “squeezed, pushed, and thrown, by some three thousand people, into a web of narrow alleys, like the maze at Hampton Court, to be torn and dragged out of the same maze by the same three thousand people immediately afterwards.” The “ever-swelling tide of dead meat” was overwhelming wholesale facilities.276 Smithfield cattle market was “ridiculously small for the amount of cattle sold there.”277 Commodity flow was eased through architectural reconstruction and transport connections. Newgate market closed in 1861, and a new Smithfield market opened in 1868, selling meat only.278 It was built over the Great Western Railway goods station, with underground rail links.279 A new twentieth-century depot held eighty thousand carcasses.280 Smithfield remained the world’s largest dead-meat market well into the twentieth century.281 Finally, in a further act of spatial distancing, meat retailing became almost totally disaggregated from the slaughterhouse. There were an estimated forty-three thousand meat purveyors’ establishments in Britain in 1910.282 By the 1930s, butchers’ shops were often graced with tiled walls, glazed screens, and even air-conditioning.283

Figure 1.7. Mechanical handling of carcasses in multistory cold store. From George Zimmer, The Mechanical Handling of Material: Being a Treatise on the Handling of Material Such as Coal, Ore, Timber, &c. by Automatic or Semi-Automatic Machinery (London: Crosby Lockwood & Son, 1905).

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Leighton and Douglas began their monumental five-volume opus on the British meat industry by announcing: “As far as capital is concerned, there is possibly more money invested in the meat industry than in any other British business, except the business of money itself.”284 The scale of operations and the capital investments necessary for refrigerated shipping ultimately produced concentration in the hands of a few major and largely American companies, which moved into the Argentinean trade in 1907. Although much of the early Argentinean meat industry’s capital was British, by 1918 American companies had a 68.1 percent share of Argentina’s export market.285 The meat industry was among the first to be dominated by multinational corporations, presiding over a truly global marketplace, with the entire meat industry regulated “by the sum total of the varying influences in all countries of the globe.”286 When American business became triumphant in the twentieth century, it did so by controlling a system largely built to feed Britain. h When British observers celebrated their heavy meat consumption, they rarely paused to consider the meat system itself. They seldom pondered the historically unprecedented mobilizing of biological forces that produced new cattle breeds or the way in which rapid-growing, marbled bovine flesh became a technology of capital accumulation. They ignored the paradox that the meat supposedly powering British liberty could be supplied only at the cost of self-sufficiency and economic independence. For Britain to develop nutritionally, it needed a diet whose ecological and technological reach was far greater than its limited surface area. This “intensive meat complex” was a global technological infrastructure enveloping hundreds of millions of animals whose systematic slaughter drove planetary meatification.287 This global second nature, oriented toward large-scale livestock production, was among the most enduring achievements of the large-planet philosophy. It helped create a global disposition toward meat eating.

C h a p t e r T wo

Wheat

The harvests of the world are at our disposal. —Winston Churchill speaking in Parliament (March 8, 1905) Man has ceased . . . to accept the plant for what it is, and begun to dictate to it what it should be. —Jacob Rosin and Max Eastman, The Road to Abundance (1953)

“

T

he lords of the world are they who have mastership of wheat,” observed Richard Jefferies in 1887.1 By this metric, the British were lords of the world. Between 1771 and 1879, the volume of wheat bread consumed in Britain more than quadrupled, while the “wheat-eating equivalent population” increased from 4.3 million to 21.9 million.2 In 1911, wheat bread provided around half the working-class calorie intake.3 But Britain was no longer a land of wheat growers. In 1909, over 80 percent of British bread was made with imported grain.4 One 1886 Derby Mercury article suggested that wheat might become an “extinct plant in England.”5 British “mastership of wheat” was achieved through planetary food systems, not island autarky. Such outsourcing was perhaps the most unambiguous statement of the effects of large-planet thinking. New World fertility was aggressively exploited to provide cheap calories for British labor: many British farmers were pushed into dairying, market gardening, or bare survival. Wheat flowed into Britain through extensive transport and logistic networks overlaid by a sophisticated information and financial infrastructure. The wheat plant itself was biologically transformed, producing standardized, highly glutinous grain that was roller-milled into mass-produced white bread loaves. No other food became so emotively linked to free trade and the command of world

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markets. This loaf, however, became the source of considerable dietary anxieties by 1914. This chapter charts a path through this tangled history.

THE RISE OF WHEAT In 1800, oats were still commonly consumed in northern England and Scotland, barley in the east Midlands, and rye in Yorkshire.6 Over the following century, the wheat transition radiated from the south and from urban centers, slowly permeating the north and west. By 1900, wheat was Britain’s standard grain. Scottish migrants to England routinely abandoned oatmeal for white wheat bread.7 “The time and glory of the great porridge eater,” lamented Charles Roeder, “is evidently over.”8 The long-standing hierarchy of grains was cemented and perpetuated, with wheat at the top and “lower” grains increasingly associated with poverty and animals. Arthur Young recorded the thoughts of one “Mr. Hart,” who observed that rye and barley bread “are looked upon with a sort of horror, even by poor cottagers.”9 Abraham Edlin’s 1805 breadmaking manual ridiculed barley bread as “heavy, viscid, and flatulent.”10 Leavened goods triumphed over local delicacies like clap bread, bannocks, and boiled grain dishes (hasty pudding, furmenty, and oatmeal). Since ancient times, white wheat bread had been a high-status food, but, in the nineteenth century, roller milling and the global cultivation and circulation of hard wheats transformed it into an article of mass consumption. In 1800, the London poor appeared dissatisfied with anything else; by the 1860s, even prisoners were eating it.11 Bran was largely relegated to use in biscuits or animal feed. Bread was cheap and portable and required no cooking. Hence it was “the staple article of the worker’s diet.”12 White wheat bread, like meat, became a symbol of British global power. Wheat was the grain of progress, “the King of Cereals.”13 “Fine white flour,” Bennett urged, always indicated “economic improvement of diet.”14 Such equations appear in economic history: Robert Allen has connected the “high wage economy” with rising white bread consumption.15 Thus was created an enduring, circular connection between wheat and “civilization” that reverberated across the Anglo world: “Wheat has . . . from early times been a measure of advancing civilization and well-being. . . . [T]he world’s most powerful nations use wheat as their principal cereal food.”16 Such equations often explicitly linked grains and race. Clichéd dismissals of enfeebled rice-eating populations were particularly common.17 Racial, cultural, and evolutionary narratives could easily be combined. In McCance and Widdowson’s Breads

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White and Brown (1956), the colors of breads stood as ciphers for evolutionary organisms, with oatcakes, chapatis, and unleavened bread compared to “earlier evolutionary types” limited to narrow niches and the “wheaten loaf bread” being “a sign of a high degree of culture.”18 Such “evolution” was hardly accidental. It was a product of a specific political, economic, and environmental history.

GLOBALIZING WHEAT PRODUCTION The history of the British outsourcing of wheat production is broadly similar to that of meat production. Improvements in crop rotation, enclosure, and drainage boosted domestic production by 225 percent between 1750 and 1850, by which time wheat yields had tripled since medieval times.19 Britain remained largely self-sufficient in wheat. What imports there were came predominantly from Ireland.20 In 1854, The Economist boasted that the current wheat crop was the best on record.21 English wheat production, however, peaked in 1855.22 English wheat acreage collapsed from 3.4 million in the late 1860s to 1.3 million in 1904.23 The decisive adoption of political economy, falling prices, fluctuating gold values, and the large-planet philosophy made domestic wheat farming increasingly unprofitable except on eastern England’s cheap, light soils.24 At the 1893 Royal Commission on Agriculture, a procession of dejected witnesses described the decline of British wheat growing, blaming overseas competition and currency fluctuations.25 By 1893, in parts of Cornwall wheat was being grown for thatch, not food.26 In 1931, only 22.5 percent of British wheat ended up in bread; half of it fed animals.27 Britain’s wheat was drawn from various, historically shifting global zones. Australian wheat production tripled between 1891 and 1911, with exports increasing sevenfold.28 The Suez Canal, railway construction, and the falling gold value of the rupee stimulated a significant rise in Indian wheat production, particularly in the Punjab.29 By 1895, about 20 million acres of British India (plus 5.7 million in other Indian states) were devoted to wheat cultivation, and most exports went to Britain.30 Russian wheat production expanded across the chernozem soils of the Eurasian steppe.31 By 1910, Russia was the world’s biggest wheat exporter.32 However, India’s rising population, low yields, relatively poor wheat infrastructure, and regular droughts made its supply uncertain, while Russia’s descent into revolution and civil war precipitated its withdrawal from the world market. 33 Argentina’s wheat acreage grew from 3.2 million in 1890 to around 15 million in 1910.34 By 1903, Argentina was sending Britain more wheat per head than any other nation.35 The development of Argentina’s wheat industry

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was, however, vitiated by several factors. Wheat farming, located along the Cattle Belt’s outer perimeters, generally remained subservient to ranching.36 Limited state investment in elevator infrastructure and grading and inspection mechanisms made Argentinean wheat the least reliable neo-European wheat.37 The impoverishment of wheat producers generated periodic unrest following the post-1912 economic downturn.38 North America, rather than Argentina, India, or Russia, became Britain’s main wheat supplier. American exports rose from the mid-eighteenth century, and, after 1800, the American wheat frontier rapidly expanded westward toward cheaper land where extensive farming was more profitable, reaching the colder, drier plains by the end of the century, with Minnesota, the Dakotas, Ohio, and Kansas dominant.39 Seventy-eight million acres of the North Central Midwest were improved in 1870. This figure grew to 250 million by 1910.40 By the late 1880s, 70 percent of American exports went to British ports.41 The American Elevator and Grain Trade called the United States “the granary of the importing world” in 1892.42 The American state subsidized railways, stimulating the development of new communities across the West.43 Grain sacks, suitable for smaller-scale agrarian systems, were replaced by grain elevators.44 Elevators were tall warehouses in which grain was stored in vertical bins before delivery to rail trucks or ships. They varied in size from smaller country elevators located along train lines to huge terminal elevators where grain was consolidated for mass distribution and export, and they developed complex internal systems for mobilizing, organizing, and weighing grain. The first successful grain elevator was built at Buffalo in 1842, and the system expanded rapidly thereafter. Modernists were fascinated by these proudly functional structures. Frank Gohlke’s stunning monochrome photographs immortalized them.45 At the end of Frank Norris’s novel The Octopus, Behrmann, the railroad operative, suffocates beneath a torrent of wheat after tumbling into his own elevator.46 American wheat, however, increasingly gravitated toward the economically prosperous northeastern states. By the 1920s, land and labor costs were higher than those of America’s competitors, and American wheat exports declined.47 They would rise again after 1945, but, in the meantime, Canada became the world’s largest wheat exporter. The great expansion of Canadian wheat farming occurred with the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century development of the prairie states (first Manitoba, then Alberta and Saskatchewan). The Canadian inspectorgeneral, Francis Hincks, urged infrastructural improvement and the free exchange of agricultural materials for British manufacturers in 1849, while James Caird predicted an “abundance of cheap food” from Canada in 1880.48

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The great Canadian wheat boom came between 1896 and 1920, stimulated by rising wheat prices and deliberate state policies that promoted railway construction, prairie settlement, and agricultural experiment stations, and excellent profits continued during the 1920s.49 New agricultural technologies (gang reapers, steam threshers, self-binding reapers) enabled large swathes of relatively thin soil to be exploited.50 Many Britons emigrated to Canada during these years, pushed by rural decline, and pulled by romantic dreams of frontier life: at Vulcan, Alberta, over 60 percent of the population was of British descent in 1921.51 This process was encouraged by racist immigration policies, which classified British emigrants as “preferred,” and a belief that Canada was “entirely suited to the British people.”52 The apparatus of Anglo capitalism forcibly usurped older biological and socioeconomic systems. Lingering buffalo herds were decimated in the late 1870s, and native populations, sometimes starved into submission, were forced onto reserved land.53 In 1923, Canada supplied 53.3 percent of British imports.54 The Canadian prairies provided near-perfect ecological conditions for wheat growing. Their “argillaceous mould of loam” could apparently withstand “more cropping without manure than any other known to agriculture.”55 Heavy rainfall during the early part of the crop’s growth was complemented by long summer days for ripening, with snowfall insulating the earth against brutal frosts.56 The prairies became one of the earth’s most monocultural landscapes. Wheat composed 80 percent of all crops in many areas: in drier regions, this figure exceeded 90 percent.57 This landscape was overlaid with a second nature of infrastructure that engineered Canadian agrarian space into a giant system for moving wheat east. This system was organized around a network of railways, canals, and elevators that grew rapidly during the 1880s and by 1918 was nearly three thousand miles long, extending from Halifax and St. John to Nordegg, Alberta.58 When farmers delivered grain to elevators, they received tickets (from which dockage and insurance were subtracted) that could be exchanged for cash at local banks, which grew dramatically in number after 1900 (see fig. 2.1).59 Commercial grades were established by the Grain Standards Committee. Grain was cleaned, stored, and eventually discharged into railway boxcars. When the wheat season opened, cars were moved to strategic points in the rail network, which required close telegraphic coordination. Rail companies regularly inspected and repaired thousands of 1,448-bushel railway boxcars and distributed coal through the system. Canadian Pacific Railway’s Winnipeg yards were reputedly the world’s largest.60 Canadian wheat and Canadian economic development were symbiotic and intertwined with British industrialization. The Bank of Canada declared

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Figure 2.1. Cash ticket issued at Canadian country elevator. The ticket could be redeemed at any bank or used as a cheque. From Clarence Piper, Principles of the Grain Trade of Western Canada (Winnipeg: Empire Elevator Co., 1917).

that no other government trying to sustain “a modern civilization and standard of living” was so dependent on a single commodity.61 The arch erected by the Canadians for Edward VII’s coronation was inscribed with “Canada: Britain’s Granary,” which was “much the same as saying Canada was no frozen, inhospitable, desolate country, but possessed richly the kindly fruits of the earth.”62 In 1881, Edward Hepple Hall, who penned numerous books on travel in and emigration to North America, called Canada an imperial “weapon,” an “unequalled” portion of planetary surface devoted to wheat growing.63 Britain was Canada’s major wheat export market well into the 1960s; it remains the most important European destination for Canadian wheat.64 One emergent problem created by drawing the majority of wheat from another continent was the necessity of internationally recognized grain standards. In the United States, the Chicago Board of Trade established general standards (for white, red, and spring wheat) in 1856 in terms of weight, but inspection remained subjective, unstandardized, and fraud ridden, and European importers grew dissatisfied. Federal standards were established in 1916: inspectors had to be licensed by the US Department of Agriculture, and inspection became mandatory for interstate and international grain commerce. Overseas buyers, however, remained dissatisfied with issues like excess moisture and breakage in the later twentieth century.65 The Canadian grading system, by contrast, became “the standard of the world.”66 The London Corn Trade Association bought Canadian grain on the basis of its inspection certificate alone. Railways rapidly funneled wheat from

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local elevators to giant terminal elevators.67 At Winnipeg, gangs inspected up to two thousand boxcars daily.68 On arrival, train clerks handed inspectors forms detailing their load’s composition.69 Samples were taken from each car with syringe-like probes that collected samples via “eleven equidistant coincident apertures” opening onto eleven small chambers that were later opened to create eleven separate heaps representing the entire depth of the car: multiple stabbings per boxcar produced a foolproof cross section of the entire truck.70 If the inspector was satisfied with the sample’s uniformity, it was mixed and a small bag taken to the Inspection Department offices in the Winnipeg Grain Exchange Building, where the grain was weighed, sieved, tested for color and moisture, physically assessed, and graded (see fig. 2.2).71 Bulk handing, inspection, and documentation were mutually reinforcing: wheat and information about wheat flowed efficiently.72 By the early 1920s, protein content was also measured, although this complicated established grading systems.73 Following grading, samples were retained in a room containing around sixty thousand boxes: new samples were added and old ones discarded daily.74 After receipt of its inspection certificate, wheat was stored in immense terminal elevators where it was weighed, cleaned, licensed, and bonded.75 Inspectors watched every stage of the process: “It is difficult to conceive any closer and more accurate supervision than that which is given.”76 The greatest concentration of terminal elevators was in the twin

Figure 2.2. Grain inspection, Winnipeg. Note the tin sample boxes on the right. These will be removed for storage in the sample room. From A. H. Reginald Buller, Essays on Wheat (New York: Macmillan, 1919).

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Figure 2.3. Grain elevator, Fort William, Canada. Reproduced by kind permission of Thunder Bay Public Library.

cities of Port Arthur and Fort William on Lake Superior, which together handled more wheat than any other grain port on earth (see fig. 2.3).77 In the later eighteenth century, grain was not among Britain’s top ten imported goods.78 By the early twentieth century, Britain imported around two-fifths of all wheat entering world trade. Its pre-1914 average importation level was greater than that of Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium combined.79 Its “ghost wheat acreage” was around 6 million in 1900 (out of a total ghost acreage of 23 million).80 Optimists thought that large-planet thinking was a form of risk management, providing insurance against climatic vagaries: “The world’s wheat producing countries are no longer a team with only one crack batsman; but are like a good all round team in which some members are bound to come off in every match.”81 This was by no means a consensus opinion, as we will see later.

TRANSFORMING WHEAT The wheat grain is composed of three parts: the skin or bran, a protective shell encasing the grain; the starchy endosperm, constituting around 83 percent of the kernel; and the embryo or germ, rich in protein, fats, and vitamins.82 The chemical composition of each part is, however, highly variable.

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Some wheats contain relatively high gluten levels: these are “hard,” proteinrich wheats. They produced “strong” flour, which made “large, upstanding, porous loaves,” while weaker, softer flour, which produced “small, flat, and . . . dense” loaves, was more appropriate for cakes, tarts, and biscuits.83 “Spring wheat,” sown in spring in regions with severe frost, produced the highest gluten levels and “lofty, well-piled bread.”84 In 1883, the Danish chemist Johan Kjeldahl developed a technique for calculating wheat’s nitrogen content and rated Manitoba the world’s richest grade.85 Through such methods, wheat grading ceased to be a local, empirical phenomenon and became internationalized, centralized, and standardized.86 The terms hard and soft were, however, often used imprecisely. Hardness was, finally, affected by climate and soil as well as by genetics. Wheat has been selected for millennia, making it highly dependent on human management.87 But, during the nineteenth century, the intensity and precision of selection increased significantly, and the early twentiethcentury application of Mendelian principles to plant breeding offered further control over wheat’s characteristics, particularly via hybridization.88 Darwin observed: “Our oldest cultivated plants, such as wheat, still yield new varieties.”89 Breeders targeted wheat’s color, gluten content, yield, baking quality, response to fertilizers, photoperiodicity, ability to avoid “lodging” (collapsing before harvest), and disease/pest resistance, exploiting the emergent science of plant genetics.90 The ability to produce disease-resistant strains, however, only encouraged the selection of more virulent forms of disease, which entailed the creation of further strains ad infinitum.91 Wheat’s capacity to self-pollinate means genetically produced useful characteristics are quite stable, which encouraged selection of exceptional plants.92 Hybridization experiments— involving crossing varieties via intentional pollination— began in the eighteenth century with the work of the German botanist J. G. Kölreuter and gradually moved from the realm of speculation to practical application as the concept of characters and their distribution emerged.93 The British breeder Thomas Knight’s early eighteenthand nineteenth-century hybridization experiments earned comparison with Bakewell. Patrick Shirreff used selection and hybridization to create new varieties, including Shirreff’s Bearded White, Pringle, and Shirreff’s Squarehead. However, such improvements failed to overcome British wheat’s central problem: its low gluten levels. Some Scottish wheats contained only 5 percent gluten, partly owing to the damp, wet climate. Although softer wheats had good flavor and generated higher yields, they could not produce the flocculent loaves demanded by the population: indeed, there appeared to be “an undoubted negative correlation” between these qualities.94 British

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wheat’s pleasant flavor and color, however, meant that it was blended with strong imported wheat to produce flour perfectly attuned to evolving baking norms.95 Nonetheless, Rowland Biffen’s early twentieth-century experiments at the Cambridge Plant Breeding Institute created novel hybrid British wheats, including Little Joss (which made excellent biscuits) and Yeoman (which produced satisfactory bread).96 Some specialty breads— notably Irish soda bread— continued to use predominantly soft local wheats.97 American developments were more consequential. Early North American plains settlers imported Russian wheat, which became the basis of the British loaf.98 Wheat breeding was institutionally encouraged. In 1888, the Minnesota Experiment Station began its systematic quest for improved wheat, producing several thousand varieties.99 This production of hard, disease-resistant wheats caused a “biological revolution” in American agriculture.100 By 1908, hard spring and winter varieties composed 55 percent of American wheat.101 The United States became subdivided into several wheat regions, including the hard strong spring wheat zone of the northern plains states and the hard durum wheat and dry-farming zone of the southern plains states.102 The most important new variety was Red Fife, selected by David Fife of Ontario in 1842 and introduced into the United States around 1855.103 The agronomist Carleton Ball called it the first “truly hard red spring wheat” in America: it was sown widely across the American plains and Canadian prairies, whose climate required early maturing, drought-resistant spring wheats.104 In 1904, the Canadian agronomist Charles Saunders crossed Red Fife with Red Calcutta, combining high yields with early ripening, and producing Marquis, “the outstanding hard red spring wheat of the world.”105 It ripened six days earlier than Red Fife, allowing the Canadian wheat frontier to push north.106 By 1918, 20 million Canadian and American acres had been sown with Marquis.107 Doting parents christened boys Fife and Marquis.108 Meanwhile, the 1873 introduction of Turkey wheat, a hard red winter variety, facilitated wheat’s expansion into drier, marginal regions: by 1919, over 80 percent of Nebraskan and Kansan wheat acreage was Turkey type. Such figures are uncommon today, with seeds increasingly designed for smaller ecological niches and wheat breeders continually selecting for rust resistance. In 2008, no single wheat cultivar composed more than 6 percent of American and Canadian total acreage: older wheat zones have become increasingly fragmented.109 Red Fife, however, as a parent of Marquis, still forms the genetic basis of North American wheat-breeding programs.110 Breeding was largely responsible for the 17 percent rise in global yields between 1886– 90 and 1926– 30.111 The chromosomal consequences

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were profound. Diploid (fourteen-chromosome) and tetraploid (twenty-eightchromosome) wheats largely disappeared, and cultivated hexaploid (fortytwo-chromosome) wheats became dominant.112 Emmer, einkorn, and spelt were almost abandoned: they became “ancient grains” through a humandriven process of agricultural obliteration and rebranding. Novel wheats appeared across the globe: Barletta in Argentina, Pusa in India.113 Pusa wheats stimulated renewed exports to Britain in the 1920s.114 In the Soviet Union, Lysenko claimed that his technique of chilling cereals to accelerate their flowering, or “yarovization” (“vernalization”), could transform spring into winter wheat (others made wilder claims, e.g., that rabbit could be transmuted into chicken).115 Lysenko’s excesses, however, represented an extreme form of a generalized belief in the mutability of vital resources. Plants, it was suggested, could be “made” in controlled stages, just like “in building a motor-car each part is constructed separately to take its appointed place in the finished vehicle.”116 The role of genetic material in such metamorphoses was emphasized in the more Mendelian West: research demonstrated the existence of determining factors in endosperm cells producing gradations in hardness from hard to soft.117 But environmental and climatic factors were not ignored since they explained why hard wheats grew poorly in Britain.118 Indeed, vernalization, shorn of its Lamarckian Lysenkoisms, remains a common agricultural technique.119

MAKING BREAD The mass production of white bread from hard winter wheats necessitated technological transitions in milling and baking: mechanization, standardization, scaling up, and accelerated production. In the 1870s, traditional milling methods in Hungary and the United States were rapidly replaced by roller milling, which was then introduced into Britain. On arrival at the mill, wheat was cleaned to remove impurities: magnets attracted metal fragments, aspirators removed lighter impurities, separators extracted stones.120 Grain was then washed, scoured, conditioned and dried.121 The wheat was then “broken” between fluted rollers whose grooves and differential speeds were designed to shear and burst, rather than crush, the wheat.122 The aim here was to produce, not flour, but rather middlings, or “semolina,” which were sifted, purified, and returned for further breaks to extract more bran.123 Purified middlings were finally crumbled into flour by smooth reduction rollers.124 Such recovery of middlings had its origins in eighteenth-century “economic milling” techniques, which relied on millstones.125 Technological arrangements varied, however, with conditioning, washing, exact break-

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roll arrangements, and purifying requirements different for hard and soft wheats.126 Flour emerged in several carefully differentiated streams, making precise grading and blending possible: it could be classified as straight (70 percent of total weight of wheat milled) or patent (down to 30 percent, or “short patent,” as opposed to “long patent,” which could reach 60 percent).127 Flour, germ, and bran were disaggregated. Bran was often sold as cattle feed, while the germ could be sold to germ bread manufacturers.128 Flour was, finally, stored and “aged” in silos to whiten. This was a time- (and space-) consuming process, the remedy for which was commercial bleaching, involving numerous chemicals, including chlorine dioxide and nitrogen peroxide.129 This process was controversial, and episodic reports culminated in the banning of bleaches in Britain in 1998. Machinery permeated the milling process, making the mill “a single automatic unit.”130 The American chemist Charles Swanson commented on the “presence of so few men” inside modern mills.131 Their size and technical complexity made mills significant fire risks: by the early twentieth century, automatic sprinkler systems were commonplace.132 Mills underwent a protracted energy transition. In 1870, watermills still produced two-thirds of the horsepower available for British grain milling.133 In 1933, by contrast, The Times noted: “To-day, the Windmills have almost entirely disappeared, few of the Watermills remain.”134 Windmills fell into ruin. Milling gravitated from inland streams and hills to major ports (Liverpool, Bristol, Hull, London, Cardiff, Newcastle) where large new structures allowed wheat to be processed immediately after importation and dispersed over huge radii. Flour imports consequently declined.135 Around three hundred inland mills survived into the late 1930s.136 By 1939, the “Big Three” millers (Joseph Rank, Spillers, and the Co-Operative Wholesale Society) controlled around two-thirds of flour production.137 Commercial baking first appeared in urban centers and in the south of England. William Cobbett considered the use of bakers’ shops, like commercial breweries, to be “wasteful,” “shameful,” and “criminally careless.” The decline of domestic baking produced the “contemptible” phenomenon of “a crowd of men and women living together in a house, and constantly looking out of it for people to bring them food and drink.”138 Such deskilling was like the Game Laws, an essential act of primitive accumulation allowing the bulk of domestic calorie consumption to be mediated by the market.139 This transition was geographically uneven: home-baked bread remained common in parts of Lancashire, Yorkshire, and the West Country and has, obviously, never fully disappeared.140 Commercial bakers, however, could

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select from an increasingly broad range of wheats and economize through bulk purchases of salt, yeast, and coal: proximity to cheap coal supplies was a major reason why domestic baking persisted in Yorkshire’s West Riding.141 Metropolitan bakehouses were routinely depicted like slums, with “hot and stifling atmosphere” generating cascades of sweat dripping into dough.142 Visitors emphasized teeming insect life, defective sanitary arrangements, and claustrophobic, subterranean ecologies.143 Bakers suffered from skin and respiratory complaints (like “bakers’ eczema”) and high suicide and alcoholism rates: dermatitis remains an occupational hazard today.144 “Of all dreary, hopeless, blighted lives,” concluded one commentator, “I should think that of the operative baker is about the worst.”145 Cheap food, as Sébastien Rioux argues, required appalling labor conditions across the food system: bakers often worked extremely long hours (over 110 per week).146 Bakers were particularly exploited, like abattoir workers and vegetable pickers, although bakeries were slowly pulled into the orbit of environmental health regulation after 1880. Within the bakery, the older “sponge-and-dough” method was replaced, first in England and more slowly elsewhere, with the faster, simpler “straight” method, in which all ingredients were introduced simultaneously.147 Edmund Bennion thought that straight dough aligned better with “modern bakery production procedure.”148 The process could be further accelerated by adding more yeast and malt extract: such processes were becoming more popular in England, being predominant in mechanized bakeries by the early 1960s.149 The development of “reliable” and “standardised yeast” was vital to short doughs, which required proportionally more yeast than longer doughs.150 In 1897, the Pall Mall Gazette claimed that hand-mixed dough was “nearly a thing of the past,” praising the sanitary advantages of producing foods largely untouched by human hands.151 While this was hyperbole, the trend toward instrumentation and mechanization was clear (see fig. 2.4). By midcentury, bakers fiddled with central control panels and preprogrammed feed rates and viscosity levels, while meters displayed the amount of ingredients entering the mixer.152 Instruments— zymotachigraphs, alveographs, extensometers— replaced individual judgments about dough’s material qualities: expansion, strength, elasticity.153 Dough became an industrial material, its colloidal properties chemically comparable to those of rubber: “It is a long cry from bread to automobile tires; nevertheless, in this problem of tensile strength they meet on common ground.”154 “From a craft, baking has been emerging in recent years into a science,” wrote James Tobey in 1939. The “cereal chemist” and the “bakery engineer” replaced the baker: button pushing replaced tactile interaction with swelling, living dough.155 Such

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Figure 2.4. Automatic bakery. From W. Jago and W. C. Jago, The Technology of BreadMaking, Including the Chemistry and Analytical and Practical Testing of Wheat, Flour, and Other Materials Employed in Bread-Making and Confectionery (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1911).

operatives were soon presiding over equipment that forced dough toward the improbable goal of instantaneous swelling. The Do-Maker Process (1951) reduced loaf-making time by three hours, enabling dough to be made with a liquid ferment in a few minutes.156 The Chorleywood Baking Process (1961) produced a palatable loaf with lower-quality flour by utilizing oxidizing agents and hard mixing to produce a rapidly, perfectly expanding protein matrix (see fig. 2.5).157 Bread was no longer a simple mixture of flour, yeast, salt, and water. Malt, fats, and sugar were sometimes added to produce precise chemical effects (crumb structure, color).158 Emulsifiers like soy lecithin were regularly used as softeners and staleness retardants by the 1960s. Persulphates maintained constant water absorption, while potassium bromate helped condition dough: the latter is possibly carcinogenic and is now banned in the European Union. Loaves were “of uniform size and shape” and “mixed to . . . the same consistency,” allowing them to pass through dividing and molding machines. This bread, with strong crumb structure and short crust, was made for slicing.159 Automatic machines sliced two thousand loaves hourly by the 1960s, facilitating the great rise in sandwich eating.160 Wrapped bread, initially using wax paper, was available from at least the 1920s.161 Cobbett’s domestic economy had been obliterated by mechanized breadmaking, which would open a space for “artisanal” breads, handmade and additive free. Bread had been “nutritionally modernized,” reconfigured with a battery

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Figure 2.5. Technologies of flocculence. Increasing white bread’s fluffiness via different baking systems. From E. Bennion, Breadmaking: Its Principles and Practice, 4th ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1967). Copyright Oxford University Press. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.

of chemicals and encased in plastic.162 It was now a materially controversial substance.

CONTROVERSY White bread, many argued, provided more calories per loaf since less was wasted as unabsorbed fiber: “In digestibility white flour resembles a highgrade fuel that burns completely and without producing dense black smoke

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or excessive ash or clinkers.”163 This argument suggested that the laborer’s “preference” for white bread had “a sound physiological basis.”164 Brown bread advocates, however, remained a voluble minority. “To degerm wheat for making household bread should, by law, be punishable,” grumbled one Times writer in 1925.165 In 1956, the Daily Mail columnist Patricia Keighran decried the loaf’s symmetrical shape, comparing its texture to “cotton wool” covered in plastic.166 The archpriest of technopessimism, Jacques Ellul, dismissed white bread as “a valueless article of fashion.”167 Internationally, British bread was regarded as anodyne. At a 1933 conference of the Food Group of the Society of Chemical Industry, in London, Dr. John Vargas Eyre apparently described British bread as “for the most part tasteless, uninteresting as a food, and frankly not worth eating.”168 This aesthetic-gustatory critique was inseparable from broader health and cultural concerns. For many, white bread epitomized a synthetic age, its consumption linked, often mysteriously, to innumerable disorders, from constipation to childhood behavior problems.169 The Bread Reform League, founded in 1880, critiqued both white bread (which threatened to make Britain “a nation of jelly-fish”) and brown bread, arguing that the latter was simply white bread plus the grain’s irritating exterior coat.170 Wheat meal, however, included the more digestible parts of bran and the nutritious germ: it was produced via decortication, which eliminated the grain’s rough outer layers.171 Thomas Allinson, whose The Advantages of Wholemeal Bread (1889) sold nearly 100,000 copies, declared: “To banish the white flour loaf from his home is the duty of every good citizen.” 172 Hovis bread dates from 1890. It was originally “Smith’s Patent Brown Bread” (1885), the appellation taken from homo (man) plus vis (force).173 Hovis created a major advertising complex, mobilizing boxes, bins, delivery baskets, vans, and barrows.174 It became associated with health food, the “Fitter Britain” movement, and the muscleman Thomas Inch.175 It would also actively mobilize nostalgia for nonmodern bread with high wheat-germ content. Its 1973 Ridley Scott– directed advertisement, featuring a boy wheeling a bike up a cobbled northern hill, was voted Britain’s favorite commercial in 2006.176 Before a 1927 Liverpool talk, Arbuthnot Lane, the archfoe of costiveness, was escorted through the streets by students carrying whole wheat bread loaves impaled on sticks.177 Scientists failed to provide unambiguous answers. Tests conducted in 1912 showed that rising bran content reduced “utilization efficiency” and that the nitrogen in white bread was more fully digested than that in “standard” bread.178 Other experiments, however, showed pigeons thriving on a wholemeal diet but deteriorating on a white bread–only diet.179

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Edie and Simpson of the Tropical School of Medicine, Liverpool, suggested that white bread’s missing vital substance might be “organic phosphorus compounds.”180 The discovery of vitamins B1 and E promised to resolve the controversy. In its 1936 report on nutrition, the League of Nations advised that the use of white flour “should be decreased” while that of more “lightly milled cereals” increased.181 The advent of roller milling could be depicted as a historical rupture heralding pernicious forms of vitamin deficiency. Some linked the removal of vitamin E or bran from bread to infertility.182 No definitive answer emerged, however, as bread choices were increasingly refracted through politicocultural attitudes. As diets diversified, a lack of vitamins from one source was easily compensated by those from another. Eating white bread did not produce an efflorescence of beriberi, like eating polished rice had done in Japan. White bread could be fortified with nutrients lost during high milling, something introduced during World War II, when bread was chemically enriched “without any interference with the colour, taste and baking quality.”183 Moreover, white bread had powerful affective dimensions. It had long been seen as the nutritional embodiment of the triumph of British free trade, in contrast to the dark breads of protectionist states stubbornly resisting globalized food to support their agrarian bases.184 Parliamentary victory for tariff reformers might, some said, inaugurate a new age of darker British bread.185 Conservatives sometimes obliged by attacking white bread’s degenerative effects, as Pierse Loftus did in Creed of a Tory (1926).186 The Nazi campaign for wholemeal bread articulated similar concerns about transnational food systems and artifice.187 The flocculent, symmetrical white bread loaf was resolutely capitalist bread, the product of planetary food systems and liberalized wheat flow. Wholemeal bread was local, vital, holistic. Darker breads might also be associated with effete intellectuals: during 1940 parliamentary debates on wholemeal bread, John Banfield, the Labour MP for Wednesbury, stated that such bread was “all right for long-haired gentlemen in Bloomsbury” but that laborers did not want to eat it “every day.”188

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF BREAD Bread was a profoundly political substance, and early twentieth-century capitalist bread belonged to a very different political system than its less refined forebears. The assize, established from at least the twelfth century, was designed to ensure that bread was priced fairly: if grain prices rose, the loaf became proportionally smaller. These regulations were established locally, reflecting regional price variations and the absence of a nationally integrated

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market.189 The basic right to bread was ensured, although domestically baked bread was not assized since flour prices were unregulated.190 An entire social order was predicated on a fairly priced, predictable grain supply.191 The assize was revived in 1709 in an attempt to appease unrest. Market activities— notably forestalling, ingrossing, and regrating— were rendered illegal.192 Additionally, various Corn Laws were passed to regulate British interactions with international markets by establishing a price threshold above which exports were forbidden. Since this threshold was rarely reached, there were few years in which merchants could actually freely export grain, although such restrictions were often evaded (smuggling was not difficult).193 The 1815 Corn Laws were passed to maintain high prices during the postwar transition: it was also believed that importing food from overseas would depress prices without averting genuine deficiency.194 These disparate, episodic, and often ineffective regulatory acts suggested that bread was considered far too important to leave to putatively market forces. However, during the eighteenth century, this orthodoxy began to unravel, and two “logics of bread” collided, one framed around moral economy, the other shaped by political economy. E. P. Thompson regarded the repeal of legislation against forestalling as a critical moment in the shift to economic liberalism.195 The assize fell apart as the relationship between the prices of wheat, flour, and bread grew increasingly opaque, making the setting of bread prices difficult and divisive. “Undersellers” began undercutting the assize price. Glasgow abandoned assizing in 1801, London in 1815, and the remainder of Britain in 1836.196 “The right, never again withdrawn,” declared Jago and Jago, “was thus conferred on the Baker to sell his bread at whatever price he chose.” September 1, 1815, they thundered, “may well be called that of The Magna Charta [sic] of the baking trade.”197 Thus, the entire grain economy was liberalizing at the precise moment when British Tories introduced their new protectionist legislation. Many political economists saw grain circulation as the heartbeat of the entire economy.198 James Wilson argued that grain prices and purchasing power were inversely proportional. Scarcity of wheat, he suggested, “drags capital from all other uses,” while abundance “gives it back.” The capacity to purchase manufactured articles depended on the cost of “first necessaries.”199 Torrens articulated the same point in 1815.200 The Corn Laws distorted the entire British economy by inflating bread prices artificially, pushing grain production onto marginal land, and raising the specter of diminishing returns on agriculture.201 Lord Liverpool was already making spirited pleas for cheap food in the Lords by 1822.202 Ricardo stated that repeal of the Corn Laws would make Britain “the cheapest country in the world” and attract capital

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from around the globe.203 The Anti– Corn Law League had a single objective: cheap bread, a cry reverberating from tracts and pamphlets and bluntly displayed on crockery, thimbles, and woolens.204 In 1842, Macaulay attacked the idea of self-sufficiency, praised “constant dependence” on foreign supplies, and applauded burgeoning overseas populations who labored to turn “wilderness into cornfields” and awaited British manufactured articles to purchase. “Cheapness of food,” he urged, “is a blessing to the nation.”205 Conversely, enforced self-sufficiency forced farming onto low-quality soils, drove up rent, risked famine, and catapulted Britain toward the stationary state.206 Britain’s entire being and future could be reoriented around cheap imported grain.207 This was a war on self-sufficiency based on the premise that the earth was full of empty space to exploit. With aristocratic MPs diversifying their economic portfolios and developing interests in manufacturing and trade, repeal became politically possible despite its disastrous short-term consequences for the Conservative Party, which fragmented in 1846.208 Robert Peel thought that repeal would attract more capital to agriculture and stimulate high farming, but his hopes were unrealized.209 Cereal duties were substantially reduced in 1846 and abolished on February 1, 1849, although a nominal registration duty of one shilling per quarter remained until 1869.210 Thus began the “the classic free economic market” and the political ascendency of liberalism and the Liberal Party.211 Traditional farming interests had “collapsed before the brazen monotone of Cobdenism.”212 The true age of “free trade in grain” thus began in 1869 and, aside from a brief Boer War hiatus, lasted until 1932.213

WHEAT AND THE WORLD ECONOMY Although grain has been traded over significant distances for millennia, a larger world market developed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, driven by economic development in core western regions, like the Netherlands.214 In the eighteenth century, grain production became responsive to conditions in the Atlantic economy, a process stimulated by the Spanish Empire’s liberalized import policies. Overemphasis on mercantilism can occlude trends toward market integration or globalization, tendencies disrupted by the Napoleonic Wars.215 The liberalization of Britain’s grain trade did not, then, straightforwardly mark a historical rupture dividing segmented from integrated markets. Nonetheless, it would be equally erroneous to overemphasize historical continuity. Dismantling Britain’s protectionist framework and outsourcing

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grain production represented a vital transition in world economic history. Guaranteed international trade in wheat connected more parts of the world to long-distance trade networks. Wheat being human rather than animal food, its market price was higher than that of oats or maize.216 From Wales to India, “lower grains” like barley and rice fed poor local populations, while wheat was grown for a world market.217 In 1854, De Lavergne noted that, in parts of France, distance from markets made growing wheat impossible.218 “Wheat is exceptional in that it enters so largely into international trade,” observed the geographer Oscar Von Engeln in 1920, noting that most foodstuffs were consumed in the immediate vicinity of their production.219 The world grain trade is estimated to have grown from 3.8 metric tons in 1854– 58 to 37.7 million metric tons in 1901– 13.220 As James C. Scott notes, grains are “visible, divisible, assessable, storable, transportable, and ‘rationable,’” and such mobile, durable properties allowed states to tax, distribute, stockpile, and accumulate.221 Wheat possessed such material qualities in abundance and was thus perfectly suited to long-distance commerce. Its compact nature made it easily amassed and transported. Roller-milled white flour was also more durable than wholemeal, hence the importance of drying equipment in silos.222 The rise of white bread was partly fueled by refined flour’s durability.223 Wheat and, to a lesser extent, white flour could be accumulated, graded, and released in a predictable, standardized, imperishable flow. Elevators were explicitly designed to mobilize and maximize such qualities. When piled en masse, wheat exerted little force on the walls and floors of elevators, meaning that their walls could be thin and their floors unsupported: many experiments were undertaken on the physics of storing and moving grain, or the “law of ‘semi-fluids.’”224 In frontier regions, where economies grew sluggish, wheat’s resilience and divisibility stimulated exchange. Wherever it flowed, so did money: it was “continually circulating, giving life to trade, and making new enterprises and the development of new lands possible.”225 In North America, it was highly liquid and readily converted into money: warehouse receipts were effective collateral for bank loans.226 With its low-friction circulation, it was highly fungible, “the only commodity in the world which was a rival to gold as a standard.”227 Britain became the world’s greatest wheat-deficit area, the center of what Wheat Studies called the western European “low pressure area” toward which wheat permanently gravitated.228 But this meteorological metaphor was hardly apposite. An entire second nature was physically necessary to create the conditions of possibility of stable, smooth, predictable flows of wheat toward Britain (see fig. 2.6). London’s Mark Lane Grain Exchange was

Figure 2.6. International wheat trade, 1920– 22. Note convergence on Britain. From T. Hammatt, “Can America Export Wheat?” Foreign Affairs, vol. 3, no. 1 (September 15, 1924). Reproduced by kind permission of the American Council on Foreign Relations.

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founded in 1747 and the Baltic Mercantile and Shipping Exchange in 1744.229 American and Canadian grain exchanges followed in the nineteenth century, connected to world markets by telegraphs and, later, telephones.230 In Winnipeg, British prices arrived by cable before the exchange opened, so its prices immediately reflected those across the Atlantic. Information flow was accelerating: “Prices that were formerly awaited for 2 or 3 months are now flashed by electricity over the whole world during the same day on which they are made.”231 Reuters’s statistical news department disseminated price information, while weather forecasting notably improved through international cooperation.232 Telegraphy facilitated sale by sample: if samples were approved, a simple message was sent requesting a whole consignment. Transportation and material handling technologies were equally important. Transcontinental shipments were undertaken in tramp steamers, “the world’s harvest waggons,” whose peregrinations were smoothed by an evolving maritime infrastructure of lighthouses, buoys, and improved waterways.233 Wheat was an easy “filling cargo” on liners carrying other goods, including meat, but necessitated technological innovations in handling: endless bucket chains, winches, conveyors, and large granaries, the apparatus through which bulk flow became possible and banal.234 Pneumatic elevators, with flexible, nozzle-tipped pipes, made unloading faster, largely eradicated shoveling, precisely distributed grain within granaries (see fig. 2.7), and accelerated wheat’s flow through the networked food economy.235 Montreal’s Grand Trunk elevator had a three-thousand-foot-long conveyor gallery that could load two steamers simultaneously.236 The Manchester Ship Canal Grain Elevator, completed in 1898, had a storage capacity of forty thousand tons, and its automatic conveying and spouting system allowed precise distribution of grain into 226 separate bins.237 Price integration, under way from the early modern period, was accelerated by these infrastructural developments. Falling transport costs were vital. In 1869, it cost around thirty-seven cents to transport a bushel of wheat from Chicago to Liverpool: by 1905, this was ten cents.238 The price differential between the two cities narrowed correspondingly, from 50– 60 percent in the 1870s to 5– 10 percent thirty years later.239 A central axiom of von Thünen’s location theory— that transport costs rose proportionately to distance from markets— unraveled.240 Such theses had not anticipated the concept of true global food systems. This phenomenon could generate physically implausible exaggerations, like Albert Mott’s claim that “time is annihilated [and] distance has become immaterial” or that the earth has become “one international soil worked by international capital.”241 Delay was ontologically inescapable, while China remained disconnected from the

Figure 2.7. Internal granary spouting system for directing grain into particular storage bins. From George Zimmer, The Mechanical Handling of Material: Being a Treatise on the Handling of Material Such as Coal, Ore, Timber, &c. by Automatic or SemiAutomatic Machinery (London: Crosby Lockwood & Son, 1905).

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world wheat economy, making the concept of a single world price misleading.242 Time-space compression, market integration, and price convergence were relative, not absolute, phenomena. But they were very real phenomena. “Speculation,” wrote Peter Dondlinger, “is the flywheel which imparts to the modern commercial machine a motion so uniform that all of its parts operate continuously and simultaneously.” It was routinely assumed to reduce price fluctuations.243 Futures trading— where wheat contracts were bought and sold for future delivery— allowed wheat supply and prices to be temporally balanced and stabilized.244 Such “to arrive” contracts and the buying and selling of warehouse receipts (not actual grain) developed in the United States in the later 1840s, enabled by grading, elevators, and telegraphy.245 The Liverpool Corn Trade Association authorized futures trading in 1883.246 By the 1930s, two-thirds of all futures trading was in wheat.247 The system was criticized for dealing in so-called phantom wheat and trading in prices of wheat rather than wheat itself, but defenders insisted that markets were ultimately anchored in “actual grain.”248 Nonetheless, the boundary between grain and information about grain (epitomized by the avalanche of tickets, receipts, and contracts) was blurring. In 1925, Wheat Studies argued that maintaining an “exportable surplus” of wheat no longer made sense.249 The elevator– steamship–telegraph–roller mill–industrial bakery complex organized the ceaseless rhythm of wheat’s global movement. There was no longer a need for granaries and stockpiles. Every aspect of the system— from the ripening of ears of wheat on the Canadian prairie to the velocity of baking, from the speed at which grain shot from pneumatic tubes to the price data circling the planet— was accelerating. h “Corn is coin and coin is corn,” concluded Jefferies. The laborer turned his toil into wages, then into bread. Wheat was capital. Wheat linked British kitchens with vast prairie monocultures. The white wheat loaf was the product of large-planet thinking, a rebuke to autarky and a symbol of liberty. “All ends in the same: iron mines, coal mines, factories, furnaces, the counter, the desk— no one can live on iron, or coal, or cotton— the object is really sacks of wheat.”250

Chapter Three

Sugar

Sugar is not only a “manufactured” food, it has been subjected to elaborate chemical and mechanical manipulation. —James Wheatley, “Dental Caries and Sweets” (1920) The hypothesis offered here is that sugar and other drug foods, by provisioning, sating— and, indeed, drugging— farm and factory workers, sharply reduced the overall cost of creating and reproducing the metropolitan proletariat. —Sydney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (1985)

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ancy attempting nowadays to live a single day without sugar,” teased the freethinking agnostic Grant Allen in 1884. “No tea, no coffee, no jam, no pudding, no cake, no sweets, no hot toddy before one goes to bed; the bare idea of it is too terrible.” For those “benighted generations” living before the introduction of sugar’s pleasures, cookery was in an “alarming” condition. It was, Allen continued, “almost too appalling to think about” a world devoid of confectionery, sweet biscuits, jellies, and tarts. The impoverished children of ancient civilizations inhabited a universe “absolutely unlighted by a single ray of joy from chocolate creams or Everton toffee.”1 Sugar divided one gustatory age from another. In Physiologie du goût (1825), Brillat-Savarin argued that sugar allowed the manufacture of “hitherto unknown flavours,” heralding an age of nutritional progress and invention.2 Such panegyric contrasted sharply with the dystopian visions of a hypersaccharinized society in John Yudkin’s Pure, White and Deadly: The Problem of Sugar (1972). “The British are easily the world’s largest consumers of sugar confectionery,” Yudkin complained, before chastising “children’s 72

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Figure 3.1. British per capita sugar consumption, ca. 1911. From J. W. Robertson-Scott, Sugar Beet: Some Facts and Some Illusions (London: Horace Cox, 1911).

mothers” for failing to limit sugar consumption despite knowing “what this does to the teeth.”3 Yudkin depicted a nation whose vitality was being sapped by an unnatural, engineered dietary pleasure, the least natural of foods. “The story of sugar,” fulminated J. I. Rodale, “is a story of stupidity, greed and ignorance. It is the final devastating removal of man from his natural environment.”4 Of all foodstuffs, sugar best embodied the paradoxes of nutritional progress. Sugar definitively became a food (as opposed to a preservative, e.g., or a condiment) only in the eighteenth century.5 This shift coincides with its dramatic consumption trajectory. World sugar consumption has risen over one hundred times in the past 150 years.6 By 1922, the equivalent of four giant Gizan pyramids were devoured annually by “the sugar appetite of the modern world.”7 This appetite first developed on a mass scale in Britain. In England and Wales, sugar consumption rose from around two pounds in the mid-seventeenth century to 90 pounds by the early twentieth (see fig. 3.1).8 By the late eighteenth century, Britain consumed nearly half of all sugar reaching Europe, and British consumption levels were over ten times higher than those in the rest of Europe.9 Britain was using around 2 million overseas acres for sugar production by the 1830s: sugar was truly its first large-planet food.10 American per capita consumption overtook that of Britain in 1908, but other European countries (Denmark aside) lagged well behind.11 The only other places rivaling British consumption levels were Australia and Canada:

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again, the “Anglo-Saxon lifestyle” was embedded through specific dietary patterns.12 In the later eighteenth century, sugar, along with white bread and tea, could still be called an “expensive” luxury and even a “pernicious Foreigner.”13 This changed over the next fifty years. In 1847, George Porter stated how “almost every class” now made “daily use of it,” far more than in the rest of Europe.14 Mintz argued that, as sugar became “essential” to “decent self-respecting hospitality,” it became experienced as one of the first truly democratized luxuries and comfort foods.15 “Next to bread, sugar has thus become a main necessity of life in this country,” observed Caird in 1872, before noting how it contributed to working-class “comfort,” especially “during times of low wages and irregular employment.”16 Sugar, along with beef and wheat, represented a peculiarly Anglo-Saxon model of dietary development. “The state of civilization and physical comfort of a people are generally proportionate to the use of sugar,” observed the Preston Chronicle in 1841.17 Giffen noted how “the consumption of tea and sugar” were “commonly appealed to as significant of general material progress.”18 Sweetness, civilization, and comfort were mutually reinforcing: Britain was “the great sugar-consuming power of the world.”19 Anglo-Saxons were “the sugar-eating-race,” people of “energy, robustness, and vigour” whose colonial expansion coincided with rising sugar consumption.20 “Energy” required fuel, and sugar was the consummate fuel food. Consumed most heavily by those “of Gothic and Teutonic stock,” it provided a significant portion of national calorie intake.21 In 1750, the average Briton received 72 calories daily from sugar: by 1909– 13, this figure was 395.22 Sugar still provides 12– 15 percent of Britain’s calories.23 This necessary luxury, Mintz concludes, provided the calorie surplus powering the Industrial Revolution. Sugar supplied “vitality” and the “stamina possessed by the AngloSaxon,” something that was “lacking in the Russian.” The human body totally oxidized sugar, “leaving no residue.”24 Production costs and free trade drove its price down: by 1888, sugar cost nearly twice as much in Germany and the United States as it did in Britain.25 It was “the cheapest of fuel foods, a shilling spent on it yielding 11,000 calories, which was more than could be obtained from the same amount of money spent on bread.”26 If, as Jason Moore suggests, cheap food was integral to capitalism’s development, then sugar— “cheap fuel food” with mildly psychotropic effects— is essential to understanding the post-1600 history of diet, energy, colonialism, artificialization, and economics.27 This chapter explores the material qualities that made this substance so alluring and problematic, allowing cheap calories and short bursts of pleasure, but wreaking havoc at both ends of

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the food chain, from ravaged colonial landscapes to metabolically disturbed British consumers. In doing so, it aims to push Sydney Mintz’s insights even further and situate the sugar cycle within a history of capitalist thermodynamics attentive to both world ecology and the history of the human body.

THE SUGARCANE SYSTEM World-systems theory, in its Wallersteinian and Capitalocene guises, has regarded sugarcane as central to the formation of transcontinental, coreperiphery, capitalist power relations.28 During the early modern period, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and British colonial systems created a sugar industry linking Europe to the Caribbean and parts of South America. For Britain, Barbados became particularly lucrative, with sugar becoming the island’s most important export by 1650.29 Jamaica was colonized from 1664, and, by 1805, it was the world’s largest sugar exporter.30 European and particularly British consumption patterns and technologies thus definitively shaped the economies and ecologies of vast swathes of the Atlantic world.31 This system predated (and contradicted) many of the principles of political economy. It was firmly mercantilist and relied on the extraction of value from enormous slave populations. Nonetheless, it prefigured many aspects of the large-planet philosophy, for example, the disaggregation of agricultural and industrial sectors that would typify British economic development. Sugar plantations were created without regard for local ecologies. Adam Smith acknowledged that profits from the sugar trade were “generally much greater” than those produced by other forms of cultivation.32 Marx noted this, as did Eric Williams, for whom the triangular trade “fertilized the entire productive system” of industrializing Britain.33 The sugar trade stimulated British manufacturing industries (milling technology, shipping, guns) and port development (Liverpool, Bristol, London).34 This mercantilist complex unraveled from the later eighteenth century under the compound pressures unleashed by transatlantic conflict, climate shocks, free trade ideology, and abolitionism. Political economists ruminated on a system founded on unfree labor and unfree markets. Ricardo urged that sugar producers be granted no protection and that “we should be free to import our sugar from any quarter whatever.”35 The abolitionist William Fox stated that, for every pound of West Indies sugar, “we may be considered as consuming two ounces of human flesh.”36 The economic protection of colonies was abolished on August 18, 1846.37 Colonial planters were abandoned in favor of the new system of largely unprotected large-scale markets. Cheap food for working-class consumers was valued above the vested interests of

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colonial producers.38 Sugar duties were entirely abolished in 1874.39 John Bright’s “free breakfast table” was becoming a reality.40 Free trade did not destroy the Caribbean industry, however. By 1865, Caribbean colonies, facilitated by immigrant indentured labor, were producing considerably more sugar than they were in 1835.41 Cane production began to thrive across the globe, not least elsewhere in the British Empire: India, Natal, Fiji, Mauritius, and Queensland. In 1930, around one-fifth of the world’s sugar was still produced in the British Empire.42 More significantly, the cane frontier expanded into Cuba, Hawaii, and Java. The postrevolutionary collapse of the Haitian sugar industry directly stimulated the rise of Cuba, which was the world’s largest sugar producer by the 1820s: machinery, slaves, and expertise gravitated there from Haiti.43 In 1862, sugar composed 58 percent of Cuba’s entire agricultural production, creating a monocultural, export-oriented economy, with slavery still legal until 1886.44 The industry rapidly developed in Java, the “Oriental Cuba,” where over 20 percent of the world’s cane sugar was produced by 1904.45 By this date, biological innovation was essential to the sugar industry’s development. There are five known sugar species, by far the most significant of which is Saccharum officinarum.46 This species synthesizes and stores sucrose in its cane, a capacity almost certainly engineered by humans since the juice of wild Saccharum plants contains little sucrose.47 The sugar historian Noel Deerr observed that “officinarum has never been found in a wild state.”48 The most common Saccharum officinarum variety was Creole cane until the later eighteenth century, when the first new variety— Otaheite (or Bourbon)— was discovered in Tahiti.49 Otaheite was the first so-called noble cane, a high-yielding, faster-maturing interspecific hybrid melding the hardiness of wild canes with the juiciness of domesticated ones, and it spread rapidly across the Caribbean.50 Creole and Otaheite canes were, however, male sterile. The cane industry was revolutionized by the discovery, in Barbados and Java, that other varieties produced viable seeds.51 The late nineteenth century saw intense experimentation to produce new, robust, high-yielding, disease-resistant crops. Mauritius established an experiment station in 1893, while the Proefstation Oost Java (POJ) was founded in 1887. This latter institution, with its vast library, calculating machines, and sampling technologies, thrust Java to the vanguard of global sugar-breeding innovation.52 The international traffic in sugar cuttings grew, with quarantines instituted to avoid the unintentional exchange of pathogens.53 The ensuing “kaleidoscopic succession of new and improved commercial varieties” contrasted with, say, potatoes, most commercial crop varieties of which (e.g., King Edward) were over thirty years old by the 1960s.54 The

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causes of cane diseases, which thrived in simplified, monocultural sugar ecologies, were comprehended.55 The postnoble age was under way. POJ 2878, probably the most important high-yielding hybrid variety, was first planted commercially in 1926 and, by 1928, composed two-thirds of Java’s crop.56 The anti-Malthusian agrobiologist Oswin Willcox thought that POJ 2878 possessed “the largest quantity of life” of any Javan variety yet grown.57 POJ 3016 and POJ 3067, both seedlings of POJ 2878, formed over 85 percent of Java’s cane area in 1960.58 Sugarcane became an “industrial plant,” designed for maximum carbohydrate production.59 This process produced varieties “unable to exist for any length of time in the wild state, as is shown by their rapid disappearance as a result of jungle competition in abandoned native gardens in New Guinea.”60 By 1950, up to 85 percent of all cane harvested globally came from improved plant stock developed in experimental stations.61 From the beginning, sugar plantations demonstrated meticulous time organization, labor discipline, and integrated processing.62 Cane took between twelve and eighteen months to grow and continued thereafter producing fresh stems, known as ratoon crops.63 Its yield diminished annually, but it required less care and involved lower labor costs.64 Cane desiccated and deteriorated unless it was cut and milled within forty-eight hours.65 Harvesting and processing were arduous work, and mechanization developed slowly: much sugarcane is still harvested by hand. Sugar production was environmentally demanding, frequently producing deforestation and soil erosion.66 Sugar-producing regions were often monocultural, with a high proportion of arable land used for the crop: almost 90 percent in Mauritius.67 Barbados became a deforested “factory island” and, eventually, a giant cotton plantation— having been exhausted in the production of one colonial product, it was put to use making another.68 Milling ground cane into juice, which was clarified and heated into a crystallized mass. The three-roller mill, initially inefficient and dangerous, was used for sugar milling from the seventeenth century.69 Cane juice emerged as a yellow, somewhat feculent liquid, containing fragments of cane fibers, wax, gums, sand, clay, coloring material, and albumen, hence the importance of clarification or “defecation,” which produced a light, pellucid liquid.70 By the mid-nineteenth century, the basic technique was the addition of lime, with the excess then being neutralized by carbonic acid, a process called carbonatation.71 After clarification (and filtration), the juice was boiled, first in cauldrons, then, following their 1813 invention, vacuum pans.72 Vacuum pans increased the percentage of crystallizable sugar and, if linked in “multiple effect” series, allowed the recycling of steam to

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condense the juice in subsequent pans, greatly reducing fuel costs.73 Finally, sugar crystals were separated from their magmatic milieu of molasses.74 The old technique, which allowed molasses to escape as the mass cooled, was by the early twentieth century largely replaced by centrifugals, a faster process producing a less sticky, more transportable substance.75 Sugar manufacture scaled up, becoming “a huge chemical experiment” subject to regular monitoring, control, sampling, and calibration.76 Average Cuban production rose from around six hundred tons per factory in 1870 to approximately two thousand tons two decades later.77 Steam power slowly replaced wind, water, and animal power. By the early twentieth century, Cuban sugar production was fully agroindustrial, with its mechanized mills or centrales the world’s largest.78 The polariscope, which measured the degree of polarization in samples of dissolved, clarified sugar, became a “universal” method of quality control, standardization, and grading.79 This technology also introduced the issue of ocular idiosyncrasy into sugar production, although compensation methods were introduced to reduce such errors.80 Like large-scale abattoirs, such mechanized mills enabled more profitable recycling of waste products, like molasses, and closer integration with other industrial processes. Crushed cane (megass or bagasse) was often squeezed to extract the remaining juice before being burned in boilers: the Cuban sugar industry became largely self-sufficient through its use.81 It has also been used as wallboard, paper, mulch, poultry litter, and a feedstock for bioplastics. Sugar’s thermodynamic qualities have generated suggestions that cane be grown specifically for lignocellulose as well as sugar, with cane factories becoming “biomass dewatering mills.”82 Finally, the chemical properties of sucrose derivatives stimulated the development of a sucrochemical industry, producing, for example, ethanol, xanthan, and alginic acid.83 Raw sugar was then shipped to Europe or the United States for refining. Milling and refining were spatially dissociated for several reasons: refining sugar was harder in humid tropical conditions, while labor and fuel were more plentiful in Europe.84 This system also fitted mercantile priorities since duties, refining, and reexporting generated profits for European economies.85 Sugar— more viscid than wheat or frozen meat— was for many years transported in burlap bags, which sometimes became soaked with leaking water.86 Moisture stimulated bacterial or mold growth, hence the need for thorough drying, exsiccated storage facilities, airtight warehouses, and disinfected packing material.87 Bulk transportation superseded bags from the 1930s.88 Sugar refining was theoretically somewhat simpler than milling. After being unloaded, sampled, and stored, raw sugar was washed, defecated, fil-

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tered, decolored, boiled down in a vacuum, recentrifuged, and subjected to analysis.89 The refining process utilized blood and, later, animal charcoal for decoloration.90 Such charcoal could be revivified twenty to twenty-five times, and, when finally exhausted, it was often sold to paint or fertilizer manufacturers.91 Clyde refineries used around five thousand tons of animal charcoal annually, with around fifteen hundred tons needing annual renewal as carbon infiltrated and caked its intricate network of pores.92 To produce charcoal, an animal bone trade extended to Brazil, Argentina, and Turkey and included “camp bones dug up from old battle fields.”93 Today, ion exchange or granulated activated carbon are used to decolorize sugar. The British refinery industry, dating from 1544, historically clustered around four ports: London, Bristol, Liverpool, and Glasgow. Greenock, near Glasgow, was “the saccharopolis of Scotland.”94 Sugar refineries were imposing structures, and they became significant fire risks and, given the necessary level of capital investment, major causes of bankruptcy. London sugar refiners pioneered new insurance techniques for large industrial risks, forming the Phoenix company in 1782.95 Sugar refineries, like gasworks and chemical plants, became part of the landscape of industrialized risk, particularly as the narrow difference in price between raw and refined sugar encouraged concentration into massive plants.96 Hutcheson listed sixteen fires in Greenock refineries between 1859 and 1895.97 At Finzel’s enormous Bristol refinery, an 1865 boiler explosion caused terrible burns, causing “the skin and flesh literally to hang in shreds to [workers’] bodies.”98 Even sugar dust could be “exceptionally” dangerous: twelve people perished at a New York sugar refinery in 1917 from an explosion thought to have originated within seventh-floor pulverizing machinery.99 Henry Tate founded his sugar company in Liverpool in 1859, building a refinery in Love Lane in 1872.100 “Refinery treacle” was sold from wheeled carts on Liverpool streets.101 Tate signed a contract to produce sugar cubes (invented by Jakub Kryštof Rad in 1843) and built a London refinery for their manufacture.102 “Wrapped cubelets represent the highest point yet attained in the art of modern sugar refining,” purred Geoffrey Fairrie of the famed Liverpool refining company in 1925.103 Abram Lyle, meanwhile, made his fortune from golden syrup (treacly inverted sucrose).104 In 1921, Tate and Lyle pooled their formidable sugar cube and syrup expertise to form Britain’s dominant refining company, whose laissez-faire political proclivities were made apparent in the 1949 slogan “Tate not State.”105 Their contemporaneous marketing logo, Mr. Cube, appeared in cartoons, on sugar packets, and as a toy, assailing Labour schemes to nationalize the refining industry.106 Their

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Figure 3.2. Tate and Lyle sugar silo, Liverpool, 1957. Image credit Historic England Archive.

giant Thames refinery at Silvertown and brutalist 1957 sugar silo on Regent Road, Liverpool (see fig. 3.2), embodied their dominance of Britain’s sugar industry, as did their development of sucralose in 1976.

SUGAR BEET In 1823, the chemist Jean-Antoine Chaptal observed that sugars from many plants were “absolutely identical” and indistinguishable.107 Of all noncane sources of sugar, beetroot has proved by far the most successful. Beet and cane sugar’s chemical identity was first demonstrated by Andreas Marggraf in 1747. Marggraf’s student, Franz Karl Achard, successfully extracted juice in 1799, built the first Fabrik for its production in 1801, at Cunern (Silesia), and identified white Silesian beets as possessing the highest sugar content.108 Such experiments coincided with the Atlantic economy’s collapse, which also stimulated doomed attempts to acclimatize sugarcane in France. Following this failure, experiments were undertaken with numerous sugaryielding substances, including carrots, apples, chestnuts, and particularly grapes. Beet was not initially the obvious choice, but its crystallizability and

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chemical similarity to cane ultimately established it as the most promising crop from which to produce an indigenous sugar supply.109 Napoleon opened six experimental sugar-beet stations and ordered the planting of thirty-two thousand hectares with beetroot in 1811, and there were around one hundred factories in France four years later.110 The end of hostilities retarded the industry’s progress, but projects continued, buoyed by the 1826 French beet tariff.111 The horticulturalist Philippe-Andre de Vilmorin began selection work by studying beet morphology.112 His son, Louis, took over the project in 1843, developing a technique of line selection and progeny testing that became known as the “Vilmorin Isolation Principle,” and producing demonstrable improvement in beets’ sugar content between 1850 and 1862.113 Despite Liebig’s dismissal of commercial sugar-beet production, the Germany industry thrived, particularly around Magdeberg, Hanover and Breslau.114 In 1859, Matthias Rabbethge and Julius Giesecke, based near Magdeburg, began breeding a spectacularly successful new beet variety, the Klein-Wanzleben, from the white Silesian beet. Germany became the world’s biggest sugar-beet seed producer, with 69 percent of the world crop coming from German-grown seed in 1918. Beet-seed breeding— essentially following Vilmorin’s method— was as scrupulous as the breeding of Herefords or Red Fife (see fig. 3.3) and took several years. Super-elite beets, bred from “mothers,” were never sold commercially, while slightly inferior elite beets were used to grow commercial beet seeds, although other intermediate generations might be cultivated and many permutations of the process were practiced.115 This was a process of mass selection via assessment of progeny quality, with new mother beets selected annually to restart the sequence.116 Photographs of particularly toothsome roots provided a permanent archive of ideal beet form, a “special pedigreebreeding album,” useful for future comparison, while beets were subjected to the precise focus of the polariscope.117 Only around 0.5 percent of all beets examined were retained to propagate mother beets.118 The resulting “Adonislike beets” were chemically examined (twice).119 “Men,” gushed the chemist and Esperantist Charles Bardorf, “prized their thorough-bred beets as sportsmen prize their pedigreed dogs and horses.”120 The work of Vilmorin, Rabbethge, and Giesecke transformed the beet into a potent magazine of chemical energy: by 1920, all varieties descended from Vilmorin’s Blanche Amelioré or the Klanz Wanzeleben Original.121 Early nineteenth-century sucrose yields were 2– 2.5 percent per beet; a century later, yields of 14–18 percent were common and 20–22 percent not rare.122 Botanists transformed the beet from an annual into a biennial plant and modified “its habit of seeding and perpetuating its species.”123 This meant

Figure 3.3. Stages in the production of sugar-beet seed. Note the length and complexity of the process. From George Coons, “Improvement of the Sugar Beet,” Yearbook of Agriculture (Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture, 1936). Reproduced by kind permission of the United States Department of Agriculture.

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Figure 3.4. Radical biological innovation: sugar beet and garden beet. From J. W. Robertson-Scott, Sugar Beet: Some Facts and Some Illusions (London: Horace Cox, 1911).

“the creation of a new species” (see fig. 3.4).124 Botanists also “changed the color of the beet itself from red to white, back to red and finally back to white, its present color.”125 Beet growing epitomized scientific agriculture: “The beet grower has made more progress in this respect in one century than the wheat grower has in many centuries.”126 Sugar beet became a paradigmatic example of the successful possibilities of plant breeding and a case study of evolution in action.127 In Mutation Theory, Hugo de Vries eulogized the sugar beet as “the finest example of the process of artificial selection.”128

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Beet was easily integrated into rotation systems, heralding “the recuperative system of four-field husbandry” across Europe.129 It was an intensive crop requiring significant fertilizer and labor inputs, often necessitating migrant labor. It stimulated economic development, attracting capital and transportation infrastructure, and embodying the “concentration of the higher forms of civilization and of economic development in temperate rather than in tropical regions.”130 Beets were transported by tracks, aerial lines, lorries, or water to central plants or stored in silos for later delivery (raw beet was more durable than cane). Sugar beet was a precocious, heavily capitalized agroindustry, with concentrated seed production, substantial material inputs, and a reliable product distributed to distant markets. Sir John Russell thought that beet stimulated new forms of rural agribusiness.131 Machine harvesting, evident on a large scale from the 1940s, stimulated further biological transformation, with geneticists developing shorter, less obconical, more globular, increasingly fangless beets morphologically apposite for new agricultural technologies.132 The sugar-extraction process was similar to that for cane, with one major difference. Following cleaning and slicing, juice was extracted via diffusion. Beets were placed in water heated to around fifty degrees Celsius, and the sugar diffused into the water by osmosis.133 Diffusion vessels were arranged in circular or semicircular batteries.134 The “pale-yellow or grayish-colored” juice was purified, evaporated, and crystallized.135 The process consumed large quantities of coal, lime, and water.136 “Chemical control” was exercised via laboratory analysis, charts and blackboards conveyed information to workers, and sampling was continuous.137 Exhausted cossettes, extracted from diffusion batteries, were sold as cattle fodder, along with beet tops and leaves, further integrating the industry into the agrarian economy.138 The beet-sugar industry thrived under European protectionism, particularly bounty systems. By 1899, two-thirds of the world’s sugar came from beet.139 The world sugar economy was now composed of two different agroindustrial-economic complexes, one tropical-liberal and one temperateprotectionist. Although beet was sold in China and India, there was never a truly integrated later nineteenth-century global market.140 German National Socialists would view beet as a classic autarkic industry.141 British free trade policies, however, did not distinguish between beet and cane, and Britain imported the world’s cheapest sugar duty free between 1874 and 1901. In 1900, 46.4 percent of British sugar imports came from Germany and AustriaHungary, and mostly from Germany.142 Sugar prices collapsed, benefiting individual consumers and the rising jam, biscuit, and confectionery indus-

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tries. Conversely, cheap (and frequently refined) sugar plunged British planters and domestic refiners into financial crisis. The politics of the international sugar economy were contentious. Cobdenites considered other nations’ economic policies to be no concern of Britain’s. Bounties were a “baneful incubus,” freedom from which gave particular British industries a great advantage.143 Pure free traders considered it appropriate to let industries thrive and die without market intervention. When asked by the Parliamentary Select Committee on Sugar Industries what refiners should do if put out of business, Robert Giffen suggested that they should find other employment.144 Meanwhile, Joseph Chamberlain and the ex-City financier and coffee planter Henry de Worms led the protectionists and antibounty lobbyists.145 Chamberlain saw the collapse of British sugar refining and its replacement with jam manufacturing as emblematic of a disorganized, uncontrolled economy.146 Workers protested in refining centers. In Liverpool, the Workmen’s Anti– Sugar Bounty Association was established.147 The 1902 Brussels Convention abolished sugar bounties, producing a slight rise in sugar prices and grumbles from confectioners and jam manufacturers. The Free Sugar League, formed in 1904, claimed rather fancifully that twenty thousand workers had lost their jobs following abolition, but the dynamics of British sugar markets remained largely unchanged until World War I ravaged central European beet fields.148 The dismantling of the bounty system was thus only one cause of the early twentieth-century revival of the international cane industry.149 The idea of cultivating beet in Britain appears to have been first discussed in the 1790s by Scottish improvers who saw beet as an opportunity to generate self-sufficiency and escape the power of Caribbean sugar planters.150 The rise of political economy and the large-planet philosophy, however, made such projects paradigmatic of erroneous small-island thinking. Evoking comparative advantage, Ricardo ridiculed the idea of British beet cultivation, arguing that this would necessitate import duties equal to the expense of domestic production.151 Edwin Lankester, Britain’s first public analyst, concluded his otherwise anodyne Vegetable Substances Used for the Food of Man with a rousing tirade against the “evils” of beet manufacture.152 French sugar-beet production, sneered Household Words, illustrated “the perversity of human nature.”153 Such persiflage did not deter three Essex Quakers from building Britain’s first sugar-beet factory— to produce slave-free sugar— at Ulting, near Chelmsford, in 1832. The plant failed for financial reasons, as did an 1836 project at Wandsworth.154 The United Kingdom Beetroot Sugar Association

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was established in 1836.155 Attempts to cultivate the plant in Ireland in the early 1850s were also unsuccessful.156 Support for beet, however, grew thereafter, with commentators overturning flawed climatic arguments and promoting beet cultivation as a technique of rural improvement. In 1870, the chancellor of the Exchequer, Robert Lowe, enthused about the idea of introducing beet sugar into southern Ireland.157 In 1871, successful beetroot distilling was reported from Robert Campbell’s Buscot Park estate in Berkshire.158 James Duncan established a beet factory at Lavenham, Suffolk, in 1868, reporting two years later that sugar was being produced on “a scale equal in extent to that of Continental sugar factories,” but output never exceeded eight thousand tons per season, and the plant closed in 1900.159 Commentators blamed the argillaceousness of the soil, the ruinous proclivities of wire worms, and the laboriousness of beet cleaning.160 Britain’s sugar-beet industry truly developed in the transformed early twentieth-century politicoeconomic climate. The National Sugar Beet Council was founded in 1910 with Lord Denbigh as president; it aligned itself against Ricardian purists and pushed unabashedly for a governmentsupported beet industry. Denbigh critiqued the idea that assisting the sugarbeet industry would undermine free trade, urging Lloyd George to “adopt the common sense principles by which Stuart Mill laid down how an infant industry could be helped without any violation of Free Trade principles.”161 Beet farming would create jobs, stimulate rural development, and reduce dependence on overseas sugar. The British Sugar Beet Society was formed in 1915. New plants were built, with varying degrees of success, across eastern England: Maldon (1910), Cantley (1912), and Kelham (1921). By 1930, there were seventeen factories in England and one in Scotland.162 The industry was further stimulated by the 1925 British Sugar (Subsidy) Act, which aimed to relieve rural unemployment rather than assist agriculture per se.163 Beet seed was usually imported.164 Beet acreage in England and Wales rose from 22,000 in 1924 to 396,000 in 1934 before settling at under 350,000 for the remainder of the 1930s.165 By 1935, homegrown sugar represented 27.6 percent of British consumption.166 These plants formed nodes of rural industrialization. At the Bardney plant, near Lincoln, which opened in 1927, beets were delivered by road or rail to concrete storage bins, then flumed to the factory, where they were washed, weighed, and sliced into chevron-shaped cossettes, four to six inches long, which exposed the maximum number of cells to water in the diffusion battery.167 A rotating rasp took longitudinal sections from sampled beets to measure sugar content.168 Suggestions were made that “wounded soldiers’ colonies” or “mobile harvesting teams,” equipped with field kitchens and

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Figure 3.5. Space-age beet factory, Peterborough. From Home-Grown Sugar: The Rise and Development of an Industry (London: British Sugar Corp., 1961). Reproduced by kind permission of British Sugar.

portable huts, could find employment opportunities at beet factories.169 By 1929, 109,201 people were employed in the industry, plus nearly 25,000 casual laborers.170 Sugar-beet production supported other industries, like coal and limestone, and produced voluminous quantities of animal feed.171 Venn noted that beet had “abundantly proved its value,” while James Watson, Oxford Professor of Rural Economy, observed that it had saved many Norfolk farmers “from ruin.”172 The British Power Alcohol Association (founded in November 1924) promoted the use of beets for fuel, insisting that energy self-sufficiency was a securer policy than relying on overseas oil.173 Some postwar beet plants had stylish, futuristic control rooms (see fig. 3.5). Classical liberals remained utterly perplexed by such policies. In 1935, the Manchester Guardian argued that it was simply nonsensical to pay to produce something domestically that was produced more cheaply overseas.174 If each laborer was given ten shillings daily to stay at home and do nothing, the newspaper calculated, taxpayers would still save ₤3 million annually.175 Reviewing the subsidy’s first decade, Bridges and Dixey considered the results “by no means satisfactory” and thought “the plant population in the beet fields . . . much too low” to replicate Continental yields.

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Since white sugar was “a standardized article the world over,” British farmers could not produce a superior article. Some farmers, they noted, “do not like the ‘trouble and bother of beet.’”176 Elsewhere, farmers were described as “indifferent,” “unenterprising,” and “quite content to go on in the old groove.”177 Despite this, the remaining companies united to form the British Sugar Corporation in 1936.178

SWEETS, JAM, AND BISCUITS Regardless of its source, sugar infiltrated the British diet in multiple guises (see fig. 3.6). It mellowed the bitterness of caffeinated drinks, it catalyzed alcohol production in beer brewing, and it was devoured by Britain’s emergent food industries: jam, jelly, breakfast cereals, confectionery, soft drinks, and biscuits. It became an essential component in the engineering of portable, durable, packaged, high-calorie snacks, optimized for sensual satisfaction.179 During the twentieth century, an increasing percentage of sugar was consumed, not as “household sugar,” but more surreptitiously as an industrial input, in which its manifold material capacities (texture improver, mold retarder, acidity modifier, emulsifier) were decisive. It was through such routine acts of banal food engineering that sugar’s classlessness and democratization became truly embedded. Cheap sugar powered Britain’s confectionery industry. Henry Weatherley, whose currant-cleaning machine graced the Great Exhibition, noted the “enormous” growth of hard confectionery consumption in 1875.180 In 1889, around 200,000 people were employed in the confectionery industry and related trades.181 “Almost every other country consumes British confectionery in large quantities,” noted Chambers’s Journal in 1900.182 British trade in sweets was worth ₤50 million annually in 1931.183 Sugar boiling often occurred in “small, confined, and dark, often underground,” locations, rather like London bakehouses, but mechanization was transforming the industry.184 Twentieth-century sweet production became thoroughly industrialized, with handmade confectionery remaining a small-scale, elite affair.185 Needler’s confectionery factory in Hull, for example, employed fifteen hundred people by 1929.186 Following sugar boiling, numerous devices produced finished sweets: pouring plates, drop rollers, toffee wrappers, jelly molders, and pneumatic lozenge machines.187 Originally made of pure boiled sugar, sweets now included gelatin, powdered milk, flours, fats, nuts, acids, salts, colors, essences, greases, and oils.188 Confectioners also used glucose, a practice pioneered in the early nineteenth century by Konstantin Kirchoff (a Russian-based German chem-

Figure 3.6. Sugar permeates the British diet: jam, sugary tea, cakes, and biscuits. Two apples sit ignored on the sideboard. From Home-Grown Sugar: The Rise and Development of an Industry (London: British Sugar Corp., 1961). Reproduced by kind permission of British Sugar.

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ist) and imported from the United States by 1939.189 Food became brighter as coal tar dyes were used “extensively” in confectionery, and artificial flavorings transformed confectionery’s gustatory profile: synthetic oil of almonds, for example, came from toluene, a coal tar product.190 Weatherley considered artificial fruit essences “remarkable triumphs of chemical art” bearing “wonderful similarity to the fruits produced by nature, as regards delicacy of flavors.”191 The same chemical feedstuffs were transmogrified into innumerable products. Glycerol— used for nitroglycerine, dynamite, and pharmaceuticals— maintained moisture levels of cheap slab cakes.192 Candy, like plastic, was a technology of the Second Industrial Revolution. Cadbury appointed a chief chemist in 1901, and Dairy Milk’s development was a consequence of “research and development.”193 In the nineteenth century, certain basic forms of boiled-sugar confectionery were stabilized: barley sugar, for example, was a discrete entity from the 1830s.194 Older, medicinal uses of sugar persisted through articles like cough candy, composed of boiled sugar with acid, aniseed, and peppermint.195 The combination of mechanization and material diversification produced an ever-changing cascade of new sweets, with sharp, exciting flavors, bizarre or grotesque designs, and vivid colors.196 Wine gums were developed by Charles Maynard, a Methodist teetotaler, in 1909 and have never contained alcohol.197 Rowntree first marketed fruit pastilles in 1881, fruit gums in 1893, and polo mints in 1939.198 By the later twentieth century, British children could choose from a vast range of sweets produced by an industry that was “an entirely British phenomenon.”199 Victorian London’s sweetshops displayed “tantalizing denominations” of candy, from “brandy balls” to “Bonaparte’s ribs.”200 By 1939, Britain boasted 250,000 such shops, making confectionery a significant business.201 Despite attracting concerns from sanctimonious observers, sweetshops were visually alluring, and sweets made life exciting.202 Remembering his youth, Roald Dahl noted that, in 1923, his local Llandaff sweetshop was “what a bar is to a drunk, or a church is to a bishop”: “Without it, there would have been little to live for.” Although Dahl depicted the owner, Mrs. Pratchett, as a filthy woman plucking sweets from the jar with her hands, sanitary equipment (wrappers, tongs, paper bags) was becoming commonplace.203 By 1900, sweet-delivering technologies had been introduced, like kiosks and vending machines. In 1921, Dr. H. Scurfield, formerly the medical officer of health for Sheffield, noted the “widespread vice of sweet sucking at all times.”204 Manchester’s School Medical Officer’s Report of 1936 complained that children generally wasted their pocket money on “sweets, ice-cream and comics.”205 Britain’s jam and biscuit industries also grew. Gladstone urged the com-

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bination of domestic fruit and imported sugar, and jam became “a great new industry” in the later nineteenth century.206 “English jam makers are at present the jam makers for the world,” declared Blackwell (of Crosse and Blackwell) in 1889.207 Germany imported most of its jam from Britain before 1900.208 Mass-produced preserves generally had higher levels of sugar than homemade varieties.209 Commercial gooseberry jam, for example, contained between sixty-three and ninety pounds of fruit to seventy pounds of cane sugar.210 Marmalade companies (Keiller, Robertson, Baxters) thrived following the 1874 repeal of sugar duties.211 Imported sugar and domestic lowgluten wheats produced a cascade of biscuits.212 By the late 1860s, Huntley and Palmers produced over one hundred varieties (such as Ginger Nuts and Digestives).213 Peek Freans pioneered enduring favorites like Garibaldis (1861, unsurprisingly) and Custard Creams (ca. 1912).214 While a significant export trade developed and overseas plants were established, domestic biscuit eating increased rapidly. Biscuits were convenient for travelers, for example, while motoring or on trains lacking dining facilities. Huntley and Palmers distributed free biscuits for first-class passengers from Paddington, urging them to look out for the company’s works at Reading. In Central Africa, Henry Stanley allegedly sometimes “subsist[ed] entirely on Reading biscuits.”215 Britain produced 300,000 tons of biscuits annually by 1939.216 Mass, mechanized production was under way (see fig. 3.7). The biscuit habit was further cemented by the normalization of eating between meals, via “elevenses” or afternoon tea, “this stodgy assemblage of saccharine and starchy horrors, insinuated between luncheon and dinner,” for which Britain became, perhaps unjustly, infamous.217 Sugar coursed through the British diet. After 1847, brewers could legally substitute sugar for malt when brewing beer; they could add solid glucose from 1865 and any saccharine matter from 1880.218 Breakfast cereals, initially marketed as health foods, soon became vehicles for sugar, initially added by users and, later, engineered into the cereals themselves (Frosted Flakes reached British supermarket shelves in 1954).219 The growing icecream trade also channeled sugar into more consumers’ bodies. Sugar, along with acids, flavorings, and carbonic acid gas, was added in large quantities to soft drinks like lemonade and ginger beer.220 Commercial sodas cheapened and proliferated. In 1812, Robert Southey described “a nectar, between sodawater and ginger-beer,” called “pop” because of the sound produced by its cork when opened.221 Robert Barr launched Iron Brew (later Irn-Bru) in 1901; Vimto was created by John Joel Nichols in 1908; Tizer appeared in 1924. Such drinks sometimes resembled traditional herbal beers of the Midlands and the north of England.222 Regular sales of Coca-Cola began in Britain around 1910; the

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Figure 3.7. Quality control of mass-produced Jersey Creams. From Peek, Frean & Co., 1857–1957: A Hundred Years of Biscuit Making (London, 1957).

company’s first British bottling plant opened in Chiswick in 1935.223 Fueled by American products, British soda consumption was becoming Europe’s heaviest: some bottles could contain “upwards of a hundred Calories of energy.”224 Meanwhile, selection was enhancing the sucrose content of fruits and vegetables; supermarket shoppers often select the sweetest varieties.225

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CHOCOLATE Cacao is a tropical crop, originating in Latin America but now also grown in West Africa and Southeast Asia. When harvested, cacao beans were fermented in “sweat” boxes, covered with banana or plantain leaves.226 This process converted starch into soluble dextrin and sugar; some sugars turned to alcohol, which then itself fermented.227 Following fermentation, beans were washed, dried, bagged (see fig. 3.8), and shipped to European destinations for processing.228 Roasting developed the bean’s aroma, helped remove the husk, gelatinized starch granules, and made the flavor milder and the beans easier to grind.229 The nibs were then ground until the mass formed a brittle cake when cold. Following the developments of pressing (which reduced fat content) and alkalization (which improved flavor), chocolate became significantly more palatable. Following pressing, the dry cake was ground to produce cocoa essence, which was then used to produce liquid or, increasingly, solid chocolate.230 The transition to European-style sweet, milky, solid chocolate took place after 1850. Conching machines, pioneered by Rodolphe Lindt, slowly and mysteriously massaged the mixture to produce perfectly smooth, aerated chocolate, to which some of the butter could be readded. Melangeurs enabled cacao to be ground with flavorings like milk and sugar. Milk chocolate, first produced by Daniel Peter in Switzerland in 1876, was a dairy industry by-

Figure 3.8. Bagging cacao beans for shipment, Trinidad. From R. Whymper, Cocoa and Chocolate: Their Chemistry and Manufacture (London: J. & A. Churchill, 1912).

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product, using condensed and powdered milk.231 In Britain, there was no legal limit to the amount of sugar that could be added to chocolate. Zipperer thought that sugar composed more than half the mixture.232 This very high level reflected British tastes, “which is why most countries have always found British chocolate unpalatably sweet.”233 Early British chocolate bars, available from at least the 1820s, were unsuccessful: the sweet ones contained insufficient cocoa butter to be properly molded, while bitter ones were rejected by consumers.234 Cocoa butter and conching enabled palatable chocolate bars to be produced from the mid-nineteenth century. As it became more malleable, chocolate was added to cakes and biscuits, although chocolate-covered biscuits (Penguins, Yo-Yos) belonged to a more neotechnic age.235 British firms became world leaders in chocolate manufacture. Fry’s chocolate was founded in 1761; Joseph Storrs Fry took over the Bristol company in 1795, installing a larger roaster and a Boulton and Watt steam engine.236 Fry’s developed an eating chocolate bar in 1847 and introduced chocolate Easter Eggs in 1873.237 Cadbury’s (established 1824) pioneered milk chocolate manufacture, operating a condensed milk plant in Knighton to which cocoa arrived from Bourneville to be mixed with sugar and condensed milk and returned as “crumb” for making chocolate.238 The company developed filled chocolates and patented the chocolate biscuit in 1891.239 Cadbury’s Dairy Milk was launched in 1905, followed by Milk Tray (1915), Flake (1920), Crème Eggs (1923), and Roses Chocolates (1938).240 Chocolate became deeply insinuated into the affective economy, inseparable from new holiday rituals (Easter, Valentine’s Day), gift giving, romance, celebrations, and childhood in general.241 Chocolate was becoming a mass-produced, branded, heavily advertised commodity: world cocoa bean imports grew ninefold between 1870 and 1897.242 By 1914, 40 percent of Cadbury’s products were sold overseas, particularly to expatriate Anglo-world communities where tea, biscuits, and chocolate were popular.243 The first penny vending machine for dispensing chocolate appeared at Mansion Street Station in July 1886, and, by the following year, “automatic sweetmeat boxes” were becoming ubiquitous across the English and Welsh rail network, reaching Pembroke, Furness, and the Isle of Man.244 Labor issues also reemerged to take center stage. Cadbury’s Bourneville plant was designed to induce cooperation between management and the workforce. Power should reciprocally circulate, producing, not “unreasoning obedience,” but self-directing and conscious cooperation. Workers were not fined, but their performances were entered on cards and their progress, or lack thereof, visually monitored. Suggestion boxes, located in

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every department, created perpetual circulation of advice and commentary, with the company acknowledging individual suggestions.245 Dairy Milk bars were subdivided into bite-sized blocks following one suggestion.246 Workers’ health was sustained by drinking fountains and dental examinations, and incipient wanderlust curtailed by summer excursions to Rhyl, Filey, and Torquay.247 Edward Cadbury appeared alongside luminaries like Henry Ford and Niccolò Machiavelli in Morgan Witzel’s Fifty Key Figures in Management.248 However, while domestic labor was well treated, cacao’s conditions of production remained a serious issue. Cadbury’s received beans from various tropical locations (Trinidad, Grenada, Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Ceylon, Ghana), but 55 percent of early twentieth-century supplies came from São Tomé and Principe, two small Portuguese-ruled islands off the West African coast.249 Portuguese authorities had allowed slaves to be imported from the mainland with the promise of freedom after seven years, launching a system of contract labor that aroused suspicions expressed in journalistic exposés of island conditions.250 Henry Nevinson reported a landscape littered with shackles, human bones, and decomposing bodies, declaring that slave labor produced 20 percent of the world’s chocolate. He concluded: “The cocoa and chocolate makers of Great Britain have been indirectly employing one-third of the slaves on the islands.”251 The connection between sweetness and slavery refused to be broken. Cadbury appeared profoundly hypocritical, promoting British worker welfare while profiting from clandestine West African slavery. The company became aware of the islands’ labor conditions in 1901 but chose a policy of gentle persuasion while directing ire toward Belgium’s Congolese excesses.252 Eventually, Cadbury sued the London Standard for libel after the newspaper questioned the company’s antislavery commitments. The 1908 trial was won by Cadbury, but damages of only one farthing were granted, with Cadbury’s also being awarded costs.253 Cadbury’s terminated the purchase of cocoa from the islands in March 1909, switching its production base to Britain’s Gold Coast colony, which rapidly became the world’s leading producer of cocoa beans.254 Labor conditions for African chocolate producers, however, continue to attract international concern.

ENERGY These new types of food— chocolate bars, jam sandwiches, sugary tea— provided immediate, evanescent hits of energy. They filled the working-class “calorie gap.”255 Sugar was the true food of acceleration, rapidly assimilated

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by the body.256 The American food economist C. Houston Goudiss called sugar “a source of speedy strength” and “Nature’s shortest cut to body stimulation through food.”257 In the later nineteenth century, sugar was commonly recommended for workers. Northumberland coal miners, noted Thomas Oliver, ate considerable amounts of sugar, and he urged its wider adoption in working-class dietaries.258 Sugar became a vital part of military rations. “No previous war in history has been fought so largely on sugar and so little on alcohol,” wrote the journalist Edward Slosson of World War I.259 Sugar was consumed by athletes, cyclists, hikers, mountaineers, and explorers. Chocolate sustained Arctic explorers and pilots.260 Frederick Cavill, who almost swam the English Channel in 1876 and 1877, thought that chocolate was “the most concentrated and sustaining food he could use for that trying test of his staying power.”261 Three million Mars Bars accompanied the British task force to the Falklands in 1982.262 Physiological analyses corroborated such intuitions. Chauveau and Kaufmann showed that four times more sugar was burned during muscular activity than when muscles were resting.263 Angelo Mosso’s 1893 ergograph experiments revealed that sugar counteracted “muscular deterioration” and rejuvenated tired muscles.264 The chemist Vaughan Harley undertook similar experiments showing sugar’s positive influence on fatigue. Monitoring nine hours of labor, he demonstrated that, when 250 grams of sugar was added to the normal diet, the work of the left finger increased by 22.032 percent and the right finger by 35.858 percent, prolonging working time, and increasing the amount of potential labor: such results also suggested that the usual afternoon productivity decline might be obviated.265 Adding “large quantities of sugar” to the diet, he concluded, would be valuable: sugar should “no longer be regarded as a mere condiment but looked upon as one of the most useful articles of food.”266 Not all scientists were convinced, however.267 These experiments suggested that the body rapidly metabolized and totally oxidized sugar, making it “especially acceptable to strenuous workers, because it restores their tired muscles and rapidly removes the sense of fatigue.”268 This meant that “no other food approximates sugar in the ease in which it can be formed into actual body energy.”269 Cane sugar triggered quicker spikes in the human respiratory quotient than did other carbohydrates.270 It was perfectly logical to conclude that sugar, not bread, was “the staff of life” or, as Goudiss did, that candy was “a considerable factor in the constant war that must be waged against fatigue.”271 Plugging the body into the industrialized sugar system appealed to a thermodynamically aware society haunted by fears of exhaustion and entropy (see fig. 3.9). One doctor

Figure 3.9. The sugar cycle: the system channels sugar from beet or cane via factory and refinery to human stomachs, intestines, livers, and pancreases. From Geoffrey Fairrie, Sugar (Liverpool: Fairrie, 1925).

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suggested that sugar, “being a food of especial value in the maintenance of heat and energy,” was more necessary than in any previous age.272 Recent studies suggest that sugar has the highest harvest index of any crop.273 Like corn, cane uses the C4 photosynthetic pathway (or Hatch-Slack pathway), which enables it to use carbon dioxide and water more efficiently and operate within a greater range of light intensities, resulting in higher photosynthetic rates than do regular C3 species.274 An acre of sugar beet, argued Charles Fielding, created twenty times the human food as an acre of grassland. He mused about the possibilities of “re-organizing the digestive organs of the humans to consume it as a sole food.” Britons able to live “entirely upon Sugar” could survive on just one-sixth of the land currently under plough and grazing.275 A large “quantity of life” indeed. Sugar, the implication went, provides the quickest, cheapest, and most efficient way of turning sunlight into flesh.276 It was a technology of biological acceleration. Such thermodynamic encomia marked a historical inversion. During the early modern period, sugar was often attacked for rotting teeth, disordering the humors, and causing diabetes (the “pissing evil”).277 By the nineteenth century, many figures were promoting it as physiologically beneficial. Florence Nightingale considered it to be “one of the most nutritive of all articles,” claiming, somewhat alarmingly, that it was “pure carbon.”278 John Fothergill recommended Everton toffee instead of cod-liver oil for “strumous” (scrofulous) children.279 The physician Robert Hutchison urged football teams to replace halftime lemons with cups of black coffee “strongly sweetened with glucose.”280 Sugar was palatable and stimulating. “What could be more wholesome,” asked one doctor, “than a good cream toffee?” Children’s bodies “blaze[d] with energy,” and sugar was the best fuel for them.281 Experiments showed that adding sugar to boys’ diets at school enhanced their capacity for exercise, while children’s literature, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, teemed with shimmering, tempting candy.282 Herbert Spencer regarded the love of sweets as “universal” among children and suggested that “sugar plays an important part in the vital processes.”283 William Beveridge thought sugar “so well-suited to children” that it was “practically irreplaceable.”284 We might also note the close connections between sugar and another old colonial plant: tobacco. Numberless children chewed realistically crafted sweet cigarette sticks before moving on to the (frequently sweetened) real thing: eating the former makes a child more likely to become a smoker.285 The “flue-curing revolution” in tobacco production also produced leaves with up to 20 percent higher sugar content.286 Sweets, chocolate, and tobacco— all somewhat psychotropic substances— were often sold from

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the same shop, as the titles of journals like Confectioner and Tobacconist suggest. The sale of sweet cigarettes was limited by section 38 of the 2004 Public Health Tobacco Amendment Act.287 The confectionery industry helped create the child consumer. Paul Cadbury revealed before the 1934 Departmental Committee on Food Law: “I like to see children develop a taste for chocolate which I hope as they grow up and have more money will be to my personal advantage.”288 One Cadbury’s sweetshop management manual put it trenchantly: “Children of today are the grown-up customers of tomorrow. They are a long-term investment.”289 Studies suggest that sweet foods evince particularly nostalgic responses in consumers, so future nostalgia might be judiciously cultivated.290 Sweetshop design manuals suggested ensuring that windows were low enough to allow children visual access to alluring piles of dolly mixtures and licorice allsorts (see fig. 3.10). A landscape of temptation was vital, and it was supplied by the sweetshop system, which sprouted like bamboo throughout British suburbia. Reflecting on the uncertain condition of the international sugar industry in the 1930s, C. J. Robertson noted that what people “think they must have” is more important than what they actually need. “One of the most hopeful aspects of the situation,” he concluded insouciantly, “is the well-known psychological fact that it is much easier to establish a habit than to break it.”291 “The diet of a whole species,” concluded Mintz, “was gradually being

Figure 3.10. Sweetshop window design, constructed to connect children with confectionery visually. From Sweet-Shop Success: A Handbook for the Sweet Retailer (London: Cadbury/Pitman, 1949).

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remade.”292 This bound Britain to the commodity frontiers of the Caribbean, Brazil, Java, and Mauritius and intensive agrarian zones of central and eastern Europe. The flow of sucrose provided a cheap, efficient stream of pure energy, the perfect fuel for industrialization, the archetypal comfort food, an insidious agent of metabolic derangement, and the gateway drug to our “psychotropic economy.”293 As a cheap luxury, sugar became an essential part of the working-class diet because it offered quick bursts of taste and brief energy and endorphin rushes, increasingly engineered around the concept of a “bliss point,” a concept developed in the 1970s.294 The rise of sugar reminds how the human palate can become accustomed and even addicted to what the fascist farmer Jorian Jenks called “an almost entirely artificial food.”295 h These first three chapters have explored the creation and growing momentum of three great food systems for meat, wheat, and sugar. These systems implanted political economy and the large-planet philosophy into global ecosystems, not least through the great acts of biological innovation that produced Hereford cattle, Marquis wheat, POJ 2878 sugarcane, and white Silesian beet. Vast global logistic systems reduced the stickiness of transit and made food flow around the world to the British mainland. These systems originally ran on organic energy but by 1900 were increasingly powered by coal and oil. Animals and plants were also disaggregated into component parts— fat, protein, bran, germ, skin, bones— and reassembled into processed foods or industrial artifacts. The rest of the book turns away from the systems themselves to explore, in turn, issues of regulation and politics, consumption and the body, and planetary ecology itself.

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Risk

Free trade in disease forms no part of Free trade. —John Gamgee, The Meat Question (1877) In days past a man sat down to enjoy his Sunday dinner with little more to think about than whether the roast or chicken was properly done and seasoned to his taste. Now he must concern himself with calculated risks, human failure and some stranger’s sense of responsibility— or lack of it— set against his desire for the highest possible profit. —William Longgood, The Poisons in Your Food (1960)

A

t the First International Veterinary Congress at Hamburg, in July 1863, the veterinarian John Gamgee was asked what Britain did with its diseased meat. “Eats it,” he replied laconically.1 Angry at what he perceived as the reckless liberalization of the international livestock trade, Gamgee was vindicated two years later when a devastating epizootic of the rinderpest morbillivirus hit Britain, causing the death or slaughter of up to 400,000 cattle. Rinderpest, he argued, was caused by two things: a specific, if unidentified, pathogen and free, international trade in animals. For Gamgee, statecraft, food supply, and disease theory were inseparable. The creation of globalized food systems in meat, wheat, and sugar was integral to the formation of a “pure Free Trade nation,” a phenomenon central to Britain’s political imagination and its economy.2 In 1905, the economist Walter Layton argued that feeding a nonagricultural nation of 40 million people “without any conscious direction or manipulation” was historically unique.3 However, the idea that Britain’s food supply functioned without “conscious direction or manipulation” was profoundly misleading. Planetary food systems had unintended consequences— in the form of novel 101

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risks and fears— that required government intervention and trust building. Food became an inescapable dimension of what Ulrich Beck called “risk society.”4 Food systems were a vital “regulatory arena” for a state aiming to align and reconcile the goals of free trade and public health through the developing technologies of risk management.5 Large-scale food risks, however, developed considerably earlier than Beck suggests.6 As food was transported over greater distances and subjected to greater levels of processing and recombination, it was materially transformed. Foodstuffs were increasingly wrapped, chemically manipulated (dehydrated, treated with preservatives), or canned. William Savage thought canning “a striking feature of modern civilization.”7 Canned food was pioneered in the early nineteenth century, and its mass production first developed in the United States. By 1935, British annual consumption reached over five pounds per head, most of that canned food being imported.8 Canning perishable fruit and vegetables provided growers with access to world markets, reciprocally enabling “the building up of towns and communities beyond the all too narrow bounds of varied production.”9 Urbanization and new food systems were mutually reinforcing. Such material-atmospheric “manipulations” arrested decay and allowed foodstuffs “to be kept for more or less prolonged periods,” but they opened potential new risk vectors. 10 “The crowding of people into large cities necessarily means the carrying of food for long distances,” observed a 1920 food industry manual, “and present habits of living demand the open market for twelve months in the year.”11 The most consequential innovation was atmospheric manipulation. Mechanical refrigeration unevenly permeated food industries (fruit, fish, dairy, chocolate). Refrigeration theoretically equalized supply and demand: “What elevators are to grain, cold storage is to meat.”12 The consumption of fresh food grown at a distance became feasible and desirable.13 Banana importation became materially possible via ships maintaining temperatures of just over fifty-four degrees Fahrenheit.14 Pears required twentynine degrees, apples thirty-two to thirty-three.15 After 1900, experimental understanding of the influence of humidity and atmospheric chemistry heralded the development of controlled atmospheric storage. Pioneering British research into apple storage showed that a temperature of five degrees Celsius, combined with a controlled climate of 10–15 percent carbon dioxide and 10 percent oxygen, prolonged commercial storage and retarded yellowing.16 This meticulous control of microclimates— what Sloterdijk calls “concrete atmotechnics”— was born in low-temperature research stations and the dreams of pomologists.17 In 1929, E. W. Shanahan concluded that, besides improving diet, refrigeration stimulated “the territorial division of

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production” and “inter-hemisphere transportation,” binding urbanizing Anglo-American centers to the pastoral lands of the Global South.18 These systems allowed the world’s most heavily industrialized regions to absorb vast quantities of food from the rest of the planet. However, these very properties— distance, processing, atmospheric manipulation— transformed the parameters of food safety. The size and morphology of food systems ensured that inspection was often highly episodic. The aggregation of animals and the monoculturing of crops created novel vulnerabilities, like species-barrier-crossing zoonoses or mass susceptibility to rust. The distance between producer and consumer raised questions of knowledge and trust. There was, however, much slack between food systems’ multiple, loosely coupled parts, meaning that food disasters emerged slowly and insidiously.19 This chapter explores five examples of such slow emergence: adulteration, epizootics, milk-borne tuberculosis, diseased meat, and food poisoning. It examines the tensions between political economy and public health that erupted around these problems and delineates the bundle of riskmanagement technologies developed to alleviate them: analysis, inspection, mass slaughter, notification, bacteriological expertise, pasteurization, port regulation, food hygiene, and sanitary regimes.

ADULTERATION, ANALYSIS, AND INSPECTION Adulteration has a long history, but the combination of longer food chains, increasing volumes of shop-purchased food, rapid urbanization, and limited regulation produced a rise in its incidence after 1800. Most foodstuffs, apart from meat, were susceptible. Milk was particularly problematic since its material complexity and variability made the establishment of unambiguous standards very difficult.20 Alum (potassium aluminum sulphate) was the most common adulterant of bread: it whitened loaves and retarded staleness, but it also caused digestive complaints. Tea might be faced or artificially colored, or its leaves’ dust was sometimes mixed with sand, starch, or other detritus.21 Adulteration warped tastes: after drinking coffee mixed with chicory, consumers wondered whether they were being given the genuine article.22 It was assailed by reformists like Arthur Hassall, who argued that intentional defrauding of the public compromised public health, the treasury, and morality.23 Hassall estimated that “millions” of pounds of public finances were lost through adulteration, which was “entirely unnatural,” a product of “a careless and loose state of things.” State regulation was necessary, he concluded.24 However, some classical liberals thought regulation intolerable. John Bright argued that adulteration was a legitimate part of trade: if the

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public liked adulterated coffee, it should be allowed to keep drinking it.25 Herbert Spencer dreaded a future state of permanent inspection, a condition akin to “slave states, in which, as they say, ‘one-half of the community is occupied in seeing that the other half does its duty.’”26 The question of adulteration, then, created profound tension between freedom of trade and social protection. The profusion of coloring materials, wrappings, and containers used for commercial foodstuffs created novel chemical risks. In June 1848, William Cornfield died after eating blancmange at a Northampton public dinner. The blancmange had been deliberately colored with emerald green (arsenite of copper). A verdict of manslaughter against both manufacturer and vendor was returned.27 In 1858, a Bradford confectioner, intending to adulterate peppermint lozenges with plaster of Paris, mistakenly added arsenic, killing twenty-one people. In 1900, arsenic-contaminated sugar caused the infamous “Manchester beer epidemic,” which killed at least seventy people and probably affected six thousand more.28 In Birmingham in 1924, hawkers were discovered painting unripe oranges with chrysoidine, “a dye used to make bait more alluring to fish.”29 Toxic metals— lead, antimony, zinc— entered the food chain via innocuous artifacts like storage receptacles, jugs, wrapping foil, or lollipop molds. Occupational health legislation began to insist on the outright separation of food from hazardous materials.30 These various phenomena (adulteration, coloring, preservatives, contamination) stimulated a movement to analyze and regulate foodstuffs’ material composition. The first Adulteration Act (1860) was, however, permissive and toothless. The 1875 Sale of Food and Drugs Act made food analysis compulsory without precisely defining the nature of food purity.31 The state’s regulatory ambit slowly expanded. The 1875 act was amended in 1899 to include articles like flavorings, condiments, and baking powder.32 The Public Health (Preservatives, etc., in Food) Regulations of 1925 prohibited metallic coloring plus six yellow dyes, “some of which are obsolete in commerce.”33 Food industries themselves, including major dairies, often appointed chemists and monitored their own standards. They argued, legitimately, that, given food’s material complexity and the ongoing transformation of public taste, establishing food standards was complicated. The straightforward opposition between the regulatory state and antiregulatory business is easily exaggerated.34 The 1875 act created a network of public analysts and sampling officers, usually functioning through local public health or sanitary committees. Most early analysts were medical officers of health rather than professional chemists, although, after 1900, new analysts had to produce documentary

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evidence of knowledge of chemistry, therapeutics, and microscopy.35 In the 1930s, Birmingham’s analytic staff consisted of three qualified assistants, a clerk, and a laboratory attendant, most of whom had bachelor of science degrees.36 Institutional support was created by the Society of Public Analysts (founded in 1874), whose main tasks included establishing adulteration and food standards, considering legislation, educating analysts in legal work, debating analytic techniques, and squabbling with government chemists at Somerset House, whose responsibilities were explicitly to the treasury.37 The analytic network thus presented itself as a public, not a state, institution. Adulteration was formally defined as the deliberate addition of injurious or specious materials, the abstraction of vital substances, or imitation. This definition, accompanied by a description of techniques of detection of impurity levels, was circulated to local officials. By 1894, ninety-nine public analysts oversaw 237 English and Welsh districts, with forty-nine responsible for one district each and twenty-two having four or more.38 Inspectors, police constables, and samplers were responsible for procuring food samples. Samples were equally divided between inspectors, vendors, and public analysts, a practice still followed today.39 Sausages, for example, should be sliced into three equal parts.40 Samples were labeled, bottled, and sealed with wax. If the distance between sampler and analyst exceeded two miles, samples could be mailed, and sampling officers usually kept small iceboxes to maintain freshness.41 Samplers should have printed notebooks with “gummed, numbered labels” and keep daily records.42 Analytic devices proliferated, with the microscope being complemented by various technologies, ranging from Soxhlet extractors to microspectroscopes.43 Rudimentary practices persisted, however. Alan Turner recalled that, when he was working for Bill Taylor, Nottingham’s public analyst, in the 1940s, “it was common for instructions to be left for me written on the inside of emptied Player’s cigarette packets.”44 Analysis was primarily regulatory, not disciplinary. Liverseege thought that prosecution was often unnecessary: a firm cautionary letter “will often avoid expensive litigation.” Nonetheless, many cases ended up in court, and modest fines or prison sentences were awarded. A practical legal milk standard of 8.5 percent fat and 3 percent solids-not-fat made prosecution easier, although never straightforward. Adulteration rates correspondingly fell: in 1879, 13.8 percent of samples were adulterated; that figure fell to 4.8 percent in 1930.45 Poisonous confectionery was practically nonexistent by 1900: aniline dyes were replacing toxic mineral colorings.46 This rather Whiggish narrative, however, disguises significant geographic unevenness and local messiness. In 1894, a select committee on adulteration found that

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five analysts (Penzance, Hartlepool, Colchester, Tiverton, Newbury) analyzed absolutely nothing.47 Calculated toning was replacing brute adulteration: some thought that detection was becoming harder because of astute vending, proliferating ingredients, and more scientific practices.48 The adulteration problem was merging with a more intractable issue. As food became more materially complex and heterogeneous, how were the individual and combined effects of its multiple chemical components to be assessed? The analyst’s job expanded to include agricultural analysis, toxicology, environmental science, and consumer safety.49 Analysts patiently charted incidents of matter out of place: insects in bread, wire in pies, and puzzling phenomena like “concrete in a Christmas pudding.”50 Britain continues to be rocked by food scandals, including the duplicitous labeling of basmati rice and King Edward potatoes and the 2013 horse-meat affair.51 Inspection was critical to this system. The 1855 Nuisances Removal Acts and the 1875 Public Health Act gave medical officers of health and nuisance inspectors reasonably extensive powers to inspect food at “all reasonable times,” meaning that they could seize diseased, unsound, or unwholesome specimens.52 Food inspection had become an integral part of Britain’s public health apparatus. Food systems were also routinely engineered to allow inspection via portals, manholes, and windows.53 The increasing volume of food imports made riparian inspection critical. London’s City Corporation, in its capacity as Port Sanitary Authority, employed three food inspectors plus a wharf and warehouse inspector. Southwark and Stepney also employed wharf and warehouse inspectors.54 In early twentieth-century Hull, food inspection was orchestrated by James McPhail, who, with four assistants, inspected cattle, meat, fish, fruit, and retail shops.55 Bradford employed an inspector for its fish-and-chip shops: 756 visits were made to such premises in 1915.56 The increasing control that local authorities exercised over markets and slaughterhouses made inspection more effective. Glasgow assumed command of its cattle market and slaughterhouses in 1845; the City of London took over its slaughterhouses in 1848.57 Consumer anxieties about distance and processing, however, persisted. One potential remedy was labeling, which developed alongside packaging. Grant Allen considered labels a mark of “civilised life,” but Hassall worried that small lettering and obscure placement threatened to further confuse consumers.58 Legislation attempted to outlaw such practices. The 1899 Sale of Food and Drugs Act insisted that skimmed milk receptacles should be labeled with the words machine skimmed milk or skimmed milk in large, legible type.59 The 1934 Departmental Committee on the Composition and Description of Foods discussed advertising statements and labels that

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were “unjustified and misleading,” leaving the public “deceived and prejudiced.”60 In 1961, the indefatigable Doris Grant demanded “clear and more complete labelling” of all prepared foods “so that we may know exactly what we are buying.”61 The relationship between linguistic and numerical labels and their material referents never became entirely transparent, however. Instead, labels became epistemological tools through which producers performed fidelity to moral-nutritional ideals and consumers exercised judicious choice and self-government, with state regulation focusing on the zone of mediation between them. Regulation would slowly come to operate liberally: consumers would be cajoled toward certain healthy behaviors that they were free to avoid. The experience of particular foods became increasingly impossible to disentangle from the informational infrastructures through which they were marketed, regulated, mythologized, and read.62

EPIZOOTICS, PARASITES AND FREE TRADE In 1842, restrictions of live cattle imports, originally designed to protect Britain from epizootics, were loosened, another key large-planet economic maneuver. Illegal animal importation had, in fact, already introduced footand-mouth disease (1839) and bovine pleuropneumonia (1841).63 These were relatively minor events compared to the 1865 rinderpest epizootic, which involved the death and slaughter of some 290,527 animals, although unofficial estimates put the figure as high as 400,000.64 The disease devastated livestock communities across Britain and generated intense debates about economic practice and disease transmission. The epizootic began with the landing of the SS Tonning at Hull on May 29, 1865. The ship’s cargo of cattle and sheep, originating in Revel, Estonia, was rapidly distributed to Manchester and London.65 Some were infected with rinderpest. In June, a veterinary surgeon examined ailing cows in an Islington dairy.66 After he diagnosed them with rinderpest, however, they were sold. The virus spread rapidly, reaching Aberdeen by the end of July and Edinburgh by August 9.67 By November 1865, rinderpest had permeated all but four of England’s counties and over half of Scotland’s.68 Authorities rapidly mobilized 1848 regulations established following a sheep pox epizootic: port authorities received powers of inspection and could slaughter afflicted animals with poleaxes.69 Inspectors could legally enter cowhouses and farms, and the movement or sale of diseased animals was forbidden.70 An order of September 22, 1865, reintroduced the practice of burying animal carcasses beneath 8 meters of earth covered with quicklime or some other disinfectant, a depth increased to 9.6 meters on January 20, 1866.71 The

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Cattle Diseases Prevention Act (February 20, 1866) permitted entry of foreign animals only via designated ports and forbade their movement inland. Animals must be slaughtered at those ports within ten days of landing, and for limited periods livestock imports from certain parts of Europe were totally prohibited.72 All infected animals had to be destroyed. These regulations concealed many local variations. Islands often adopted a siege mentality. In North Wales, the sea and mountains were regarded as natural barriers against the virus, the only vulnerable points being the Conway and Llanrwst bridges. These spots could easily be protected by officials, while the sanitary condition of railway trucks needed to be closely monitored.73 The “Aberdeenshire System,” involving inspectors and compensation to owners of slaughtered cattle, was noted for its efficacy in the absence of central government action.74 Farmers grew suspicious of trespassers, including inspectors, who were, quite legitimately, accused of potentially spreading the disease. Emergency slaughter might prove hard to implement, with crowds intimidating axmen and preventing killing. In London, an initial burial policy caused problems with sewers, so carcasses were dispatched to the Isle of Dogs and processed into manure, a practice itself abandoned following fears of infected fertilizer.75 The situation stimulated therapeutic innovation. Mr. Jarvis, of Lineal, near Ellesmere, reportedly calved animals in subterranean stalls: if they became diseased, they were simply buried there.76 Gamgee recommended warm, well-ventilated, isolated buildings, oatmeal gruel, and various medicines.77 Voguish homeopathic techniques and vaccination failed, along with various other cures, including onion necklaces, electricity, fumigation, and vapor baths.78 Supernatural causes were sometimes evoked, resulting in calls for prayers or days of humiliation or fasting. In Danby, Yorkshire, following one animal’s sickening, the heart of an ox, pierced with nine new pins, nine new needles, and nine new nails, was burned during a midnight psalm reading. As the heart “began to shrivel and blacken,” moans, footsteps, and finally a “prolonged wail” were heard.79 Regulatory techniques, combined with the epizootic’s slow burnout, caused its demise during 1866, with the final case reported in September 1867.80 Inspection was not universally effective, however: “It will be found that port inspection of foreign animals is a sieve with large meshes.”81 In 1872, afflicted cattle about to land at Hull were packed into a lighter that was dispatched to sea and scuttled. The carcasses, however, inflated with gas, forcing the ship back to the surface. Some washed up on the shores of the Humber.82 Tugboats en route to Grimsby reported the appalling smell.83 During another outbreak in 1877, 1,099 animals were killed, mostly as a

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precaution.84 Rinderpest spread to India, the Philippines, and Africa.85 The disease was eliminated from Britain by the 1930s.86 Today, it is the only epizootic that humans have successfully eradicated. In October 1865, James Kay Shuttleworth admitted that the epizootic posed problems for “that system of personal liberty and self-government to which we are attached.”87 Many liberals stood their ground. Gladstone thought that government insurance schemes would undermine private ones and generate waste and fraud.88 During the second reading of the 1866 Cattle Diseases Bill, Mill suggested that the aristocracy should “bear the brunt of the inconvenience and evils which fell on the country generally.”89 England, argued The Economist, was a place, not “of central or single despotism, but of scattered and local freedom” within which centralized control was impossible. Antipanopticism flourished. Watching “all the roads of England” was impossible and illiberal. In this conceptualization, trade and contagion, freedom and risk, were mutually constitutive. Indeed, trade was “the contagion of civilisation.”90 The solution was medical, not economic. The liberal solution, as with Chadwick’s “sanitary idea,” involved nonintervention with trade.91 In 1866, more parliamentary time was occupied discussing compensation schemes for Cheshire farmers than the contemporaneous cholera epidemic.92 The Times noted: “We want to preserve two advantages hardly consistent with one another— free trade in foreign cattle, and freedom from foreign cattle disease.”93 Others argued that freedom from disease took precedence over freedom to trade. Market forces were destroying Britain’s cattle, so a reflexive, protective response was urged, a “double movement” in Polanyi’s sense.94 Gamgee argued that “misapplication of Free Trade principles” had “burst open the channels of disease transit between the Continent and this country.”95 Steam power was, he felt, more effective at transmitting contagion than war.96 While urging the creation of a national insurance scheme, he also suggested that mechanical refrigeration offered a technical fix by precluding the transnational circulation of livestock. He shared the liberal objection to quarantine, however, describing cordons sanitaires and controlled cattle movements as “vile symptoms of a perverted system.”97 The Times concurred: “Put the butchers on the road instead of the oxen, and the whole difficulty will be at an end.”98 Disease theory and policy making were not independent variables. When rinderpest struck, many conceptualized the disease in terms of spontaneous generation. The doctor John Parkin argued that, along with contemporaneous phenomena like potato blight, phylloxera, and cholera, rinderpest was produced by atmospheric poisons.99 Investigations into rinderpest, however,

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helped discredit miasmatism.100 In 1865, William Budd described rinderpest as being caused by “a specific materies morbi.”101 Proto–germ theories were more readily accepted with animal diseases than with human ones, not least because the easiest solution— slaughter— was morally feasible. The theory of spontaneous generation rapidly perished for epizootics: “There is no greater possibility of Foot-and-Mouth Disease being spontaneously generated in Australia, than there is of a kangaroo being generated spontaneously on the top of Mont Blanc.”102 Environmental factors, however, remained significant. John Paterson, writing in the Aberdeen Journal, attacked the “artificial way the animals were nurtured” and the deviation “from Nature’s laws,” which involved restraining animals, depriving them of exercise, and forcing them to eat “vile mixtures of oilcake.”103 A combination of inspection, controlled movement, and, ultimately, refrigeration successfully overcame rinderpest. This model was not, however, universal. The Colorado beetle panic of 1877, for example, did not produce dramatic restrictions on the American potato trade, although importation of potato stalks was forbidden and legislation passed requiring notification of the police if the troublesome pest was discovered.104 Britain’s first Colorado beetle colony was discovered in Kent in 1901, but it was swiftly eradicated.105 Trichinosis, which struck German states in midcentury, is a more striking example. One hundred and one people died in an 1865 Hedersleben outbreak. Symptoms included gastrointestinal disturbances and cramps. The disease was contracted by consuming raw pork, as was customary in parts of Germany.106 Before the 1860s, the parasite was “a dissecting-room curiosity,” but these outbreaks generated serious comprehension of the disease.107 After infected meat had been consumed, worms escaped their “marble coffins,” grew, and bred: the larvae then hatched, bored through the flesh, and formed cysts.108 The disease’s intensity depended on the amount of trichina consumed. Pigs developed the disease through eating rats or waste pork, the so-called sylvatic cycle; the disease then entered the human food chain through the domestic cycle.109 Despite British cooking predilections, reports of the disease surfaced from midcentury. Two cases were reported at the London Hospital (1835– 36) and one in Wolverhampton (1850).110 An 1879 outbreak at Thaxted, Essex, left fifty-two people with diarrhea, vomiting, double vision, and pain after eating “probably foreign” sausages from a street stall.111 William Cochran declared that there was no need for “alarm” but that the public should be “on their guard.”112 Proper cooking would destroy the parasite, cementing xenophobic prejudice against “foreign sausages.” British travelers in Germany would now “absolutely reject a Wurst.”113 Many blamed American

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pork. In 1879, one “foreign authority” stated that 10–20 percent of American hams imported into northern Germany were “so infected with trichina as to render them dangerous for food.”114 Most European nations responded by banning American pork imports. Germany, for example, refused American sausage imports in 1880 and extended this to all pork products in 1883, catalyzing a “Pork War.”115 The embargo was lifted in 1891 with the establishment of improved American inspection and institutionalized trichinoscopy, complemented by intense European inspection regimes. Germany restricted the entry of Danish pigs after 1879; thereafter Denmark cultivated the British market while Germany gravitated toward porcine autarky. Britain, by contrast, refused trade restrictions, placing the burden of responsibility on the individual. Even temporary government restrictions on imports were not forthcoming. A local government board circular simply recommended giving sausages “an extra ‘frizzle.’”116 As the largest American pork importer, Britain thereby expressed its commitment to freedom of trade. The American social reformer Albert Leffingwell noted the “attitude of unconcern” in Britain since over 80 percent of American bacon and hams went there.117 Occasional trichinosis outbreaks continued into the twentieth century. In 1941, at least five hundred people in Wolverhampton and its environs were afflicted with the disease, many of whom were women who habitually ate raw pork sausage, sometimes spread on bread as a “tasty and portable lunch.”118 British cooking habits ensured that trichinosis never became a major public health threat, but more rigorous sanitary practices doubtless helped. There was, however, no concerted regulatory attempt to control the disease: the market was largely allowed to run free. This was not the case with milk-borne disease.

MILK AND TUBERCULOSIS Although liquid milk consumption in Britain remained relatively low compared to the United States and continental Europe, it was the most sanitarily problematic foodstuff. It provided “a complete bacterial diet” for various microorganisms, from bacterium lacti acidi (necessary for butter and cheesemaking) to streptococci, staphylococci, and bacillus coli communis.119 One bacteriologist observed: “For the purpose of enumeration, milk must be treated as sewage.”120 Bacteria entered milk from many sources, from bovine teats to houseflies. The fetid, dung-splattered urban cowshed became the focus of sanitary hauteur. The close correlation of milk-cart routes and outbreaks of typhoid and scarlet fever attracted suspicion (see fig. 4.1). In 1881, Ernest Hart listed seventy-three disease outbreaks traced to milk, of which

Figure 4.1. Typhoid epidemic traced by examining particular milk rounds, Bristol, 1897. From Harold Swithinbank and George Newman, Bacteriology of Milk (London: John Murray, 1903).

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fifty were typhoid, observing that the milk-disease relationship was “clearly proven.”121 The shift of emphasis from airborne to liquid-borne disease was of clear epidemiological significance, as Michael Taylor noted in 1870.122 Taylor produced his milk-borne-fever hypothesis following an 1857 outbreak of “epidemic typhus” in Penrith, in a report mingling the miasmatic and the zymotic.123 Reports of such epidemics— and corresponding etiological speculations— grew thereafter. Infected water often trickled into the milk supply from dilapidated cesspools or cracked water closets via “leakage, overflow, rat holes or percolation” or direct contact between infected farmworkers and fresh milk.124 In 1936, polluted material entered milk via a stream at Bournemouth and Poole, causing 718 typhoid cases and 70 deaths.125 The scarlet fever– milk connection was made contemporaneously. An 1892 Glasgow outbreak, for example, produced 254 total cases and 11 deaths.126 The scarlet fever question was complicated by the theory that the disease spread directly from cow to human— the so-called Hendon disease— which was ultimately disproved in favor of the theory that it was transmitted to milk from cattle handled by infected milkers.127 Public health officials also dealt with milk-borne outbreaks of tonsillitis, diphtheria, polio, and dysentery, becoming increasingly involved in the micromanagement of farms, carts, and milk shops. In Brighton, Arthur Newsholme handled numerous early twentieth-century scarlet fever epidemics, tracing their outbreak to particular farms.128 In 1905, he distributed a circular to farmers informing them that they were legally obliged to supply him with lists of customers, although this was often resisted.129 Sanitary officials used various tactics— tracing to the source, notification, disinfection— to expand their regulatory reach. These issues crystallized around milk-borne tuberculosis. Tuberculosis was among Victorian Britain’s most significant public health issues, killing around fifty thousand people annually in the 1870s.130 It was also “the most universal and insidious of all diseases in the animal kingdom” and a particular problem among cattle.131 In the later nineteenth century and the early twentieth, estimates suggested that 20–40 percent of the national herd was infected (see fig. 4.2).132 Such rates were, again, usually blamed on transformations of dairy cattle’s living conditions, with cows “becoming too artificial and too civilised,” their constitutions strained by “multiplied consanguinity, by artificial feeding and manuring, by excessive forcing, by early and over-breeding.”133 Milkers seemed oblivious to the fact that overcrowded, dirty byres were ideal milieus for microbial multiplication.134 In 1907, one Hove doctor found a tuberculous dairyman’s half-full sputum receptacle “alongside the open pans of milk on the counter.”135

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Figure 4.2. Bovine carcass heavily infected with tuberculosis. From Harold Swithinbank and George Newman, Bacteriology of Milk (London: John Murray, 1903).

Such concerns were amplified by the growing consensus that tuberculosis could move between species. In 1865, Jean-Antoine Villemin demonstrated that rabbits contracted tuberculosis when inoculated with tuberculous matter of human or bovine origin.136 In 1868, Jean-Baptiste Auguste Chauveau demonstrated that tuberculosis was transmissible by ingestion.137 The theory that tuberculosis could spread from animals to humans first appeared in the British medical press in 1876.138 In 1901, however, Robert Koch declared that bovine and human tuberculosis were distinct and that reciprocal infection was extremely rare, an argument appreciate by farmers who resented government intrusion.139 However, Koch’s theory was dis-

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mantled by numerous scientists, including John MacFadyean and Nathan Raw, who argued that, while bovine tuberculosis and human tuberculosis were morphologically distinct, mutual infection was common. 140 Koch’s views were increasingly marginalized. In 1911, the final report of the Royal Commission on Tuberculosis announced unambiguously that humans could be infected with bovine tuberculosis. Tuberculous milk was clearly recognized as a serious public health danger. Studies showed the bacillus surviving for 120 days in butter and 35 in cheese.141 Urban authorities began analyzing milk supplies for tuberculosis. In 1907, the Birmingham medical officer of health, John Robertson, measured 180 samples of mixed milk and found that 13.33 percent were tubercular.142 Bovine tuberculosis, caused by Mycobacterium bovis, was now blamed for around two thousand deaths annually in Britain, largely in the form of tabes mesenterica (consumption of the bowels).143 Such nonpulmonary tubercular modalities were particularly evident in children, whose mortality rates declined more slowly than did those of adults, making milk-borne tuberculosis a significant pediatric health risk.144 Abdominal tuberculosis lesions were mainly caused by the bovine bacillus, with the greatest number occurring in the second year of life, when children consumed large amounts of cow’s milk.145 There were claims that rates of human infection with bovine tuberculosis were higher in Britain than elsewhere in the world.146 A regulatory apparatus developed to counter the menace of tuberculous milk. Inspectors received powers to procure milk samples and enter private property under the 1866 and 1875 Public Health Acts and the 1875 Sale of Food and Drugs Act. In 1908, for example, the London City Council undertook five inspections of all London cowsheds.147 Urban inspectors were empowered from 1890 to follow milk to sources beyond their formal zone of jurisdiction, a practice some metropolitan inspectors had undertaken from the 1870s.148 The Board of Agriculture and Fisheries issued a 1913 order requiring notification of bovine tuberculosis (with emaciation, tuberculosis of the udder, or other chronic udder disease) and made provision for slaughtering such animals.149 The Ministry of Health centralized milk inspection in 1925, with two inspectors supervising local government activities. The 1926 Milk and Dairies Order required all local sanitary authorities to maintain registers of their districts’ dairies and enforce cleanliness regulations.150 Establishing effective inspection over rural areas, however, proved difficult, with the chairman of United Dairies dismissing it as a “farce.”151 The thermometer’s capacity to discover infection was discovered during the 1865– 67 rinderpest epizootic, but tuberculin promised earlier, more accurate diagnosis in outwardly healthy cattle.152 Tuberculin was sterilized

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tuberculous matter, initially developed by Koch as a potential vaccine. In tuberculous animals, injected tuberculin produced a temperature spike that, if gradual and followed by a slow decline, indicated a positive reaction. 153 The British Institute of Preventive Medicine offered tuberculin from 1895, at the cost of one shilling for three doses.154 Although the test required skill and was far from foolproof, it catalyzed tuberculosis eradication programs. Despite the marketing of “tuberculin-tested” milk from 1923, however, in 1937 only around 3 percent of British milk came from tuberculin-tested herds.155 In Denmark, meanwhile, the Bang method, which used tuberculin diagnosis to bifurcate herds into tuberculous and nontuberculous, allowed full eradication well before this was achieved in Britain.156 By the early 1930s, Denmark announced that two of its southern islands were totally free from tuberculosis, as was much of Zealand and nearly 60 percent of Jutland.157 Islands, again, possessed geographic advantages. Guernsey’s policy of immediate slaughter of imports led to eradication by 1920, when the island’s medical officer of health boasted that its population drank “no tuberculous milk.”158 Progress on mainland Britain was understandably slower. The Manchester General Powers Act (1899) included “Milk Clauses” allowing laboratory testing of samples. If tuberculous matter was discovered, medical officers of health traced it to its source, where cattle were inspected by a veterinary surgeon, samples taken, and tuberculous cows identified, isolated, and possibly slaughtered.159 Tuberculin allowed the division of reactors from healthy animals, who themselves could be retested to ensure diagnosis of incipient tuberculosis. Young animals should be isolated from other stock and tested twice within an interval of three months.160 This “Manchester method” spread elsewhere: to Croydon, Sheffield, and Sunderland, for example. In Birmingham, Robertson adopted the technique in 1908, and, by 1910, it was being applied to thirteen herds.161 “A recognised supply of tubercle-free milk” now existed, although demand was greatest “in the better-class districts.”162 The most significant factor in the decline of human infection was neither bacteriology nor tuberculin, however, but pasteurization. In 1898, the chief medical officer, Richard Thorne, claimed, sweepingly, that the English were “almost the only civilized nation in the world who habitually consume uncooked milk.”163 Sterilization techniques developed from the eighteenth century, but the development of germ theory and comprehension of the thermal death points of bacteria made the practice more popular and led to the more precise technique of pasteurization, which utilizes temperatures of 140–75 degrees Fahrenheit for a limited time, destroying only those germs in growing condition. It also avoids sterilized milk’s cooked flavor. Two com-

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peting systems developed: the holder system (which held milk at 145–60 degrees F for thirty minutes) and the flash or HTST system (which heated it to 162 degrees for fifteen seconds).164 The latter system triumphed after 1945, mainly because of problems caused by bottle cooling at slow rates.165 Pasteurization required significant capital investment, which explains why large companies, like United Dairies and Express Dairies, often pioneered its use to increase shelf life.166 In 1923, John Drummond noted that pasteurization was, like canning and refrigeration, a consequence of “the artificial conditions which our civilisation has built up, particularly in the large towns and industrial areas.” He expressed concerns about the potential “far-reaching effect” of heating-treating milk.167 Pasteurization was assailed for destroying milk’s vital properties and its vitamin C content or for being an instrument of state control.168 Some experiments suggested that children gained more weight on raw milk.169 Farmers complained about the expense. One rural MP blamed pasteurization for tooth decay.170 Some denied the existence of bovine tuberculosis or even germs themselves.171 Lewis Mumford thought that pasteurization exemplified mechanized existence.172 More compelling was the argument, made by R. Stenhouse Williams, director of the National Institute for Research in Dairying at Reading, that, by destroying bacteria, pasteurization made sanitary dairying potentially pointless.173 These arguments, however, disintegrated before an emergent medical consensus that compulsory pasteurization was the easiest way to guarantee a pathogen-free milk supply.174 The vitamin argument was debunked: milk is not a strong source of vitamin C.175 Pasteurization denialism, noted Bernard Myers in 1938, would one day be regarded “as a criminal offence.”176 By 1936, 95 percent of London milk and between 80 and 90 percent of Glasgow and Manchester milk was pasteurized.177 Sterilized milk maintained a regular, sometimes significant demand in the Midlands, Lancashire, and Yorkshire.178 World War II accelerated the trend toward pasteurization, but unpasteurized milk remains legal, if heavily regulated, in England and Wales, although it is illegal in Scotland.179 Today, raw milk is consumed in vanishingly small quantities in Britain. Meanwhile, bacteriological analysis, incremental improvements in rural hygiene, and tuberculin testing spectacularly reduced the incidence of bovine tuberculosis and its spread to human populations. The Ministry of Agriculture established a bacteriological advisory service in various parts of Britain to advise producers and examine samples.180 Tuberculin tests showed that the disease was declining. A national eradication program, begun in 1950, had eliminated the disease by 1960, with only residual infection

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remaining.181 The number of reactors fell from around 20 percent in 1930 to around 0.07 percent in the first nine months of 1963. Only ten animals were slaughtered in 1962.182 The disease persists in Britain, however, and is spread between herds by tuberculous badgers, particularly if their latrine systems coincide with pastures.183

MEAT PRODUCTS Slaughterhouses had long been associated with duplicitous practices, like “blowing” meat (inflating it to exaggerate its apparent bulk) or “polishing” it (smearing it with fat to produce specious luster).184 Flesh switching was another problem. Donkeys were disguised as deer, dogs as lamb, lamb fetuses as rabbits: like sheep brains in milk, such stories had a certain mythic quality.185 Some butchers purveyed animal fetuses, or “slink” calves. In Aldgate Market in 1861, a fetus that “wanted at least a month of the natural period of gestation” was discovered dressed and ready for sale.186 “Only among English gourmands is the meat of fetuses considered a delicacy, as was the case among the Romans,” scoffed the Berlin veterinary professor Robert Ostertag.187 The term slink was, however, more widely used, particularly in northwest England, to refer to unsalable flesh, like the “very black and sticky” meat seized in Blackburn in August 1895.188 In Liverpool in 1870, Robert Birchall was fined ten pounds for possessing “soft, dropsical and flabby” meat, with Inspector Lloyd condemning him as “nothing but a slink butcher.”189 In 1892, Preston was “a depot for the disposal of slink meat in the North of England.”190 During these years, miasmatic anxieties were replaced with concerns that slaughterhouses were nodes through which pathogens entered the food chain, via diseased meat or contamination arising during killing and storage. Tuberculous dairy cattle were regularly killed in slaughterhouses. Between July 1861 and July 1862, 1,075 diseased cattle carcasses entered the food chain in Edinburgh (791 were sold for human consumption, the rest fed to pigs).191 It was financially difficult for farmers to behave otherwise. “The butcher’s knife,” went the saying, “is the best doctor.”192 Duplicitous butchers were facilitated by a crepuscular apparatus of slaughter and sale: markets often sold diseased meat on Saturday evenings, under beguiling, xanthous gaslight.193 In Aberdeen, diseased meat was prepared outside the city and then returned in wooden-axled carts, “unheard and unsuspected.”194 Butchers routinely “stripped” pleura or tuberculous glands to hoodwink gullible inspectors.195 Much diseased meat entered the food chain through an expanding net

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work of penumbral meat-product manufacturers networks, from which spewed a cascade of sausages, pies, and potted meat. Many such foodstuffs were still produced in slaughterhouses, providing manifold opportunities for cross-contamination. Sausages served as cylindric receptacles for any available minced scraps, from bull beef and horse meat to heavily diseased meat: Bobus Higgins, Thomas Carlyle’s satirical creation, was a “dishonest cunning and scandalous sausage-maker” who disguised wretched meat with “grey-pepper spice.”196 A Hackney sanitary inspector, William Lewis, recalled piercing an abscess when cutting into one sausagemaker’s meat.197 In Clerkenwell in 1891, the Vestry’s sanitary inspector investigated a butcher’s premises, seizing twenty-one pieces of meat, rotting minced flesh, and “four pairs of putrid lungs.”198 Little wonder that sausages were sometimes called “skin and mystery.”199 More opaque still was the pie, repository of fears of cat or human flesh entombed in a sarcophagus of pastry.200 In 1889, one Glaswegian urban official pithily concluded: “Some of the meat is just the colour of bile.”201 Developing effective regulatory techniques was complicated. Butchers often resisted the entry of inspectors, and closing insanitary slaughterhouses was difficult. Joseph Gamgee (John’s brother) lamented ineffective metropolitan meat inspection in 1857, characterizing Newgate market as a scene of “filth, fraud, and negligence.”202 By the early twentieth century, Britain had a reputation for having one of Europe’s worst-inspected meat systems. Ostertag expressed astonishment that this “cradle of hygiene” lacked “regulated meat inspection.”203 Nonetheless, legislation expanded powers of inspection, entry, and removal of unsound goods, while numerous local authorities passed their own legislation and acquired powers to inspect premises beyond their legal boundaries.204 Inspectors seized sizable quantities of meat: 273 tons were confiscated in the City of London alone in 1880.205 Such meat was obliterated via carcass crushers, desiccating and rendering machines, digesters, and picric acid.206 Salable goods like fertilizer were produced. The reconstruction of markets also facilitated inspection. The 1924 Public Health (Meat) Regulations made notification of slaughter mandatory, stated that carcasses must be retained for several hours to allow inspection if necessary, and empowered the minister of health to authorize local authorities to mark inspected carcasses.207 Lists of conditions for which carcasses could be condemned were distributed, with some discretion left to inspectors.208 The City of London appointed a special meat inspector, Charles Fisher, in 1849, along with an inspector of live cattle, Robert Shouler.209 By the mid-1880s, meat inspection was a routine component of local public health

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operations.210 Its institutional apparatus varied geographically. Liverpool’s Health Committee oversaw meat inspection, deploying four inspectors of meat and animals, six inspectors under the Diseases of Animals Act, and four fishmongers as inspectors of fish and food, plus regular food and milk inspectors. In 1908, these inspectors made 7,129 visits to slaughterhouses and 66,884 to butchers’ shops, seizing 1,565 carcasses, over half of which were sheep. Ideally, animals were inspected before, during, and after slaughter.211 Inspectors should be familiar with sound and unsound meat and know the signs of suspicious death. Glands, particularly mesenteric ones, were closely scrutinized since they were the locus of tuberculous lesions; inspectors should observe organs, including the lungs, to detect potential pleural stripping. Pocket microscopes and notebooks were recommended.212 Inspectors should keep detailed records and take notes “at the moment of inspection.” In Hamilton, diagrams depicting the situation of glands allowed the location of disease to be marked by “red colouring” (see fig. 4.3).213 Early meat inspectors came from modest walks of life: they were bricklayers, tram conductors, cheesemongers, gas fitters.214 The 1875 Public Health Act stated that sanitary inspectors should possess “some knowledge” of animal anatomy and flesh’s appearance, a perhaps deliberately vague description.215 The Sanitary Institute established a meat and food inspection course in 1896, with a separate meat inspectors’ examination instituted from 1899.216 Although the course remained voluntary, by 1931 inspectors usually held the certificate.217 Veterinary inspectors were also appointed in London, counties, and large boroughs, although the office was often part-time.218 In 1884, Thomas Walley of Edinburgh became the first veterinarian specifically appointed to inspect abattoirs. Edinburgh abattoir, built in 1910, featured laboratories with good lighting, hot and cold water, gas, microscopes, oil-immersion apparatus for bacterial work, and equipment for cultivating organisms.219 The density of transportation networks and the continued existence of thousands of small slaughterhouses, however, ensured that domestic inspection was hardly omniscient, although telephones and cars made life easier. Rural inspectors often lacked assistants and traversed great distances with limited transportation options.220 The meat system included many umbrageous spaces into which diseased meat could disappear. Slaughtermen and butchers were sometimes obstructive, keeping properties locked, deploying large dogs, utilizing aliases, or switching meat.221 In 1904, a Birmingham butcher stabbed an inspector, leaving him in a “critical” condition.222 Bloye grumbled about the “slipshod and haphazard” nature of much inspection: lazy, corrupt, and incompetent inspection endured alongside persistent

Figure 4.3. Meat inspection record, Hamilton. Note the shaded lung regions identifying areas affected by tuberculosis. The carcass was condemned. From Gerald Leighton and Loudon Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 5 vols. (London: Educational Book Co., 1910), vol. 3.

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insanitary practices.223 Indeed, as recently as the BSE crisis, British consumers did not demand veterinary control of slaughtering.224 As meat imports rose, ports were identified as “the first line of defence” against meat-borne disease.225 Following the rinderpest epizootic, a system of scheduled ports was established through which animals were funneled and slaughtered, concentrating inspection in controlled spaces. The shift from live to frozen imports, however, created problems. Consignments of thirty thousand frozen carcasses of mutton or lamb might arrive in one shipment, making thorough inspection extremely difficult.226 Frozen meat, if boned or boxed, often congealed into a single gelid mass, which was almost impossible to inspect adequately.227 Things were worse “with boxes and barrels containing a conglomeration of parts of slaughtered animals which have been subjected to various more or less adequate processes of preservation.”228 Cold store inspection was also criticized as unsystematic.229 Separate port sanitary authorities were created under the 1872 Public Health Act, and local government board orders (1892, 1898, 1906) made sections of public health acts applicable to the ports of London and Manchester.230 By 1904, the Port of London’s staff included a medical officer of health (Herbert Williams) and ten sanitary inspectors.231 In 1905, they seized a vast, diverse array of suspicious foodstuffs, including 3,517 quarters and 1,463 pieces of beef, 524 crates of rabbits, 5 cases and 1,121 tins of canned meat, and 1,666,860 eggs.232 Mountains of unsound meat presented logistic problems. On September 6, 1902, 18,399 carcasses and 31,381 pieces of mutton, along with 2,229 quarters of beef, were seized on the Niwaru. An inspector, Spadaccini, oversaw the dumping of the diseased meat at sea.233 The system allowed the interception of cubed, putrid meat destined for shameless sausagemakers.234 Under the 1907 Public Health (Regulations as to Food) Act, boxed meat should be packed to make individual pieces observable. Meatpacking improved, with ox kidneys, tongues, skirts, and other offal often separately frozen; kidneys might be arranged in inspectable strata one or two organs thick.235 Depth inspection necessitated instrumentation: glands could be reached by boring through frozen flesh with gouges.236 Merchandise marks acts (1926 and 1934) made the marking and identification of imported produce increasingly thorough, and the 1938 Imported Food Regulations declared that no meat products could enter Britain without a certificate of soundness.237 Concerns were further alleviated by the internationalization of inspection standards. Large overseas abattoirs or pig factories were much more easily inspected than the multitudinous jumble of British slaughterhouses. American standards improved following the trichinosis panic and Sinclair’s

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The Jungle. In 1923, George Putnam reassured readers that all meat was inspected four times: once before death and thrice afterward, “upon the glands of the neck, on the viscera, and on the halves of the carcass.”238 Federal standards for exporting Canadian meat were established in 1907.239 A 1908 Danish law stated that all exported meat must be produced in public slaughterhouses subject to government inspection.240 Danish bacon was also inspected at Esbjerg before distribution to England, and, from 1906, all exported bacon was given two stamps: a blue oval bearing the words I.Kl., Danmark, Statskontrol, indicating its disease-free status, and the red Lur Brand with the word Danmark and a number indicating the slaughterhouse of origin (see fig. 4.4).241 This brand was a technology of trust guaranteeing the bacon’s quality, homogeneity, and origin, a tool for minimizing food anxiety and perceived risk. From 1908, all Danish bacon was declared free of preservatives apart from salt and smoking.242 The Australian Commonwealth government appointed special staff to inspect all exported meat in February 1911, and imported meat carried a Commonwealth approval stamp.243 New Zealand’s Department of Agriculture controlled all meat-exporting slaughterhouses, and the meat was guaranteed by government inspectors

Figure 4.4. Stamping Danish carcasses. The number refers to the slaughterhouse in which the pig was killed. From Ravnholt, Danish Co-Operative Movement (Copenhagen: Det Danske Selskab, 1950).

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under veterinary control, while a London-based produce commissioner and veterinary officer examined all cargoes.244 There were thirty-two abattoir inspectors and eighty-six inspectors of meat works by 1921.245 New Zealand mutton was then routinely marketed and displayed as government inspected and pure.246 The boundary between inspection and marketing blurred: both were essential to the formation of export-oriented economies and predictable shopping. In Argentina, cattle were inspected twice before slaughter and their meat once afterward: three hundred veterinary surgeons and three hundred assistants inspected cattle killed for exportation.247 A negative evaluation of the effects of meat inspection is thus unwarranted. A transcontinental inspection network had developed without serious difficulty: “It is remarkable to what extent the nations have accepted each other’s inspection.”248 Overseas meat, particularly Danish bacon and New Zealand lamb, gained a reputation for quality and material predictability. Domestic abattoir construction and meat inspection did not obliterate the illicit trade in diseased and unwholesome meat, but it clearly reduced it. The relationship between butchers and inspectors was, generally, cooperative rather than adversarial. James Wilkinson, the Oldham medical officer of health, observed that butchers routinely contacted inspectors if they discovered a diseased carcass.249 Rural areas might have lacked permanent inspection, but local, personal interconnections probably functioned equally successfully. Indeed, Leighton thought that rigid inspection might be potentially less necessary in rural areas.250

EMERGENT FOOD-BORNE PATHOGENS “Veterinary science,” announced a meat inspection textbook in 1936, had shown “that a large proportion of the meat that had formerly been condemned as dangerous was really quite harmless.”251 This sense of reduced food risk would be reinforced by the retreat of bovine tuberculosis and the spread of pasteurization. Other problems, however, were emerging. In 1962, Sir Graham Wilson, introducing a Royal Society symposium on food poisoning, drew attention to the “enormous increase in the incidence of food poisoning” over the previous two decades.252 Wilson was not the first to articulate such a position. In 1899, Victor Vaughan, a University of Michigan professor of hygiene, argued that “an actual increase in the number of outbreaks of food poisoning” was evident.253 Indeed, the term food poisoning first regularly appeared from the 1880s.254 In the later nineteenth century, food poisoning was often comprehended zymotically, as a consequence of ingesting putrefying substances, something

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formalized in the ptomaine theory, which thrived well into the twentieth century.255 Ptomaines were specific “alkaloids produced by decomposing animal substances,” like collodine (from decaying horseflesh or mackerel) or putrescine (from human corpses).256 Bacteriology discredited this theory. In 1888, Gustav Gärtner isolated the Bacillus enteritidis following a Frankenhausen meat-poisoning outbreak. The infection’s clinical features resembled a milder version of typhoid.257 In the early twentieth century, many bacteria were collated under the genus Salmonella: typhoid (Salmonella typhi) is the severest form.258 Multifarious salmonella serotypes were discovered: there are currently over twenty-six hundred. Salmonella infection in England and Wales increased in incidence dramatically after 1945: there were 120 cases in 1941 but over 5,000 by 1973.259 Given salmonella’s niche— animal intestines— its emergence stimulated renewed focus on abattoir conditions. Overcrowded transportation systems and lairages provided greater opportunities for the disease’s dissemination through infected fecal material.260 Since infected animals lacked visible lesions, inspecting animals and tracing salmonella outbreaks necessitated bacteriological analysis. Meat inspection gravitated further toward the laboratory, where stools, vomit, and suspected foods were emulsified or plated directly on agar; if colonies appeared, they were incubated. Drains and gullies in suspected abattoirs or food manufacturing establishments were examined with sewer swabs.261 The Public Health Laboratory Service, formed in 1946, enabled more systematic analysis. Bacteriological methods also uncovered the significance of carriers in food-poisoning outbreaks.262 Salmonella radiated from zones of intense livestock farming (cattle and, increasingly, chickens). New serotypes and waves of infection spread through novel processed products like synthetic cream or dried, frozen, and liquid egg.263 Multiplying kitchen technologies— tin openers, meat slicers, mincing machines, and carving knives— increased the material possibility of cross-contamination.264 These new material circumstances created novel milieus for microbial evolution: salmonella was, Savage thought, “in an evolutionary stage” typified by differential adaptations to multiple niches and a “high degree of host specialization” allowing pathogens to thrive in various animal reservoirs.265 He considered Salmonella paratyphi B effectively “a human invasive parasite causing long-continued infection and rarely gastrointestinal symptoms.”266 Other emergent food-borne pathogens included Clostridium welchii, now known as Clostridium perfringens (discovered in 1892), and Escherichia coli (discovered in 1885, although it was known as Bacterium coli communis until 1918).267 Staphylococci’s role in food poisoning was understood from 1914.268 Such food-borne epidemics followed

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a familiar pattern: while most people ingesting the pathogen remained symptomless, there were “huge numbers of dispersed victims.”269 The most deadly food-borne pathogen, Clostridium botulinum, first hit Britain in 1922, when eight people died after eating potted duck sandwiches at Loch Maree in Scotland.270 J. B. S. Haldane considered botulism earth’s most toxic substance when ingested, noting that sixty pounds could probably destroy the human race.271 Between 1949 and 1960, meat caused 73 percent of recorded British food poisoning outbreaks.272 Meat-borne food poisoning gained notoriety in 1880 when beef and ham sandwiches served on the Duke of Portland’s Welbeck Abbey estate caused four deaths. The meat’s “under-cooked” nature was blamed for producing putrefactive conditions.273 Undercooked meat products— particularly pies and sausages— featured in many food-poisoning cases. Microbes on meat’s surface, warned one manual, eventually became “tucked well inside the centre of a pie.”274 At Bedford in 1908, for example, twenty-nine people were sickened by undercooked pork pies.275 Gradual cooling of jelly, aspic, and gravy also provided ideal conditions for microbial growth.276 William Savage listed fifty-one food-poisoning outbreaks caused by pathogens in canned foods, mostly salmonella and mainly from South American meat. Testing cans was similar to testing human chests, involving much “palpation, percussion and auscultation.” Inspectors should examine joints and seams, test for leaks, and check labels. But, Savage concluded, canned food posed little threat to the public.277 Other food-poisoning threats included shellfish, ice cream, chicken, synthetic cream, and eggs. The future King George V contracted typhoid after eating oysters in Dublin in 1891. A major “oyster scare” followed, generating painstaking investigations into the sanitary conditions of British oyster beds.278 In 1902, oysters spread typhoid at Winchester, Portsmouth, and Southampton, killing the bishop of Winchester at a mayoral banquet.279 Such incidents plunged British ostreophagy into vertiginous decline.280 Dehydrated eggs, imported from 1941, brought numerous new salmonellas that generated multiple food-poisoning outbreaks. Frozen chicken legs wreaked gastrointestinal havoc at the Liverpool Tennis Club in July 1968.281 Transformations in British eating habits— particularly increased dining in restaurants, canteens, and snack bars— increased the likelihood of food poisoning.282 A 1920 study of Birmingham hotel, café, and restaurant kitchens (including an early A-B-C rating system) showed that domestic washing-up arrangements produced markedly cleaner utensils.283 The “superficial tinsel” of public eating spaces, grumbled one commentator, occluded the

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Figure 4.5. Ideal vs. poor food handling. From A. Christie and M. Christie, Food Hygiene and Food Hazards for All Who Handle Food (London: Faber & Faber, 1971).

“humid food-smeared media of the kitchen equipment” in confined preparation spaces.284 Food handlers’ habits of “nose-picking, nail-biting, smoking, snuff-taking, use of hand instead of handkerchief” transferred bacteria to hands, as did fondling pets and poor bathroom hygiene (see fig. 4.5).285 Sneezes should be stifled (see fig. 4.6). Microbes circulated between oblivious bodies via towels, toilets, door handles, cutlery, and banknotes. Solutions included bactericidal soap, foam dispensers, watercloset provision, metallic doorknobs, serving tongs, and the bandaging of cuts. Food became neurotically wrapped in plastic and enticingly imprisoned behind access flaps in perspex display cabinets (see fig. 4.7).286 Such technologies were “tactics in a form of bacteriological warfare,” but they further cemented a visual, nontactile relationship between Britons and their food.287 While mechanical refrigerators promised atmospheric control, they were not always reliable. One leading frozen food manufacturer estimated that forty-five thousand obsolescent frozen food cabinets were in use in Britain

Figure 4.6. How germs can spread to food. The perils of unstifled sneezing. From Elliott Dewberry, Food Poisoning, Food-Borne Infection and Intoxication: Nature, History, and Causation, Measures for Prevention and Control, 4th ed. (London: Leonard Hill, 1959).

Figure 4.7. The apparatus of hygiene. Individual servings encased in plastic. From Ministry of Health, Clean Catering: A Handbook on Premises, Equipment and Practices for the Promotion of Hygiene in Food Establishments (London: HM Stationery Office, 1963).

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in 1968.288 Operational problems included the excessive opening and closing of doors, overfilling, and electrical breakdown.289 More serious, again, were problems caused by reheating food that had been previously prepared and perhaps cooled: it was important, for example, to make stock fresh daily and discard what was unneeded.290 Food hygiene regulations from 1960 stated that meat, fish, gravy, and imitation cream must be kept above 145 degrees Fahrenheit or below 50 degrees Fahrenheit.291 The overall result was the gradual reconfiguration of the commercial kitchen into a sanitary landscape, a “true production factory.”292 The 1955 Food and Drugs Act gave powers to disqualify filthy caterers.293 Regulations from 1960 decreed that such spaces should be well lighted and ventilated, with clean water supplies. Articles touching food should be kept clean and in good repair. Disposable cups and cutlery became more commonplace. Canteens were as meticulously partitioned as prisons, permeated by sinks, stainless steel surfaces, tiles, and extractor fans, punctiliously disinfected, and routinely inspected. They were ideally well ventilated, with outwardopening, self-closing doors (with metal kick plates) to minimize insect access.294 Wrapping and covering proliferated: exposed food constituted a risk (see fig. 4.8). Vermin were deterred by rat-proof construction, food containers, traps, insecticides, and a Sisyphean war on crumbs. DDT or Gammexane for flies and chlordane or dieldrin powders were deployed to annihilate cockroaches, although the rapid evolution of resistance was acknowledged.295 What E. O. Wilson later called the “Vietnam of entomology” had reached the cafeteria.296 Kitchen staff donned the ubiquitous raiment of institutionalized hygiene: rubber gloves, hairnets, aprons, blue bandaids. We can trace such developments through the history of Marks and Spencer, which established its Food Technology department in 1948. By the mid1950s, all staff working in its canteens and cafeterias underwent hygiene training, stainless steel and glass fittings proliferated, and managers were encouraged to patrol kitchens identifying fly “hot spots.”297 The condition of its workers’ throats, fingers, hair, and nostrils was strictly regulated.298 The company banned smoking and dogs from food sections and celebrated its pioneering DDT fieldwork.299 Following a major 1964 outbreak of typhoid in Aberdeen caused by infected corned beef, Marks and Spencer reacted immediately by removing and destroying lettuce, cucumbers, cream cakes, and pork pies from its local store before distributing hygiene recommendations to all its managers and canteen staff.300 Staff toilets, one newspaper article purred, featured “hand-cream, talcum powder, deodorant, nail-brushes and soft disposable paper towels.”301 Across Britain, the fussy hand of “health and safety” reached into can-

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Figure 4.8. Food hygiene poster, informing the reader of the fly’s revolting habits. From Ronald Kinton and Victor Ceserani, Theory of Catering, 4th ed. (London: E. Arnold, 1984).

teens and greasy spoons and dragged eating environments and caterers toward the age of hazard analysis, in which risks at every stage of food chains were identified and monitored.302 The techniques were ideally nondisciplinary, involving subtle or even superficial transformation in habits rather than forcibly implanted hygiene: “A kick in the pants is sometimes far less effective than a word in the ear.”303 Such hygiene, sanitary discipline, and quality-control standards were also instituted and enforced across Britain’s globalized food chain: in neoliberal times, supermarkets, rather than the state, often did the enforcing.304 If risk is an inescapable aspect of advanced industrial society, then the omnipresent possibility of, anxiety about, and resignation toward the unpredictable eruption of novel food-borne diseases is a paradigmatic example of risk society, and food systems were one of the most palpable ways in which the phenomenon of risk was experienced and conceptualized.305 h

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The century dividing the great rinderpest epizootic and the rise of the health and safety regime saw the uncoordinated evolution of various regulatory techniques for providing risk management to food systems. The key strategies— inspection, notification, tracing, analysis, sampling, hygiene— evolved within the broader apparatus of British public health as part of a cautious critique of free trade evident from the 1860s. But regulatory strategies were also engineered into the technical form of food systems, most notably through refrigeration and pasteurization, but also through abattoir, warehouse, and canteen design and microtechnologies like cellophane wrapping and serving tongs. Regulating the food system involved construction, retrofitting, and technological innovation as well as inspecting and analyzing. A perfectly self-regulating and human-regulated food system never materialized. Milk-borne tuberculosis and rinderpest were conquered, but food poisoning grew in incidence, adulteration became more sophisticated, and the scope, mediation, and discursive richness of food labels expanded, generating nutritional and, later, ecological information (witness the rise of “food footprint” labels, which mediate the spatial relations between Britons and their food).306 Disinfectants and sanitary codes could not, by themselves, expunge human error from dining halls and canteens. Britain’s worst foodpoisoning outbreak came in Lanarkshire in 1996, when 21 elderly people died and another 496 became seriously ill from Escherichia coli O157:H7, an outbreak traced to poor handling of meat products.307 The American bacteriologist Edwin Jordan concluded that, as people became more dependent on others for their food, “the hazards engendered by cupidity, ignorance, and carelessness” ramified.308 Britain’s Clean Livestock Policy (1997) recognized the persistent problem of contamination of “exposed muscle surfaces” by filthy fleeces, hair, abattoir workers, dust, and knives and graded animals according to visible levels of grime, rejecting those caked in dirt and dung.309 Food system breakdown was not, however, caused solely by human error. Food systems are evolutionary spaces within which certain pathogens can emerge, thrive, and spread. Food risks were a moving target: never eliminated, only managed. A good example is Listeria monocytogenes, the microorganism causing listeriosis, the food-borne nature of which was comprehended in the 1970s. Unlike salmonella, listeria is psychrophilic, meaning that cold storage could act “essentially as a period of selective enrichment for this species.”310 Transformations in feeding and abattoir practices created the conditions of possibility of E. coli O157:H7 and bovine spongiform encephalopathy. As Hannah Landecker has argued, food was becoming a form of exposure, a total environment into which humans were inescapably folded.311

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The problem to be solved was, how to get rid of the people. —John Mitchel, The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps) (1861) The more total the war, the more totally it puts a stop to laisser-faire. —John Boyd Orr, Food and the People (1943) Famine is the representation in relief of power at its fiercest. —Janam Mukherjee, Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire (2015)

“

F

ood is a weapon,” declared Earl Butz, US secretary of agriculture, in 1974.1 Food power, he suggested, could counter OPEC’s weaponization of oil. The use of food systems for geostrategic and economic purposes, however, has a far longer history. During the long nineteenth century, Britain used its food systems as instruments of slow violence, creating manifold “attritional catastrophes” of mass starvation, wasting, and famine, with enduring, even intergenerational, effects.2 In nineteenth-century Ireland and India, when famine erupted along fragile commodity frontiers, economic restructuring and protodevelopment took precedence over the saving of human lives.3 Famine was used to implant the apparatus of economic liberalism in recalcitrant peasant societies forcibly. In World War I, economic blockade was waged with tremendous effectiveness, creating the enduring German fears of famine that underpinned Hitler’s genocidal visions.4 In 1942, Carl Schmitt argued that “the English disposition” involved a belief that “death by starvation is a bloodless death— even a proof of higher humanity and refined humaneness.” Continental powers, however, found this “cruel butchery.”5 Control of global food systems 132

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allowed food to be withheld or distributed according to geopolitical context, a capacity foreshadowing the post-1945 Americanized world food system of which Butz spoke. This chapter proceeds in chronological order, focusing on four events: the Irish famine, the Indian famines, and both world wars.

NECROPOLITICS AND THE NUTRITION TRANSITION: IRELAND The British mainland was among the first areas of Europe to escape the relentless cycle of medieval and early modern famines. Market integration, domestic peace, transportation developments, and asymmetrical price patterns for different grains meant that England became increasingly famine free after 1650.6 Vulnerabilities remained, however. During the Napoleonic Wars, the French continental system attempted to close British markets and prevent Britain selling colonial products to European nations.7 Blockade and harvest failures generated extreme price spikes, cooperative milling experiments, resort to lower grains, and rising death rates.8 Bread riots erupted from Truro to Berwick.9 In 1812, the government moved militias to areas of protest in the Midlands and the north.10 The 1816 Spa Fields riots were basically assaults on bakers and butchers.11 Malthus fretted about the possibility of the “unceasing carnage” of mob rule, while Lord Liverpool worried that hunger might precipitate “a French-style revolution.”12 George III survived two assassination attempts on May 15, 1800. Several rioters perished on the scaffold.13 This was a period when marketization and older, more protective systems coexisted, sometimes in tension, sometimes harmoniously. As markets expanded, they became harder to locate spatially and attack: as they became more normative, authorities had less tolerance for entitlement riots.14 Political economy germinated in the fertile soil of food crisis. Burke and Smith argued that government regulation undermined market activity and created scarcity, and voluble Foxites proclaimed their free trade mantra throughout the 1790s.15 Ricardo formulated his rent and price theories during the dearth.16 London’s sophisticated municipal corn provision system had fallen into disuse.17 In 1795, government grain purchases were rapidly suspended, although a bounty was established to encourage imports.18 The government, however, covertly convinced the East India Company to export grain and rice into Britain.19 Soup kitchens were established in major cities, while the Poor Law and charity successfully channeled food to the poor.20 Britain survived the blockade by exploiting American and Baltic (and

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French) resources, developing convoys, and expanding domestic production: its troops were, overall, better fed than the French.21 The end of hostilities, however, brought little immediate respite as a combination of the stratospheric dust veil released by the 1809 unknown and 1815 Tambora eruptions and the postwar trade depression catalyzed a European subsistence crisis. The year 1817 was one of famine for most of North Wales, vagrancy and emigration rates increased, and a typhus epidemic struck from 1816 to 1819. However, after spring 1817, prices tumbled, and starvation never became widespread.22 Hunger spiked during times of economic hardship, leaving workers vulnerable to enervation and infection. The “escape from hunger” was prolonged and unevenly experienced along class and gender lines, as James Vernon has shown.23 The dominant discourses surrounding food and progress, within Great Britain at least, became increasingly Whiggish, even cornucopian. Such sentiments were not absolutely incorrect, as Fogel has shown.24 Genuine improvements in food supply were interwoven with a politicocultural narrative of nutritional progress, epitomized in the retrospective construction of the idea of the Hungry Forties from which Britain escaped through steam power, outsourcing, and the perspicacious application of political economy.25 In 1883, Giffen claimed: “Periodic starvation was, in fact, the condition of the masses of working men throughout the kingdom fifty years ago.”26 Ireland’s history, of course, dramatically complicates this optimistic narrative. Ireland experienced food shortages in 1800–1801, 1816–17, 1822, and 1831.27 There were, however, substantial differences between food systems in Ireland and on the British mainland. In Ireland, butter and beef were produced for British markets, while the west and south, with their heavily subdivided and often marginal land, were heavily potatoized. By 1845, the year the Great Famine began, potatoes covered 2.1 million acres of Ireland, producing around 6.2 million tons annually, equaling around 4.6 pounds daily per man, woman, and child.28 The high-yielding, low-quality Lumper potato became particularly prevalent in the southwest.29 During the eighteenth century, political economists often approvingly linked potatoes to growing population, cheap sustenance, and state wealth.30 Arthur Young, Adam Smith, and John Sinclair thought the potato wholesome; David Davies considered it “an excellent root.”31 In 1797, William Buchan argued that potatoes made “the people less dependant [sic] on bread and animal food for their subsistence” and, hence, more resistant to dearth. “No man will ever perish for hunger who can have potatoes,” he concluded.32 When consumed with milk, butter, or bacon, potatoes provided a calorie-rich and nutritionally balanced, if somewhat insipid, diet.33 The sixth annual report of the Poor-Law Com-

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missioners (1840) concluded that a potato diet “must be, upon the whole, where there is open-air exercise along with it, healthy and sustaining.”34 This diet pointedly contrasted with the British mainland’s increasingly grain- and meat-based diet. Potatoes produced many more calories per unit of land than did wheat, and Malthus blamed them for overpopulation and low wages.35 Because their cultivation was easy, Cobbett assailed them as the food “of slovenliness, filth, misery, and slavery.”36 They were a subsistence crop, a food of undeveloped regions yet to undergo the nutrition transition. England lacked a fanatic potatophile like Parmentier. Despite lauding the potato’s “nourishing quality,” Smith thought that problems of storage and preservation meant that it would probably never be “the principal vegetable food” in any “great country.”37 Potatoes were the material antithesis of wheat: their bulk kept transport costs high, their perishability made them unreliable as stocks, and they used too little land, encouraging overpopulation.38 This inability to distend through space and time meant that potatoes failed to generate exchange value.39 John Wheatley called for the “total abolition” of the potato system.40 Incipient British potatoization raised concerns. Charles Trevelyan worried that Somerset and Devon were “fast becoming potato countries,” potentially vulnerable to subsistence farming, overpopulation, and disconnection from food markets.41 In 1843, Richard Cobden announced to the House of Commons that to eat potatoes was “to descend in the scale of physical comfort” and to abandon “the hope of moral improvement.”42 Since every possible racial and economic permutation of underdevelopment could be refracted through potatoes, they became emblematic of Irish backwardness. Carlyle mocked the “Rhizophagous” Irish.43 In 1849, Clarendon collapsed sign and referent, calling the Irish people “human potatoes.”44 Famine magnified this emerging critique of potato economies, and famine policy demonstrated the increasingly and perhaps strategically potatophobic drift of British political economy. British policy occurred in several overlapping phases, beginning with the cautious market tinkering of autumn/ winter 1845– 46. Peel established the Commissariat Relief Department in late 1845 to distribute government-purchased “Indian corn” (maize), hard to digest if incorrectly cooked (see fig. 5.1).45 By early 1846, coastal relief depots were established for the distribution of the grain, which, suggests Christine Kinealy, was intended to enable Ireland to ascend a Cobdenite “cultural ladder” leading from potatoes to the improved diet of “wheaten bread and meat.”46 These depots operated only in the absence of discernible market activity: the government would never compete with private traders. This was undertaken so stringently that there were reports of people dying near depots that refused to sell them food.47 In March 1846, a board of

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Figure 5.1. Ticket for Indian meal (maize) issued during the Irish famine at Portlaw Relief District, 1846. Note that the recipient is deemed to be “a fit and deserving person.” This image is reproduced with the kind permission of the National Museum of Ireland.

works was created to oversee public works projects on which the absolutely destitute worked for cash, a process that involved steamers distributing silver currency to Irish coastal towns.48 Relief works, lamented Forster, produced “slow death” by prolonging hunger.49 By early 1847, this arrangement had collapsed, and a system of soup kitchens and ration cards was introduced that lasted until October 1847.50 In summer 1847, a network of kitchens served thin soup to 3 million people daily. When this system, never entirely popular, was abandoned, famine victims were left at the mercy of Ireland’s Poor Law, and Ireland was forced to pay for relief.51 At Castlerea workhouse in Roscommon, the dying were moved to a room at the building’s tail end: after death, their corpses were pushed down sliding boards into a pit and immediately limed.52 As hunger deepened, desperate people, their tastes numbed, turned to carcasses, nettles, frogs, grass. Rising eviction rates left families homeless and dwelling in bogs and ditches.53 At Cape Clear, enervated laborers approached hills on all fours.54 Such huddling and dispersion, coupled with disintegrating sanitary practices, encouraged the spread of dysentery, typhus, tuberculosis, and relapsing fever. One eyewitness reported children looking like “decrepit old women,” with “eyes looking like those of a corpse.”55 Deficiency diseases, including scurvy and xerophthalmia, erupted.56 Although absolute starvation killed far fewer than disease, cases were recorded.57 When the Reverend Richard Webb of Caheragh received a report from his parish of unburied, dog-eaten bodies, he wrote to the Southern Reporter’s editor, asking: “Are we living in a portion of the United Kingdom?”58 Hinged coffins

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allowed the acceleration of burial to be shabbily occluded behind a veneer of respect for the dead.59 These conditions provided opportunities for economic restructuring. Mill penned his Principles of Political Economy in 1848, restating that government intervention should be limited to “the narrowest compass,” a line reiterated regularly in The Economist, which attacked the “do-everything-for-the-people system.”60 As David Nally argues, Ireland was sometimes depicted as existing in a “transitional” state, and London articulated a clearly protodevelopmentalist agenda.61 George Nicholls, an architect of the Irish Poor Law, noted in 1836 that Ireland required a “transition” that would, ominously, involve “difficulty and suffering.”62 Ireland, declared the Reverend G. Stoddart, “needs the developement [sic] of her industry.”63 The Economist lamented Ireland’s “extraordinary undeveloped” industrial resources in 1846.64 Potatoes were increasingly castigated as corrosive material agents of underdevelopment. Potatoes and grain were mutually exclusive: “Bread is scarcely ever seen, and an oven is unknown.”65 Subsistence potato economies must be obliterated: “a higher style of cultivation” had to be secured.66 Potatoes were the wrong type of cheap food: divorced from the cash economy altogether, they made land, not labor, “synonimous [sic] with life.”67 While distancing himself from “abstract principles of political economy,” Stoddart argued that creating a cash economy would generate consumption of “a better kind of food . . . pure wheaten bread,” plus occasionally meat.68 The Christian Observer hoped that, by stimulating “a freer use of grain,” famine might “elevate the physical condition of the people,” catalyzing a chain reaction of better habits, social improvement, and prosperity.69 Grain, the argument ran, presupposed and generated labor, capital, and markets: “the treacherous potato” precluded them.70 One 1842 workhouse report suggested that wheat growing was an exemplary technique of industriousness, involving soil cultivation, growing, reaping, and selling (in the form of grain or straw products like hats).71 During the famine, some workhouses forced men to work a capstan mill to grind corn, further cementing the connection between grain and labor.72 “Corn cultivation,” argued Trevelyan, created “industry” and required capital, in pointed contradistinction to its “idle, barbarous” opposite, “the potato system.”73 Grain, which required “ingenuity and labour,” linked producers “in wholesome dependence with other classes,” unlike the atomization of potato societies.74 “Potato patches” begat “contented indolence” and isolation, making the peasantry “a distinct species.”75 “Exclusive potatoe cultivation,” pontificated the Leeds Times in October 1845, “makes a people idle and grovelling,” before urging the repeal of the Corn Laws lest potato dependency infect England.76 Ireland must

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become “independent of the potato.”77 Trevelyan compared Irish smallholders to isolated South Sea islanders, detached from commercial intercourse.78 The properties of grain that enabled an elevator system were absent in potatoes: they were hard to stockpile for later transformation into liquid assets.79 In some areas, they became a form of evanescent capital or “circulating medium” whose tiny orbit’s radius was delimited by the localized geometries of potato patches, humans, and pigs.80 “The potato,” declared Jasper Rogers, “has become the labour coin of the agricultural community.”81 The Times, however, hoped that Irish meat eating would increase: “When the Celts once cease to be potatophagi, they must become carnivorous.”82 When the potato crop improved in 1847, Clarendon feared that progress might be precluded.83 In 1850, the Dutch physiologist Jacob Moleschott reflected on how the “sluggish potato blood” of the Irish generated “powerless despair.”84 Such discussions were inseparable from attempts to refashion Ireland into British agrarian hinterland. As Ireland became a major supplier of British food, tension emerged between dense peasant populations and large-scale agricultural production. The desire to reduce population long predated the famine: Wheatley described his 1824 emigration schemes as techniques of “‘euthanasia,’” enthusing about the possibilities of settling 4 million Irish people in Canada to found a great wheat-producing colony. Ireland could then produce “corn and cattle” for English manufacturing centers, and the “cabin and potatoe-garden system” would disintegrate.85 Nassau Senior recounted a conversation he had had in 1862 with one Dr. G., who asserted: “The sooner it is over— the sooner Ireland becomes a grazing country, with the comparatively thin population which a grazing country requires— the better for all classes.”86 Two years later, McCulloch stated that, while Ireland was “admirably fitted for a grazing country,” its population was “still far in excess” of what was necessary to achieve this goal.87 As Marx reflected, the famine did not affect all classes equally, killing “poor devils only.”88 No wonder Mitchel caustically attacked Britain’s “rage for extermination.”89 Depopulation, displacement, development, nutrition transition, and expanded livestock farming mutually presupposed one another. If Ireland were not terra nullius, like Australia, it could be partially rendered so by a combination of famine and law, allowing development— emerging as a loose concept— to unfold.90 Ireland was a “hideous chasm prepared for the foundations of future prosperity,” having been “cut to pieces and thrown into the magic cauldron.”91 It became, literally, a “new and extensive field” for capitalist investment.92 Cattle would replace humans, just as livestock replaced tenants during the Highland Clearances, which removed “redundant population” (a term routinely used to describe those lacking steady

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employment) from another formerly potato-centric famine-prone territory.93 The potato famine also struck the Scottish Highlands and further reduced its population. Smith had laconically used the phrase unnecessary mouths to describe tenants removed from Scottish farms.94 Senior made the connection, responding to Dr. G. by nonchalantly observing how “black cattle and sheep” replaced humans in northern Scotland.95 Steepling rates of emigration, eviction, and demolition of cabins and houses accelerated the clearing process as people were “swept out of life” to linger in ditches, ruins, and bogs before disappearing.96 Marx echoed and reformulated Senior, connecting displacement with terrorism, violence with counterviolence: “The Irishman, banished by sheep and ox, re-appears on the other side of the ocean as a Fenian.”97 Clarendon thought that the west of the country was permanently overpopulated, confiding to Russell that it was necessary to “sweep Connaught clean” of 400,000 people.98 Extermination might mean removal or death: such rhetoric elided the distinction.99 Mass deaths from putatively natural causes were a perfect way, said Peel, of “convert[ing] a grievous affliction into a means of future improvement and a source of future security.”100 The Economist waxed epigrammatic, inverting an expression attributed to O’Connell and later used by Irish nationalists: “Ireland’s necessity is England’s opportunity.”101 Here was a chance “to convert a potato culture into a cerial [sic] culture.”102 This was not malign indifference. By identifying this as “an opportunity which, if neglected or abused, may never return,” the British state could forcibly orient Ireland toward a depotatoized, depopulated, marketized future, shorn of “unproductive life and redundant labour.”103 The famine effectively became a necessary event. The land agent William Trench noted how it unlocked capital, adding, casually: “It relieved the plethora of the labour market.”104 This formulation was apparent in the 1851 Irish Census, which juxtaposed “sudden depopulation” with the immediate phenomenon of postfamine prosperity and “development of [Ireland’s] resources.”105 Famine, says Janam Mukherjee, serves to render vast numbers of people “grotesque, frightening and foul” and, thus, entirely expendable.106 This capacity to dehumanize is, he suggests, probably “connected to the very psychology of power itself.”107 The sentiments lingered. In 1887, an Ulster linen manufacturer grumbled: “Till we get the population down to three millions we shall never come to any good.”108 Ireland became what Marx called “an agricultural district of England” yielding “corn, wool, cattle, industrial and military recruits.”109 Irish cattle numbers rose during the famine, and, by the 1880s, rearing and fattening zones were evident in north Munster, east Connacht and north Leinster, respectively.110 In the 1930s, the cattle-human ratio (135:100) was consider-

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ably higher in Eire than anywhere else in Europe.111 Shanahan noted in 1920 that Ireland was “no longer over-populated” and that its land could “now be directed to the production of those things for which they are best suited, namely, animal foodstuffs.”112 Ireland was, in other words, not “best suited” to people. Indigenous Irish cattle were, however, exterminated or Anglicized by the drive to produce English food. By 1859, “the old Irish breeds” were “nearly extinct” as newer breeds became predominant.113 Shorthorns and British Friesians replaced indigenous cattle, which, except for the Kerry (itself an endangered breed), had “practically disappeared” by 1970.114

INDIA Like Europe, South Asia routinely suffered famines throughout ancient and medieval times: estimates suggest one famine every fifty years.115 British rule, however, saw the number and intensity of Indian famines demonstrably increase, with the 1770 Bengal famine a harbinger of future disasters. Nineteenth-century India experienced at least twenty significant famines.116 While earlier famines were usually caused by drought, floods, or wars, these famines coincided with the reconfiguration of the Indian economy as new export staples (wheat, jute, cotton, tea) were integrated into global markets.117 This transition was entirely in keeping with political economy. J. S. Mill argued that the “early development” of India’s “productive resources” required rapid expansion of agricultural exports.118 The impact of this transition was magnified by climate anomalies, while British famine policies were little different from those followed in midcentury Ireland. Mike Davis has estimated the deaths from the Indian famines of 1876–78 and 1896–1902 at between 12.2 and 29.3 million.119 The 1876–78 famine struck swathes of southern India (Madras, Mysore, Bombay) following the monsoon’s failure.120 Colonial authorities refused to interfere with trade, although they encouraged the circulation of price information, extended train lines, and reduced tolls in certain areas.121 “Absolute non-interference with the operations of private commercial enterprise must be the foundation of our present famine policy,” ordered Lytton. The basic famine-management technique was the relief camp, with strict labor tests.122 Despite their ostensible purpose, such camps had palpable disciplinary functions that echoed those of the Victorian workhouse: they attacked idleness and vagrancy.123 The Bombay government undertook tests on the basis of appearance, labor, and wage, excluding people with visible assets like jewelry and good clothes.124 The famine-stricken were employed in various ways, from stone breaking to road construction.125 In 1876, in Bellary

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District, Madras, Mr. Oldham, a Bengal officer, described a road filled with laborers as reminiscent of “a battle-field, its sides being strewed with the dead, the dying, and those recently attacked.”126 Richard Temple, placed in charge of government relief in 1877, had strict instructions to economize, having been criticized for excessive generosity during the 1874 Bengal famine. He reduced laborers’ rations in Madras and Bombay to one pound of rice daily, regarding the question of whether this diet would sustain life as “a matter of opinion,” and arguing that “the experiment ought to be tried.”127 Populations were reduced to the lowest subsistence levels, revealing deeply racialized perceptions of dietary needs, an “experiment” condemned in the British medical press.128 The Madras sanitary commissioner, Robert Cornish, argued that diets with less than two hundred grains of nitrogen (protein) were insufficient.129 He dismissed claims that the smaller size of South Asian bodies meant that they required less food.130 Temple insisted that such people needed only one part nitrogen to seven parts carbon in their diets, compared with a one to three ratio for the English, arguing that they excreted proportionally less nitrogen than Europeans.131 The “Indian grain-eaters,” wrote Robert Christison, had habitually grown “independent” of more “powerful aliments.”132 This was protein racism: if protein meant power, the powerful needed and received more protein. British famine policy was, thus, built on ineluctable, if historically determined, metabolic difference, which explained the power one carnivorous nation wielded over its granivorous dominions. Although the (nonracialized) human body does possess a certain amount of metabolic flexibility, these famine diets provided fewer calories and less protein than did evolving Western dietary norms.133 Underpaid South Asian laborers certainly sometimes complained about near-starvation diets.134 These putative metabolic differences would, ironically, later be used creatively by the social scientist Radhakamal Mukerjee, who argued that South Asians were physiologically energy efficient and ideally equipped to power global agrarian transformation.135 Cornish recorded the camps’ appalling conditions, infectious disease, and mortality.136 F. J. Price, the acting collector of Cuddapah, found old people “with very rare exceptions . . . becoming shrivelled, flabby, and haggard in appearance.”137 The argument that the native population needed less protein sat ill with universalizing, developmentalist dietary assumptions, as when The Era argued: “Rice, like the potatoe [sic], in Ireland, may become the bane, instead of the blessing, of the people.”138 Temple, meanwhile, remained unmoved. Conditions declined, with reports of child selling, cannibalism, and dogs devouring corpses.139

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British liberals generally viewed the famine as an inevitable consequence of progress. The Economist described the Indian population as accustomed to economic “stationariness.”140 Absorbing South Asian territory into the British economic system stimulated population growth, which introduced new vulnerabilities: “Progress implies dangers unknown in stationary societies.”141 Overpopulation and underproduction were the perceived problem, which shaped Orientalist-Malthusian interpretations, like Lytton’s claim that the Indian population increased more rapidly than the food supply.142 Such assertions are unsupported by the historical record, which suggests that South Asian maritime areas produced significant agricultural surpluses before imperial consolidation, that these populations were not averse to practicing preventive checks, and that classical political economists overlooked the heterogeneity of rural South Asian economies.143 Schemes promoting emigration to Barbados, Jamaica, Burma, and Ceylon generally failed.144 The maintenance rations, justified by biological difference, legitimated the deaths of the excess population. Sir Charles Elliott, drafter of famine codes, concluded: “The campaign against famine, like other wars, if properly conducted must have its butcher’s bill.”145 South Asia was, unevenly, becoming marketized and integrated into the world economy. Local granaries and irrigation systems were dismantled, leaving populations more vulnerable to famine and drought.146 Railways, vaunted as a precondition of efficient markets, often funneled crops away from poverty-stricken famine zones since cash-crop producers made bigger profits elsewhere.147 The value of India’s wheat exports rose from £32,924 in 1870 to £6,479,792 in 1898– 99, and 17 percent of India’s wheat crop was exported in the period 1891–95.148 Although some groups undoubtedly profited, others felt, perhaps, that isolation from markets kept them more secure than being at the mercy of transnational trade cycles. These problems were compounded by indebtedness, limited access to credit, and rigid loan conditions.149 These ecological, infrastructural, and fiscal issues were largely ignored by the colonial administration, which adhered to its policy of minimal intervention. While the 1880 Famine Commission conceded that the state was responsible for preventing starvation, it also urged nonintervention in trade, rejected granaries, and warned against excessive sympathy. The commission also blamed industrial underdevelopment, ignoring the fact that deindustrialization was precipitated by the colonial project, which, Nehru later argued, had “progressively ruralised” India.150 Nonetheless, the famine codes did create systems of local organization, with districts divided into circles and inspectors visiting villages weekly and arranging relief measures.151

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The British response was not entirely uniform, however. As the CornishTemple debate shows, the Madras administration regularly followed a more interventionist, benevolent approach than that of Bombay.152 Numerous British commentators attacked government indifference. William Digby thought that future historians would find the generation of “chronic faminestrickenness” in South Asia the starkest legacy of the nineteenth-century British Empire.153 Indian famines catalyzed critique of British political economy and alternative conceptualizations of the world economy, particularly that of the “impoverishing drain” of wealth formulated by Dadabhai Naoroji. “England has taken away her capital,” he intoned, urging the economic protection of India, and citing Mill in support. This quantity of capital, he complained, dwarfed the £700,000 given in relief by the British for the 1878 famine.154 Shortage of capital, not overpopulation, caused famine. Worse famine followed in 1896 and 1897, with a large region experiencing no rainfall from mid-August to mid-November.155 The main subsistence crop, rice, failed.156 This was swiftly followed by the 1898– 1900 catastrophe, which unfolded over 189,000 square miles, afflicting 28 million people in British India plus some in the princely states. Digby estimated the mortality at 3.25 million.157 In 1900, nearly 6 million people were reportedly in relief camps (see fig. 5.2).158 Reports teem with the ubiquitous tropes (and images; see fig. 5.3) of drought and famine: twisted corpses, parched earth, dry wells,

Figure 5.2. Relief works, India, ca. 1899. From J. Scott, In Famine Land: Observations and Experiences in India during the Great Drought of 1899– 1900 (New York: Harper & Bros., 1904).

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Figure 5.3. Starvation. From J. Scott, In Famine Land: Observations and Experiences in India during the Great Drought of 1899– 1900 (New York: Harper & Bros., 1904).

skeletal corpses, hideous vultures.159 The sixth cholera pandemic struck Bengal in 1899. Sir John Elliot, the government meteorologist, considered the 1899 drought greater in extent and intensity than any other during the previous two hundred years.160 There is, however, no straightforward, deterministic connection between drought and famine.161 While colonial apologists connected such conditions to long-established stereotypes of “soft,” fatalistic, unresourceful natives, with “no power to plan for the future,” critics blamed markets for translating climatic factors into human calamity.162 Railways failed to distribute grain to areas of scarcity, not least because those areas lacked purchasing power. They did, however, effectively transmit bubonic plague around India.163 In many areas, communication remained sluggish, rainfall blocked roads, and cart shortages made private enterprise physically impossible.164 Perusal of the reports of the 1898 and 1901 Famine Commissions suggested some ambivalence in British famine policy. The former acknowledged that gratuitous assistance administered in victims’ homes contributed to the success of relief operations, while the latter expressed concerns that charity had become too “attractive,” causing “much demoralization.”165 The 1898 report also articulated anxieties that people might become accustomed “to a gigantic system of gratuitous relief.”166 Poor communications were

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repeatedly emphasized, and famine was thus retranslated into an unintended consequence of technological backwardness.167 The problem was, again, a decontextualized and abstract model of what became known as underdevelopment, understood entirely outside its empirical, colonial context. Giffen clinically argued: “Nothing short of a revolution in Indian agriculture, and a great development of manufacturing for export, will suffice for the diseased condition we have to face.”168 In his classic study of famine in twentieth-century Nigeria, Michael Watts showed how the collapse of noncapitalist relations of production generated “new threats to subsistence security,” not least by creating markets in grain without simultaneously generating local purchasing power.169 These insights are equally applicable to Britain’s colonial famines, which involved the implantation of market technologies without the simultaneous reconfiguration of resilience, leaving peasant economies lacking both stockpiles and monetary access to flows of food. The emphasis on infrastructure and markets clearly foreshadowed twentieth-century development projects.170 The British state was committed primarily to its own food security, ensuring that, like food production itself, famine was effectively outsourced to peripheral zones, those inhabited by the weakest and most politically excluded colonial subjects, as Hobson noted.171 Alex de Waal argues: “The key links in the chain that leads to famine are always political.”172 The Irish and Indian famines were political events in which the food power wielded by the English core over its Celtic and South Asian zones was made viscerally apparent. Britain’s “escape from hunger” and the labor camps, emaciation, mass graves, and funeral pyres dotting its colonial landscape are, ultimately, impossible to disentangle fully. By 1900, food power and colonial power were inseparable. During the Second Boer War (1899– 1902), the British forced refugees into similar camps after destroying farms and livestock, creating the prospect of engineered famine, with differential ration levels that in some cases produced starvation. 173 Meanwhile, imperial railways maintained a steady stream of canned meat to British troops.174

FOOD SECURITY “Plant power,” according to the South African botanist John Bews, “means world power.” Geostrategic and economic might relied on command over food.175 By 1900, Britain’s plant power was ostentatious. It was also vulnerable, as Fletcher and Kipling made explicit:

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For the bread that you eat and the biscuits you nibble, The sweets that you suck and the joints that you carve, They are brought to you daily by all us Big Steamers, And if any one hinders our coming you’ll starve!176

Britain’s “terrible and growing dependence” on a global food system was the source of its power and its greatest weakness.177 Britain’s food supply relied on the perpetual motion of global food systems, which could be interrupted by strikes and adverse weather. Far more intractable were military and geostrategic concerns that called the large-planet philosophy into question. In 1895, The Standard cited the political economist John McCulloch: reliance on intercontinental food flows rather than local stockpiles risked leaving Britain “in the most perilous situation that can be imagined.”178 Captain Bedford Pim, the Arctic explorer and Conservative MP, thought that Britain should “bind” colonies to “the Mother-country ‘with hooks of steel.’” “The three Fs of British Free-trade are the falsehood, the fallacy, and the failure of Free-trade,” he thundered, adding: “Every prophecy that Messrs. Cobden and Bright uttered about Free-trade has turned out to be incorrect.”179 On April 6, 1897, Henry Seton-Karr, a Conservative supporter of imperial preference, proposed a parliamentary resolution, unanimously adopted, that dependence on foreign food necessitated government attention. He noted the alarming collapse of self-sufficiency since Napoleonic times, observing that just three weeks’ grain supply remained in Britain. He expressed concerns about wartime insurance rates, considering it wise to secure food before war rather than suffering the “severe tax on the community at large” that would follow hurriedly undertaken wartime food purchases.180 A new food security infrastructure was proposed. Robert Marston urged the construction of grain stores in all towns possessing corn markets, praising the “immense silos” of grain in Malta, where wheat languished for two or three years.181 “Reservoirs of corn,” he urged, were as vital to security as “reservoirs of water.”182 He suggested combined fort-granaries, with bomb-proof roofs, fortified embankments, and moats (see fig. 5.4).183 Thomas Read compared British agriculture to a “giant sieve” with an outsize “‘bread hole.’”184 Captain Stewart Murray advocated granarification, calling Cobdenism “a vampire which is slowly sucking the life-blood of the British race.” He advocated the storage of a rudimentary basal diet, or “siege ration,” composed largely of bread, potatoes, oatmeal, and barley, to quell potential wartime unrest.185 In 1913, Arthur Conan Doyle proposed building a channel tunnel to tap continental and Mediterranean food supplies.186

Figure 5.4. Plan for a giant fortified granary for storing and protecting wheat in wartime. From R. B. Marston, War, Famine and Our Food Supply (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1897).

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The Royal Commission on Supply of Food and Raw Materials in Time of War (1903– 5) examined all raw materials potentially affected by war but regarded wheat and flour “as by far the most important articles of consumption in these islands.”187 Numerous neoprotectionist schemes were mooted, from airtight granaries suffused with carbonic acid gas to import duties.188 The commission, however, eschewed such policies, arguing that Britain’s volume of merchant shipping, its network of global coaling stations, and the multiplicity of potential shipping routes meant that blockading or starving Britain was impossible.189 It did propose a national indemnity scheme to cover inevitable losses at sea during wartime.190 As Avner Offer argues, Britain effectively subsidized food via naval funding in order to support its “Atlantic Orientation,” reinforcing an “economist” belief that the AngloAmerican trade alliance would sustain Britain throughout wartime.191 The large-planet philosophy emerged triumphant. Frank Coller, secretary of the Board of Trade’s Food Department after the war, called the report “the Bible and text-book of our rulers on the whole subject of food and raw materials in time of war.”192 It upheld a policy born in the 1840s: the world would feed Britain in wartime as well as peace, although critical voices were becoming more common. Concerns were raised about the unsuitability of reefers, cattle ships, and petroleum ships for carrying wheat and the unpredictability of wartime prices.193 Coller considered the report “a Complacent Document” that misunderstood the transformed international situation.194 In January 1909, Sir Frederick Bolton urged Asquith to adopt wartime food contingency plans.195 The emergent threat of airships and bombers magnified these fears, while strikes demonstrated Britain’s dependence on mechanized transportation systems. But the government remained committed to dreadnoughts and free trade, not granaries. In 1914, Lord Lucas, president of the Board of Agriculture, reiterated the Ricardo-Cobden paradigm: “Why trouble growing it when you could import any amount you wanted?”196 In Germany, where food imports also rose with industrialization, official nonchalance was markedly absent. In 1891, Chancellor Caprivi told the German Reichstag that “in a future war the feeding of the army and the country may play an absolutely decisive part,” and his answer was increased food self-sufficiency.197 A greater commitment to agricultural intensification, protectionism, and rising pork, rye, sugar-beet, and potato production made Germany more nutritionally self-reliant than was a Britain vulnerable to blockade “on a grotesque scale.”198 But Germany still imported around onethird of its food supplies in 1914, and naval defense was integral to its war plans.199 At the 1912 annual congress of the Pan-German League, Admiral

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von Breusing stated that, in any war, “the interception of British food supplies must become one of the first objects of Germany.”200 World War I would be a conflict of food systems as well as of military machines.

WORLD WAR I World War I saw the greatest shift in British food policy since the midnineteenth century. Through price controls, government purchases, and rationing, the state extended control over national dietary practices. By spring 1915, the Liberal administration was purchasing wheat, meat, and sugar and had begun action on shipping and prices.201 The Ministry of Food was founded in 1916 to organize the buying, distribution, and selling of food on “an extraordinary scale.”202 It intensified its command over food systems under Lord Rhondda (June 1917– July 1918). With a staff of over eight thousand, the ministry orchestrated the establishment of food control committees and divisional food commissioners across mainland Britain.203 This network provided the institutional apparatus for a massive reorientation of national food policy that was characterized as a pragmatic, temporary deviation from a norm rather than a permanent ideological volte-face. In 1917, Lord Rhondda stated such extraordinary conditions meant that “the free play of economic laws” must be suspended, comparing Britain to a sick patient requiring drugs for “a serious but temporary illness” that would, “under normal conditions of health” “prove very harmful.”204 By 1918, 94 percent of British foodstuffs were regulated in some way: only the least important foods (like bananas, wine, and honey) remained entirely unregulated.205 Britain immediately secured its transatlantic wheat supply by purchasing wheat reserves and exploiting raised American production levels.206 The Ministry of Food’s “cereals division” (the Wheat Commission) was founded in October 1916. Bread was subsidized rather than rationed, but the loaf’s form was heavily regulated.207 The state took over flour mills, dictated bread’s weight and shape, prohibited sales of muffins, crumpets, and teacakes, and banned the utilization of cereals by starch industries.208 Normal prewar extraction rates were around 70 percent: by April 1918, they were 91.9 percent.209 Oats, barley, beans, and potatoes were added to bread. The Wheat Commission estimated that such policies saved around 10 million sacks of wheat during 1917– 18.210 The white loaf remained purchasable by those possessing medical certificates, which thrived like requests for communion wine during Prohibition.211 The resulting bread was, admitted the physiologist Ernest Starling, “unattractive.”212 Walter Hadwen grumbled that an “epidemic of diarrhoea” was giving thousands “acute gastric distur-

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bances,” but Robert Hutchison found such claims specious, save for those with delicate colons or faulty teeth.213 The state rapidly secured meat imports: American bacon and frozen and chilled Argentinean meat.214 Refrigerated merchant ships were equipped with guns in April 1915.215 The Board of Trade scoured the globe for potential new sources of meat: South Africa, Nigeria, the Falkland Islands.216 Maximum meat prices were set from September 1917, with government buyers operating in all local markets, while all retail meat dealers, auctioneers, and cattle dealers were licensed.217 As extraction rates rose, fodder supplies fell by between one-sixth and one-seventh.218 Since food animals were routinely fed milling offals, “it was man versus animal.”219 Oilseed feed imports fell. Feedstuffs were formally controlled in 1918.220 Since cattle were inefficient food processers, meat production necessarily fell.221 Yet a vegetarian war was unthinkable for most. One solution was, as a 1917 Royal Society committee concluded, to accelerate prewar trends toward “baby beef.”222 Wood estimated that as little as three months’ fattening would be sufficient, meaning that animals would be slaughtered in a “much less fat condition than has been customary in the past,” with preferential treatment for working animals, dairy cows, and breeding stock.223 The result was a contraction of edible zoomass. During wartime, sheep numbers declined by around 10 percent and pig numbers by approximately 27 percent, while the average slaughter weight of cattle plunged by around 14 percent.224 Horseflesh consumption rose, and rabbit keeping was encouraged.225 Milk production, meanwhile, fell by roughly 25 percent, and condensed milk imports rose from 49,000 tons in 1913 to 128,000 tons in 1918.226 Margarine consumption became “almost a national habit.”227 During wartime, “the diet becomes more simple, more vegetarian, more rough,” concluded Alonzo Taylor, director of Stanford’s Food Research Institute.228 Britain’s meat rations for soldiers, however, exceeded those of other European nations.229 Since war terminated Britain’s central European beet supply, the Sugar Commission began importing sugar from further afield: Cuba, Java, and the empire. Sugar’s metabolic properties made it essential: the Food (War) Committee recommended eight ounces per head weekly.230 Indulgence and ostentation were, however, forbidden. Confectioners managed with lower quantities. When Robert Graves got married in January 1918, his wife’s family saved a month’s sugar and butter for a three-tiered wedding cake, but the icing was made of plaster.231 In 1917, the government reserved ten thousand tons of sugar for jam making, and six pounds were allocated per household member, which meant that much fruit was wasted.232 Despite the construction by the Ministry of Food of a network of fruit-pulping stations across the

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south of England, lachrymose Times readers complained about a looming “jam famine” well into 1919.233 Domestic agriculture was consciously promoted. County agricultural executive committees received powers to inspect land, offer advice, and take over farms.234 The 1917 Corn Production Act established minimum wages and guaranteed prices, making the war comparatively profitable for British farmers.235 In 1918, the area under tillage reached 12.36 million acres, the highest figure between 1886 and 1942: this increase in domestic supplies was unique among European belligerents.236 Allotment keeping thrived; golf courses, gardens, and lawns were cultivated; potatoes thrived in Buckingham Palace’s flowerbeds.237 The potato became a “premier vegetable,” with a great rise in production and the formation of the Potato Control Committee to oversee potato-deficit areas.238 Potatophobia was historically entirely situational. When potatoes ran short in 1917, scurvy erupted in Manchester, Newcastle, and Glasgow.239 The government urged economy, distributing leaflets like Thirty-Four Ways to Use Potatoes Other Than as Vegetables, with enticing recipes for chocolate potato cakes and potato buns, and How to Save and Why, which encouraged gleaning and acorn collection.240 The burden of economizing fell explicitly on the housewife.241 “The waste of even a crumb of bread,” declared The Times, “should be regarded as a disloyal act.”242 Local campaigns thrived: Portsmouth reduced its bread consumption by 25 percent in 1917.243 In Glasgow, illuminated tram cars with loudspeakers broadcast the economy message.244 An updated version of George III’s Napoleonic Royal Proclamation was issued in 1917, advocating reduced bread consumption. It was read in churches and published in newspapers and post offices. Members of Arthur Yapp’s League of National Safety pledged to economize and check waste.245 The National Salvage Council collected waste foodstuffs, for example, transforming fruit stones and nutshells into charcoal for gas masks.246 The British public was not universally compliant, however. A 1917 King’s Lynn survey of 4,727 houses showed only 54.6 percent pledging to economize, with reasons ranging from concerns about pastry cutbacks to vague antigovernment suspicion.247 Many people were punished for private excesses, like feeding dogs and birds with bread.248 One Grangetown furnaceman was fined ten pounds for throwing his chips on a fire.249 Hoarding was forbidden from April 1917, and, in February 1918, the government passed an amnesty on hoarding— or “accidental surplus”— to be extended to those surrendering food: by February 7, two hundred pounds of food had been recovered.250 In Ireland, the strains of war and the Easter Rising reduced food supply to

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the point where nationalists accused the British of forced starvation.251 Food riots erupted in Cumbria over high prices and shipments of food out of the county.252 By December 1917, Sheffield was experiencing “the longest food queues it had known,” and women threatened to raid stores unless given tea and sugar.253 These problems hastened moves toward rationing, which began with sugar. Generalized schemes started in late 1917, and, by July 1918, a national rationing system was established, covering numerous foods, most importantly meat, sugar, and butter.254 Each customer was tied to a retailer, who received the precise quantity of food for those registered. Rationing was based loosely on scientific calculations: a 1917 report suggested that 3,300 calories for adult males and 2,400 for adult females were adequate.255 The basic ration (sugar, butter/margarine, tea, jam, bacon, meat) composed 1,680 calories, with the rest made up of articles like bread and potatoes.256 The ration was “elaborately adjusted” for all needs (vegetarians, children, workers performing strenuous labor).257 Bread remained unrationed in Britain, unlike almost everywhere else in Europe. Official food-control histories argue that this allowed a flexible calorie reserve and, hence, a degree of individuation, but revisionists have suggested that fear of revolt was more significant, particularly during the Russian Revolution, which followed a food-system collapse.258 Rationing offended classically liberal sensibilities: Lord Devonport, the first food controller, disliked “its tickets, its officials, its vast expense,” and its “un-English . . . character.”259 Designing, printing, and distributing ration books took three months. The Invalids’ Ration Branch scrutinized innumerable appeals for exemption.260 Different institutions often possessed divergent rationalities: the Board of Trade’s economic liberalism, the Ministry of Food’s greater statism, and the Royal Society’s commitment to physiological logic were never fully aligned.261 Overall, however, good organization and minimal ideological posturing helped soothe potential friction. Rationing was generally perceived to affect rich and poor equally, unrationed luxuries like salmon notwithstanding.262 This cooperative atmosphere was fostered by the Consumers’ Council, an advisory body incorporating representatives from women’s institutions, unions, and the cooperative movement.263 Tawney concluded, with reasonable justification, that “a collectivism was established which was entirely doctrineless.”264 Lloyd George concluded: “The food question ultimately decided the fate of this War.”265 British war policy has generally been seen as successful, a temporary subjugation of liberty to equality.266 The war also made globalization palpable, by making people appreciate “economic interdependence” and large-planet concepts of “world prices, world demand, and world sup-

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plies.”267 Prices were protected, profiteering was limited, and overall calorie intake dropped by around 2.5– 3 percent.268 Indeed, Spriggs thought three thousand calories potentially too generous: “There is a very large number of people for whom 2,500 calories or less is enough.”269 Official histories, like Coller’s, emphasize the maintenance— even improvement— of wartime living standards.270 Nutritional programs for nursing mothers and young children were established by numerous local authorities by late 1917.271 The partial reversion of the nutrition transition very probably decelerated rates of intestinal complaints and tooth decay. Lane claimed that bowel-scouringly fibrous Danish bread produced the lowest death rate ever recorded in history.272 Winter’s conclusion— that civilian life expectancy was enhanced— has considerable merit.273 Respiratory tuberculosis rates, however, increased by 25 percent between 1913 and 1918, with undernourishment probably a predisposing cause, something acknowledged by George Newman in 1921, although he later denied the connection.274 Such success also required militarized food chains. German strategists focused on British naval supply lines from the war’s beginning. The first U-boat sinking of a British steamship came on October 20, 1914, and Germany declared British waters a war zone on February 4, 1915.275 Unrestricted U-boat warfare began on February 1, 1917, with nearly 2 million tons of merchant shipping destroyed within three months.276 The day before the campaign stared, Gröber declared: “England’s war of starvation  .  .  . has given birth to unrestricted submarine warfare.”277 Merchant vessels were equipped with defensive technologies: smoke-producing apparatus for selfobfuscation, guns, depth charges, dummy guns, and paravanes for catching and cutting mine moorings.278 Many ships were camouflaged with dazzle painting, which used stripes, streaks, blotches, and chessboard patterns to render assessment of courses difficult and disrupt the aim of torpedo ships.279 British waters swarmed with yachts, sloops, paddle steamers, and motorboats engaged in minesweeping operations.280 Flotillas of motor launches were equipped with hydrophones, rather unreliable presonar piezoelectric devices for subaqueous sound detection.281 By summer 1917, aircraft and airships were searching for and even bombing U-boats.282 In June 1917 regular convoys were instituted.283 By late 1917, the number of functioning U-boats declined as the convoy system’s success continued (see fig. 5.5).284 The Wilhelmine U-boat campaign, like Napoleon’s Continental System, was thwarted. Britain used its logistic power to choke Germany’s food supply. German merchant ships and neutral ships conveying food to Germany were intercepted and detained from the war’s inception.285 Britain’s control of global

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Figure 5.5. Convoy protected by airship. Airships were stationed across the east coast of Britain during 1917. From John Jellicoe, The Crisis of the Naval War (New York: G. H. Doran, 1921).

supplies of coal and jute bags allowed it to strangle supplies from recalcitrant merchants.286 A transatlantic intelligence network monitored flows of goods and declining German conditions.287 One recent analysis concludes that “British leaders intended to starve the German people” and thereby destroy morale.288 Churchill said this explicitly in The World Crisis.289 France vetoed British schemes to burn German crops with incendiary devices dropped from aircraft.290 A 1914 commission headed by Paul Eltzbacher concluded that Germany needed 56.75 billion calories and 1.605 million tons of protein annually. Germany should simply accept transformed living standards, ban exports, expand cultivation, and grow more root crops and alternative foods.291 Despite Britain’s “starvation scheme,” Germany could be, if extremely careful, “unconquerable,” a message German propaganda continued to circulate during the war.292 Eltzbacher’s optimism was misplaced. All German foodstuffs were rationed by winter 1916, with wheat extraction rates reaching 97 percent.293 Administration proved difficult, not least because Germany had many more domestic producers than Britain. Additionally, the German government made serious policy blunders, such as the mass pig slaughter in 1915.294 Berlin experienced food riots by October 1915.295 The food situation

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further declined from the late summer of 1916, particularly for those unable to access illicit markets. Fuel, food, and fodder shortages, rising prices, and queues became common as Germany slid toward the infamous, freezing Kohlrübenwinter (turnip winter).296 By the winters of 1916– 17 and 1917– 18, some German adults were consuming under one thousand calories a day, producing “severe malnutrition.”297 One Bonn professor, “corpulent before the war,” fell from 76.5 to 57 kilograms in weight between November 1916 and May 1917.298 Fats were in particularly short supply, a cruel blow for a butter-loving nation: “All Germany’s present troubles, or nearly all of them, start and end with the question of grease.”299 Oil was wrung from rats, hamsters, crows, cockroaches, hair clippings, and old leather boots.300 Food distribution systems collapsed. A “dull apathy and mental prostration” settled over the hungry.301 Tuberculosis and malnutrition rates rose, although diabetes levels declined during the blockade, as did those of degenerative arterial disease immediately after the war.302 The influenza pandemic hit a weak, hungry population. Fertility rates fell, schoolchildren grew lethargic, and desertion, criminality, strikes, and public disorder rose.303 The young and the old were hardest hit. Munich studies showed that average children were two to three centimeters shorter in 1917 than they were in 1913.304 Social cohesion began to disintegrate, and Jewish middlemen were blamed.305 Germany secured grain from the Ukraine following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 3, 1918), but supplies were disappointing and failed to stem the descent into famine. On November 10, 1918, the imperial chancellor telegrammed Paul von Hintze, secretary of state for foreign affairs, begging him to send a wireless message to the Armistice Commission drawing attention to Germany’s imminent starvation.306 Estimated civilian casualties in Germany between 1914 and 1918 range from 300,000 to 800,000: most were from malnutrition, and starvation continued long after the war (see fig. 5.6).307 Austria-Hungary lost around 467,000 civilians because of the blockade, and its effects rippled out to the collapsing Ottoman Empire, and into Persia.308 Food relief was withheld until March 15, 1919, when Germany signed the Brussels agreement, as Britain used the blockade to force compliance with the treaty.309 It was, concluded George Bernard Shaw, “a frightful starving match.”310 But the logistic power and flexibility of the British food system— its ability to wield vital power— made the fight profoundly asymmetrical. Britain’s transatlantic connections slowly reduced Germany’s food supply, killing over a million people. Britain and America then proceeded to relieve populations they had brought to the edge of starvation, rendering palpable food power’s double-edged nature: the power to withhold food and to administer

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Figure 5.6. Famine conditions in Europe after World War I. From Raymond Pearl, The Nation’s Food: A Statistical Study of a Physiological and Social Problem (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1920).

it as cure.311 Such logistic power enabled Britain to emerge after the war as the promoter of international humanitarianism (during the Russian famine of 1921–22) and the defender of universal human rights against immediate, face-to-face violence (during the Armenian genocide).312

INTERWAR BRITAIN Following the Armistice, Germany, “on the verge of starvation,” was gripped by revolution, with food shortages threatening strikes and unrest (see fig. 5.7).313 Between the Armistice and the Peace Treaty, over 2.4 million tons of foodstuffs were distributed in Europe. The United States bore the largest share of the relief costs.314 In Britain, normal dietary conditions did not immediately return, and postwar strikes left the government reliant on its wartime apparatus of control. The end of food control was anxiously awaited. “We are not content, neither will be the trade, to settle down under permanent control,” grumbled the Grocer’s Gazette.315 The apparatus of con-

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Figure 5.7. Food crisis in postwar Germany, 1918–19. A horse being butchered in the street with pocket knives. This image is reproduced with the kind permission of the Imperial War Museum.

trol was slowly dismantled, with prewar normality effectively established by 1921. Wheat extraction rates dropped gradually: “The return to good white bread is one of the blessings of peace.”316 The coalition government abolished the Corn Production Act in 1921, reexposing British farmers to market forces.317 This became known as the “Great Betrayal” of British agriculture and might suggest a rapid reestablishment of free trade.318 But Britain was not immune to the drift toward protectionism and state control evident across interwar Europe, as the beet subsidy and the creation of the Milk Marketing Board demonstrate. Traumatized by starvation, Germany pursued a post-1918 Erzeugungsschlacht, or “battle for food.” Keynes predicted that the peace settlement would make providing “bread and work” in Germany difficult.319 For Hitler, Britain’s blockade was a Jewish-style strategy that should never be repeated: his arguments were unequivocally Malthusian.320 Extreme anti-Semitism, “paranoid nationalism,” and food shortages were mutually reinforcing.321 Wartime mass pig culling was recast as a Jewish conspiracy.322 Hence the drive toward autarky: Italy began its “Battle for Grain” in 1925, deploying

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novel wheats selected and hybridized by Nazareno Strampelli.323 For Hitler, territorial expansion eastward would secure Germany against its First World War fate and maintain its agrarian foundations.324 Thus was born the fascist counterpart to Britain’s capitalist large-planet philosophy, a very different geometry of food production that viewed space, race, and resources as tightly and mutually coincident rather than globally dispersed. Lebensraum could expand but was always bounded: the rest of the stubbornly finite planet was its outside and enemy.325 “A healthy people,” stated Hitler, “will always attempt to satisfy its needs from its own territory and land.”326 Fascists critiqued the effete foods of liberal democracies and associated whole wheat bread with increased fertility and superior civilization.327 In Britain, large-planet ideas remained dominant. Regulation rarely extended beyond price controls or industrial subsidies. There were few efforts to reduce reliance on international trade or reverse the nutrition transition, a policy extending to other raw materials: Canada, for example, was a major source of Britain’s aluminum and nickel as well as wheat.328 Astor and Rowntree’s Agricultural Dilemma (1935) argued: “For good or ill Great Britain must remain dependent upon overseas supplies of wheat.” 329 The area under cereals soon declined to prewar levels, while urbanization and the construction of housing, airfields, reservoirs, roads, and golf courses further devoured Britain’s potential farmland.330 In his 1938 Kettering speech, Neville Chamberlain argued that food self-sufficiency would ruin the economy, adding that the navy and the mercantile marine would protect Britain from starvation.331 By 1938, Britain imported 88 percent of its wheat, 96 percent of its butter, 76 percent of its cheese, and about half its eggs and meat.332 Before the war, the Institut für Konjunkturforschung listed various nations’ “degree of self-sufficiency,” with a score of 100 equal to self-sufficiency: the figures ranged from 121 (Hungary) to 83 (Germany), 51 (Belgium), and 43 (Norway). The British figure was 25: the country remained fed by intercontinental flows, not stockpiles. Although Britain’s own calculations produced slightly different figures, the results starkly suggested that its particular economic path continued largely unabated until 1939.333 Concerns about food security, however, persisted. In 1929, Sir Charles Fielding produced a scheme that included 6 million more acres devoted to wheat cultivation and the construction of bacon factories, poultry centers, and sugar-beet plants.334 The destruction of Canadian wheat infrastructure, noted Science in 1930, would practically terminate British supplies.335 Socialist and cryptofascist encomia to autarky proliferated. Viscount Lymington warned of future wartime famine in which “a swarm of starving, diseased, and desperate population” roamed Britain’s countryside, “glad of grass and dead rats

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to eat, killing and devouring, like locusts, any living thing in its path.” He urged the regeneration of local milling and grain storage and the cultivation of self-reliance.336 In I, James Blunt, H. V. Morton’s dystopian vision of the Nazi takeover of England, Britain suffers the ultimate ignominy of being forcibly deindustrialized and “turned into a dairy farm, like Denmark.”337 Anxieties intensified with the deteriorating international situation and escalating fears about the potential damage of bombing campaigns. Following Italy’s 1936 invasion of Abyssinia, the Committee of Imperial Defence established the Food Supply Sub-Committee. In December 1936, the government established the Food (Defence Plans) Department, which outlined plans for control and urged the adoption of rationing along lines similar to that implemented during the previous war.338 The government purchased wheat in April 1938.339 By August 1939, divisional and local organization was established, while emergency supplies for the 4 million people expected to leave London and large towns under evacuation schemes were delivered to destination centers and ration books printed and distributed.340

WORLD WAR II Britain’s second Ministry of Food was established on September 8, 1939, and rationing introduced from January 1940.341 The ministry was the sole purchaser of some commodities and “exercise[d] price control over practically all products.”342 American supplies were crucial, and wheat control was, again, prioritized. Port area grain committees supplied imported wheat to millers. In mid-1940, the number of permissible loaves was reduced to four.343 Slicing and wrapping were prohibited.344 Initial attempts to maintain extraction rates of 73–76 percent were scuppered by shipping losses, resulting in the imposition of an 85 percent “National Wheatmeal” loaf from April 1942.345 Such transmogrifications intensified prewar debates about the digestibility and nutritional value of white and wholemeal bread, producing “intense, bitter and acrimonious” discussions.346 However, advances in nutrition chemistry made calcium and vitamin B1 fortification feasible, promising nutritionally enhanced white bread and abundant milling offals for livestock. On July 18, 1940, Robert Boothby, parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Food, stated in the Commons that bread would be supplemented with synthetic vitamin B1.347 The resulting loaf was immediately heralded by Moran and Drummond as “a revolutionary advance.”348 Others disagreed, arguing that extracting nutrients before substituting synthetics for them was “a counsel of desperation,” or questioning the nutritional equivalence of natural and artificial vitamins.349

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The government revived the plough policy, increasing the area of tilled land by 66 percent between 1939 and 1945, with yields of most main crops increasing.350 There were 1.5 million allotments in Britain by 1943.351 Potatoes, again, “became the food of war,” with production rising by 87 percent and marketing techniques including Potato Pete and advertisements for “the Potato Plan” employed.352 The Ministry of Food once displayed seventy-five different types of cake and pie made of potatoes.353 British farmers’ percentile contribution to British calorie intake rose during wartime from 33 percent to 44 percent.354 This was enhanced by economy campaigns, with newspapers, posters, traveling vans, lectures, and exhibitions.355 Tractor and synthetic fertilizer use grew, wheat-breeding experiments continued, and synthetic foodstuffs were explored. The government centralized slaughter and took over slaughterhouses in January 1940, reducing their number from 16,000 to 779 by 1942.356 This allowed the easier recovery of by-products like offal and blood, used for fertilizer, fire extinguisher foam, and even the laminated boarding of Mosquito bombers.357 Over 3 million tons of kitchen waste were salvaged in the 1940s.358 Innovations conserved shipping space: boneless meat, crates, dehydrated eggs, and “telescoped” carcasses (inserting chopped-off legs inside the carcass).359 Such carcasses occupied about 60 percent less space than traditional carcasses.360 Unpopular, un-Danish American bacon, “fat and heavily-boraxed,” flooded the British market.361 Wartime conditions provided opportunities for dietary diversification. Horse-meat consumption rose, and the Ministry of Food encouraged rabbitmeat production.362 “I had no scruples about making enormous horse-liver pâtés and jellied tongues,” recalled the model and cookery writer Theodora Fitzgibbon. “A rook pie one day was eagerly devoured.”363 The pilot-engineer Georges de Mauduit regarded the war as an opportunity to exploit Britain’s diverse culinary resources, tempting readers with recipes for pickled cowslips, baked snipe, chrysanthemum soup, slippery elm bark, dandelion coffee, and nettle beer.364 Such ebullient neomedievalism conveyed a sense of adventure. Metal and fuel shortages stimulated technological innovation: insulated hay boxes for slow-cooking casseroles and fire pits in sections of corrugated iron.365 More radical schemes, however, like the consumption of pets or grass (promoted by Richard Branson’s great uncle), failed to gain traction.366 Milk control involved price regulation, restrictions on luxury and manufactured products, and the prioritization of children’s consumption.367 A 1943 order penalized the willful misuse, or unreasonable hoarding, of milk bottles, 2.5 million of which were found in one year in metropoli-

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tan dustbins.368 The work of the Milk Vessels Recovery Limited, founded in 1920, became integrated with national defense. Aluminum milk-bottle caps were requisitioned for munitions: the Ministry of Information claimed that 75 million of them composed of this “basic material of war” were wasted monthly.369 Sugar-beet acreage increased from 350,000 before 1939 to 412,000 by 1943, with prisoners of war employed in beet fields.370 Sugar was streamed differentially to specific food industries, according to the food value of their output: the condensed milk industry received a 75 percent allocation, while the beverage and mineral water industry received only 40 percent.371 Communal jam production preserving centers were introduced in 1940: by 1941, 5,168 rural centers preserved 2,271,522 pounds of fruit for jam manufacture.372 Rationing was flat rate, with registry at a retailer, and bread, potatoes, and canteen/restaurant meals freely available.373 Fifty million ration books were printed before the war and then securely stored around the country.374 Sorting and delivering these was a major logistic task for the post office. A national register made centralized monitoring of the population increasingly feasible.375 Rationing, again, was highly differentiated: “The ideal consumer never removed, or took a holiday, or had a baby; was not a vegetarian, or a Moslem, or an estuarial seaman, or a hop-picker; did not keep bees or poultry, or spend nights in police cells; above all, was not under two, or under five, or under six, or under eighteen.”376 But the unproductive or racially undesirable had no explicitly reduced right to food. Lord Woolton, the food controller (1940–43), noted that such basic equality was “right and just” and “good for the morale of the civilian population.”377 “For the first time in modern history,” wrote Orr, there was “a food plan based on the nutritional needs of the people.”378 While the illicit market in Britain was substantial, it was smaller than elsewhere in Europe.379 The Scientific Food Committee, established in May 1940, outlined a two-thousand-calorie “basal diet” of ideally unrationed bread, fats, potatoes, oatmeal, milk, and vegetables; the remainder should consist of “supplementary foods.”380 Estimates suggest that wartime diets provided slightly fewer calories than did prewar-period diets, but they never fell below an average of twenty-eight hundred calories, far higher than levels in continental Europe.381 The early war years saw falling hemoglobin levels in women and children, vitamin C deficiency, slower childhood growth rates, and increasing incidence of tuberculosis and food poisoning.382 However, such issues were potentially compensated for by falling fat and sugar consumption and rising fiber and milk intake.383 In some industrial areas, milk consumption tripled between 1935 and 1943, although it declined in some “‘residential’” areas.384

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There was a general sense that dietary equalization was the result.385 Blackcurrant syrup and, from April 1942, sweetened, bottled American orange juice were provided freely for under-twos, while under-fives and expectant mothers received subsidized milk.386 There was a demonstrable early war decline in mortality from myocardial diseases, although levels rose again from 1942.387 In 1946, the chief medical officer reported that British wartime “vital statistics” were “phenomenally good,” while Rorty and Norman’s Tomorrow’s Food (1947) contained a chapter entitled “The Advantages of Being Blitzed.”388 The possible sugar avalanche following rationing’s termination was regarded with trepidation.389 Churchill remained committed to large-planet thinking. In December 1941, he wrote to Roosevelt emphasizing the critical importance of “our ability to feed this Island.”390 The continuing reliance on importation ensured that the naval innovations of 1914– 18 were continued, with ships demagnetized to counter German mines deposited along shipping lanes.391 The depredation of submarines, sluggish rates of shipbuilding and repair, and the logistic complexities of global war had a rapid effect on import levels. The Lend-Lease Act (March 1941) expanded the scope of imports while increasing dependence on American shipping and finance.392 Cryptanalysis eventually intercepted submarine telecommunication, while British aircraft destroyed German convoys (see fig. 5.8). The concentration of mills, granaries, refineries, and cold stores in ports made them ideal targets for air raids. In 1941, a Bristol granary containing eighty-five hundred tons of wheat was destroyed. Two months later, fires were still erupting from the seething heap, which reeked of sour porridge.393 Food stocks were, wherever possible, dispersed from ports and conurbations within range of enemy aerial bombardment. Britain’s synthetic nitrate industry was partly relocated to Canada, while a “shadow” ammonium sulphate factory was built at Prudhoe, near Newcastle, amid fears of Nazi bombardment of Billingham, where synthetic ammonia and gasoline were both produced.394 The Ministry of Food distributed leaflets giving advice on protecting food during gas attacks, and sanitary inspectors were appointed as gas officers: airtight containers, wrappers, cans, and refrigerators were used to prevent contamination.395 Food transported in wagons or stored in the open air should be covered with tarpaulin, while salvage technologies could recondition cans and dry grain soaked by firefighter’s hoses.396 Recycling was undertaken enthusiastically: “If cattle or pigs are slaughtered by machine-gunning, the food they represent remains edible, and the wastage need only be small.”397 Novel provision technologies arose to cope with air raids: shelters with feeding systems, mobile canteens, and emergency feeding centers.

Figure 5.8. Fleet Air Arm destroying German convoy, northeast of Stadlandet, Norway, June 1, 1944. This image is reproduced with the kind permission of the Imperial War Museum.

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At Plymouth and Sheffield, cooking depots provided stews and roasts with pudding.398 Hot, sweet tea was regularly distributed after bombing raids.399 Stockpiles, the liberal bête noire, reappeared. From June 1939, four dumps containing canned food for 1 million people were established in the London area. By December 1941, £830,000 worth of food was stockpiled in approximately five hundred depots around Britain, and reserves were deposited on inhabited islands around the coastline.400 The hyperdurability of canned and dried foods made such dumps feasible. Spray-dried milk, packed in “inert gas in sealed tins,” could be “kept at ordinary temperatures for at least eighteen months.”401 Over 5 million cans of food were stockpiled in emergency feeding centers: Woolton called this a “shadow larder.”402 A system of British restaurants also stayed open during emergencies.403 By early 1943, several hundred communal pie centers in the south and east were selling agricultural laborers around a million pies weekly.404 Such systems provided a blueprint for postwar plans for emergency feeding during possible nuclear war.405 The food situation deteriorated after 1945. The greater needs of deprived continental areas led to bread rationing between July 21, 1946, and July 24, 1948.406 Records suggest that British body weight fell between early 1945 and early 1947.407 Potato consumption spiked at 284 pounds per head annually in 1947.408 Attempts to promote whale meat and snoek failed. In 1950, four thousand tons of whale meat languished unsold on a Tyneside dock.409 Conservatives were outraged. Bread rationing, claimed Oliver Lyttelton, would unleash an army of “coupon snippers, and larder snoopers,” the vanguard of a “Socialist paradise.”410 Derationing proceeded slowly. When sweets were derationed in 1949, the population proved understandably so enthusiastic that rationing was reintroduced until 1953.411 The same year’s Flour Order allowed bread of any extraction rate to be produced: if this rate fell below 80 percent, bread should be fortified, a view upheld by the 1956 Cohen Report.412 Adversaries of industrialized dietaries were appalled. The Oxford nutritionist Hugh Sinclair argued that this report was a “public-health event of such significance that future historians will describe the era before that date [September 30, 1956] as ‘BC’— ‘before Cohen’— and the subsequent decline as ‘AD’— ‘after Decontrol.”413 The refined carbohydrate vector of the nutrition transition was emphatically reestablished. While such privations were consequential, they pale into insignificance when viewed comparatively. At least 20 million people died from starvation, malnutrition, and associated diseases during World War II. In Germany, food was a racial weapon from the beginning of the Erzeugungsschlacht in 1934, with undesirables starved to death in camps, food confiscated from occupied territories, and plans developed to deprive massive areas of eastern

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European and Russian territory of food.414 The murderousness here was overt and intense, but there remain unsettling parallels with events in nineteenthcentury Ireland: the wrong kind of people would be replaced by the right kind of plants and livestock. “The German people,” said Göring pithily, “come before all other peoples for food.” And Germany’s food system did not collapse.415 Britain, again, also used its food system to devastating effect. Around 5 percent of the Greek population died during the wartime famine, which was greatly exacerbated by the nearly year-long British blockade following the German invasion in April 1941.416 The Allied blockade compounded the Dutch famine of 1944–45.417 The meticulous food-control system established in Britain was not extended to the colonies. Around 3 million people died in the Great Bengal Famine of 1943–46, triggered by the Japanese invasion of Burma, the bombardment of Calcutta, a major cyclone, and wildly misguided colonial policies, not least the “denial scheme,” which involved the forcible commandeering and hoarding of grain to prevent it from falling into Japanese hands and the consistent refusal to contemplate importing sufficient grain to stem the famine.418 Churchill called this “feel[ing] the pinch” and deliberately allowed Bengal to starve to maintain logistic operations elsewhere.419 This was the calculated articulation of policy through food systems. Like Mitchel, Gandhi blamed famine on colonial government. The ensuing social collapse, says Mukherjee, “provided a grim bio-political substrate upon which the most virulent strains of communal ideology flourished.” The explosive sectarian violence that erupted in Calcutta in August 1946 is incomprehensible without understanding how the slower violence of famine had utterly brutalized the population.420 Other parts of the British Empire— Mauritius, northern Nigeria, and Tanganyika— also experienced famine.421 By 1946– 47, European farmland was decimated, and drought extended across Australia, Argentina, South Africa, and parts of the Caribbean.422 Between 1939 and 1945, global food availability fell by 12 percent.423 On October 15, 1942 (the year of Oxfam’s foundation), William Temple, the archbishop of Canterbury, declared that acquiescing in the “slow starvation” of fellow humans was “intolerable.”424 “Food would be the dominant world problem in 1944,” declared The Times in October 1943.425 h The history of the British food system, then, is a history of structural violence as well as of well-regulated plenty. The intensified national metabolism that powered the Industrial Revolution cannot be disentangled from

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the horrors of famine and starvation in Ireland, India, and central Europe. In Ireland and India, the food system became an instrument of discipline and economic transformation, converting blight and drought into largescale famine. Conversely, in twentieth-century global conflict, economic liberalism was abandoned in favor of the decisive state regulation of food, the mobilization of global resources, and a ruthless blockade policy. These examples demonstrate the logistic flexibility of Britain’s food system, the power of which lay in its resilience during ecological and geostrategic crises, regardless of the human cost elsewhere. If, as Foucault argued, state power became “exercised at the level of life,” then food systems ultimately became the most potent, pervasive instruments of this power.426

Chapter Six

Metabolism

Father is still the dietetic pivot of the household. —Crawford and Broadley, The People’s Food (1938) The sugar-bowl, the tea-pot and the white loaf came to represent “the poor man’s breakfast table,” while all three became as much a symbol of English life as the flaccid and somnolent lions of Trafalgar Square. —J. Edgar Saxon, Sensible Food for All in Britain and the Temperate Zones (1949)

T

he formulation of the concept of metabolism was among nineteenthcentury biology’s greatest achievements. In 1852, following exhaustive animal experiments, Bidder and Schmidt published their pathbreaking studies of respiration and excretion. Claude Bernard’s discovery of glycogen biosynthesis (1857) suggested that the body actively decomposed and resynthesized ingested materials.1 By the early twentieth century, the concept of “intermediary metabolism” had been fully elaborated by laboratory experiments (see fig. 6.1).2 Anaerobic carbohydrate metabolism and the citric acid cycle were understood by 1937.3 Intermediary metabolism described the manifold internal biochemical chain reactions and processes through which living bodies broke food apart into smaller elements and reassembled them to perform every process necessary to maintain life, from replacing cells and tissues to maintaining body heat, from pumping blood to muscular activity. The body was a heat machine, with food providing energy and the cell the “chemical instruments and workshops” of energy conversion.4 Enzymes broke down starches into sugars, then further decomposed these sugars, liberating energy in the process. The body was a biochemical engine composed of millions of molecular and enzymatic motors.5 167

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Figure 6.1. Respiration calorimeter for calculating human metabolism. From J. J. R. Macleod, Physiology and Biochemistry in Modern Medicine (St. Louis: C. V. Mosby, 1922).

Intermediary metabolism was, by the early twentieth century, located within the broader framework of total metabolism, which measured broader chemical exchanges between human bodies and their environments.6 Diet was a critical dimension of what Hannah Landecker calls the “biology of the in between,” the metabolic processes through which environment becomes self and vast commodity chains are incorporated— literally made into bodies.7 Recent scholarship has expanded the concept to incorporate manifold scales of energy circulation and absorption: urban, social, planetary.8 I will return to the planetary scale in the final chapter. This chapter and the next, however, focus more specifically on the social and individual levels of metabolism. They explore how the distribution of nutriment and its biological and thermodynamic effects constituted power relations and social differences. Britain’s social metabolism was a mosaic of differential metabolisms, organized hierarchically along lines of class, gender, race, age, and geography: the historically specific conjunctions of power and

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nutrition produced “uneven bodies.” Men ate more than women did, and their protein consumption was higher. Colonial subjects were assumed to have lower calorie and protein requirements. Babies, children, and the aged had their own metabolic regimes. Rural populations sometimes had different diets than urban ones. The uneven reproduction of bodies was a fundamentally nutritional process.9 This also had experiential and phenomenological aspects. The production of social difference is, as Alain Corbin reminds us, profoundly somatic, and metabolic asymmetry generated subtle, silent, but elemental thermodynamic and experiential distinctions and fissures, manifest in the experiences of lassitude and achiness as well as satisfaction and satiation.10 The experience of changing living standards was mediated by food systems and social relations disposed toward the unequal distribution of food.

LIVING STANDARDS Scholars have devised numerous ways to calculate the elusive phenomenon of living standards, among them utility, wealth, freedom, health, mortality, life expectancy, and access to goods.11 Any attempt to evaluate a given society’s standard of living at a specific historical juncture must judiciously combine issues of happiness, prosperity, freedom, and health. Diet unites all these variables, and any argument about improved standards of living involves investigating the vexed question of historical levels of calorie intake. Contemporaries like Giffen regarded rising consumption of meat, wheat, and sugar as indices of progress.12 In 1894, the Pall Mall Gazette announced that a higher percentage of food expenses went to meat and sugar in Britain than elsewhere in Europe, meaning that more “effective nutriment” was secured by its population.13 This vague and generalized sense of dietary improvement is reflected in British historiography. There is widespread agreement that, regardless of metric, living standards began clearly improving after 1875, just as there is a “relatively pessimistic consensus” about such standards earlier in the century.14 After 1900, average adult life expectancy and age-specific children’s heights and weights increased.15 Thomas McKeown famously argued that improved diet, stimulated by economic progress, was the basic cause of these rising living standards, providing disease resistance and reducing susceptibility to deficiency diseases.16 This thesis has, however, been seriously critiqued. Wrigley and Schofield’s work undermined the idea that population increase was initially caused by falling mortality rather than rising fertility.17 McKeown clearly underestimated the

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role of health infrastructure and overrelied on tuberculosis data.18 As Woods and Hinde conclude: “Improvements only in moderately poor nutrition will not on their own lead to dramatic changes in mortality.”19 How do we assess diet’s role in transformed standards of living? What Merrill Bennett called a “nimbus of uncertainty” surrounds any attempt to calculate historical levels of calorie consumption.20 Pre-twentieth-century data are extremely poor, meaning that attempts to evaluate them are, to quote Massimo Livi-Bacci, like taking “soundings of a submerged and largely unknown world.”21 Divergent statistical methods can produce different, even conflicting, estimates of calorie intake. Aside from problems owing to an inherent lack of data, averages often disguise significant variations in distribution by age, sex, class, and region. Historical levels of food waste are almost inestimable. Digestion itself is so complex and idiosyncratic that “a formula for an infallible calorie count” is probably impossible.22 Finally, calorie levels must always be related to historically varying body size and activity levels. All assessments of historical (and contemporary) calorie intake must, then, be treated as approximations.23 The established view— of Braudel, Cipolla, and Fogel— that early modern European dietaries were seriously calorie deficient has been critiqued by Muldrew, who convincingly argues that agricultural productivity would have necessitated intake greater than 2,000 calories daily.24 Muldrew suggests that, if beer and free food are considered, intake might have reached 4,000 calories, although population pressure was driving consumption levels down by the later eighteenth century.25 Calculations for this period suggest calorie levels in the higher 2,000s for northern England and the lower 2,000s for the south.26 Fogel, Floud, and Harris estimated mid-nineteenth-century intake at around 2,362 calories, but other calculations extend considerably higher.27 Later nineteenth-century calculations show a similar or even greater range. Gazeley and Newell have recently concluded that the average per capita consumption and the adult equivalent consumption were 2,400 and 3,000 calories daily, respectively.28 Surveys suggest slightly higher intake by the 1930s, perhaps around 2,500 and even toward 3,000 per head. 29 In 1925, Austin Hill of the National Institute for Medical Research surveyed diets in rural Essex, calculating an average of 2,871 calories “per man per day,” including around 350 calories from homegrown produce.30 The following year, Paton and Findlay discovered that rural diets were generally calorifically better than urban ones.31 Post-1945 estimates display a similar range. Carr-Saunders, Jones, and Moser’s 1958 statistical survey suggested an average household diet of 2,641 calories, while The Economist claimed levels of 3,300 calories in 1965.32 This later estimate probably conflated

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per capita supply with actual per capita consumption: daily energy intakes in the developed world have stabilized at between 2,000 and 2,300 calories daily.33 Overall, if such data are used cautiously, and if gender disparities are remembered, the idea of a gradual increase in calorie intake from around 1850 is supported, particularly if such intake is considered relative to reductions in physical labor and the metabolic implications of increasingly encapsulated, atmospherically regulated living. Standard dietaries, usually developed for laboring men, promoted slightly higher calorie levels. Moleschott’s first accepted dietary standard (1859) was approximately 3,160 calories; Smith’s 1860s British standard was 3,000.34 In 1933, the British Medical Association Committee recommended a minimum diet of 3,400 calories, with fifty grams of first-class protein (containing all eight essential amino acids), and included standards for vitamins and minerals, while the Ministry of Health suggested 3,000 calories and thirtyseven grams of first-class protein. In February 1934, the two committees met and reconciled their opinions by producing a sliding scale of daily calorie requirements for men, women, and children.35 All such recommendations were gendered: a man doing heavy work required 3,400– 4,000 calories, while a housewife required only 2,600– 2,800.36 Human idiosyncrasy and variations in activity level made such prescriptive standards endlessly contested. “In speaking of a standard diet,” admitted the physician Frederick Pavy, “the expression must not . . . be taken for more than it is really worth.”37 We are probably on slightly firmer ground when assessing the quality of these calories. The balance between carbohydrates, fats, and proteins tilted away from the former over the course of the twentieth century. Carbohydrates composed 67 percent of the diet of the poor and 55 percent of that of the richest in 1900; these figures were 45 percent and 42 percent, respectively, in 1980.38 While the concomitant rise in fat consumption has often been associated with certain health conditions, fat deficiency was a major problem in many nineteenth-century dietaries. Dietary diversification and comprehension of vitamins also unevenly affected the British diet.39 Despite increased food processing and the invention of trans fats, it is hard to sustain the argument that British diets have declined from a mid-Victorian optimum.40 Human height is another index of dietary improvement. The height reached by an individual is a result of genetic potential and nutrition during periods of active growth: stature can be used to measure “nutritional deprivation.”41 Height is especially sensitive to prenatal, neonatal, infantile, and adolescent environments.42 Thus, we would expect improved nutrition— particularly maternal nutrition— to be reflected in enhanced human stature.

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Studies show a demonstrable dip in human stature early in the Industrial Revolution, consistent with the pessimist argument, but a steady rise after 1860, although this initially returned average heights only to their 1400– 1700 norm.43 Nutrition is not the only environmental factor affecting health: the control of growth-affecting diseases and general improvements in housing and water supply were obviously also significant.44 But the palpable rise in average British height over the past century is evidence of slowly and unevenly rising rates of maternal nutrition. This sharp increase in human body height and weight, powered by the improved twentieth-century maternal nutritional status, has been called “technophysio evolution.”45 It is the best empirical evidence for a progressive view of British dietary history, suggesting that macro- and micronutrient intake has increased sufficiently to sustain an autocatalytic process through which successive generations become larger and metabolize more energy, allowing people to work harder for longer. Numerous studies have shown that height has a positive correlation with labor productivity.46 This can explain 20–30 percent of growth in per capita income over past two hundred years. Britain thus accumulated a higher level of “physiological capital” through its nutrition transition, which was sufficient (along with fossil fuels) to sustain economic liftoff.47 Gazeley and Newell conclude that, by 1900, most households’ diets provided enough energy for sustained labor, although a “substantial minority” had calorie intakes that were insufficient for “sustained physically demanding work.”48 The implication here is clear: there was no single “British metabolism.” Instead, there were multiple metabolisms correspondingly roughly to age, class, and gender distinctions. The rest of this chapter explores this phenomenon of “inequality within improvement.”

SOCIAL METABOLISM As one ascended Britain’s social scale, consumption of meat, milk, butter, cheese, eggs, fruit, and vegetables rose: people attended dinner parties and dined at restaurants. Conversely, the percentage of calories derived from bread, potatoes, sugar, margarine, and condensed milk increased as one moved downward. “The bed-rock diet of the very poor now consists of white bread, margarine, sugar, and tea,” noted the British Medical Journal in 1915.49 Such foods acquired a class stigma that overdetermined their gustatory qualities. Margarine’s taste, for example, was inseparable from its perception as a food of poverty.50 Working-class diets often followed a weekly cycle, with meat consumption spiking on Sundays.51 As Orr noted, class dis-

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tinction could be inferred from levels of animal protein consumption.52 One Oxfordshire family described how, despite consuming “a can of Swiss once a fortnight,” they had gone without fresh milk for seven years.53 Crawford and Broadley’s class AA, by contrast, consumed no condensed milk whatsoever.54 Bread, Drummond argued in 1940, had truly become “the food of poverty,” something soon appreciated by developmental economists and nutrition transition theorists.55 This was now largely mass-produced white bread, smeared with margarine, jam, or sugar.56 Sacrifices were regularly made to purchase meat, which struck some middle-class observers as “irrational,” particularly given the quality of cheap meat products.57 Rowntree described the “stringy, depressing aspect” of one Essex family’s meat.58 Such comments ignored the comforts of flavor or meat’s psychological significance. Sunday dinner had a particular psychosocial symbolism that defied economic rationality.59 Poverty was painfully palpable if Sunday dinner was financially impossible.60 Sugar’s cheapness and taste explained its popularity. One early twentieth-century Middlesbrough family of three consumed four pounds weekly, which equaled “ten teacups piled up with sugar.”61 Tea consumption rose from 1.90 pounds per capita in 1851 to 6.5 pounds per capita in 1911.62 Tea was the true drink of the working classes: “The lower one descends socially, the greater its monopoly. A working-class breakfast without a ‘strong cup of tea’ would be no breakfast at all.”63 Newman thought that “ten or twenty cups of tea daily is too much.”64 Heavy tea drinking might be compared to heavy alcohol consumption. However, tea’s germicidal qualities probably protected against stomach infections.65 In such circumstances, prepared food was welcome, especially in urban areas. Limited cooking facilities and long working hours made fish and chips particularly popular among the industrial working class.66 Its toothsome flavor— particularly when richly salted and doused in vinegar— contrasted vividly with the monotony of bread and jam or the “weary round of bacon and pudding.”67 Surely fish and chips is one of Britain’s great culinary innovations (see fig. 6.2). It was an excellent source of cheap protein and could be eaten by those with poor or no teeth.68 Little wonder that the fish and chips shop became “the restaurant of the poorer quarters.”69 By the 1930s, an estimated 60 percent of potatoes in Lancashire were eaten as chips.70 As George Orwell said, “dull wholesome food” was justly rejected in such circumstances in favor of something “a little bit ‘tasty.’”71 Mass-produced snack foods thrived after 1918. Herbert Morgan, chairman of Smiths Crisps (founded 1920), proudly declared: “Our goods are to be found in every village, hamlet, on every pier and beach, at every wayside café.”72 Britain’s Savoury Snacks Information Bureau declares that crisps are “indisputably an integral

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Figure 6.2. The joy of fish and chips. Hastings, 1970s. Credit Allan Cash Picture Library/ Alamy Stock Photo.

part of the British culture.”73 Such foods— chips, crisps, chocolate, sweets— were neither healthy nor sophisticated, but they were (and are) tasty, pungent, and comforting. This diet was not, however, devoid of vegetables or fruit. Elizabeth Roberts has shown how Barrow and Lancaster residents consumed a wide range of vegetables.74 Nonetheless, such accounts must be juxtaposed with more systematic studies demonstrating that the poor ate fewer vegetables than did their supposed superiors.75 Similarly, rising rhubarb consumption, the gathering of fallen apples, and the popularity of northern English gooseberry shows cannot mask the low level of working-class fruit consumption before around 1870.76 Refrigerated shipping and special ripening rooms, however, meant that banana consumption rose from 2.5 million bunches in 1900 to 20 million bunches in 1937.77 Such diets might strike some readers as monotonous, and many contemporaries clearly agreed. John Evans, an unemployed mechanic, found wholemeal bread unaffordable and white bread tiresome: “The sight of bread makes me feel sick. . . . If you want to vary it, you change from marg to lard, and when you’re tired of that you go back to jam— if there’s any left.”78 A 1909 Liverpool casual labor report noted that food was often “unattractive” and that meals were rarely shared with friends and neighbors.79 Others, however, expressed strong attachment to their diet: one of Doris Grant’s

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correspondents described a middle-aged man who “lives on loads of pastry, white bread, fish and chips”: “But he said he’d ‘rather die than change, thank you all the same.’”80 Class structured dietary experience in other ways. Table manners had long been clear markers of social distinction. Working-class tastes were, viewed from the perspective of middle-class sensoria, coarse. Manchester operatives, said Ure, had “vitiated palates accustomed to the fiery impressions of tobacco and gin.”81 George Holyoake described the stomachs of the poor as “the waste-baskets of the State”: “It is their lot to swallow all the adulterations on the market.”82 The visceral economy of snobbery was anchored in perceptions of desensitization: metabolism and taste merged with social identity. In 1949, Edgar Saxon blamed adulteration and food processing for producing a “confused, dulled and degraded” palate.83 There was much condescension in such observations, but it was condescension that revealed evolving somatic and perceptual differences.84 Dietary standards of living, then, rose unequally, translating economic into metabolic inequality. By the 1930s, the lack of high-quality protein, vitamins, and minerals was experimentally linked to increased susceptibility to lung and gastrointestinal disease and general physical weakness.85 Orr argued forcefully: “As income increases, disease and death-rate decrease, children grow more quickly, adult stature is greater and general health and physique improve.”86 Attempts to establish a poverty line recognized this fact by combining biological understandings of bodily functioning with more socially shaped ideas of satisfaction, adequacy, and comfort. There was widespread agreement that, if a three-child family’s income fell below around twenty shillings weekly, then that family was technically poor.87 This figure, commonly identified with Charles Booth, was first articulated by the London School Board in the 1870s.88 Those living below the poverty line often participated in a shadow, nonmarket economy, acquiring “broken food” from restaurants, “trimmings” of meat from butcher’s shops, and “ends of fish.”89 Small quantities of food were borrowed or shared.90 Many resorted to the lost commons by foraging, picking blackberries, forking for eels, collecting cockles, winkles, mussels, and crabs, catching rabbits or pigeons, and keeping pigs.91 Samphire was gathered from coastal salt marshes, seaweed collected from beaches.92 Other scavenging techniques included collecting stale bread thrown to birds or “ash-boxing,” scavenging for food in dustbins outside wealthy homes.93 Some acts crossed the tightening threshold of criminality. The most desperate were driven to acts of outright theft, like pilfering food from railway yards.94

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Meanwhile, such deficiencies were being comprehended through a new conceptual apparatus rooted in laboratory science. The term protein was coined by the Dutch chemist Gerardus Mulder in 1838 to refer to the “most important” substances, those nitrogenous ones essential for life.95 In 1843, Liebig argued that “nitrogenised” (plastic) foods could be converted into blood but that nonnitrogenous (respiratory) ones could not.96 This protein theory was, however, dismantled over the following decades by manifold experiments showing that all foods generate heat and contribute to tissue formation.97 Experiments on geese and ducks provided “conclusive evidence” that carbohydrate could be converted into fat.98 The vital power of protein, however, remained central to biochemical theory.99 Numerous scientists, including Edward Frankland, Frederick Pavy, and Edward Smith, calculated the human body’s thermodynamic efficiency as around 20–33 percent.100 The calorie values of every food were established, from 9,107 calories per gram for cod liver oil to 434 for cabbage.101 In the 1880s, Max Rubner produced the “law of isodynamic equivalence,” by which proteins, fats, and carbohydrates could replace each other in quantities proportional to their calorie value.102 It was during these years that the metaphor of the (putatively universal) human motor became pervasive.103 While this analogy was enduring, it was rarely unqualified. Living bodies burned their fuel but also decomposed and resynthesized it at the cellular level. The self-replacing, self-repairing, nervous, dynamic nature of living beings made them metabolically distinct from nonbiological engines. This metabolic-thermodynamic framework allowed dietaries to be enumerated with greater precision. In Glasgow, Dorothy Lindsay thought that the diets of those “who may properly be called poor” never reached 3,000 calories.104 Calorie levels for particular activities were established. The Food (War) Committee of the Royal Society (1917) calculated that, while tailors required 2,750 calories daily, stone masons needed 4,850 and woodcutters 5,500. Temporal variability of muscular efficiency levels was calculated, revealing palpable postprandial productivity spikes.105 This new epistemology of energy efficiency was soon applied comparatively. The British generally used three comparative frames of reference. The first was European. James Jeans’s studies of labor output showed British supremacy, and the Italian economist Francesco Nitti thought the robust, meaty British diet the cause.106 Nitti was merely reprising an established discourse connecting the power of Britons to their high levels of meat consumption relative to that of other Europeans.107 The 1841 performance of English laborers engaged in constructing the Paris-Rouen railway line became the exemplar. When they outperformed French workers, physiologists regarded heavy beef consumption

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as the cause, something vindicated by improved performance by the French when placed on a meatier diet.108 In 1895, the German economist Gerhart von Schulze-Gävernitz referred to the “extraordinarily good nourishment of the English [cotton industry] operatives,” who lived on meat and wheat, in comparison to their potato-eating German neighbors.109 The second frame was racial-colonial. Comparisons with South Asian laborers suggested British supremacy. Major D. McCay, a Calcutta physiology professor and advocate of high levels of protein consumption, thought that Bengali diets caused Indian labor to be “lacking in continuous application, punctuality, energy, and regularity.” Bengali miners produced barely a quarter as much coal annually per person as British miners, despite easier working conditions.110 McCay did, however, praise more protein-rich Sikh diets, as McCarrison later did.111 Others highlighted climatic and racial causes of perturbed colonial metabolisms.112 Such metabolic distinctions were, again, historical products, and British rule in India involved their calculated maintenance: colonial power was articulated through an enforced dietary inferiority that could itself be used as a pretext for development along British (dietary) lines.113 Third, comparisons with American workers usually revealed British diet’s inferiority. “The American working man,” argued Atwater, “has a more strongly-built machine and more fuel to run it than has his European brother.”114 American men performing moderate muscular work should consume thirty-five hundred calories daily: this was not dramatically higher than such workers’ actual consumption levels.115 American consumption levels were apparently clearly outstripping British ones by 1900.116 This latter point merely emphasized Anglo-American dietary supremacy since both Britain and the United States commanded vast quantities of cheap meat, wheat, and sugar: “England and America are the two largest meat-eating countries; perhaps because they are the two wealthiest and the two most hard-working.”117 Some made political connections. Werner Sombart noted how “all Socialist utopias came to nothing on roast beef and apple pie.”118 Shanahan noted a hierarchy of meat power running Russia– Germany–England– the British settler colonies–America, with such peoples “in ascending order as regards nervous vigour and driving force.”119 Meat, wheat, and sugar fueled the planet’s two most potent economies, an argument coinciding with that of scholars who see an intimate connection between economic takeoff and the Anglo-American nutrition vector. Robert Fogel argues that rising calorie consumption, along with better clothing and shelter, increased the energy available for work. This “thermodynamic contribution to economic growth” accounts for around 30 percent of British economic growth since 1790.120

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We are presented, then, with something of a puzzle. Although contemporaries decried the British working-class diet as meager and unhealthy, it was also comparatively nutritious and clearly helps explain British economic takeoff and sustained growth. There are several reasons for this apparent disjuncture. Some of this critique was clearly distorted by class prejudice. While monotonous, this diet was often substantial. Such studies also ignore a vast pool of unpaid, underfed labor: women.121

GENDERED METABOLISM According to Jan de Vries, the Industrial Revolution is incomprehensible without addressing a complementary “industrious revolution”: the active desire for and consumption of goods within the home. With food, raw meat and vegetables become a tasty, nourishing meal: this transition produces a “Z-commodity.”122 Value can be gained or lost during this process: food can become enticing or unpalatable; scraps can be profitably recycled or wasted. Focusing purely on the production or purchase of food occludes this domestic stretch of the sociometabolic circuit: the spaces (particularly kitchens) where commodities became metabolizable meals. Moreover, by the later nineteenth century, the burden of managing this apparatus fell almost entirely on women. Once family income rose above the poverty line, families often withdrew the wife’s labor power and redeployed it as household labor, to focus on Z-commodities like comfort, health, and nutrition.123 This coincided with intense late nineteenth-century focus on motherhood as the fulcrum of the imperial nation.124 The family meal became a metabolic and affective source of family strength, “the sacrament of family life, one of the means by which the home is kept together.”125 This generated anxieties about the state of working-class women’s culinary knowledge. In 1897, for example, the Liverpool Committee of Voluntary Relief Society undertook house visitations, finding “a lack of any proper knowledge of cookery.”126 Newman considered training in such skills a key educational dimension of public health.127 Cookery was formally introduced into British elementary schools in 1870, and it became compulsory (for girls) in 1878.128 Culinary information and domesticity discourses were channeled to future homemakers through periodicals like Good Housekeeping (first published in Britain in 1922), BBC broadcasts, cookery lessons (see fig. 6.3), exhibitions, marketing techniques, and institutions like the Girl Guides or the National Food Economy League, all forming a vast apparatus through which the housewife was addressed, interpellated, and, not infrequently, blamed for dietary inadequacy.129

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Figure 6.3. London County Council cooking lesson, 1907. Note that this is targeted at mothers alone. Note also the instruction in both composition and price of foods. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY.

Creating an effective metabolic apparatus also required a discrete spatial and technological milieu— a kitchen. Throughout the nineteenth century, working-class kitchens were also used for nonculinary purposes: washing, living, and sleeping. The spatial disaggregation of these multifarious activities was slowly achieved by legal and architectural means, although laundry remained commonly undertaken in British kitchens.130 Model housing projects usually included separate kitchen spaces.131 Nonetheless, change was gradual, and a discrete space did not imply a single use: according to one 1938 report, 84 percent of new dwellings in London housing estates built over the previous decade used “the bad old system of cooking in the living room.”132 From the nineteenth century, closed ranges, usually with hotplates over fires, largely replaced open ranges.133 These were often called kitcheners and, by the 1860s, typically included ovens.134 They allowed more varied cooking techniques and, along with domestic fires and gaslight, connected domestic metabolism to vast mineral energy systems. Mancunian smoke pollution often peaked at mealtimes, especially Sunday lunchtime.135 Gas cookers (see fig. 6.4), without domestic heating capacity, were functional from 1828, but their widespread use began with the 1890s development of penny-inthe-slot technologies and their promotion by female demonstrators.136 The first mass-produced gas cooker was the Gas Light and Coke Company’s “Horseferry” cooker: around six to seven thousand were in use in 1892.137 Widespread use of gas— for lighting and heating as well as cooking— reduced

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Figure 6.4. Gas cooker, full of meat. From Thomas Newbigging and W. T. Fewtrell, King’s Treatise on the Science and Practice of the Manufacture and Distribution of Coal Gas, 3 vols. (London: W. B. King, 1882), vol. 3.

costs and gradually eradicated the more variegated cooking practices and fuel usage of previous decades.138 By 1901, around a third of British homes had gas cookers (which could be rented): in 1947, this figure was around threequarters.139 Electric cookers gained popularity during the burst of suburban semidetached housing construction in the 1920s.140 Such novel technologies

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were not always welcomed. In his autobiographical The Unprivileged, Jeremy Seabrook recalled how his grandfather was convinced that gas cooking poisoned food: to circumvent this, his grandmother transferred his dinner from the gas stove to the open fire just before his arrival home from work, a ritual lasting until his death.141 Many working-class people, however, used old, broken, and inefficient stoves well into the twentieth century (indeed, many still do), while using prepayment meters could create time stress and, hence, undercooked food. Rice’s Working-Class Wives (1939) described several women using open fireplaces. Mrs. C. from Essex lacked a stove and used “an open fireplace” for cooking.142 The open range was found in most northern English homes in the 1920s and persisted in parts of Scotland into at least the 1970s.143 Such limitations accelerated the growing trend toward purchasing prepared food. Victorian cookbooks were at their most circumlocutious when describing kitchen devices: turbot kettles, omelet pans, larding needles, four-gallon iron saucepans, egg baskets, nutmeg graters, gravy strainers.144 Such lists were wildly unrepresentative of the equipment available to most nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cooks. Edward Smith noted the “great deficiency in cooking utensils” in working-class homes, while Reeves observed that “one kettle, one frying-pan, and two saucepans, both burnt, are often the complete outfit.”145 This situation was compounded by limited technologies with which to clean them. Robert Roberts thought that the frying pan was the most ubiquitous piece of British kitchen apparatus.146 Reports showed people eating potatoes with shears or cooking with buckets.147 Rowntree found a family dining from a bare table without plates, which seems luxurious when compared to those who ate off beds.148 From the later nineteenth century, cheap, mass-produced cooking utensils enabled women to cook and serve food far more effectively. Another problem was storage space, without which food “often lies on the table from meal to meal.”149 Inspection in Colchester in 1905– 8 showed that, of 2,669 houses, 92.8 percent lacked larders.150 This explained why the poor regularly bought food (uneconomically) in small quantities. In singleroom dwellings, humans cohabited with their food, which soon dried, tainted, or was devoured by vermin. Families innovated, using chests of drawers, washing coppers, and orange boxes for cupboards.151 Savage thought that proper food storage technologies were as essential as damp proofing.152 Ventilated pantries, larders, and cupboards began appearing in model dwelling plans.153 Smaller storage technologies— jars, bins, and boxes— were marketed. In warm summers, perishable food— particularly milk— often spoiled quickly. Improvisations included covering milk bottles with muslin, secur-

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ing paper around tops with elastic bands, immersing bottles in cold water, domestic sterilization, or using special tops.154 Many found condensed milk more practical. Domestic refrigerators, meanwhile, spread quite slowly: only around one person in two hundred had a domestic refrigerator in 1938.155 Cooperative or feminist alternatives to the individualized domestic kitchen failed.156 In 1874, the Building News published a plan for a community with private apartments supplied with food from a single kitchen.157 A decade later, Wolff attempted to develop centralized kitchens for Britain’s working population to release families from the difficulties of buying and preparing food in trying circumstances and to reduce smoke emissions.158 Deeply entrenched ideas of liberal individualism and familial autonomy scuttled such projects.159 Distribution systems were unsuccessful, including the London Distributing Kitchens Limited’s 1901 scheme to dispense luxurious meals via electric vehicles.160 Communal kitchens remained suspiciously Kropotkinian, limited to books like H. G. Wells’s A Modern Utopia, where Utopians considered private kitchens ridiculous and retrograde.161 British men, meanwhile, became increasingly distanced, even alienated, from cooking. By the time of Charles and Kerr’s Women, Food and Families (1988), hapless husbands often found boiling frozen peas an impossible culinary undertaking.162 Yet men were guaranteed significantly more food than women. Dietary manuals and studies repeatedly recommended that women usually needed around 80– 90 percent of male intake.163 This was sometimes simply taken for granted or justified by appealing to size, body surface area, or levels of labor, the latter argument usually ignoring housework’s muscular effort. Similar figures are quoted today, although women’s fat distribution and possible hormonal influences are primarily used as variables.164 At the cellular level, female metabolism was perceived as slower and its energy expenditure “less violent.”165 In men, by contrast, the “katabolic” or destructive/animal dimension of metabolism dominated the anabolic/plant dimension.166 Experimental evidence suggested that higher male metabolism was evident by the age of ten.167 In Britain’s social metabolism, more energy flowed to, through, and from men: scientific studies rendered this uneven metabolic landscape natural and normal. The League of Nations, meanwhile, created a putatively universal dietary, with a basic figure of 2,400 calories, to which accommodations for muscular exertion were added.168 However, scientists usually studied only men’s diets and simply appended calculations about women, often mediated by their own prejudices. Studies, however, regularly showed that, particularly among the lower classes, women’s diets were worse than suspected. The “factory girl” was routinely depicted as undernourished and gaunt.169

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Thomas Oliver thought East End needlewomen subsisted on practically “a ‘starvation diet’ when it contains 200 grammes of carbon, and 9 of nitrogen,” while female lead workers also had terrible diets.170 He calculated men’s daily energy intake as 3,321 calories and women’s at just 1,870.171 Two 1932 Ministry of Health studies revealed significant malnutrition among women while downplaying the consequences or blaming poor dietary knowledge.172 Widdowson and McCance’s 1936 study of sixty-three women (aged nineteen to sixty-two) found that their average consumption was closer to 70 percent of men’s. One-third of women examined ate under 2,000 calories daily.173 Such evidence suggests that assumptions about women’s late nineteenthcentury dietary improvement that rely on wage rates and local prices probably overlook the deep nutritional imbalances— the peculiar Z-commodity configurations— buried within families.174 The powerful equation of meat and masculinity created metabolic asymmetries around meat consumption. Widdowson and McCance’s study showed women consuming 31 percent less protein than men.175 Among poor families, available meat was routinely given to the male head of household. One Leicestershire wife, for example, reported that she loved meat but kept it for her husband since “he has to have it.”176 Such logic, linking high-status humans to high-status food, was reinforced by scientific studies concluding that men needed more protein, and meat in particular, than do women.177 This was about status, not workload, as Ellen Ross has powerfully shown.178 It was also rationalized culturally through the pervasive idea that women expressed love for their husbands by feeding them. They were givers, not receivers, of food and should surround themselves with contraptions aimed at perfecting the feeding of men (see fig. 6.5).179 Differential calorie and protein intake was the metabolic core of the industrious revolution. Food relations contained an element of self-sacrifice: “She [the mother] decides to feed him [the father] sufficiently and to make what is over do for herself and the children.”180 Edward Smith noted how even leftover meat was reserved for the male head of household, to be eaten cold at work or reheated for supper.181 A bourgeois version of sacrifice— expressed through hashed goose and eggs à la tripe instead of bacon and white bread— suffused Isabella Beeton’s interminable Household Management like mawkish platitudes permeate lurid seaside rock.182 Women’s diets, then, were generally more carbohydrate rich and protein poor than men’s, often consisting of little more than bread, tea, margarine, and sugar. Newman grumbled that many working-class girls went without food until midday and largely subsisted on tea.183 Rhondda studies from the 1930s found that schoolgirls’ diets left them physically weaker than boys.184

Figure 6.5. Coal-meat-love. 1955 Gas Council advertisement, making explicit the gendered exchange between food and love through the medium of a pie. Credit Allan Cash Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo.

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Children recalled their mothers not eating proper meals and instead consuming bread.185 In his autobiography, Joseph Williamson recalled a two-day period when his mother ate “nothing but water and a raw carrot which she found in the gutter.”186 Women almost certainly experienced hunger more than did men. Working-class mothers, noted Birmingham’s medical officer of health, were often “self-denying,” giving available food to other family members, and going about “in a state of semi-starvation.”187 This was exacerbated by claustrophobic cooking conditions, in which women routinely supervised the feeding of numerous children, precluding relaxed eating and digestion: “She [the mother] finds it easier to take her meals standing.” A diet of “empty calories,” combined with exhaustion, left female bodies raddled with chronic afflictions: headache, varicose veins, anemia, constipation, indigestion, backache.188 This evidence demonstrates that rising standards of living did not entirely alleviate the nutritional stress that scholars have identified as a feature of women’s lives since the Neolithic Revolution.189 Comparative studies suggest that later nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century urban conditions were particularly nutritionally difficult for young pregnant women.190 Rice recorded the thirty-seven-year-old Mrs. H., of Sheffield, who “lived almost entirely on bread and tea” during a pregnancy. A “good set of false teeth” helped.191 One late nineteenth-century woman, Mrs. Layton, recalled that she “was insufficiently nourished during pregnancy and nearly lost [her] life through want of nourishment and attention.”192 Experiments, Paton concluded, showed that, if the mother was poorly fed, “the infant starts life at a low level and readily succumbs to the hardships to which it is too often subjected.”193 We now understand that there is a strong causal connection between poor maternal nutrition, intrauterine growth retardation (particularly in the first trimester), low birth weight, and the risk of metabolic diseases later in life.194 Critical moments of “plasticity and openness to the environment” early in life might affect gene expression and in turn the very systems through which the body processes food, which is one explanation for the greater metabolic risk run by the poor.195 This hypothesis— that food can leave an “imprint”— marks a profound shift in the concept of metabolism.196 Recent developments in epigenetics provide cautious support for such arguments.197

BABIES AND CHILDREN In The Preservation of Infant Life (1907), Emilia Kanthack urged nutritional war against “race-deterioration and race-degeneration”: “We want not only to keep babies alive, but we want them to be healthy young animals.”198 At

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the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, the school inspector Alfred Eichholz argued that food was at the root of the degeneration question.199 Cultural fears of decline coincided with a stubbornly high infant mortality rate. Between 1876 and 1899, while Britain’s general morality rate fell from 21.0 to 17.4 per 1,000, the infant mortality rate rose, from 146 to 156 per 1,000 live births.200 In some cities, including Birmingham, Middlesbrough, and Sheffield, this figure reached 200.201 In 1915, Hugh Ashby observed that 20 percent of all deaths before the first birthday were caused by infantile diarrhea.202 In the later nineteenth century, putrefaction was routinely blamed for polluting atmospheres, infiltrating food, and propagating infantile diarrhea.203 Some incriminated the quality of milk.204 Others emphasized fin de siècle climatic anomalies, particularly several unusually hot, dry summers.205 The missing link, however, was the housefly. Southend-on-Sea’s medical officer of health, J. T. C. Nash, noted the connection in 1902.206 Studies showed that their hairy legs and bodies were ideally adapted for collecting, conveying, and depositing bacteria. They were attracted to putrefying organic material and to human food, onto which they manically vomited and defecated assorted microorganisms.207 Warm weather accelerated the insect’s life cycle and rates of organic deterioration, thus catalyzing waves of diarrhea, while large urban horse populations and ramshackle sanitary contraptions provided copious quantities of available dung for larval development. The fly, one study concluded, was to temperate climes what the mosquito was to warmer ones.208 Infection spread from the spatial interaction between housefly ecologies and working-class kitchen space, which provided exposed landing spaces enticingly splattered with sugar and condensed milk. Flies, raged Arthur Newsholme, had to be “picked out of the half-empty can of condensed milk” before the remainder was fed to the infant.209 Reports of food “literally swarm[ing]” with flies permeated sanitary reports.210 Flies on feeding bottles were another motif.211 Limited hot water supplies made cleaning bottles (particularly old long-tubed versions) and teats extremely challenging, while warm summers, sweet liquids, dense populations, moist dunghills, poor sanitation, limited storage space, and artificial infant feeding provided ideal conditions for diarrheal infection. Liverpool studies revealed that summer mortality among infants under three months fed on artificial foods and breast milk was fifteen times that of those consuming breast milk alone.212 Infant feeding was, and remains, among the most critical practices around which debates over nature and artifice were articulated. “From a physiological standpoint,” declared Henry Chapin, “the artificially-fed baby

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is a premature child, and anything but maternal milk is foreign to its digestive tract.”213 A mother should not “sublet her duty to a cow.”214 Chemical analysis revealed significant differences between human and bovine milk, with the latter much richer in protein and calcium. Its heavy curds were hard to digest, producing indigestion and constipation and stools that were “firm, pasty, somewhat dry, and of a pale yellow color with a feebly ammoniacal odor.”215 Cow’s milk should, ideally, be “humanized,” either by dilution or by more precise methods. Arthur Meigs recommended 10 cubic centimeters cream, 5 cubic centimeters milk, 10 cubic centimeters lime water (to neutralize cow’s milk’s acidity), 15 cubic centimeters water, and 2.2 grams milk sugar.216 Such ingredients were expensive, and humanized milk never became popular in Britain.217 More prevalent were proprietary infant foods, usually cereal based and often critiqued for their high-carbohydrate, low-fat composition. The doctor Eric Pritchard attacked the “hecatomb of innocents sacrificed upon the altar of commercial enterprise,” which produced babies that were “large and square headed, fatuously complacent, pot-bellied, spade handed and dumpy footed, for all the world presenting the appearance of animated jelly.”218 Condensed milk was also popular, but its high sugar content drew condemnation, and heavy consumption might produce scurvy, even in quite wealthy households.219 Pritchard thought that sugar produced “fat, feeble, sluggish, perspiring, rachitic infants.”220 Some babies simply ate whatever their parents consumed: bacon, potatoes, pickled cabbage, and tea.221 Breast feeding thus acquired renewed significance as the archetypal “natural” practice threatened by artificialization. In 1905, McCleary warned that maternal functions were “undergoing atrophy in the women of modern civilisation.”222 Such degeneration produced a Lamarckian “virtual disappearance of the lacteal function.”223 Concerns were also raised about factory employment causing a “check imposed on the lacteal process” among working-class women.224 Physiological and intellectual development was threatened: the persistent, specious idea that breast-fed babies have higher IQs than those fed “artificially” was established by the 1930s.225 There is, however, little evidence that breast-feeding rates were particularly low. The practice seems to have been general in urban England, and Newsholme thought it normal among working-class mothers.226 Almost 86 percent of London infants in the first two decades of the twentieth century were exclusively breast-fed and only 7.6 percent artificially fed from birth. Some cities, like Southampton and Stoke, had lower rates.227 A fair estimate is that around 80 percent of working-class mothers were breast feeding around 1910.228 Some commentators worried about excessive breast feeding. One physician noted that breast-fed two-year-olds were not uncom-

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mon “among hospital out-patients” in 1904.229 Breast-feeding rates did, however, decline across the twentieth century, although sanitary improvements neutralized the worst effects of this transition.230 This period also saw municipal interventions into the feeding of infants and mothers, drawing on pioneering New York and Paris experiments. Britain’s first infant milk depot was established in St. Helens in 1899. Others followed, including Liverpool (1901), Battersea (1902), Bradford (1903), and Burnley, Glasgow, Dundee, and Finsbury (1904).231 The 1904 Physical Deterioration Report recommended the creation of milk depots in every town.232 St. Helens’s depot provided humanized milk, diluted with added cream, sugar, and salt.233 The bottles, resembling “those containing Tennent’s lager beer,” were fetched and returned by parents in baskets of nine or sometimes delivered by boys on bicycles.234 Breakages were charged at one pence per bottle.235 At Battersea, milk was supplied under contract by a farm selected by McCleary, the local medical officer of health, and delivered in sealed churns to the council’s depot every morning, with a warranty ticket guaranteeing quality. It was strained, humanized, and modified for different ages: seven-month-old infants received entirely unhumanized milk (see fig. 6.6).236 Mothers were instructed to warm bottles in jugs of hot water. The largest service was in Liverpool, where around sixteen thousand babies had been supplied with milk by the end of 1909.237 Advocates of milk depots boasted of their favorable infant mortality rates, compared with that of infants fed in traditional ways, although the general focus was on clean milk rather than breast feeding.238 However, the movement soon unraveled as a result of cost and inconvenience.239 The Woolwich depot closed on July 31, 1909.240 Weighing babies— a practice pioneered in France— was often resisted on superstitious grounds.241 In 1913, Janet Lane-Claypon, hygiene lecturer at King’s College for Women, University of London, argued that depots were expensive and encouraged artificial feeding.242 They were, however, replaced with a more comprehensive apparatus of infant and maternal welfare, particularly after World War I.243 The first infant welfare center opened at St. Marylebone Dispensary in March 1906.244 The Infants’ Health Society began advocating breast feeding in 1907.245 Baby shows offered prizes for breast-fed babies.246 Health visitors and inspectors distributed baby-feeding information.247 There was a growing realization that health depended not only on the infant’s nutrition but also “particularly upon the nutrition of his mother before his birth.”248 By the 1930s, the Ministry of Health’s Advisory Committee stated that expectant and nursing mothers should drink around two pints of milk daily, while the Children’s Minimum Council recommended that such mothers, along with

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Figure 6.6. Milk bottles, Battersea Infant Milk Depot. From G. McCleary, Infantile Mortality and Infants Milk Depôts (London: P. S. King & Son, 1905).

children, should receive cheap milk “as a matter of social policy.”249 The pathological consequences of starvation diets were understood. The causal connections between alcohol and fetal pathologies (understood today as fetal alcohol spectrum disorder) were drawn with increasing biological precision. William Sullivan (1899) and Maurice Nicloux (1900) showed that alcohol passed to the fetus with damaging, even toxic effects.250 Ashby concurred, arguing that, if alcohol reached the fetus, it “may injure the tissues and retard the development of the cells.”251 The early twentieth century saw dramatic improvements in infant mortality rates, which fell from around 128 per 1,000 births in 1900–1910 to 33 by 1950.252 Urban sanitary improvements were the main cause, but new techniques of ante- and postnatal care for women and their babies provided modest dietary improvements. Peter McKinlay concluded in 1928 that a “vast national machinery of maternity and child welfare” now existed to care for “the ante-natal, natal, and post-natal” phases of infant life.253 The

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falling fertility rate, evident from the 1870s, ensured that individual children received greater attention, and education for women helped enormously.254 Death rates from tuberculosis among women, which offer a partial index of maternal health, clearly fell from the 1860s through the earlier twentieth century.255 We can cautiously conclude that, by the 1930s, maternal and fetal undernutrition was declining, although this must be weighed against persistent levels of deprivation in urban areas and the slow emergence of novel metabolic disorders and anorexia nervosa. There was widespread agreement that, after weaning, milk should remain the central element in the child’s dietary, to be slowly supplemented by carbohydrates and animal protein. Studies showed, however, that working-class children rapidly gravitated toward carbohydrate-rich diets. Bread was often consumed in large “doorsteps” smeared with jam, margarine, or butter.256 Anderson, the Chorley medical officer of health, undertook a 1936 study showing children eating far more chips and pies than home-cooked potatoes or meat.257 This unbalanced diet was often very fat and protein deficient. Protein consumption per head declined as family size increased, and there is evidence that unemployment rates affected children’s heights.258 R. J. Collie, a London school medical inspector, thought that underfeeding could make children “functionally mentally defective.”259 Starchy diets produced thick feces: “The rolls are as thick as a man’s arm. I don’t know how they can get out of a child’s body.”260 They left children vulnerable to ailments like measles, the effects of which are worsened by malnutrition.261 They also contributed to the pervasive urban problem of rickets.262 In 1906, Dr William Robertson examined 806 Leith children and found that nearly one-seventh were rachitic and almost one-twelfth had curvature of the spine.263 In 1919, Mellanby demonstrated that deficiency of fat-soluble vitamin D caused rickets.264 This “newer knowledge of nutrition” allowed dietary deficiencies to be calculated more accurately. In 1936, M’Gonigle and Kirby found that 23.9 percent of children undergoing routine medical inspections had some kind of malnutrition.265 Concerns rose that “veiled malnutrition” was undermining individual and social functioning, although reaching a consensus about measurement remained elusive.266 Such metabolic deficiencies turned economic difference into biological disparity: “The appalling difference in physique between the children of the poor and the children of the upper classes is due to the difference in food and in environment.”267 These multitudinous nutritional deficiencies generated calls for government intervention to prevent such children growing up into “weaklings.”268 School feeding emerged as a potential area of state intervention.269 The Fabi-

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ans wanted universal school feeding and attacked the idea that this would undermine the private sphere.270 Thomas Macnamara urged “the community, as a whole, to recognize some obligation in respect of the physical condition of the children.”271 Despite grumbles, like those of the Conservative education spokesman William Anson, who urged charitable support, taxpayer-funded school feeding gradually expanded.272 In 1906, the Education (Provision of Meals) Act allowed local authorities to add up to halfpence in the pound to rates to provide free meals for children going to school without breakfast, with a poverty test the most common technique of identification.273 Acts in 1914 and 1921 expanded the state’s powers, meaning that local authorities could be compelled to provide food for needy children. Numbers of children fed at school fluctuated thereafter: only in 1944 were all local authorities forced to provide school meals. As Vernon concludes, they provided ugly heaps of tasteless meat and overcooked vegetables that did little to rescue British cuisine from its poor reputation.274 The provision of school milk was another product of this period. In 1909, the London County Council began dispensing milk in cases of “special necessity or delicacy,” and milk clubs started in some schools.275 Scottish tests in 1927– 30 strongly suggested that adding milk to diet improved children’s weight, height, and general condition at all ages.276 Despite some reservations about the results’ statistical reliability, most regarded them as confirming milk’s power to provide tangible improvements to children’s health. Williams noted that such experiments proved that adding milk had a “wonderful effect” on children’s health.277 The 1929 Milk in Schools Scheme saw around 350,000 schoolchildren buy a third of a pint of milk daily during its first year of operation, a figure reaching 1 million in 1933.278 The 1930 Milk Act absorbed this apparatus into a broader, state-run system of milk provision. By March 31, 1939, 55.6 percent of children received free or subsidized milk.279 These schemes complicated ongoing school meal provision, with many schools using milk as a substitute for meals: by 1934–35, 61.9 percent of school meals provided by local education authorities were milk alone.280 Provision was regionally variable. In the late 1930s, average consumption per child varied from 1.31 pints weekly in Newton Abbot to 3 pints in Crook. Simply giving children milk, however, did not mean that they necessarily drank it.281 Moreover, school milk schemes were explicitly techniques for increasing milk sales during a period when colonial and Danish milk products were threatening the markets of British dairy farmers. The industry conceptualized the system like other industries conceived of sugar and

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tobacco, hoping that “children will acquire the milk habit when young and so continue it in later years.”282 Social provision was not necessarily at odds with state support of agriculture and industry. h Mass outsourcing of beef, bacon, bread, cheese, sugar, and butter provided Britain’s developmental dietary blueprint, even if this blueprint’s primary gustatory qualities made it the stuff of ridicule. The regulatory apparatus explored in chapter 4 and the rise of maternal health care and school milk made Britain’s diet considerably safer by the early twentieth century and undoubtedly contributed to rising height and life expectancy. This is the general conclusion of economic historians, and it is not inaccurate. Robert Allen, for example, concludes that northwest Europe had “the highest standard of living” because of its “apparent widespread consumption of expensive and highly refined foods like white bread, meat, dairy products and beer.” He contrasts this with peasant and worker diets in France, Italy, India, and China, where “a quasi-vegetarian diet of grain, often boiled, with scarcely any animal protein” was eaten.283 However, as this chapter has shown, such observations conceal the highly asymmetrical metabolic pathways through which such nutriment circulated. Most importantly, they ignore the very real differences between men’s and women’s diets that gave industrial laborers more energy than housewives. They also ignore the slow emergence of new bodily disorders related to dietary transition, as the next chapter demonstrates.

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The British have the worst teeth in the world. Their condition beggars description. It should excite in us a feeling of shame and humiliation, and a fixed determination to mend our ways and remedy the evil. —Harry Campbell, What Is Wrong with British Diet? (1936) I believe it is true to say that in those countries which have achieved unparalleled advance in technological skill in medicine and in what is called standard of living we are witnessing the decay of man— the decay of his teeth, his arteries, his bowels and his joints on a colossal and unprecedented scale. —Walter Yellowlees, “Ill Fares the Land” (1979)

I

n 1973, the surgeon Denis Burkitt expressed grave concerns about the bodily effects of dietary transition. Appendicitis, diverticulitis, varicose veins, deep vein thrombosis, hemorrhoids, gallstones, coronary heart disease, obesity, and hiatus hernia “were rare or uncommon even in the Western world a century ago and . . . are rare or unknown in undomesticated animals.” Burkitt blamed rising fat and sugar consumption and declining fiber consumption, concluding that returning to “a high-residue diet” could be as beneficial to Western health as “the elimination of cigarette smoking.”1 Others were pithier. In 1980, Alan Long, a medical research officer for the Vegetarian Society, described Britain as a nation of “constipated, toothless fatties.”2 Burkitt and Long were, of course, not the first to argue that progress generates novel forms of risk.3 They were, however, articulating a new anxiety: that entire populations were threatened by rapid, large-scale dietary change. These concerns focused on specific organs and bodily systems (intes193

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tines, teeth, blood) and emergent, anomalous health conditions ranging from appendicitis to colorectal cancer that appeared to be increasing in incidence with prosperity. Discourse became hyperbolic but had undeniably visceral referents: rising intake of salt, sugar, saturated fats, gluten, refined carbohydrates, and trans fats, along with decaying teeth, clogged arteries, constipated bowels, and insulin resistance. “The digestive organs of the civilized human being,” raged John Cope, were weakening “from the lips to the anus.”4 The British world food system generated two novel geographies. The first and more perceptible was the reconfigured frontier landscapes— prairie monocultures, railways, and grain elevators— that supplied the meat, wheat, and sugar on which the British diet was based. The second, viscid, geography emerged insidiously within the bodily systems of consumers.

EVOLUTION AND CIVILIZATION: WESTERN DIET AS MASTER PATHOLOGY Debates over Britain’s standards of living have often concentrated on the past two to three hundred years and addressed variables such as wage rates, life expectancy, human height, and calorie intake. The questions articulated by Burkitt situated humans in evolutionary time. The food systems discussed in this book should be seen as an act of human niche construction, producing novel ecological interactions between humans and foods that in many cases they had not evolved to eat.5 This profound ambivalence complicated all claims that diet had straightforwardly “improved.” The development of evolutionary biology and anthropology created alternative frameworks through which diets were more critically assessed. Instead of triumphantly counting calories or reckoning meat consumption, the British diet was decried as an artificial deviation from the healthier diets of earlier generations. Lane articulated an evolutionary position, arguing that there was “something radically and fundamentally wrong with the civilized mode of life.”6 The diets of non-Westerners became, in turn, routinely romanticized. Lane pointedly contrasted the “simple life of the native” with the complex life of “civilization,” with its raft of “diseased conditions.”7 The nutrition transition, then, was deeply paradoxical, creating a diet that powered progress yet brought sickness in its wake. Critics assailed every material aspect of British food. It was refined: “The milling processes to which our cereals are subjected is the worst thing civilised man has yet devised for his own undoing.”8 It was preserved and designed for durability: hence the emergent obsession with freshness.9 British food manufacturers, we should note, undertook pathbreaking work with pickles, sauces, and con-

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diments as well as jam, chocolate, and biscuits.10 These foods were concentrated, packing many calories into a small volume, often by removing water and fiber. They encouraged snacking. They were chemically heterogeneous, involving large numbers of additives designed for specific physical and gustatory effects. Such “arbitrary food mixtures” included fried foods (combining fat and protein) and heavily processed foods with manifold ingredients (whey, gluten, MSG): “Civilized man . . . has introduced an extraordinary complexity into his dietary.”11 Two consequences of these processes of fragmentation and recombination were the emergence and growing incidence of celiac disease (first identified in 1887) and food allergy (comprehended from the early twentieth century).12 This diet was highly seasoned, particularly with salt, leading to people “choosing foods that please their palates, and not simply foods that fill their stomachs.”13 Finally, food was, for many, becoming overabundant. “Ultraprocessed” or engineered drivers of metabolic disorders are sometimes viewed as a very recent development.14 Clearly, however, food was becoming what McCarrison called a “‘dead’ fuel mass” since at least the early twentieth century.15 Dietary change could, consequently, be linked to almost any emergent morbidity or mortality. In the 1950s, several books and authors seriously argued that sugar produced polio.16 In 1937, the statistician Frederick Hoffmann argued that overconsumption of “high powered food products” and “modified substances” caused cancer.17 Salted foods were implicated in cancer clusters on the Isle of Man and parts of Yorkshire (kippers and bacon, respectively).18 White flour and sugar were, however, most commonly blamed. In Diabetes (1969), Cleave and Campbell argued that refined carbohydrates manifested the greatest “alteration from the natural state” of all foods. There was a threefold deviation from the natural: concentration, removal of fiber, and removal of protein.19 Today’s consensus is that refined carbohydrates are so rapidly assimilated that they produce spikes in blood glucose and then insulin, which can generate insulin resistance: sugar’s “speedy strength” is a curse.20 The idea that there was a causal relationship between the nutrition transition and “Western diseases” was reinforced by selective anthropological studies of populations largely unaffected by dietary change, producing a counternarrative to the contemporaneous idea of colonial malnutrition. 21 Here, the emphasis was on, not the non-Western world’s underdevelopment, but the Western world’s overdevelopment. Non-Western populations, declared the Plimmers, did not suffer from “constipation, indigestion, gastric and duodenal ulcers, gall stones, appendicitis, colitis, rheumatism, cancer and diabetes,” despite their apparently insanitary existence and exposure

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to “extremes of heat and cold.”22 In Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (1938), the dentist Weston Price surveyed areas yet to experience or beginning to undergo the nutrition transition. “Isolated groups dependent on locally produced natural foods,” he concluded, showed few signs of infirmity, but the establishment of commercial connections to global markets brought such populations into contact with Western foods, contact that unleashed an avalanche of disorders. In the Outer Hebrides, “fish and oat products with a little barley” maintained fine dental structure, but in “the modernized section of Stornoway,” replete with cakes and jam, “dental caries was very extensive.” White flour, sugar, and canned goods produced “breakdown” among Maori populations.23 Premodern diets were also venerated. Harry Campbell noted that preagricultural diets meant no bread, milk, or concentrated sugar.24 The conditions of possibility of today’s Paleo diet had been created, much to the chagrin of the sugar industry, which replied with denialist bluster.25 “When humans switch from an ancient to a Western lifestyle, they experience increased waistlines, reduced insulin sensitivity, higher blood pressure and a host of related disorders and diseases.”26 These are Staffan Lindeberg’s words from 2010, but they could, with minimal adjustments, have been uttered by Price, Campbell, Lane, or, indeed, Lappé. These paradoxes created confusion. In 1934, the British Medical Journal condemned the “bewildering” cascade of dietary advice, which was undermining faith in dietary expertise.27 The physiologist Edward Cathcart warned that such cacophonous discourse might create “a pathological interest in food.”28 Material heterogeneity of food and jumbled advice made eating more stressful. Nutrition confusion was the consequence. The gulf between past and present and between natural and artificial was negotiated with every meal. Eating catalyzed interminable discourse on progress, nature, health, and bodily being that linked the large-planet diet and its ecologies to various enigmatic, unsettling visceral transitions. Let us follow this through the body, from teeth to blood and fat, via the stomach and intestines.

TEETH AND JAWS “The evil condition of modern teeth is notorious,” declared Arthur Keith in 1936. Examination of prehistoric and ancient English skulls, he argued, demonstrated distinct deterioration of dental morphology.29 Studies of British schoolchildren from 1925 suggested that around 13 percent of all permanent (and 43 percent of deciduous) teeth were carious, while a 1931 inquiry into London schoolchildren’s health revealed that between 88 and 93 percent had “badly formed or decayed teeth.”30 One 1908 text stated that dental

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Figure 7.1. A young boy with rotten teeth: Friern Hospital, London, 1890/1910. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY.

disease was so common that the public regarded childhood caries as “a normal condition” (see fig. 7.1).31 Skeletal studies continue to demonstrate that the extent of dental caries, periodontal disease, and abscesses rose with settled agriculture and, later, the increasing consumption of refined foods: nineteenth-century skeletons are more carious than seventeenth-century

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ones.32 Tooth decay was a visceral reminder of the radical bodily effects of rapid dietary change: “How sad is the spectacle, beheld almost daily, of a toothless person!”33 Dental disease was identified as a particularly British problem. The editor of the Toronto Globe, visiting Sheffield in 1909, described people with “loose-set mouths with bloodless gums and only here and there a useful tooth.”34 F. Truby King, medical director of the Babies of the Empire Society, considered tooth decay “a more serious national scourge than Cancer or Consumption,” and contemporaries linked the disease to numerous other ailments.35 French children, less exposed to sweet shops, had better teeth.36 The pathologist John Adami, who returned to Britain in 1919 after teaching in Montreal, observed that “men and women had only to smile to exhibit what, compared with my experience in Canada, was a perfectly ghastly series of decaying fangs.”37 Kurt Thoma, a Harvard oral pathologist, averred that “savages” would “turn away in disgust” from Western urban mouths.38 The arrival of Western dietary habits, however, rapidly obliterated dental differences. Dental deterioration on Tristan da Cunha in the 1930s, following the appearance of white bread and sugar, was infamous.39 A 1894 letter in Nature observed how older generations on the North Isles of Scotland had largely undecayed, if often worn, teeth, while generalized decay was evident among the young, with many teenage girls “almost edentulous.”40 The writer blamed tea and white bread: the nutrition transition could be empirically connected to dental deterioration (see fig. 7.2). Price observed that artificial teeth increased in number as one gravitated toward England.41 By the mid-1970s, however, one estimate suggested that nearly 50 percent of the Scottish population had no teeth of their own.42 Many potential causes of rising tooth decay were advanced: vaccination, meat eating, biology, intermarriage.43 Most experts, however, blamed diet. Some suggested that the removal of essential minerals or vitamins was critical.44 Refined carbohydrates were ultimately identified as the fundamental cause of the problem. The apostle of preventive dentistry, James Sim Wallace, led this crusade, arguing that caries was caused by “the stagnation of easily fermentable and generally expensive carbohydrates.” Sugar was “a pure chemical product produced in quantity for the destruction of teeth.”45 Attempts to prove this experimentally with a monkey were thwarted when the animal suffocated in a fire.46 The results of tests on American schoolchildren in the early 1930s strongly linked sugar to tooth decay.47 Candy’s damaging effects were proved in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when mentally disabled inmates at the Vipeholm Hospital, near Lund in Sweden, were force-fed specially manufactured ultrasticky toffees and their dental deterio-

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Figure 7.2. Teeth on the Isle of Harris, showing effects of the nutrition transition and promoting idea of the superior health of “primitive” dietaries. From Weston Price, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: A Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects (New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1939).

ration monitored relative to that of a control group.48 This chemical hypothesis has since been recast ecologically. Mono- and disaccharides provide an ideal surface for bacterial fermentation: mouths teemed with cariogenic microbes, and oral microbial biodiversity declined. Sugar and white flour reshaped oral ecosystems.49 Many of sugar’s flocculent, sticky forms were designed for pleasurable

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Figure 7.3. School toothbrush drill, ca. 1920. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY.

oral deliquescence, producing a mass that “jammed into retention areas, such as the intervals between the teeth and the pits and crevices on occlusal surfaces of the cusped teeth.”50 Marmalade, grumbled Wallace, was “viscous and clammy in the mouth,” preventing saliva from cleaning teeth.51 Medical officials lamented the public’s rudimentary dental knowledge or inability to afford treatment.52 Campbell suggested that supplying children with dental information was the solution so “that it shall become a religion with them to keep their mouths clean.”53 A 1912 leaflet distributed to Shropshire schools provided a grave warning of the harm of “starchy and sugary foods.”54 Some considered the toothbrush to be an artificial solution to an artificial problem: “It would be just as much flying in the face of Nature to brush our stomachs as to brush our mouths.”55 Such views, however, dissipated. The circular toothbrushing method rapidly became orthodox.56 Parents were urged to habituate children to daily toothbrush use, at least “until the ways of the race have become more simple, more primitive and more healthful.”57 Schools drilled children in orthodox brushing technique (see fig. 7.3). The apparatus of dental care— floss, fillings, toothpaste— became more available in the early twentieth century: the first collapsible toothpaste tube appeared in 1891. Injunctions to brush and floss crept into women’s publications as part of general guidance on appearance.58 Nylon replaced pig bristles and silk

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floss.59 Fluoridation, begun in 1957, was another sign that artifice was the only remedy for artifice, and, although the practice was widely critiqued, dental health began improving. The proportion of edentulous adults in England and Wales fell from 37 percent in 1968 to 20 percent in 1988.60 Optimism reigned by the 1980s, with assertions that “filled teeth could become a rarity” in the future.61 Although dental health continues to improve in Britain, one-third of dentate adults had some evidence of tooth decay in 2009, with the phenomenon more prevalent in working-class teeth.62 Tooth decay remains a significant pediatric health problem.63 One percent of English adults, apparently, never clean their teeth.64 Dietary transition also subtly transformed mandibular morphology. Fiberless carbohydrate foods were mushy and easily swallowed. Cope thought that the spoon was “the symbol of all that is weak, soft, sentimental, degenerating,” and proposed its abolition or reservation “for invalids and the toothless aged.”65 Teeth played an increasingly incidental role in eating. Without “arduous duties,” British jaws became smaller and teeth correspondingly more crowded.66 The “contracted palate” was producing malocclusions.67 Overbites, underbites, and impacted molars have become much more common with industrialized diets.68 The British face was narrowing and tongue position and breathing modality changing, producing a “modern, pinched-in, hatchet-shaped type of face” in people prone to nasal catarrh (see fig. 7.4).69 Facial changes (narrowing, mouth breathing) were observed in global populations undergoing the nutrition transition.70 Human

Figure 7.4. The crisis of the British face. Jaw narrowing and malocclusion. From Harry Campbell, What Is Wrong with British Diet? Being an Exposition of the Factors Responsible for the Undersized Jaws and Appalling Prevalence of Dental Disease among British Peoples (London: William Heinemann, 1936).

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tooth size, bite force, and face size have fallen as foods have become softer and more processed.71

STOMACHS AND INTESTINES “There is no complaint more common in this country than an imperfect condition of the stomach,” observed the pathologist Matthew Baillie in 1825.72 This was most commonly manifested in dyspepsia, which Guthrie Rankin, physician to the Dreadnought Hospital, considered probably the most prevalent disease the general practitioner encountered. It was chronic and debilitating, a “factor in the sum total of human misery,” appearing in numerous subtypes (acute, atonic, acid, nervous).73 The idea that such disorders radiated across the body was long established. In A View of the Nervous Temperament, Trotter described the stomach as a “centre of sympathy” connecting body and mind, “of more exquisite qualifications than even the brain itself.”74 Fothergill thought some of Thomas Carlyle’s particularly splenetic writings were penned while gripped by digestive problems.75 The causes of dyspepsia were manifold. The German-born homeopath J. Ellis Barker thought that “extravagant sugar-eaters” were “usually chronic dyspeptics,” with poor complexions, constipation, and irritable tempers.76 Tea and preservatives were blamed for thermal damage or deranging the stomach.77 Eating too quickly led to food being “bolted or flapdragoned”: Max Einhorn called such hasty eating “tachyphagia.”78 An increasingly sedentary, “high pressure  .  .  . decidedly artificial” existence had gastric repercussions.79 Russell advised dyspeptics to peruse mail and papers after eating, to avoid upsetting the appetite.80 Dyspeptics were urged to avoid sugar and focus on toast, meat, potatoes, butter, and milk.81 Food should be eaten slowly and thoroughly masticated: Gladstone, foreshadowing Fletcher, chewed every piece of food thirty-two times, once for each tooth.82 Dietary aids and tonics were marketed: vegetable charcoal, pepsin, bismuth.83 Environmental remedies might be apposite, like a “change of surroundings, a stimulating and sunny climate, cheerful society, massage, and hydrotherapy.”84 New gastric technologies— oesophoscopes, gastrodiaphony, radium photography, gastroscopes— revealed the dyspeptic’s tender interior geography.85 Surgical developments allowed more invasive measures, like gastroenterostomy, promising “immediate, great, and permanent” relief.86 Gastric ulcers were recognized as distinct pathological entities in the sixteenth century and became more widely noted thereafter.87 By the 1920s, they were causing four to five thousand deaths annually.88 While we now know such ulcers to have been most frequently caused by H pylori, con-

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temporaries, mindful of other bodily transformations, regularly postulated dietary causes, blaming sweets and white bread, for example.89 Cleave was adamant that protein- and fiber-stripped refined carbohydrates (particularly sweets consumed by “cinema audiences” and “lorry drivers”) produced the surge in peptic ulcers, pointing to ulcer-free non-Western populations.90 Treatments included rest, light diets, and surgical interventions like partial gastrectomies.91 In 1921, the distinguished gastroenterologist Arthur Hurst defined constipation as “a condition in which none of the residue of a meal, taken eight hours after defaecation, is excreted within forty hours.”92 He was reflecting on a deep shift in human dietary experience. Before the nineteenth century, argues James Whorton in his magisterial history of costiveness, constipation was associated with disorderly habits, like idleness or late sleeping.93 By 1850, however, chronic constipation was rising in incidence.94 Even regular bowel movements themselves might cloak deep fecal torpor: “If a passenger is waiting for a train to arrive at a given hour and sees a train come in he does not know whether it is the one that he was expecting to catch or the previous one that is perhaps several hours late.”95 Kellogg liked the transportation metaphor, describing various obstructions along the convoluted “alimentary subway.”96 Thus emerged a historically unusual concern that constipation was potentially deadly, poisoning the body from the guts outward, manifesting itself “in parts far remote from the intestine.”97 Here, sewerage imagery often prevailed. The bowels were “the main sewer,” and any potential obstruction affected the whole body. “Sooner or later,” warned Lane, “all must suffer from the block, in their drainage and from its far-reaching consequences.”98 Frederick Hornibrook warned that “we carry our cesspit about inside us,” while Kellogg described the “civilized colon” as “a Golgotha of pollution” (see fig. 7.5).99 To be permanently constipated was to live around a “fecal cesspool,” a condition called “chronic intestinal stasis” by Lane, whom one acolyte revered as the “the Father of Stasis.”100 The disorder aroused intense concern. It was “the disease of diseases,” generating “chronic diseases of every kind.”101 Stasis, said Lane, warped abdominal geography. In weaker individuals, gravity dragged the bloated intestines downward, producing visceroptosis.102 In stronger subjects, however, visceral drooping was resisted by the formation of kinks or “bands or membranes . . . crystallized lines of resistance” that gripped the bowel to compensate for the strain.103 Contorted, overloaded bowels became culs-de-sac of stagnant stools and “incarcerated flatus.”104 Bacteria thrived, penetrated the intestinal threshold, and entered

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Figure 7.5. The crippled colon. From J. H. Kellogg, The Itinerary of a Breakfast (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1923).

the bloodstream, “clogging the glands, choking up the pores and obstructing the circulation, thereby causing congestion and inflammation of the various organs.”105 Chronic intestinal stasis became autointoxication, a term coined by the French physician Charles Bouchard in 1887.106 For Lane, the sufferer was easily detectable: apathetic, balding, sallow. Leonard Williams described the “sloppy gaits” and “septic open mouths” of the chronically constipated.107 Of the enteroptic individual Hornibrook concluded: “His digestion is a mockery, gurgling and groaning in hopeless disability, his breath reminiscent of a Limburger cheese, and his general outlook upon

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life a pessimistic wail.” He observed: “The hollow abdominal viscera are crowded like an angler’s bag of worms into the lower part of the abdomen and the pelvis.”108 Lane’s rhetoric became almost apocalyptic. “It spells the failure of civilization and is a veritable Pandora’s box,” he intoned. From the condition cascaded manifold ailments from Bright’s disease and eye complaints to cancer and shell shock.109 While Lane’s hyperbolic formulations were not entirely representative of the age, they expressed genuine anxieties about large-scale dietary change. Unprecedented globalized mobility and durability of foodstuffs were matched by their equally unprecedented stagnation and putrefaction within the body’s viscid depths, something compounded by insufficient fluid consumption: “Many people drink as little as ½ or ¾ pint of fluids daily, which is not enough to keep the faeces soft.”110 Removal of roughage was linked to two other conditions with rising rates of incidence: diverticulitis and appendicitis. Samuel Habershon of Guy’s Hospital produced the first English account of diverticulitis in 1857.111 “Until recent times,” said Edmund Spriggs in 1929, diverticulitis “was looked upon as a rare disease,” but the characteristically spiculated colon was becoming far more common.112 The number of deaths attributable to diverticulitis rose from under four hundred annually in 1931 to over fifteen hundred in 1991.113 David Barker, the author of pathbreaking studies linking early nutritional status with later chronic disease, noted how appendicitis death rates peaked between 1900 and 1930.114 Commentators noted that both diseases appeared when nonWestern populations began eating white flour and sugar.115 Anthropologists fixated on bowel habits. “Wild animals, wild men, healthy infants and idiots move their bowels as often as they are fed,” noted Kellogg, and the prodigiously lax bowels of primitive tribes became an anthropological motif.116 Cleave and Campbell eulogized the regular stools of “tribal Africans,” some as long as fifteen inches.117 Western stools, by contrast, were “almost as hard as old putty, and very dry.”118 “Habitual constipation” was “a penalty of our imperfect civilisation.”119 Western technologies of defecation were widely critiqued. Poorly located, cold, unventilated, and mephitic toilets thwarted relaxed, regular bowel movements.120 Watercloset design forced bodies to deviate from the natural squatting position.121 Modesty made women want “to avoid being seen to enter the water-closet or privy.”122 Children should cultivate bowel movements at set hours, preferably in the morning.123 Gant thought reading “pernicious,” interfering with defecation, and encouraging hemorrhoids.124 In The Conquest of Constipation, Walsh was more sympathetic, noting: “In some cases, it is best to relax the mental tension, as by reading. Men often find a smoke very helpful.”125

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Figure 7.6. Intestinal oxygen bath. From Samuel Gant, Constipation and Intestinal Obstruction (Obstipation) (London: W. B. Saunders, 1909).

The never-ending list of remedies included exercise, soap, intestinal belts, rectal dilators, injections of air, water, oxygen (see fig. 7.6), or carbonic acid, and rolling cannonballs across the abdomen. Mineral waters were routinely administered via either end of the digestive system. Harrogate became “the Mecca for the sins of the colon.”126 Electricity could produce spectacular results. One aficionado of galvanism effused: “I tried it once, and could hardly get out of the way in time.”127 More common were stool softeners (like liquid paraffin), laxatives, and cathartics.128 Preparations included colocynth, gamboge, elaterium, Chinese rhubarb, aloes, senna, Epsom and mineral salts, and Beecham’s pills.129 In 1941, J. N. Morris studied 1,352 male National Health Insurance workers, finding that 61 percent regularly purged themselves with patent medicines.130 Many such products are still widely used: my grandmother, Ada Young, took two senna pills every Tuesday and Friday in her old age.131 The practice was often seen as habit forming.132 Recalling these obsessions, Jane Grigson noted how “constipation hung over some families like a mushroom cloud.”133 Most common, however, were simple dietary remedies: wholemeal bread, all-bran, yoghurt, and salads.134

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Some feared that “faddist societies” were promoting unnatural levels of cellulose consumption.135 Warped, spiculated, and caked, the intestines were visceral proof of the turbulent inner geographies wrought by metabolic transformation. Metchnikoff, a major influence on Lane, considered the colon evolutionarily vestigial.136 “Every year the opinion gains ground,” announced Keith, “that the great bowel, from appendix to rectum, has become, so far as man is concerned, a useless and dangerous structure.”137 Short-circuiting operations were first undertaken by Charles Mansell Moullin in 1900, and Lane began performing full colectomies soon after.138 “The colon,” he claimed, “can be removed without detriment and in certain conditions with the greatest benefit to mankind.”139 Lane contextualized high mortality rates (24 percent according to 1908 figures) by arguing that many patients were already severely disabled or rendered suicidal by their condition.140 F. P. Bremner stated that, after Lane divided his ileum and reattached it to his rectum, he had daily bowel motions, a better appetite, and improved nervous symptoms.141 Most of his thousand-plus patients were, however, female.142 Diet and fashion doubtless encouraged constipation in women, which was compounded by ideas about the nervous female body, to which I will return later in the chapter.143 The fashion for surgery, however, soon waned. Hurst thought that evidence connecting kinks and stasis was “inconclusive,” and even Kellogg considered surgery necessary “only in very rare cases.”144 One doctor grumbled that, if Lane’s theories were accurate, “stations for the performance of ‘ileosigmoidostomy’ (‘free’ and ‘while you wait’) should be established throughout the land.”145 By 1923, Walsh was entirely orthodox in noting that chronic constipation “rarely requires operative interference.”146 The Lancet referred to the “bogy [sic] of intestinal intoxication” in 1933.147 Colectomies, however, are still performed for bowel cancer, colitis, uncontrolled bleeding, Crohn’s disease, and obstruction. Lane was almost certainly the inspiration for Sir Cutler Walpole, the surgeon in George Bernard Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma who made his fame from a procedure for removing the “nuciform sac,” a fictitious organ seething with “rank ptomaines.”148 But it is too easy to condemn him as a crank and his patients as victims of psychosomatic delusions. The notion that intimate connections exist between intestinal and psychic ills has proved enduring. Lane considered the depressive effects on the nervous system to be “perhaps the worst feature of the effects of chronic intestinal stasis.”149 Pavlov described intestinal “psychic secretions,” now called the cephalicphase response in digestive physiology, while Metchnikoff urged the inges-

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tion of lactobacilli to negate the malign influence of pathogenic intestinal flora.150 The psychiatrist Thomas Clouston thought that “melancholy of the bowels” preceded and accompanied mental illness.151 In 1910, the doctor J. F. Goodhart discussed “the easy switch-off that takes place between cerebral and abdominal centres.”152 Two years later, Francis Brook of Guy’s Hospital reported distinctive fecal flora and “alimentary toxaemia” in neurasthenic patients, postulated a “direct causal relationship” between the two phenomena, and recommended dietary change: fecal transplants were undertaken in 1922, and a market in often dubious bacterial supplements developed.153 “The present age,” concluded Barker, “is not only the age of neurasthenia, but also the age of constipation.”154 The science of neurogastroenterology suggests that an “inflammatory cascade” of gastric effects has demonstrable links to profoundly refractory (and historically unusual) conditions like depression, autism, and fibromyalgia.155 Dietary transition— particularly decreased fiber consumption— has reduced the diversity of the gut microbiome relative to that of nonindustrialized populations.156 Irritable bowel syndrome was a “common clinical diagnosis” by 1972.157 Today’s concerns about the “gut-brain axis” emerged from longer-term anxieties about the subtle interplay between intestinal and psychological systems.158

BLOOD AND HEARTS In 1900, diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease were relatively insignificant diseases in Britain. By contrast, in 2019, 3.5 million people there had diabetes, and around 7.4 million had heart and circulatory disease.159 The incidence of diabetes increased steadily from the 1840s.160 Before the development of insulin treatment in 1922, the only remedies were dietary, with carbohydrate restriction and bread substitutes frequently recommended.161 Diabetes was generally associated with overeating. The Family Physician recorded that the disease was more common in men than women and that it afflicted urban populations more than rural.162 The distinction between type 1 (insulin-deficient) and type 2 (insulin-resistant) diabetes was formally made in 1936.163 Older, heavier people required increasingly large amounts of insulin to control their blood sugar and eventually developed various serious health conditions. The global incidence of type 2 diabetes rose sevenfold from 1975 to 2005.164 By the early twentieth century, excess sugar consumption and diabetes were routinely associated.165 Saccharophobia was emerging among those concerned with weight and diabetes.166 In 1969, Cleave and Campbell

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argued that the body was evolutionarily ill equipped to consume refined carbohydrates. The absorption of “concentrated sugar” into the bloodstream was a “violent” process, unlike the act of consuming potatoes. Wherever refined carbohydrates were consumed in large quantities, insulin resistance appeared. Sir Havelock Charles thought diabetes in India clearly increased within ten years of the construction of the first rice mills. Rising diabetes levels among Indian laborers working in Natal were attributed to heavy sugar consumption.167 Consumers confessed their sugar “addiction,” with varying degrees of irony: the phrase soon became clichéd. “I am a chocolate biscuit addict,” admitted a 1941 Northern Whig writer, while a wartime Women’s Institute Gallup Poll identified sugar as the most-missed food.168 Later editions of McCollum’s Newer Knowledge of Nutrition discussed the perils of being “addicted” to sugary foods.169 A 1963 letter writer told the Lancet that he was consuming over two pounds weekly and experiencing “unpleasant symptoms” of “withdrawal.” He concluded that he was suffering from “a true sugar addiction.”170 Pure, White and Deadly’s sixteenth chapter was entitled “Why Sugar Should Be Banned.”171 Such metaphoric use of the language of addiction has given way to more precise laboratory studies suggesting that intermittent sugar binges have similar, if milder, neurochemical effects to addictive drugs.172 These analyses suggest that sugar consumption generates phenomena like binging, craving, withdrawal, and tolerance.173 Sugar is not just a food but a signal disturbing the body’s information pathways. Heart disease was not unknown in ancient populations. Studies of mummies and hunter-gatherers suggest, however, that, despite some degree of atherosclerosis, heart attacks were uncommon.174 In eighteenth-century England, concerns about cardiovascular health appear to have increased. The doctor William Heberden identified and named angina pectoris in 1768, describing the disorder’s “strangling and anxiety.”175 Heberden was probably referring to a condition with rising incidence, linked to falling fiber and rising salt consumption.176 In the late nineteenth century, the physician Sir William Osler connected the condition to stress, “ease and luxury,” and excess appetite.177 “The tragedies of life,” he concluded dolefully, “are largely arterial.”178 Medical treatments included amyl nitrate (1867) and nitroglycerin (1879).179 In 1872, the British Medical Journal observed that, while 5,746 men had died of heart disease in 1851, the figure reached 12,428 in 1870.180 In 1915, the doctor Clifford Allbutt stated that “the arteriosclerotic of 40 years of age is no longer a rarity,” observing that in such cases arterial walls felt softer than in those with senile arteriosclerosis.181 Forty years later, Arnott noted

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that the rising incidence of heart disease could not be attributed simply to increasing longevity and greater medical awareness.182 By the 1970s, heart disease was an “epidemic.”183 It was no longer the preserve of corpulent businessmen. The highest rates were recorded in places like Burnley and Scunthorpe, areas with high levels of early century infant mortality, offering evidence for the persistence of maternal malnutrition, the transgenerational metabolic penalties of poverty, and deep, subtle forms of metabolic violence.184 It was also more likely to affect men than women.185 Moreover, the precise nature of heart disease was shifting. While rheumatic and valvular heart disease declined in incidence between 1920 and the 1960s, atherosclerosis, coronary heart disease, and unhealthy lipid profiles became more prevalent.186 The proportion of cardiac deaths caused by coronary and arteriosclerotic heart disease rose from 22 percent in 1939 to 82 percent in 1960.187 In 1915, this might be regarded as an inevitable entropic consequence of rising life expectancy: as “human life became protracted the arteries got time to wear out.”188 But diet soon became implicated in the surge in heart disease, although there was little agreement over which foods were most significant or precisely how they affected the arteries. Milk, for example, was blamed for depositing calcium along arterial walls.189 But, by the 1950s, there was increasing consensus that fats, not minerals, were the problem. In 1959, the physician Norman Jolliffe noted the higher incidence of coronary artery disease in countries with “a luxury diet” high in saturated and hydrogenated fats. His data showed that 38.4 percent of an estimated 3,270 calories consumed in the average British daily diet was composed of fat and that saturated fat composed 35 percent of total calories.190 Hydrogenated or trans fats, developed in the early twentieth century, allowed the manufacture of spreadable margarines.191 Trans fats pervaded processed foods, but they were difficult to metabolize: “Arterial degeneration and an increase in margarine consumption have gone forward together in Great Britain.”192 The cholesterol hypothesis became even more pervasive. In 1913, Nikolai Anichkov demonstrated that the arteries of rabbits on high-cholesterol diets became caked with fatty plaque: by the 1930s, cholesterol was acquiring its reputation as a dangerous fat.193 Ancel Keys then showed that “the proportion of fat in the diet” corresponded most closely to rates of coronary heart disease and levels of cholesterol.194 The role of low-density lipoproteins in heart disease was demonstrated in 1955, and the British Medical Journal warned that cholesterol and atherosclerosis were closely related.195 A new emphasis on Mediterranean food (tomatoes, garlic, fish), encouraged by Elizabeth David, reinforced these warnings, producing a persuasive hypothesis that lipids— saturated fats, synthetic fats, cholesterol— caused heart disease.

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Bodily complexity, competing dietary epistemologies, and the food industry itself thwarted this monocausal hypothesis and ensured that, despite claims to the contrary, full closure has never been achieved.196 Dissenting scientists, doctors, and journalists pursued a contrary, refined-carbohydrate theory. Yudkin, himself sometimes funded by the egg industry, emphasized links between high sugar intake and coronary disease.197 Cleave and Campbell argued that, since fats had been eaten for thousands of generations, only their overconsumption could cause heart disease.198 A complementary argument emphasized the protective role of unsaturated fats, drawing on Dr. Isidore Snapper’s 1941 work correlating their high consumption with low Chinese arteriosclerosis levels.199 This was reinforced by research showing that the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats in the human diet had greatly risen owing to grain-fed livestock and margarine consumption.200 Experiments suggested that the balance between polyunsaturated and saturated fats had tilted heavily toward the latter in heavily marbled domesticated animals.201

FAT “Young and middle-aged men today are probably about 15 lb. heavier than men of the same age and same height 30 years ago,” announced the Lancet in 1968.202 The prevalence of serious obesity doubled in Britain between 1980 and 1991.203 Philip James, chairman of the International Obesity Task Force, reported in 2004 that “the rise in obesity in Britain is as fast or faster than anywhere else in the world.”204 This development is perhaps the most startling bodily effect of the dietary transition outlined in this book. Throughout human history, corpulence has usually been rare and usually signified power and wealth. Well into the nineteenth century, such views remained common, and concerns about thinness among the poor dissipated slowly. Edward Smith noted that “many persons” exhibited the “desire to be able to accumulate fat and flesh in a greater degree.”205 These views, however, sat alongside growing concern about excess weight, evident from early modern times, when obesity was generally viewed as a humoral disorder, treatable by escaping cities or marshes or consuming bitters, aromatics, vinegar, or soap.206 In 1781, William Cullen asserted: “In England there are more fat people than in any country of twice the bulk in the world.”207 In 1828, William Wadd, surgeon extraordinary to the king, described a Huddersfield man who was refused a coach ride to Manchester because of his size, “unless he would consent to be taken as lumber, at ninepence per stone, hinting at the same time the advantage of being split in two.” The man apparently wedged himself in the coach

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and refused to move.208 One 1879 American newspaper advert announced that visitors to London should brace themselves for “the great number of excessively fat people whom he everywhere meets.”209 The American physician Silus Weir Mitchell reiterated the point in 1891.210 “Of all the parasites that affect humanity,” declared William Banting in his Letter on Corpulence (1863), none is “more distressing than that of Obesity.” Banting recalled his frustrations with traditional antiobesity techniques: exercise, sea air, and Turkish baths. Eventually, he followed a diet prescribed by the physician William Harvey, which limited consumption of milk, butter, potatoes, pastry, beer, some wines, and most sugar. Harvey, who had recently attended Claude Bernard’s Parisian lectures on the liver function, argued that sugar and starch created fat. As we saw in chapter 1, such knowledge was used to accelerate animal fattening. Banting lost thirtyfive pounds.211 Here, it was used to decelerate human fattening. The diet was immediately popular, stimulating discussion about weight and diet. A scathing Blackwood’s Magazine review reasserted the moral worth of corpulence, claiming that “few murderers weigh more than ten stone.” Corpulence signified “inward rectitude and virtue.”212 Doctors debated the merits of the diet. By encouraging practically unlimited protein consumption, argued Fothergill, it overtaxed the kidneys.213 In Corpulence (1884), William Ebstein described Bantingism as a “‘starvation-cure.’”214 However, with its limitation of carbohydrates, Banting’s diet foreshadowed the Atkins and Paleo diets. Indeed, Lindeberg, a Paleo diet trailblazer, claimed that Banting’s diet “has a lot in common with a Palaeolithic diet.”215 Concerns about obesity merged into more general concerns about transformations in human being and subjectivity. Degeneration theorists linked increased body mass to large-scale biological decline: Lombroso, unlike Blackwood’s, thought born criminals’ average weight exceeded the norm.216 Chittenden argued that protein consumption had become excessive and that the natural appetite was being overridden, resulting in “greater and greater freedom in the taking of food.”217 Self-restraint was viscerally displayed by slenderness.218 Hoffmann thought that discipline was dissipating “in a population over-indulging in food habits to a dangerous degree.”219 Abundant calories, which powered the Industrial Revolution and economic development, posed growing physicomoral quandaries. The democratization of obesity suggested potential limits to self-control and threatened the mirage of willpower itself: the insidious agency of lipids subverted and disrupted autonomous power. New forms of metabolic differentiation were emerging: divested of agency, the obese poor appeared like animals fattened for human consumption.220

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This process was linked to growing self-awareness of physical body image. Between the late eighteenth century and the mid-twentieth, scales went from being isolated and public to ubiquitous and private. Banting urged “corpulent readers” to weigh themselves “weekly or monthly.”221 In 1870, Lankester noted the rising use of weighing chairs.222 Hornibrook recommended ceaseless self-monitoring, with weekly weighings on “small portable weighing scales,” and continuous dietary self-adjustment.223 Such habits made little sense, however, without numerical norms against which to compare bodily deviance. John Hutchinson’s 1846 measurements, compiled from records of 2,650 men, were among the first to chart and normalize the height-weight relationship.224 Here was a critical point of emergence of today’s “quantified self,” in which humans regard themselves as “computational objects” generating a steady stream of data.225 The notion that normal body weight could be calculated by dividing weight by the square of height was first proposed by Adolphe Quetelet in 1832: this Quetelet index was renamed the body mass index (BMI) by Keys in 1972.226 Weight gain threatened adults and children alike. “Middle-aged-spread” insidiously accumulated after forty, when energy levels and activity declined.227 Doting wives overfed aging, tractable husbands.228 The weight of infants and children was painstakingly charted. Pritchard recommended a “careful record” of weekly weighings from birth.229 In 1950, Birmingham Children’s Hospital began a clinic for treating overweight children. The “grossly overweight child,” whose weight was 50 percent higher than expected, might require hospitalization.230 Obese schoolchildren were regularly teased about their weight, lamented the Lancet in 1978: “Their unhappiness may distort personality, education, and family relationships.”231 Fossil fuels, office work, and sedentary lifestyles were scapegoated: “The luxurious car brings with it the evils which arise out of inadequate exercise of the muscles.”232 In 1961, Sir Derrick Dunlap, the queen’s physician in Scotland, observed: “The executive class has practically lost the use of its legs, and that more regular exercise was needed.”233 Passmore, an Edinburgh University physiologist, remarked: “It is seldom recognized to what extent homo sapiens has become homo sedentarius.”234 Living in an obesogenic environment was another emergent form of risk, more pervasive and inescapable than those examined in chapter 4. Harris Solomon calls such spaces “bastion[s] of metabolic provocation.”235 As humans became increasingly desk bound and screen centered, their foods became cheaper and more energy dense, and their circadian rhythms gradually unsettled.236 Twentieth-century obesity theories were increasingly articulated within evolutionary, thermodynamic, and genetic frameworks. Although Neel’s

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“thrifty genotype” thesis has been largely debunked, evolutionary biologists have compellingly argued that human metabolism was an adaptation to energy constraint, which, when removed, makes weight gain very easy.237 The body basically operates as a fuel bank. For most of human history, humans have had a negative energy balance: today, too many calories and too little fiber mean that food is frequently absorbed faster than the liver and pancreas can handle and that excess sugar turns to fat.238 Studies of fat’s complex endocrinal functions suggest that obesity is a consequence of biochemical derangement triggered by excess refined carbohydrates leading to leptin resistance and overproduction of insulin.239 Theories of obesity, however, remain conflicting and complicated, not least because of the sheer number of interrelated physiological signals regulating appetite and weight.240 However, the nutrition transition— especially its refined carbohydrate vector— has clearly disturbed the human body’s hormonal infrastructure and the complex signaling pathways underpinning appetite and fat storage. The risk of obesity, however, is higher in the Anglophone world than in other advanced industrial nations. One plausible cause is socioeconomic. Body weight is positively associated with stress, itself a consequence of rapid sociotechnical change and a causal factor in many Western diseases.241 Long-term stress unsettles metabolism, releases cortisol, and stimulates the consumption of sugary comfort foods.242 Major social causes of stress include feelings of helplessness and subordination, and such feelings are higher in more unequal and individualistic societies.243 Some studies show that free market economies generate “greater economic insecurity” and, hence, stress and spikes in cortisol production.244 Others suggest that stress is transmissible in utero, producing babies at greater risk of gain weight.245 Corporations have more successfully reconfigured British and American nutritional landscapes than they have those in more social-democratic nations. Stress, insecurity, and inequality, then, have combined with cheap processed food, cars, television, and electronic devices to generate a historically unprecedented obesogenic environment. Such environments are most common in socially deprived areas: social metabolism, again, is uneven. In 1932, Ernest Bulmer argued: “Should the national overweight continue to grow unchecked, the mortality from the degenerative, non-bacterial diseases will diminish the average expectation of life.”246 The connection between abdominal obesity, diabetes, and hypertension was noted independently by Hitzenberger (1921), Kylin (1923), and Vague (1956), who also linked obesity to atherosclerotic disease.247 Obesity was also implicated in

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cancer of the colon, endometrium, and breast and various forms of arthritis and had psychological consequences, including depression and suicide.248 By 1900, British insurance companies, formerly worried about thin, feeble applicants, were expressing more concerns about both obesity and diabetes.249 Risk, again, was refracted through Britain’s splintered social metabolism.250 The market duly produced an endless stream of new remedies. Humoral themes persisted, notably the enduring use of vinegar.251 Various forms of anticarbohydrate diets were promoted.252 Very-low-calorie diets— involving under eight hundred calories daily— were developed in the 1920s to achieve more substantial, rapid short-term weight loss than standard energyrestricted diets.253 This tension— between diets emphasizing types of calories and those simply emphasizing calories— persisted thereafter.254 Antiobesity medicines thrived, many composed of little more than citric acid and water.255 Such nostrums were dismissed as “altogether unscientific, and in many cases . . . positively injurious.”256 Thyroid extract, pioneered by the endocrinologist George Murray in 1891, demanded more serious medical attention.257 One 1906 report documented average weekly weight loss of between two and a half and four pounds among women aged twenty-five to forty-five: results were less successful with younger patients.258 Preludin, invented in 1954, displayed promising results, despite acknowledged side effects like subacute delirium, toxic psychosis, and addiction in psychopathic adults.259 It was also a stimulant: its recreational users included the Beatles. The overweight could also utilize an expanding range of exercise technology: sculling machines, dumbbells, clubs, vibrators, ultraviolet radiation, and electric light baths.260 Behavior modification— like the techniques pioneered by Richard Stuart— offered further possibilities.261 More extreme bodily intervention techniques were appearing. Abdominal lipectomies were being performed in late nineteenth-century America, but, in 1927, Christie noted that surgery had “found no favour amongst [British] surgeons.”262 Successful bypass surgery was feasible by 1960.263 Early side effects were, however, significant: “We have heard elsewhere that the problems of flatus are so great that wives refuse to sleep in the same rooms as their husband and workmates refused to work in the same place.”264 Orthodontic jaw wiring was available by the 1980s.265 The desire to lose weight was becoming commonplace. However, given the gendered dynamics of dietary change in Britain, the pressures, stresses, metabolic provocations, and desires surrounding weight loss were not experienced equally by everyone. Gender is a system of power with metabolicsomatic dimensions as well as socioeconomic and discursive ones.266

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ANOREXIA NERVOSA Anorexia nervosa emerged within this landscape of novel metabolic risk. It made sense only in a world where food was historically plentiful but followed a gendered logic, one in which female overconsumption was specifically pathologized. It also emerged in a world where women ate less than men but ate a higher percentage of fattening refined carbohydrates and a lower percentage of proteins. Biological difference is significant, although this is always refracted through and mediated by power relations and cultural structures. Scientific studies do suggest that the female body processes fat in different ways than the male: genetics, hormones, and metabolism mean that girls develop considerably more subcutaneous fat during puberty, and women gain more fat than men. Observational evidence that women often eat less food but accumulate more weight would appear to have some scientific merit.267 Consequently, an anorexic culture interacted with female biology to make eating an increasingly traumatic experience for British women. Fasting has a long, complex history. It was and remains a regular part of several religious calendars, and exceptional fasts were often linked to saintliness or demonic possession, although organic illness was sometimes blamed.268 Fasting allowed women to express devoutness or renunciation and respond to bereavement and private calamity. There were several such nineteenth-century cases, like Sarah Jacob, the “Welsh Fasting Girl,” who died in 1869, apparently under the influence of religious literature.269 However, while religious fasts probably expressed unresolved tensions about women’s social position, they were generally not undertaken to control body size.270 Plumpness was long a desirable female quality, and this did not immediately disappear after 1800: Brillat-Savarin thought that being thin was “a frightful misfortune” for a woman, while, in 1865, the British Medical Journal hoped that regulations enabling “a scraggy young lady” to “be made fat” might be composed.271 However, the idea that obesity and beauty were antithetical was becoming hegemonic by 1900. Annette Kellermann made beauty integral to the female self, arguing that fat obliterated physical attractiveness: “‘Fat’ is a short and ugly word. But ‘stoutness,’ ‘plumpness,’ ‘fleshiness,’ ‘obesity’ and ‘embonpoint’ are only softpedal euphemisms. It is fat just the same, and just as clumsy, as unhealthy, as ugly and awkward spelled with ten letters as with three.” She promoted a toned body, attacking “loose and wobbly” flesh.272 Writers appealed to women’s putatively “inherent inclination” for male admiration: fat threatened to rob women of their key social power, the

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capacity to attract men.273 This was often supported by biological speculation about women’s innate propensities to accumulate weight faster than men, perhaps owing to “the softness of their tissues” or their “sedentary” habits.274 Texts regularly castigated both leanness and “flaccid embonpoint,” further constricting the definition of apposite weight.275 Women were urged to fight their metabolisms. Medical texts and conduct manuals promoted dietary self-control, while bathroom scales and fulllength mirrors invited ceaseless self-calibration and self-objectification.276 During the nineteenth century, mirrors became mass-produced and, hence, cheaper, larger, and more pervasive. The potential for “the continuous monitoring of appearances” was generated.277 Helena Rubenstein thought that women should “collect mirrors for their home, and surround themselves with them.”278 Corsets encouraged meager dietary intake and tiny waist measurements, and later fashion trends, bodily norms, and standardized clothes sizes left women trapped inside an inescapable lipophobic oligopticon.279 Women were repeatedly told that their appetites should be small, and eating could become shameful and furtive. Publications like the Girl’s Own Paper equated female virtue with self-denial while simultaneously instructing girls on cookery and cementing ideas of domesticity.280 Girls should take small portions and avoid large mouthfuls.281 Such injunctions were cemented through a new literary form: the diet column. Mothers fretted over daughters’ overeating. Simultaneously, girls were repeatedly told that their duty in life was to become cooks and food givers. What was emerging was a historically particular, extremely powerful subject position: women whose social identify is defined by giving food but whose own consumption is fraught with anxiety and restraint.282 This dietary subjectivity was entirely consistent with the nutrition transition’s gendered logic. We have established that women clearly ate less than did men but that their diet was more carbohydrate rich. Meat avoidance was, and remains, far commoner among women than among men, not least because of the strong associations between masculinity, power, and meat. Arthur Newsholme claimed that girls of fourteen to twenty often suffered from “a species of chronic starvation” caused by a protein-deficient diet of “bread and butter and puddings.”283 This was not, however, simply a habit that women thoughtlessly acquired since they were responding to pervasive and often quite explicit cultural cues (see fig. 7.7). The suggestion here is that dieting became a passage to selfhood perhaps earlier than we think: food was already becoming a “combat zone” for women in the later nineteenth century.284 Enervation was common among working- class girls. Women—

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Figure 7.7. Advert for “Figuroids,” 1908. Note the unambiguous signal that an extremely thin female waist is desirable. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CCBY.

particularly those living on “white bread, margarine, and tea”— were vulnerable to digestive complaints and “vague psychoses.”285 Some blamed chlorosis, a form of iron-deficiency anemia, on meat avoidance or “depraved appetite,” but others held corsets responsible.286 Doctors pontificated on pica and purging: “I have seen chlorotic and dyspeptic girls, both sane and insane, devour chalk, cinders, and other disgusting solids.”287 Dyspepsia was particularly suffered by women.288 Chambers cited the case of Miss Ellen B, a teenager in spring 1863, who had secretly vomited up her meals for four years.289 At the confluence of these distinct phenomena— an ideal of thinness, the small appetite, self-control, the particular metabolic pressure on women, manifold digestive disorders— the specific condition we now call anorexia nervosa emerged, an intense, debilitating fear of fat that persists when the patient is dangerously underweight.290 It was named almost simultaneously in France, Britain, and the United States in the 1870s, and, while its appearance undoubtedly predated its naming, dissevering it from other forms of psychologically disturbed eating was a protracted process.291 In Britain, William Gull began using the term around 1873.292 Gull’s cases (see fig. 7.8) had

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Figure 7.8. Patient with anorexia nervosa. From William Gull, “Anorexia Nervosa,” Lancet, March 17, 1888.

similar symptoms, and, when taken from their families and persuaded to eat nourishing food, all recovered.293 Following Gull’s work, Anglophone discourse on the condition rose significantly, and the concept was widespread by 1900.294 Scholars have rightly emphasized manifold causes of this peculiar historical phenomenon. Hilde Bruch, for example, saw anorexia as an adolescent response to the crisis of sexual development.295 Anorexia nervosa is “a disorder of the self, rather than a disorder of weight, food or appetite.”296 Some have postulated organic causes springing from endocrinological, hormonal, or neurological dysfunction.297 Historians of science have emphasized how the nineteenth-century conceptualization of the nervous female body allowed the concept of anorexia nervosa to emerge, in contrast to anorexia

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hysteria, with its uterine referent.298 Others have seen anorexia nervosa as a pathological response to the normative bourgeois nuclear family at a historical juncture when female sexuality and liberty were becoming marginally more negotiable. In Gull’s reports, there were implications of power struggles within families.299 Refusing food and becoming ill was a “ladylike” way for young women to express autonomy, and separation of the patient from the family was the first therapeutic response.300 Powerful cultural models have also been successfully proposed. The dominant cultural logic of the period suggested, as Suzanne Bordo has argued, that it was virtuous for women to try to discipline their appetites and avoid weight gain. Anorexic attitudes accurately reflected what culture told women about their bodies. Such attitudes also showed power to resist food in an age of plenty. Eating less provides “moral or aesthetic superiority” in a world of overindulgence.301 The multiple etiological models of the disease produced contrasting treatment regimes: psychotherapy, forced feeding, drug treatments, and withdrawal from the family.302 But, like obesogenic environments, anorexic logic has only grown more pervasive and cruel. All such models— save perhaps the more dated psychoanalytic ones— clearly help us understand the dominant cultural and social forces that have shaped the disease. But anorexia nervosa is inexplicable without material forces too, not least the phenomenon of plenty, the rise of carbohydrate-rich diets, and the cascade of meat that, for many, aroused feelings of anxiety and even disgust. The ideal female figure grew thinner as the difficulty of avoiding weight gain increased. In 2016, over 1.6 million people in Britain suffered from eating disorders, with digital media amplifying the trend.303 As Susie Orbach argued: “Food is the medium through which women are addressed; in turn, food has become the language of women’s response.”304 h In 1800, obesity was rare, and nobody suffered from anorexia nervosa. Tooth decay and constipation were low on the list of everyday concerns, while infectious diseases were far greater threats than heart disease or diabetes. British food systems, however, remade British bodies just as they remade Australasian and Argentinean landscapes. Some of these transformations— such as rising height and physical strength— were undeniably positive. But the rise of generalized metabolic disorders has become the biggest public health problem in the developed world. The “epidemics” of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and anorexia nervosa did not appear out of nowhere.305

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They are the long-term, insidious products of food systems disposed to provide cheap sugary, processed food. Britain played a major role in creating this disposition. The diet that sustained and powered industrialization has become a danger to human health. Moreover, it is also threatening planetary health. The next chapter explores this in more detail.

Chapter Eight

Earth

The four large continents of the world have created vast deserts in the endeavour to meet the British public’s demand for cheap food, and the British government’s policy is slowly ruining the good soil of Britain and is rapidly going to create another desert in Africa in its “Groundnuts Scheme.” —Philip Oyler, Feeding Ourselves (1951) The entry into the Anthropocene was intrinsically bound up with capitalism, with the commercial nation-state and the genesis of the British Empire, which dominated the world in the nineteenth century and forced other societies to serve its model or seek to follow it. —Jean-Baptiste Fressoz and Christophe Bonneuil, The Shock of the Anthropocene (2016)

T

he British food system used the whole planet as a resource for raw materials. Manifold technological innovations (synthetic nitrates, grain elevators, global information systems, tractors, refrigerated shipping, pesticides, chicken plants) knitted this system together and allowed it to scale across the planet. However, once Britain began living beyond its “energy income,” it created a debt that was hard to pay back: it was utilizing 377 percent of its biocapacity by 1973.1 Resource frontiers and ecological debt “unlock[ed] the epoch-making potential of endless accumulation,” allowing Britain to consume more meat and sugar than almost any other country on earth while introducing dramatic inequalities into world ecology.2 These transformations had slow, but fateful, effects on wider earth systems. Surging fertilizer use produced accumulations of nitrogen and phosphorus in aquatic ecosystems, generating algal blooms and anoxic 222

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environments. Commodity frontiers underwent deforestation and soil erosion. Monocultures, habitat destruction, selective breeding, and genetic homogenization significantly reduced biodiversity and accelerated rates of extinction to Cretaceous-Paleogene levels. Of the nine “planetary boundaries” defined by Rockström and Klum, four have been exceeded. Two of these four— extinction rates and biogeochemical flows— are directly linked to world food systems and are responsible for tipping the planet from its fragile Holocene stability into the more uncertain Anthropocene epoch.3 Food systems contribute up to 29 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.4 The Anthropocene is, as Marcia Bjornerud notes, simply the point at which human activity “started changing Earth’s Holocene habits.”5 This “point,” of course, has become the subject of vigorous transdisciplinary debate, and I have no wish to add to such discussions here. The elemental point is that the creation of the British food system is a case study in greedy habits showing how the imperatives of capital and cheap food have had increasingly discernible global ecological effects. The intercontinental cycling of food created a planetary disaggregation of urban-developed-industrial and rural-underdeveloped-agrarian zones. In the nineteenth century, this produced a globalized relationship between a “world urban-industrial nucleus” in western Europe and the northeastern United States and an immense, discontinuous group of agrarian zones, scattered across the planet, from which nutritional material was absorbed.6 The British world food system was a precocious example of this: “British trade overseas is only a special case of the general interaction between agriculture and industry, an interaction which in most other countries takes place to a large extent internally.”7 This spatial and circulatory process has, following Marx, been called the metabolic rift.8 Human populations became increasingly separated from the soil, developing what Vogt called a “waster’s psychology” oblivious to the origins of extraurban resources.9 This is a history of accumulation, depletion, and entropic dissipation. It also involves attention to those voices who anticipated what A Blueprint for Survival (1972) would call the consequences of “the transformation of the ecosphere into nothing more than a food-factory for man.”10

NITROGEN AND PHOSPHORUS Farming reshaped nitrogen and phosphorus cycles well before the colonization of the neo-Europes or the invention of synthetic fertilizer. In parts of medieval Europe, notably the Po Valley and the Netherlands, farmers began adopting continuous rotation and abandoning fallowing.11 Rotation

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reached England in the seventeenth century and, in countless localized permutations, was widespread by the nineteenth.12 It combined fodder (turnips, legumes) and cash crops (grains). Legumes replenished the soil by biofixation, and, during the winter, animals ate root crops and produced manure, creating an intensified nutrient cycle between soil, plant, and animal that increased farm productivity. Clover’s annual cycle meshed particularly well with grain cultivation: by 1880, almost one-fifth of cultivated land in northwestern Europe was used for legumes.13 Clover-generated nitrogen powered the production of milk, beets, and potatoes.14 Legumes and dung were complemented by organic wastes, from blood to seaweed. Alkaline conditioners— lime and marl— were applied so liberally that Liebig thought autumnal Yorkshire and Oxfordshire appeared to have been sprinkled with snow.15 These organic innovations allowed Britain to remain largely agriculturally self-sufficient until the nineteenth century, although clover seed was imported in large quantities.16 British wheat yields rose steadily between 1600 and 1800, with manuring increasingly significant after 1700.17 The use of legumes was, argues one historian, comparable to steam power in terms of its impact on European economic development.18 After 1830, local organic inputs were increasingly insufficient for Britain’s expanding wheat acreage, and farmers increasingly looked beyond the farm for feedstuffs and manure.19 They found assistance from the emergent science of organic chemistry and its practical applications, the diffusion of which Peter Jones calls an “agricultural Enlightenment.”20 The comprehension of nitrogen and phosphorus were particularly important. In the 1830s, Jean-Baptiste Boussingault demonstrated that the nutritional equivalents of crops were related to their nitrogen content. He postulated that the quantity of circulating nitrogen limited the quantity of living material, that this nitrogen was supplied by the atmosphere, and that these vital reactions occurred in terrestrial mycoderms.21 The biochemical process whereby microorganisms fix nitrogen, in symbiosis with plants, was demonstrated in 1886. At their Rothamsted research station, founded in 1843, John Lawes and Joseph Gilbert demonstrated that nitrogen inputs greatly increased plant yields.22 Liebig emphasized the importance of other chemicals, notably phosphorus, which stimulated the rise of the phosphate industries.23 Farmers had long utilized bones as fertilizer, and, by 1815, nearly thirty thousand tons annually were imported from Europe, accompanied by rumors of ransacked battlefields.24 James Murray began experiments with vitriolized bones, dissolved in acid, near Belfast in 1808.25 Lawes built Britain’s first superphosphate factory at Deptford Creek in 1841, receiving a patent for his process in 1842.26

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The vagaries of the European bone supply drove Lawes to explore new raw materials, notably coprolites (fossilized dung) and mineral phosphates like apatite (a luminescent igneous rock).27 A large phosphorus mining industry developed, exploiting new geologic and stratigraphic knowledge: William Buckland coined the term coprolite in 1829 following his discovery of “osseous faeces” at Lyme Regis.28 Britain’s chief coprolite beds ran from east Bedfordshire to Cambridgeshire, and thousands found employment digging their shallow seams and transferring material to processing plants, where the nodules were ground and dissolved in sulfuric acid. Early coprolite contractors included Joseph Fison, whose Ipswich-based agrochemical factories would grow into a multinational empire.29 Liebig complained that, after pillaging the vegetable world for fossil fuels, England was now exploiting vertical as well as horizontal frontiers and mining “an extinct animal world” for fertilizer.30 By 1920, Britain was manufacturing nearly 1 million tons of phosphate rock annually, around one-eleventh of global production.31 European supplies have since been completely exhausted, however, forcing phosphate extraction further afield, to the United States, North Africa, Russia.32 Phosphate rock extraction has tripled since 1945, raising serious, if disputed, concerns about depletion and “peak phosphorus.”33 This demand, which began in early nineteenth-century Britain, has radically altered phosphorus’s biospheric pathways. The anthropic flow of phosphorus is now eight times that of the natural one. Around 20 million tons of phosphorus are extracted annually, 9 million of which end up in the ocean.34 Phosphatic fertilizers are also responsible for terrestrial accumulations of heavy metals.35 Industrial by-products were soon absorbed into agricultural practice. Soot had been used for centuries, but the early nineteenth-century gas industry’s generation of ammoniacal liquor allowed the profitable diversion of ammonium sulphate into the agrarian system. Trials in the 1840s demonstrated its agricultural value, not least for wheat production.36 Between 1870 and 1885, annual British production rose from 40,000 tons to 97,000 tons: global production reached 1.1 million tons in 1910.37 Another by-product, gas lime, “a greenish yellow, evil smelling substance,” was particularly beneficial for legumes and turnips.38 Ammonia was recovered from blast furnaces by condensing and washing waste gases.39 The Thomas-Gilchrist process (1878), which allowed the utilization of phosphate-rich iron ores for steelmaking, produced mounds of phosphate-rich “basic slag,” which was shown to be a powerful fertilizer in 1885.40 In 1912, one chemist waxed alchemical, comparing basic slag to the philosopher’s stone, “a magic something, the touch of which should clothe the languishing earth with a perennial verdure.”41 The

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development of the open hearth process, however, reduced slag’s phosphate content.42 The new extractive fertilizer economy was most strikingly apparent with Peruvian guano and Chilean nitrates. Guano is a rich fertilizer formed from the excreta of seabirds, particularly cormorants, boobies, and pelicans, on islands off the Peruvian coast.43 The hot, dry climate meant that “vast accumulations of excrementitious matter” agglomerated over thousands of years, at a rate of around two meters per century.44 Although the Incas and the Spanish settlers used guano, the deposits remained largely untouched until the European fertilizer crisis stimulated the intercontinental guano trade. The Peruvian government declared guano a state monopoly in 1841, awarding export contracts to British businessmen, first W. J. Myers of Liverpool and Anthony Gibbs and Sons of London and then, from 1848 to 1861, Gibbs alone.45 Around half of Peru’s guano exports went to Britain in the 1850s, and British purchases peaked at 302,207 tons in 1858.46 Phytophthora infestans probably reached Ireland in a guano shipment.47 Guano, rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, is effective on many crops.48 In 1854, the Farmer’s Magazine compared it to the “elixir of life,” producing “perpetual motion.”49 The chemist John Nesbit claimed that one ton of ordinary Peruvian guano equaled 33.5 tons of farmyard dung in terms of nitrogen percentage.50 Even fanatical manure recyclers like Mechi supplemented fertilizer inputs with guano.51 Guano helped shift farming away from traditional legumes and fodder and powered Germany’s sugar-beet industry.52 Guano was mined by debt peons, transported in appalling conditions from places as far afield as China and Easter Island.53 Workers were whipped, drugged, and driven to suicide by hurling themselves off cliffs.54 As laborers were worked to death, guano became exhausted. Britain’s first experience of guano depletion came on Ichaboe Island off Africa’s southwest coast, where modest quantities of feathery penguin guano were rapidly devoured in the early 1840s.55 From 1840 to 1879, 12.7 million metric tons of guano left Peru’s islands. This was unsustainable: guano on the Chincha islands was running out in the 1860s.56 In 1908, the mathematician Peter Dondlinger lamented that most guano beds were “completely exhausted.”57 Along today’s Chilean coastline, the desiccation of nitrogenous spindrift and the evaporation of groundwater in the arid Atacama Desert had, over centuries, produced mineral accumulations of caliche, a sedimentary rock from which sodium nitrate is extracted.58 These deposits were tapped in the mid-1860s by José Santos Ossa and Francisco Puelma.59 In 1883, following the War of the Pacific with Bolivia and Peru, Chile gained sole possession of the nitrate territories, securing a global monopoly over supplies.60 These

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Figure 8.1. Blasting test hole in caliche to unveil nitrate of soda, Chile. From Thomas Keitt, The Chemistry of Farm Practice (New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 1917).

reserves were exploited by Chileans and overseas entrepreneurs, including Thomas North, the Yorkshire “Nitrate King,” who established the Liverpool Nitrate Company in 1883 after acquiring nitrate certificates in Lima, by which time nearly half the nitrate mines were British owned.61 Dynamite exposed veins of nitrate (see fig. 8.1), which was refined, bagged, and shipped to Europe.62 Nitrates, produced in company-controlled factory enclaves with poor labor conditions, powered the late nineteenth-century Chilean economy.63 In 1890, 927,000 tons of sodium nitrate was exported, of which over two-thirds went to Britain, whose capital controlled 70 percent of the industry.64 German imports rose considerably thereafter, with the country accounting for 30 percent of all exports by 1909.65 Chilean nitrate remained the world’s dominant inorganic source of nitrogen until the mid-1920s, by which time the pioneer of population dynamics, Alfred Lotka, was predicting its “impending exhaustion.”66 These industries definitively contributed to rising European yields in the later nineteenth century.67 But deposits were finite. In 1900, William Crookes argued that the wheat-eating “Caucasian race” would “cease to be

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foremost in the world” without a reliable technique for synthetically fixing superabundant but unreactive atmospheric nitrogen.68 Two early solutions— the cyanamide process (1901) and the electric arc process (1902)— were very energy intensive. The breakthrough— Fritz Haber’s synthetic nitrogenfixation technique— made numerous nitrate fertilizers abundantly available.69 British fertilizer consumption rose modestly from 647,000 tons in 1886–93 to 1.281 million tons in 1911– 13.70 After 1918, however, nitrogen became “a truly strategic element” in Britain’s rather perfunctory flirtation with self-sufficiency. ICI, founded in 1926, built plants at Mossend (1939), Dowlais (1940), Heysham (1942), and Prudhoe (1943).71 Fertilizer use increased by around one-third between 1913 and 1939, then trebled between 1939 and 1954, with domestic production stimulated by war.72 Humans had temporarily but spectacularly escaped the limits of the natural nitrogen cycle and created their own technologically expanded system (see fig. 8.2): agriculture was catapulted into “the fertilizer epoch.”73 Lotka said that this development “represents nothing less than the ushering in of a new ethnological era in the history of the human race, a new cosmic epoch.”74 The rise of superphosphates, basic slag, guano, nitrates, and synthetics produced a corresponding decline of formerly innovative techniques like rotation and root crops. Farmers could now grow “wheat after wheat” with-

Figure 8.2. The anthropogenic nitrogen cycle, including synthetic nitrates, guano, and industrial by-products. This clearly can no longer be called a “natural” cycle. From Alfred Lotka, Elements of Physical Biology (Baltimore: Williams & Watkins, 1925).

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out intermediary legume stages.75 Thus emerged the “NPK mentality,” an approach conceptualizing soil fertility in terms of quantifiable chemical inputs of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Donald Hopkins, a nuanced exponent of this theory, thought such inputs necessary to correct the “nitrogen spiral,” in which “the nitrogen budget constantly fail[s] to balance itself, loop after loop.”76 The “magical touch of nitrogen,” argued the biologist Sir Frederick Keeble, was necessary to coax the English landscape out of its “winter lethargy.”77 Commercial fertilizers, like internal combustion engines, closed off alternative technological futures. Using human excrement as manure became largely unthinkable in Britain. Liebig assailed the importation of “bone earth” to replace phosphates lost through water-borne waste-removal systems, which viewed the planet as a large sink into which waste simply disappeared.78 Critiques of Western “robber agriculture” complemented those of Western dietary habits and intestinal torpor.79 Agricultural chemists calculated the value of waste, and isolated individuals attempted to prove its profitability.80 During winter 1881–82, the doctor George Poore bought a house in Andover and utilized earth closets to collect the excrement of one hundred people, which nourished crops that were sold in London.81 Some towns experimented with these systems. In Rochdale, houses were provided with external pan closets, with fecal material collected and distributed to manure works.82 The earth closet was a homeostatic engine of instantaneous nutrient looping. “The same elements may be used over and over again ad infinitum,” exaggerated the American engineer George Waring, articulating a potent, if marginalized, strain of physiocratic antimechanistic anti-Malthusianism— a kind of thermodynamics without entropy— most forcefully expressed by French thinkers like Leroux.83 As water-borne waste-removal systems gained momentum, however, recovering human waste became technologically challenging and phenomenologically repulsive. Hopkins complained about the wastefulness of the odorless “universal sewage pipeline.”84 Some places (Southwark, Maidenhead, Leatherhead, and Hammersmith) sold pulverized town waste to farmers in the immediate postwar years: Southwark’s pulped refuse fertilized Kent’s hop gardens.85 Such projects were inconsequential. In 1955, the Dumfries county engineer J. C. Wylie, echoing Liebig, observed that Britain wasted around 200,000 tons of nitrogen annually by dumping sewage into rivers and the sea while adding approximately the same quantity in chemical fertilizers.86 By this date, the localized nitrogen and phosphorus cycles of the medieval period had been blown apart, distended, and linearized. Britain had escaped the limits of the organic agrarian economy and entered the thrilling, precar-

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ious world of mineralized agriculture.87 The rate of anthropogenic nitrogen creation rose more than tenfold between 1860 and 2000, to around 165 teragrams. Nitrogen was cascading, accumulating in aquatic and atmospheric reservoirs. Along with nitrogen emissions from power plants and cars, this has caused eutrophication, acidification of waterways, and the accumulation of tropospheric ozone and greenhouse gases.88

FRONTIERS, MACHINES, MONOCULTURES The exploitation of highly fertile, thinly populated commodity frontiers gave Britain the luxury of an “environmental overdraft,” which many places— for example, China— lacked.89 This made possible the organic outsourcing underpinning British industrial development, creating what Baden-Powell called “reliable and inexhaustible supplies” of “raw materials and foodstuffs” necessary for a shift to manufacturing.90 In 1899, the agricultural statistician R. F. Crawford estimated Britain’s “ghost acreage” for foodstuffs at 23 million, a figure only referring to wheat, beef, mutton, milk, and animal feedstuffs.91 Britain, by comparison, possessed 31.246 million acres of farmed land and 13.67 million acres of rough grazings in 1922.92 These neo-European agrarian hinterlands were, as far as humans were concerned, among the least densely populated areas on earth.93 Argentina’s population density was 8.6 persons per square mile in 1928: Canada’s was 2.6 and Australia’s 2.1. By contrast, the figure for England and Wales was 671.94 These territories had, however, extremely high ratios of livestock to humans (see fig. 8.3). Along such frontiers, land exploitation could continue without the necessity of feeding large, contiguous industrial populations, but these spaces could also be the cause of significant geopolitical tensions.95 Levy expressed concerns that rising urban population might reduce exports and unbalance New Zealand’s economy.96 Frontier expansion scaled out across the earth’s surface. In Ireland and Scotland, the area under permanent grass rose by over 40 percent between 1870 and 1937.97 Further expansion moved “along lines of low spatial resistance” into fertile, sparsely populated regions with weak or nonexistent states across the New World and Australasia.98 Such developments had discernible effects at the level of earth systems. Between around 1835 and 1885, the largest global source of carbon dioxide emissions came from land clearance in the United States, with levels reaching over 1.2 billion tons of CO2 annually around 1880.99 New World farmers were not, however, entirely oblivious to these ecological effects.100 One German-born prairie farmer admitted: “I know perfectly well that continuous wheat-farming exhausts the soil.”101 In

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Figure 8.3. Ratio of livestock to humans per country. Note preponderance of high ratios in Anglo-world territories (New Zealand, Australia, Argentina). From Georg Borgstrom, Hungry Planet: The Modern World at the Edge of Famine (New York: Collier, 1967).

Vulcan, Alberta, economic circumstance and improved wheat strains made monoculture more profitable, despite many farmers preferring mixed farming.102 In southwestern Saskatchewan, grains displaced indigenous plants as topsoil disappeared, while thriving gopher communities were annihilated in industrial quantities. Cereal farming caused permanent transformation to Canadian grasslands, which needed “vigilant protection to survive.”103 Argentina’s cultivated land expanded by around 18,000 percent during the nineteenth century, and, by 1900, little indigenous savanna ecology remained.104 “Conditions like these,” concluded Borgstrom in 1967, “justify speaking about South America as one large shadow colony of the West.”105 The Antipodean commodity frontier was correspondingly reconfigured. In 1883, a New Zealand dairy farming treatise announced: “The markets of the world are open to [New Zealand]. Steam and electricity annihilate time and distance.”106 The New Zealand economy was increasingly oriented toward feeding an island over eleven thousand miles distant.107 Grasslands rapidly replaced forests, and pasture grasses were imported, creating anthromic “artificial pasture types.”108 Improvement involved cutting and burning the North Island bush in the 1890s and the first decade of the twentieth

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Figure 8.4. Bush burn, New Zealand. From E. Levy, Grasslands of New Zealand, 3rd ed. (Wellington: A. R. Shearer, 1970).

century and the destruction of around 85 percent of New Zealand’s original wetlands (see fig. 8.4).109 Charles Dilke presented this process as a benign version of ecological imperialism that naturalized the advance of colonialism itself.110 Stapledon described the “vast changes wrought in habitat relations” in Australasia, with “swards almost wholly British in character,” which made British settlement seem, quite literally, “natural.”111 This accelerated ecological transformation took “little more than one full lifetime.”112 In 1970, the botanist Bruce Levy was still speaking of New Zealand’s “boundless duty to produce food, and to produce it as cheaply as we can, to aid the great industrial forces of the world to compete successfully in the trade of the world.” He rhapsodized about “clover nitrogen factories” converting atmospheric nitrogen into fat livestock.113 Specific soil deficiencies stimulated guano and phosphate imports and bonemill construction.114 Airborne phosphate delivery drove cultivation into the interior of Australia and New Zealand’s South Island, and, by the mid-1980s, the two countries were applying millions of tons of agrochemicals annually.115 Levy recalled giddily: “I thrilled at the aerial topdressing trials in 1949 when I felt the phosphate raining on me from the skies.”116

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These extensive frontier monocultures, their indigenous populations controlled and relocated, were controlled ecosystems with homogenized plant communities, reduced biodiversity, and artificially maintained adaptedness.117 Biomass was concentrated in small numbers of genetically similar organisms farmed in enormous quantities for international sale.118 Agrarian anthromes reversed the orthodox organic principle of succession since climax communities produce very little food per unit area.119 Simplified ecosystems lose their capacity to self-regulate and become more vulnerable to viral and fungal infections and have higher densities of insect pests: the Ug99 rust, first discovered in Uganda in 1998, is deadlier to wheat than any previous pathogen.120 Hence, monocultures became saturated with an ever-expanding range of pesticides, from gammexane (benzene hexachloride), copper-based fungicides, nicotine, and vitriol in the nineteenth century, to arsenic, sodium chlorate, and cyanide in the early twentieth, to the portfolio of mid-twentieth-century synthetic toxins.121 In the 1950s, the conservationist Derek Ratcliffe studied egg collections reaching back into the 1930s and pinpointed 1947, the year after DDT’s introduction, as the moment eggshell thinning began.122 Despite reports of fatal poisonings from the 1940s, regulation was sporadic before the 1970s, although the Agriculture (Poisonous Substances) Act of 1952 empowered authorities to provide protective clothing and masks for those producing and manipulating such chemicals.123 These various chemicals entered the food chain, another form of risky metabolic exposure.124 One- or two-staple colonies were vulnerable to sudden fluctuations of world prices or global economic downturns. Such farming systems, then, offered great riches but compound vulnerabilities: they embedded fundamental, long-term ecological and economic instabilities into the global food system. Planetary monocultures required what the economist Walter Hamilton called the “gradual development of the machine-technique,” which generated a global surplus that produced “higher competitive standards of living.” This was inseparable from Britain’s position as an industrial power producing “only a very small part of its food supply.”125 It was impossible to know where comparative advantage stopped and “machine technique” started, but machine technique produced an ecological asymmetry between Britain and what Jevons rather disingenuously called “our willing tributaries.”126 Agrotechnical innovation intensified in the nineteenth century— in Britain and across its expanding commodity frontiers— as farm implements were metallized and mechanized.127 Cast-iron ploughs were patented in 1785 and were common in East Anglia by the 1820s.128 The steel plough was first produced from saw-blade steel by John Lane in 1833. The Great Exhibition

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Figure 8.5. Threshing machine, ca. 1845. From J. J. Mechi, A Series of Letters on Agricultural Improvement; With an Appendix (London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1845).

overflowed with agricultural implements. The first harvester was patented in 1858 by C. W. and W. W. Marsh.129 The threshing machine (hand, horse, water, or steam powered) was invented in 1732, and many varieties followed (see fig. 8.5).130 Steam threshers were functional by the 1870s and reaperbinders the following decade.131 By 1880, over 16,000 steam engines were being used in British agriculture.132 Mineralization accelerated after 1914. Astor and Rowntree applauded the introduction of the internal combustion engine into British agriculture, noting the existence of 65,725 oil and petroleum engines on English and Welsh farms by 1931.133 Tractor numbers in England and Wales rose from 55,000 in 1939 to 364,000 in 1956.134 Mechanization permeated the agricultural system, from ploughing and fertilizer distribution to harvesting, pumping, and crop drying. Industrialized agriculture first flourished, however, in North American wheat-growing zones, where the scale of wheat cultivation made mechanization financially rewarding.135 Mechanized farming and food processing powered the Midwest’s agroindustrial takeoff. Without mechanization, the expansion of prairie agriculture would have been far slower and costlier.136 The mechanical agency of reapers, tractors, and threshers was most potent in such flat, unforested spaces. There were 105,000 tractors on Canadian

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farms by 1931, with designs becoming increasingly nimble, with internal combustion engines and power-takeoff shafts.137 Machine technique and fossil fuels dissolved firm boundaries between agriculture and industry. Industrial materials (creosote, asphalt, corrugated iron, concrete) changed the structure, properties, and appearance of farm buildings.138 In 1887, François Bernard urged that the land be treated as “an industrial establishment.”139 Fields and factories were the same: both required chemical inputs to produce standardized products.140 By the 1930s, this vision was becoming reality in the United States, Denmark, and Russia, and it was emergent in Britain. “We have become like Denmark,” claimed Colin Clark in The Spectator, “and most of our farms are now ‘factories’ in which . . . imported raw material is converted into milk, eggs, bacon and beef.”141 Such factories created order (agroindustrial products) and disorder (waste): whey oozed from cheese factories into local drain networks, and sugar-beet plants leached pulp, washings, and diffusion battery effluent into streams.142 Across the New World, local organic energy inputs were exchanged for external mineral inputs.143 Distant markets became more feasible and profitable as freight rates fell. Von Thünen’s urban-agricultural spatial model, with urban zones encompassed by market gardens and more distant woodlands for fuel and building materials, became more complicated, as did any straightforwardly symbiotic relationship between cities and their particular hinterlands.144 Drawing food from across the planet involved “a much more extensive use of energy.”145 Coal powered the system by the later nineteenth century. Steamships brought nutriment to the mainland and returned manufactured goods and coal to Britain’s supply zones. Coal, Jevons stated, was “the alpha and omega of our trade”: it powered British manufacturing and, along with the products of manufacture, balanced trade.146 This changed, however, during the twentieth century: Britain was the world’s largest petroleum importer by the 1930s.147 The speed and cost effectiveness of steamand later petroleum-driven transport connected formerly isolated states and facilitated the disaggregation and specialization of agrarian landscapes. There was a corresponding decline in the energy return from agriculture: in 1826, 12.1 calories of food were obtained per calorie used for its production, a figure tumbling to 2.1 in 1981.148 Steam-powered transportation technologies powered the global food system. Railways made commodity circulation more predictable, accelerated material appropriation, and made food cheaper in North America, Argentina, India, and Britain, where they firmly connected previously tenuously linked areas.149 Manchester began drawing more food from Scotland, Lincolnshire,

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and the northernmost parts of England.150 Railroad building was a material precondition of the westward expansion of the North American wheat and meat frontiers. Refrigerated railcars created cold chains providing chilled meat and fresh liquid milk to vast urban markets. Dalhousie argued that “great tracts” of India were so “teeming with produce” that disposing of it was difficult.151 Railways opened up Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Orissa for food production.152 Steam was equally important for transoceanic connections. Although faster and more effective sailing ships accelerated transcontinental transportation, the steamship increased reliability and cheapness, particularly following key technological innovations: the screw propeller (1827), the triple expansion engine (first used for Atlantic liners in 1888), and the steam turbine (1894).153 Engine efficiency more than doubled between 1855 and 1890, reducing the amount of coal that ships carried, and liberating cargo space.154 Steamships escaped eotechnic unpredictability. Wind patterns became increasingly irrelevant: the North Atlantic’s clockwise winds ceased to affect transit times greatly.155 In 1870, the carrying power of steam in the British fleet was two-thirds that of sail, but, by 1890, it had outstripped sail fivefold.156 There were two basic types of steamer: liners (which undertook regular, scheduled voyages between two ports) and tramps (which sailed between ports as commissioned). In 1914, around half of all world tramp ships were British.157 By 1914, tramp steamers accounted for 60 percent of British tonnage, and the system was more Eurocentric than today’s globalized shipping economy.158 Tramps were the world economy’s sluggish, dependable lifeblood. Ships were increasingly tailored to carry particular cargoes, particularly following the development of atmospheric control. Seventy percent of Palestinian oranges were shipped to Britain in 1949.159 Some food has moved over significant distances for millennia. Throughout history, however, most urban communities have remained closely interconnected with their hinterlands, something continuing well past the nineteenth century. Paris still received most of its food from its contiguous Paris basin in the late nineteenth century and remains quite closely linked to its agrarian environs today.160 As its food prices became increasingly unrelated to distance from markets, London followed a different path, one toward a much larger global footprint. By the early 1830s, the average distance traversed by London’s imported food was 1,820 miles, a figure reaching 5,880 by 1909– 13.161 Through such processes, urban footprints increased significantly. By the early twenty-first century, the food system was responsible for one-third of British road freight traffic, and supermarketization was rapidly increasing the distance families drove to do their shopping.162

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The key raw materials of the British diet— particularly sugar and wheat— are among the easiest foodstuffs to transport over long distances. They are durable, standardizable, and easily stored and bagged and can be piped. Foodstuffs and transportation systems became mutually reinforcing. As the energy efficiency of steam engines, turbines, diesel engines, and petroleum engines increased, so did the distances traversed by food. In The Distribution Age (1927), Borsodi argued that, although “the ton-mile cost of transporting freight” was reduced, “the average miles per ton shipped” had increased, completely eradicating any saving.163 The Jevons paradox haunted the world food system.

AGRARIAN CRISIS For much of the nineteenth century, Malthusianism was swamped by a tsunami of carboniferous proto-Boserupian cornucopianism and ingenuous chemical utopianism. “Hunger,” argued Thomas Hodgskin in Popular Political Economy (1827), “stimulate[s] the ingenuity of man.”164 In 1832, Thomas Edmonds predicted a future where bread would come from sawdust, sugar from rags, and “aerial terraces” sustained by decomposing animal matter would precipitate escape from the constraints of land area.165 Writing on the topic of “the future of food” in 1888, John Cross argued that free trade and railways meant that “an ever-growing surplus of food must come to us.”166 There was widespread agreement that steam power, free trade, and scientific agriculture could postpone Malthusianism fears indefinitely. Kropotkin and Atwater ridiculed the concept of agricultural limits.167 Mill, more sanguine and nuanced, argued that “the limited quantity of land, and limited productiveness of it,” presented a boundary that was neither wall nor infinite horizon but a “highly elastic and extensible band” that would exert pressure as finitude approached. Although improvement slowed the law of diminishing returns, assuming such finitude was “at an indefinite distance” was, he warned, “the most serious [error] to be found in the whole field of political economy.” This logic applied even “to those who are willing to draw their food from any accessible quarter that can afford it cheapest.”168 In 1898, William Crookes addressed impending finitude in a presidential address to the British Association at Bristol, suggesting that the largeplanet philosophy was precipitating a nitrogen crisis.169 People had become so “accustomed” to an endless stream of wheat, he suggested, that “the vast plains of other wheat-growing countries” were imagined as “inexhaustible granaries.”170 It was simply assumed that millions of acres could be added annually to the global wheat-growing area. His words created a “cosmic

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scare” and stimulated immense debate on the question of the limits to the world food supply.171 Several American writers also described the diminishing returns on land as wheat production gravitated toward increasingly arid, elevated, or cold regions. Crookes incorporated the writings of the Kansas farmer C. Wood Davis into the published version of The Wheat Problem.172 The scientist Silvanus Thompson thought that the world’s available wheat area could not support more than 666 million people. Three-quarters of Chilean nitrate output, he noted, was “devoted to manuring the wheat-fields,” an unsustainable quantity.173 Crookes concluded portentously that food supply would become “a very perplexing problem” within a generation unless a chemical solution was discovered.174 In the early twentieth century, Hobson and Keynes, among others, echoed Crookes’s concerns and pushed them in more Malthusian directions. As Alison Bashford shows, such anti-largeplanet theories would inform later ideas of “spaceship earth” and the closed world.175 Keynes speculated that nineteenth-century material progress might be an evanescent escape from Malthusian normality.176 Crookes’s somber predictions, however, soon appeared naive. “We will laugh at the panic of Sir William Crookes,” gloated the cornucopian economic geographer J. Russell Smith in 1919.177 Productive wheat cultivation surged across Canada and Siberia. Canadian commentators attacked Crookes’s “superficial” geographic knowledge.178 Dry farming techniques, deep wells, pumps, and government hydrographic surveys pushed wheat production into semiarid areas like Kansas, Colorado, and Alberta.179 This expansion exploited new wheat varieties with particular photoperiodic or drought-resistant capacities. Lawes and Gilbert thought that Crookes underestimated soil fertility.180 Crookes himself hoped that chemistry could rescue agriculture. The critical technological fix and large-planet innovation par excellence emerged from Haber’s laboratory, although, in the short term, plant biology and agricultural engineering were at least equally significant.181 Smith’s World Food Resources (1919) was the definitive guidebook to this resurgent cornucopianism. The ocean, for example, teemed with “rays, menhaden, sharks, skates.”182 In The World in 2030 A.D., the Earl of Birkenhead claimed that totally industrialized agriculture might liberate humans from land constraints altogether, making Britain a “land of laboratories” and “self-supporting” cities capable of feeding any number of citizens.183 By the 1930s, cornucopians were framing a new version of the large-planet philosophy, one in which alternative feedstocks— yeast, cellulose, coal, air— would provide infinite food supplies for giant human populations, making global surface area irrelevant.184 Such optimism had material referents: untilled frontiers, new plant

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breeds, and laboratory reports. Beveridge, critiquing Keynes, argued that only small percentages of cultivable land in Canada, Australia, Russia, and South Africa were being utilized.185 In 1925, The Times called the global wheat harvest “a continuing festival,” always under way somewhere.186 The 1928 Canadian wheat harvest was the largest ever: wheat accumulated next to overflowing Saskatchewan elevators, and the rail network was overwhelmed.187 World wheat production increased by around 22 percent between 1910 and 1932, leading to an un-Crookesian overproduction crisis.188 The situation was compounded by the 1931– 32 financial crisis. World wheat prices collapsed, but consumption failed to rise: this inelasticity of wheat consumption was noted by numerous economists and produced “a world agricultural crisis of unprecedented gravity.”189 A 1931 Geneva Special Studies report described warehouses “glutted with surplus stocks of wheat, sugar, coffee, cotton and other commodities,” with some prices at forty-year lows.190 Western European wheat consumption declined as populations gravitated toward animal proteins: this was Bennett’s Law avant la lettre. The overproduction crisis continued throughout the 1930s, rippling out into the wider economy, affecting the growing and pricing of wheat, the relationship between these prices and prices of other commodities, purchasing power, credit, and “all other human activities.” De Hevesy thought that the wheat crisis “has shaken the very foundations of our economic order.”191 Economic crisis was compounded by ecological concerns. Soil erosion is as old as the continents themselves, but agriculture and frontier expansion accelerated the process, even during the Neolithic.192 Barbados was so deforested in the mid-seventeenth century that coal was imported from England for sugar boiling.193 Washington and Jefferson expressed concern about colonial agriculture’s damaging impact on soils.194 But expanding nineteenthand twentieth-century global commodity frontiers caused unprecedented anthropogenic soil erosion. The long-accumulated fertility of vast swathes of new land was quickly mined by steel ploughs and tractors.195 Soil lost its fertility, porosity, and cohesion and crumbled into gullies.196 In geologic terms, the effects were practically instantaneous. In 1850, Charles Lyell noted the rapid emergence of “modern ravines” in North America, which he linked directly to deforestation (see fig. 8.6).197 The soil’s water-retention capacity was reduced, leading to increased vulnerability to flooding and siltation, which impeded river navigation. Jacks and Whyte concluded their polemical 1939 account of world soil erosion by arguing that, across the New World, “profit and wealth have been most easily won by exploiting and exhausting the virgin soils.”198 The capitalist penetration of earth had direct and palpable effects. “Cheap imported food,” said Lymington, meant “ruined

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Figure 8.6. Ravine, Georgia, 1846. From Charles Lyell, Lyell’s Travels in the United States: Second Visit, 2 vols. (New York, Harper & Bros., 1849), vol. 2.

soil.”199 Britain was “a contented parasite” whose “steaks and chops” contained the mineral riches of denuded landscapes from Argentina to India. Or, perhaps, given the complexity of food chains, a metaparasite. Denmark, “herself a parasite on the New World” for animal feed, then shipped animal products for ultimate consumption in Britain.200 Such trophic relations placed commodity frontiers under intense ecological pressure. The archetypal example is the 1930s American Dust Bowl, caused by mechanized agriculture, the frequent absence of rotation, an exploitative attitude toward accumulated natural resources, expansive livestock and wheat farming, water depletion, heat, and drought.201 The Dust Bowl was concentrated in wheat-growing areas: Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas.202 One 1939 report claimed that 3 billion tons of solid

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material was washed from American fields and pastures annually, including 91,172,300 tons of phosphorus, potassium, nitrogen, calcium, and magnesium, much of which drained into the Gulf of Mexico, “stained with the substance from which our children build bone and muscle and blood.”203 The economist Frank Taussig noted that the old idea of soil’s indestructability and stability, which underpinned Ricardian rent theory, was geologically and thermodynamically implausible.204 Comparative advantage was historically mutable. “No wonder there is this new concept of man as a large-scale geological force,” concluded Osborne in Our Plundered Planet (1948).205 The Dust Bowl was a global event.206 In Canada, relentless soil mining exhausted the earth: drought hit the semiarid Palliser Triangle belt earlier in the century. Professional rainmakers appeared, duped, and fled, leaving Alberta littered with abandoned farms.207 The 1930s drought magnified the impact of world depression and was compounded by overzealous dry farming, which caused soil drifting and “dust storms of ‘black blizzards.’”208 In 1937, Evelyn Wrench, touring southern Saskatchewan and southeast Alberta, described “desolation on all sides.” On reaching Winnipeg, he was told that “Western Canada was facing a major disaster— a disaster which affects Canada as a whole.”209 The geographer George Kimble described the Canadian prairies’ condition as “lamentable” in 1939.210 In Soil and Civilization (1976), Edward Hyams claimed that about a million acres of topsoil had been removed from South America and “assimilated” into English flesh “or, by way of their sewers, thrown into the sea.”211 Australian soil erosion rates increased following the arrival of sheep, and, by the mid-twentieth century, erosion was “a widespread destructive force” with dust storms increasing in frequency and cricket matches interrupted.212 Between Napier and Gisborne, on New Zealand’s North Island, Herbert Guthrie-Smith described “a countryside scabbed with naked surfaces and scarred with weeping mud.”213 In South Africa, soil erosion— already a problem in the nineteenth century— grew significantly by the 1930s.214 Smuts considered erosion an urgent problem and called for public education on the subject.215 Erosion was blamed on uncertain climate and reckless development following the discovery of gold.216 It was also conceptualized in unabashedly racial terms, with native pastoralists blamed for overstocking, their cattle often unceremoniously culled while white farmers received generous assistance.217 Smuts expressed concerns about whites being driven out of the interior toward the coasts.218 Hall was perplexed by the African tendency to accumulate cattle without eating them: as in Ireland, nutrition reform, market relations, and monetization were mutually self-reinforcing.219 Peripatetic pastoralism and nomadic peregrinations were

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anathema: “This economic system cannot long survive contact with white races intent on developing natural resources.”220 Primitive accumulation was forcibly implanted in Africa. Conservation, agrarian reconfiguration, and imperial development would follow. A firm distinction between grazing and cultivated land was established.221 Soil erosion extended across Kenya, Rhodesia, Basutoland (Lesotho), and British East Africa. Jacks and Whyte thought it evident across “practically all tropical Africa under European administration” and blamed colonial mismanagement.222 Africa would, ultimately, be blamed for its own late twentieth-century famines.223 India and Russia also struggled with erosion.224 The only place spared was Europe itself: soil erosion was a precocious toxic export. Basic amelioration techniques included state subsidies and rehabilitation schemes. Australian growers received over ₤14 million in government relief in the 1930s.225 De Hevesy urged “birth control in wheat,” something evident in the Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933) and the deliberate reduction of America’s wheat crop.226 Macroeconomic solutions, explored at several international conferences, floundered. Improvement techniques mitigated the worst effects of erosion, desertification, and soil drifting through planting vegetation, terracing, afforestation, rotation, contour ploughing, and irrigation.227 The Canadian 1935 Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act provided up to $1 million annually to alleviate the effects of droughts and drifting.228 In Australia, Victoria passed soil conservation acts in 1940 and 1942.229 Legislation proliferated across the British Empire, from Ceylon to Kenya, Palestine to St. Helena.230 British colonial experts scrambled to produce a more comprehensive understanding of imperial ecologies.231 In Kenya, a touring cinema showed films demonstrating the effects of soil erosion.232 Formalized ecological knowledge and management also developed, aiming to produce what Worster called a “new, man-made equilibrium . . . an ‘anthropogenic’ climax.”233 The global Dust Bowl— with humans as “the supreme disturbing factor”— demonstrated how anthromes were supplanting biomes.234 Market volatility and ecological disorder made protection and selfsufficiency politically appealing. Britain’s century of unabashed economic liberalism ground to a halt, with subsidies for agriculture and the 1932 Wheat Act guaranteeing agricultural prices via deficiency payments. Critiques of industrialization and calls for agricultural redevelopment, or even zero growth/degrowth, became more commonplace.235 Stapledon admired Mussolini’s land-reclamation schemes.236 In 1939, Jacks and Whyte stridently argued that “economic nationalism” was “effecting a more equal redistribution of soil capital” and limiting “excessive exploitation of new lands.”237 Autarky did not automatically lose its appeal after 1945. The British Com-

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munist Party’s 1945 agriculture policy featured commitment to domestic production: cheap food, it was argued, was often produced at the expense of overseas “labour and soil.”238 In 1951, the farmer Philip Oyler urged the restoration of water and windmills and the grinding of “our own cereals on the spot.”239 Windmills, lamented William Beach Thomas, had been obliterated by “the shapeless monsters of Liverpool.”240 British orthodoxy, however, remained broadly liberal. Astor and Rowntree criticized agricultural protectionism and remained wedded to ideas of comparative advantage.241 By the early twenty-first century, soil erosion was proceeding at a rate nearly thirty times faster than deep-time erosion rates.242 This sense of accelerated degradation had, however, long generated unease about nature, life, humanity, and progress.

PIGS, CHICKENS, EGGS Intensive livestock production is not a twentieth-century invention, as confined veal-calf rearing and urban dairying demonstrate. In 1855, De Lavergne foresaw a time when English cattle would “be shut up in melancholy cloisters, which they will only leave for the slaughter-house.”243 Since 1900, however, confined feeding (from feedlot cattle to broiler chickens) has become the most intensified and large-scale form of global livestock production.244 Domesticated animal life, in the developed world at least, unfolds within thoroughly artificialized environments. The ecological consequences include the accumulation of immense quantities of waste and crowded, humid environments ideal for insect, rodent, and microbe proliferation.245 In 1938, Astor and Rowntree noted that agriculture was becoming a “processing industry” with livestock the biological medium through which imported feed became human food.246 During the twentieth century, the global meat industry shifted toward monogastric pigs and chickens, which have higher feed-conversion rates.247 While early twentieth-century Danish pigs lived in purpose-built shelters, British pigs were farrowed in huts, dog kennels, malthouses, and “old railway waggons.”248 After 1918, however, inspired by the Danish model, totally enclosed, factory farming became popular, facilitated by the 1933 Pig and Bacon Marketing Scheme. While humanitarian attitudes were not disappearing entirely, they became increasingly secondary to capitalist imperatives of efficiency.249 By the 1970s, “the totally-enclosed piggery where the environment was under complete control” was common, with rigorous management of insulation, ventilation, and lighting.250 An example was the “Bacon Bin,” a Styrofoam-insulated cylinder, warmed by heat lamps,

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into which food was mechanically streamed from a hopper via a rotating overhead auger, feeding over four hundred pigs in 210 seconds.251 Such centralized control, also evident in preset, punch-card, or photoelectric systems for dairy cattle, demonstrates how totally managed livestock feeding has become.252 Sows were squeezed into cramped cubicles or farrowing crates: porcine being unfolded in a world of cement, asbestos, plastic, foam insulation, and corrugated steel.253 The fowl population in England and Wales was 30.75 million in 1924: fifty years later, British chicken production reached 377 million.254 These birds were subject to tremendous genetic manipulation. In 1891, Edward Brown described the “wonderful plasticity” of the British chicken, which could be “moulded in a wonderful way to the needs of man.”255 Popular breeds included Sussex Dorkings, Buff, Black and White Orpingtons, Plymouth Rocks, and Wyandottes.256 Hybridization dominated the chicken industry, unlike, say, dairy farming, where true line breeding remained commoner.257 Galline life underwent an even more intense telescoping than bovine life. In the early twentieth century, fattening began at around four months and usually lasted for three weeks, beginning with trough feeding and terminating with cramming, with creamlike food pumped through a nozzle into the bird’s gullet. “Great care must be taken not to choke the bird,” concluded Leighton and Douglas, before adding unconvincingly that the birds eventually appeared “to welcome the appearance of the crammer at feeding time.”258 This acceleration of chicken life was produced within a milieu of confinement, thermostatically regulated incubators, mechanical feeding apparatus (see fig. 8.7), brooders, lights simulating near-permanent daylight, and the administration of vitamin D.259 Chicks were nurtured in various rearing appliances, while excess males could be destroyed “by gassing with the exhaust gas of a petrol engine,” that is, by linking the pipe to a “lethal chamber” with flexible tubing.260 In the 1950s, industry leaders explicitly called for the creation of cheap chicken.261 By 1939, chickens’ nutrient requirements were known more precisely than were those of any other species, resulting in the use of highprotein corn, cottonseed, and soybean feed by the 1950s.262 Antibiotics were commonly added to feed by the early 1960s.263 In 1951, British broiler chickens, younger and smaller than traditional “roasters,” reached 4 pounds after 12 weeks, a feed conversion rate of 4:1. In 1965, they reached 3.5 pounds in 9 weeks, a rate of 2.3:1, and chicken was cheaper per pound than any other meat in Britain.264 British chicken houses contained fifteen thousand or more birds by 1960, with production channeled through large packing

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Figure 8.7. Encapsulated chickens fed through mechanized tubing system. From Leonard Robinson, Modern Poultry Husbandry (London: Crosby Lockwood, 1961).

stations like J. B. Eastwood’s “chicken cities” or the Buxted Chicken Company’s Aldershot poultry factory.265 By 1964, this factory produced 500,000 oven-ready chickens weekly: they were unloaded, placed on an overhead conveyor, stunned, bled, plucked, eviscerated, and frozen.266 Smaller-scale slaughtering techniques included killing cones (see fig. 8.8). Freezing technology was essential to preclude virulent postevisceration bacteriological risks, notably salmonellosis.267 Frozen chickens became particularly popular in Britain. Chicken was promoted as a cheap, easy-to-cook form of meat (see fig. 8.9). Ninety percent of British chicken production was controlled by a thousand growers and a few dozen processors in 1963.268 The rapid emergence of the modern broiler chicken makes it a geologically significant animal.269 The changes in broiler morphotypes have been extraordinarily rapid and the accumulation of carcass waste unprecedented: such “mono-specific vast bird biomass” is probably unprecedented. Should their bones mummify in anaerobic landfills, their volume and distinctive morphology may make them “a key species indicator of the proposed Anthropocene epoch.”270 It was also a “neoliberal bird,” appearing in supermarkets “sheathed in sheer polythene packs, wearing labels that evoke the freshness of country life in spring.”271 The Buxted Chicken Company was founded by Antony Fisher, an ex-RAF pilot and the Hayekian creator of the Institute of Economic Affairs,

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Figure 8.8. Bleeding chickens. From Leonard Robinson, Modern Poultry Husbandry (London: Crosby Lockwood, 1961).

a neoliberal think tank that promoted free market economics and heavily influenced Margaret Thatcher.272 Bernard Matthews’s Norfolk turkey empire commanded a million birds by the late 1960s.273 In the early twentieth century, Britain imported more eggs than the rest of the world combined: over 215 million dozen in 1913, half of them from Russia.274 Thereafter, a significant domestic egg industry developed, with the Rhode Island Red becoming “the supreme commercial breed.”275 The battery system was pioneered in Britain by Winward, a Lancashire farmer, around 1925.276 Britain’s most densely populated poultry zone was the Fylde, near Preston.277 Cellular enclosure increased environmental control. Water flowed through continuous troughs, and some batteries included automatic water feeders.278 Britain’s new electricity grid powered heating and food mixers.279 Electric lighting (over ten lux) activated hens’ pituitary glands, stimulating hormones and egg production: more hens laid two eggs daily, and double-yolked eggs increased in number.280 Various contraptions, including

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Figure 8.9. Sainsbury’s chicken advertisement, ca. 1960. Reproduced with kind permission of the Sainsbury Archive, Museum of London Docklands.

tarred paper, roller belts, and electrically propelled ploughs, prevented excess accumulation of droppings.281 The National Mark Scheme (1928) established statutory grading standards and a network of packing stations from Redruth to Penrith through which producers were obliged to sell their eggs.282 The Cheltenham station, for example, served a thirty-mile radius and collected eggs via motor vans, which, following transportation by power conveyor, were tested and

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graded.283 The great shift to battery farming followed. In the 1930s, 98 percent of eggs came from free-range or semi-intensive systems. In 1977, 93 percent of egg-producing chickens were located in battery cages.284 Egg output per hen doubled between 1960 and 1980.285 The chicken’s reproductive system was now diverted to serve human ends. This was “an entirely new kind of animal food-culture.”286 Egg laying, once episodic, became “everlasting.”287 Wild fowls produce around twelve eggs annually. Domesticated fowls lay up to three hundred, the calcium demands of which can cause crippling osteoporosis, which, along with “cage layer fatigue” and fatty degeneration of the liver, make the battery hen’s life painful and monotonous, even if divested of cold, hunger, darkness, and the predation of foxes.288 Boredom drove hens to explore the boundaries of their heavily circumscribed agency, smashing pellets, flicking water, and plucking feathers. Egg production was relentlessly monitored and the culling of unproductive hens ruthless.289 Battery farmers exercised the right of death and the power over lives weakened, foreshortened, and oriented toward capitalist accumulation.290 The battery farmer H. E. Swepstone suggested 180 eggs as the threshold below which hens should be discarded.291 Mechanized systems left chickens vulnerable to the normal accidents of a technologically complex world. Seventy thousand battery hens suffocated when a ventilating system failed in one plant in August 1987, while a further twenty-four thousand were asphyxiated or roasted alive in a 1986 fire.292 The perhaps unconscious ideological work performed by children’s fiction creates a lingering, distorted, and woefully sentimentalized imaginary relationship to livestock’s real conditions of existence.293 The scale and mechanization of such farming and its almost total removal from social consciousness deindividuate livestock and make affective bonds with them harder to sustain.294 In 1930, the Pig Council grumbled that excessive breed diversity was thwarting standardization and urged either improvement of all breeds or focus on efficient ones.295 Despite the opposition of numerous breeders, the general trend, sustained by technologies from fencing to artificial insemination, has been toward genetic concentration.296 By the 1990s, two breeds— the Large White and the Landrace— accounted for 90 percent of all British pigs.297 Chicken industry consolidation reduced commercial breeds’ genetic variety. Such breeds meshed better with their newer niches: older breeds, better equipped to live outside, sank into oblivion.298 To improve an animal, noted Hammond, one modified its niche by “plac[ing] it in an environment which allows full expression of the character in question,” before selecting and breeding to enhance that character.299 Intense artificial selection, particularly for individual traits, can affect animals’ behavior, developmental characteristics, and constitution: such

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animals might develop serious circulatory and musculoskeletal conditions.300 The diversity of grain-fed cattle’s gut microbiome, evolutionarily designed to ferment cellulose, has been reduced, with “microbiota ecosystem engineering” posited as a solution.301 Confinement, with its concomitant spatial constriction, monotony, and olfactory overload, can create fear, aggression, and stress.302 Not all agreed, however: “Never having known any different environment they cannot miss something they never had.”303 Domesticated animal zoomass now dwarfs that of wild animals. In 2000, the earth supported around 4.3 billion large domestic animals, including 1.65 billion cattle and water buffaloes and 900 million pigs, amounting to around 620 million tons of live zoomass, ten times that of wild terrestrial animals.304 As Stephen Meyer notes, nonhuman life in the Anthropocene will largely consist of “a peculiarly homogenized assemblage of organisms” selected for compatibility with humans and their capitalist system.305 Cropland expansion is a major driver of extinction.306 The process of human-driven extinction, palpable from the early Holocene, has entered a phase of intense acceleration, evident in the decline and extinction of many livestock breeds whose proclivities and capacities were less well suited to artificialized milieus, despite the trepidation many British breeders felt about standardization and artificial insemination.307 Encapsulation and extinction are two dimensions of the same process. Darwin noted the “process of extermination amongst our domestic cattle,” observing how ancient black Yorkshire cattle were “displaced by the long-horns,” which were then replaced by shorthorns.308 The Large White Ulster pig, created to produce bacon for the British market, was extinct by the 1960s.309 Now-extinct British cattle breeds include the Alderney, Blue Albion, Glamorgan, Irish Dun, and Sheeted Somerset. By 2001, the most endangered cattle breed in Britain was the Vaynol, with preserved semen from only eight bulls, while the Kerry was reduced to a breeding population of 350 cows.310 The Rare Breeds Survival Trust, founded in 1974, created a semen bank and stockpiled frozen embryos, aiming to preserve breeds whose traits were less apposite for intensive agriculture.311 The calculated maintenance of domesticated breeds that have outlived their economic viability is another example of the late twentieth-century drift to biological control.

BACKLASH The argument that meat eating is natural has long served to placate anxieties about planetary meatification. Brillat-Savarin, the ebullient omnivore, reassured his readers that humans possess “canine teeth for tearing flesh.”312

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A common claim was that human intestines and stomachs were designed for mixed flesh-and-vegetable diets.313 Such physiological knowledge was, by the later nineteenth century, combined with anthropology and evolutionary biology to create a narrative, anchored in deep time, of homo sapiens as a fundamentally meat-eating species. This discourse circulated from anthropological treatises into meat industry language. “Meat,” announced one meat industry textbook, “has formed part of the food of man from time immemorial.”314 Thus emerged the gendered cliché of “man the hunter”: “Evolving Man attained his full manhood, his status of homo sapiens, as a hunter.”315 Such views further cemented gendered dietary and culinary practices. Constructing a counternarrative involved reinterpreting history, evolution, and biology. A common argument appealed to homo sapiens’s fundamentally omnivorous nature. Alexander Monro argued that human teeth and intestines had more in common with herbivorous than with carnivorous animals.316 “There can be no doubt,” concluded Russell, that “the physical nature of man is not constructed for carnivorous habits.”317 Lappé said something similar.318 The emergent paleoanthropological record provided ample ammunition for those arguing that early humans were frugivorous or nut eating.319 Moreover, specifically human qualities of intellect and will allowed the construction of the argument that humans were physiological omnivores with the capacity to choose to avoid meat rationally. True evolution was oriented toward a meatless future: “In his highest development man is not a hunter, but a gardener.”320 Meat advocates countered by urging that meat eating was healthy as well as natural, providing all essential amino acids: “Generally speaking, animal proteins are better than vegetable proteins.”321 This view, again, circulated between physiological and industry discourse.322 Studies of vigorous Arctic populations subsisting largely on whales, walruses, and fish supported this position.323 Counterexamples, again, were easily found. Russell thought that the Japanese, who lived on rice, beans, fish, water, and tea, had “probably the highest degree of national activity in the modern world.”324 The remarkable longevity of frugal abstainers gained almost mythic status, particularly Old Tom Parr and his implausible 152-year-life span.325 Some argued that meat was actively detrimental to health. Kellogg thought that meat’s toxins could generate autointoxication and sometimes careered toward outright nitrophobia: he argued that nitrogen was found in explosives and snake venom.326 The dietary crusader Otto Carque thought that meat teemed with “effete and poisonous matter” like urea and creatine.327 Others causally

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connected meat and specific diseases, including cancer, gout, high blood pressure, appendicitis, tooth decay, and insanity.328 The long-established, and entirely specious idea that meat caused violence and sexual excess thrived.329 The naturalist William Smellie thought that animal food made men more “choleric, fierce and cruel” than those eating vegetables.330 Carnivores were fierce and cruel, while frugivores were “tranquil” and “joyous.”331 Napoleon’s excesses were often blamed on his alleged high meat consumption, a peculiar inversion of Anglo-French meat rivalry. Shelley thought that the French Revolution would have been gentler with a Pythagorean emperor, while Arnold Lorand found the idea of Napoleon living on “a purely vegetable diet” unimaginable.332 Carque blamed Napoleon’s behavior on his daily consumption of “the brain of a newly slaughtered ox.”333 Killing animals produced even greater violence. Lady Paget claimed that butchers often became murderers and that they were even hired as assassins.334 Others emphasized the dangerous sexual passions unleashed by high meat consumption. A low-meat diet was sometimes recommended as a masturbation remedy.335 Late eighteenth-century political economists, agrarian commentators, and philosophers, including Paley and Young, routinely argued that meat was an inefficient technique of protein production.336 Adam Smith stated: “A cornfield of moderate fertility produces a much greater quantity of food for man than the best pasture of equal extent.”337 Potatoes, of course, provided still more, which explained the particular density of Ireland’s prefamine population.338 This argument would be central to Diet for a Small Planet.339 Shelley fused moral, medical, and protoecological arguments, attacking the “monopolizing eater of animal flesh” who devoured “an acre at a meal.” “The quantity of nutritious vegetable matter consumed in fattening the carcase of an ox, would afford ten times the sustenance,” he continued, “if gathered immediately from the bosom of the earth.”340 Meat eating needlessly extended the circuits traversed by nutritional matter. It literally required a larger planet. Meat avoidance has a long history, stretching back to Pythagoreans, monks, and hermits. However, the conjoined phenomena of Bakewellian breeding practices and the global cattle diaspora made meat more controversial. Meat was reviled by many eighteenth-century writers, including Rousseau and Adam Ferguson.341 This metanarrative linked meat eating to human decline. Pratt’s Humanity; or, The Rights of Nature (1788) argued that subjection of humans followed that of animals: meat eating meant slavery.342 Shelley argued that Prometheus first taught the use of animal food,

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which corrupted natural diets and introduced artifice and deception into human dietary practices. Like Newton’s Return to Nature, Queen Mab and A Vindication of Natural Diet explicitly connected carnivorousness with the fall.343 Shelley’s dietary rules were simple: no meat, no fish, and only distilled water to drink. Human depravity began with “unnatural habits of life” and forsaking “the path of nature.”344 Shelley linked luxury and decay to the international food economy: a “natural system of diet” required no imports or international disputes.345 Five years earlier, the Reverend William Cowherd formed the Bible Christian Church in Salford, where he urged his congregation to eschew meat and alcohol.346 Abstainers were initially known as “Brahmins,” “Pythagoreans,” or pursuers of a “natural diet.”347 The term vegetarian was coined at the utopian meat-free Alcott House community in Surrey around 1838–39.348 The Vegetarian Society was founded at Ramsgate in 1847, and its first annual meeting was held in Manchester the following year.349 The movement grew slowly but appealed to Owenites, dissenters, and radicals.350 By 1904, many cities had vegetarian restaurants: London boasted thirty-one.351 Vegetarianism attracted numerous luminaries: George Bernard Shaw, Annie Besant, Anna Kingsford, Leo Tolstoy.352 Isaac Pitman, the inventor of shorthand, wrote to The Times in 1879 attributing his good health to his abstinence from meat.353 “Muscular vegetarianism” thrived. MacFadden thought that his strength increased on a nonmeat diet and argued that many athletes were following suit.354 The vegetarian cyclist James Parsley (see fig. 8.10) broke numerous late nineteenth-century cycling records, including the 1896 Catford C. C. Hill Climbing Contest, while the French found British voluntary meat rejection entirely perplexing.355 The meat-free Eustace Miles was British tennis champion in 1899.356 A vegetarian, George Allen, slashed seven days off the Land’s End– John O’Groats record in 1904, fueled by poached eggs and weak tea.357 Such athletes could feast on specialist substitute foods, like Mapleton’s vegetable fats “Nutter” and “Albene” or fruitarian cakes of compressed fruits and nuts.358 Such feats attracted derision. The first president of the German Football Association, Ferdinand Hueppe, compared the vegetarian to “an overheated steam-engine which is in danger of explosion owing to the use of a wrong kind of fuel.”359 Vegetarian food failed to satiate, producing people who were “pot-bellied, muscularly flabby, and susceptible to infection.”360 The arguments were, again, gendered. Women might be “sentimental,” concerned about cruelty, or vulnerable to the “dogmatic statements of fanatical vegetarians.”361 Vegetarianism was a weak, irrational subject position, a “charming fancy of delicate and highly sensitive women and . . . sentimentalists.”362

Figure 8.10. Meatless power. Vegetarian cyclists, late nineteenth century. From Charles Forward, Fifty Years of Food Reform: A History of the Vegetarian Movement in England (London: Ideal Publishing Union, 1898).

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Such weakness had geopolitical implications, with vegetarianism dismissed by the meatophilic doctor Woods Hutchinson as “the diet of the enslaved, stagnant, and conquered races.”363 Vegetarianism thrived in the mineral, artificialized cores of the Industrial Revolution: urban areas detached from meat production but increasingly flooded with meat. It was not, obviously, a purely British phenomenon; many similar critiques and concepts existed in industrializing Germany.364 As livestock were withdrawn from immediate human contact, they were “sentimentalised and idealised.”365 Sentimentality and animal affection, like heavy meat eating, became markers of British culture. This is reflected in the relatively high numbers British vegetarians. According to the Vegetarian Society, there were 3.5 million vegetarians in the United Kingdom by 2000.366 In rejecting a hugely symbolic substance, vegetarians articulated, however incoherently, various arguments about capitalism, identity, power, and progress. It is easier to give up meat than to abandon electricity, plastic, or oil, so vegetarianism became perhaps the most basic act of politicized consumption. With the practice’s links to Eastern philosophy and religion, vegetarians palpably critiqued the Western idea that heavy meat eating was healthy, inevitable, and progressive.367 Meat came to symbolize the violence, exploitation, and ecological recklessness at the heart of British development. This consumption-based identity, which subverted gender and race identities, willingly invited tiresome and clichéd criticisms. It “requires some moral courage to avow oneself a vegetarian,” noted the Pall Mall Gazette in 1885. “The vegetarian is accordingly liable to much mild banter, and not a little officious advice.”368 Meat critique merged into a broader critique of artificialization. Jorian Jenks, the agricultural adviser to the British Union of Fascists, argued: “At every link in the long chain from soil to stomach, our food is subjected to artificial processes.”369 Worse: “The remedy for artificiality is more artificiality.”370 Contemporary agro– food systems were conceptualized as giant machines for divesting natural substances of what made them wholesome and subjecting them to innumerable forms of material fragmentation, reduction, devitalization, and recombination. Although the meat industry’s defenders often equated critique of “unnaturalness” with emotion rather than reason, unease failed to dissipate and fed into numerous strands of ecocritique.371 William Longgood complained that “virtually every bite of food you eat has been treated with some chemical somewhere along the line,” calculated to produce particular bodily effects.372 Artificiality permeated agro– food systems: indeed, what were agro– food systems but apparatuses of artificialization? Lymington lamented the

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destruction caused by the “anti-Christ who replaces God with the Conveyor Belt.”373 The attack on soil artificialization was articulated most forcefully by Albert Howard, who had worked extensively on composting in India. Howard attacked industrialized agriculture as mechanical and chemical. Farm machinery produced smoke, not dung or urine, and failed to cycle nutriment back to the soil.374 The “NPK mentality” regarded soil as a completely calculable entity.375 The vegetable world became a “factory” for “converting inorganic salts into metabolized material for the benefit of the animal kingdom, without payment.”376 This mentality ignored “the life of the soil,” despite its advocates’ constant allusions to synthetic fertilizer’s mystical capacities.377 This mélange of antimechanistic, antichemical practices became known as organic farming, a term first used in Lord Northbourne’s Look to the Land (1940). For organic advocates, the soil and plant life were biological, even vitalistic: “The growing of crops and the raising of live stock belong to biology, a domain where everything is alive and which is poles asunder from chemistry and physics.”378 Vladimir Vernadsky saw soil as an integral aspect of the “living film” of the land. Soil was “bio-inert,” an equilibrium of living organisms and inert material.379 Howard pushed this in a more vitalistic direction, emphasizing the importance of quasi-living phenomena (humus, manure, and compost). Humus, produced by decomposing animal and plant residues, differed “profoundly” from chemical manure. Mycorrhizal association formed “the living fungous bridge between humus in the soil and the sap of plants.”380 Humus was enigmatic. Graham compared it to jam and to the eggs entirely integrated into a “finished cake.”381 Manure, too, was “as a living organism” with an “outer boundary, or skin, separating it from the outer environment.”382 Composting was another expression of the organic impulse: “Compost is a mixture of earth along with every sort of organic refuse, which rots without having gone through an animal organism.”383 Municipal composting never gained momentum, however.384 In 1997, Britain recovered only 6 percent of its municipal organic waste: nitrogen’s ecosystemic flow was increasingly linear.385 This veneration of humus, manure, and compost sometimes veered toward the mystical, as in the case of biodynamic farming, introduced into England by Carl Alexander Mier.386 Maye Bruce, of Sapperton in Gloucestershire, a biodynamic founder member of the Soil Association, thought her compost heap produced miracles owing to “the powers of Radiation”: “In the compost heap we have a great co-operation, all parts working together in harmony to the glory of God.”387 Organic farming, then, emphasized soil’s holistic nature and its ultimate irreducibility to any set of known sub-

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stances. Wylie expressed such neovitalism clearly, arguing that an elusive “other factor” existed beyond “N.P.K. content.”388 Seymour said that soil was “of such enormous complexity that it is doubtful if mankind will ever fully understand it.”389 This applied to all acts of reduction: whole grains were sometimes viewed in a similarly holistic fashion.390 Doris Grant called wheat germ “the very life element of the wheat itself.”391 Northbourne attacked the reductive decomposition of foods into constituent elements and the abandonment of the “rule of return,” by which organic waste was returned to the soil.392 Organic advocates urged the revival of rotation, the use of natural predators, and, above all, the end of large-planet thinking.393 Food systems should be scaled down, producing local, cyclic geographies anchored in unique, vital landscapes. Local, English peculiarity mattered. “Earth,” notes David Matless, was “the key element of organic England.”394 Local food pointedly contrasted with globalized food drawn from anywhere. The self-sufficiency guru John Seymour railed against the rise of “shelf life.”395 Although Lang coined the term food miles in the early 1990s, the concept has existed for decades.396 The ruralist Harold Massingham assailed the “idiocy of longdistance farming,” declaring the nineteenth century’s “economic parasitism,” the large-planet philosophy, “dead.”397 Oyler declared: “In a re-born countryside we shall not see lorries carting our fat stock out of the district to some great slaughterhouse and other lorries bringing back to us frozen meat from the other side of the world.”398 Viscount Lymington complained about the cycling of coal and bacon between Britain and Denmark, arguing that it would be “far more stable and beneficial to exchange coal and bacon among our own people at home.”399 Graham called for more British beef cattle, not least because of their contribution to soil fertility and quality.400 Seymour recommended the use of livestock that were “not too highly specialized, not too developed away from the wild creature, not too finicky and highly strung, not too productive.”401 Such views were not limited to organic advocates. Cheapness, grumbled Orwell, trumped quality and led to English people liking flocculent American or Australasian apples while “English apples rot[ted] under the tree.” The “shiny, standardized, machinemade look” of American apples now counted for more than the rich taste of English apples.402 Organic farming thus presented itself as a technology of agro–food risk reduction.403 High yields and cheap food were not the only ends of agriculture. “The townsman,” declared the farmer and racehorse breeder Friend Sykes, “was determined to have his cheap food, and he cared not whence it came.”404 Sykes’s seven-hundred-acre organic farm used ley farming, heavy

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cultivation, and “intensive controlled grazing” and eschewed artificial fertilizer.405 He was a self-declared “muck farmer,” dreaming of a rustic, compostcaked England, lambasting artificial insemination as “a revolting practice,” and blaming “every disease known,” including cancer, on constipation.406 This link between soil health and human health had been articulated most forcefully in the 1939 Medical Testament, published by a group of doctors and promoted by Howard.407 The organic and vegetarian movements were by no means ideologically coherent, identical, or straightforwardly compatible.408 Their critiques, however, went beyond their ostensible objects of attack (synthetic fertilizers and meat). The vegetarian movement emerged in the early nineteenth century as a revolt against commerce, luxury, and cruelty. The organic movement emerged from the politically volatile 1930s as a critique of artificialization, chemicalization, desertification, and globalization. Both targeted the capitalist penetration and corruption of human bodies, animal life, and the earth, even if businesses have happily co-opted their ideas. Both revered non-Western and amodern knowledge systems. Both tried to counter the overwhelming momentum of Britain’s vast food systems. Organic advocates, like vegetarians, were easily caricatured.409 Howard connected capitalism, machine technique, and soil erosion: “The transfer of capital, in the shape of soil fertility, to the profit and loss account of agriculture is being followed by the bankruptcy of the land.”410 In attacking capitalism, such figures pointed out the profound planetary costs of cheap food drawn from long distances. Massingham lamented the drive toward “cheapness at any cost, cheapness at the expense of nature, man, and the joint energies of them both.”411 “Cheapness,” announced the Organic Farming Digest, “is expensive.”412 Economic liberalism looked fatally naive in retrospect: “The floodgates of cheap food had been opened, and when the development of transport in the new countries of the world, together with the invention of the self-binder, enabled the virgin prairies to be exploited fully, the British market stood open, ready to absorb a steadily increasing amount of imports.”413 h In 1952, Edward Hyams called humanity “a disease organism.” Such parasitism was particularly associated with Britain and its vast empire.414 While this critique is often marginalized, it was evident from the birth of the British world food system and its driving philosophy of large planetism. Various facets of the food system came to embody everything that was wrong with progress: heavy meat consumption, the collapse of local food systems, meta-

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bolic derangement, synthetics and chemistry, burgeoning food miles, waste, soil erosion, machine farming, and depletion. Terms like nature, organic, and local acquired tremendous valence in the process, yet they remained essentially middle-class luxuries and as such revealed an almost impossible degree of tension between the desire for cheap food and unease at the systems delivering it. These tensions, of course, have only magnified in the post-1945 world.

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Acceleration

The food systems we have inherited from the twentieth century have failed. —Olivier de Schutter, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Final Report: The Transformative Potential of the Right to Food (2014)

T

he story of post-1945 world food systems is often told as a history of Americanization and globalization. These processes, however, owed much to the two centuries of history told in this book. The structures, ideologies, possibilities, and problematics generated by Britain’s nutrition transition and its global systems had, by 1945, acquired far too much momentum simply to dissipate. As the meat-wheat-sugar triad and the (now oil-driven) large-planet philosophy became developmental orthodoxy, they became more globally dominant, operative at ever-larger scales, and unfolding at ever-faster rates. The speed at which information, capital, and goods could move allowed dietary aspirations and desires to be reshaped at historically unprecedented speeds. Momentum became acceleration; problematics became crises. In the early twenty-first century, food systems are inseparable from intertwined ecological, economic, and biological crises. This ongoing crisis is in many ways a scaled-up, completely planetary version of the manifold problematics experienced across the British food system in earlier decades. The British food system encouraged consumers to eat meat, wheat, and sugar drawn from wherever it was cheapest, and these consumers were encouraged to associate this diet with status, strength, and development. There was a tight, synergistic, mutually reinforcing relationship between the second nature that oriented production toward particular foodstuffs and 259

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the tastes and proclivities of consumers. The tendency was toward biological and economic growth but also metabolic disorders, soil erosion, nitrate leaching, heavy fossil-fuel inputs, deforestation, and embedded asymmetries of food provision. The later twentieth century saw the old British dietary complex, in countless and often highly appealing culinary forms, adopted as the diet of development around the world. The consequence is that the dispositions of this system are operative at larger and more damaging scales. The result is today’s accelerating global syndemic of obesity, undernutrition, and climate change, the momentum of which makes slowdown and reversal extremely challenging.1 Such a compound problematic did not appear ex nihilo in 1945.

SYSTEM FAILURES The idea that there was a single world food system amenable to regulation by global institutions also predates 1945. The International Institute of Agriculture, whose primary purpose was to collate statistics, was founded in 1905. The League of Nations became involved in world nutrition in the 1930s, and its nutritional standards formed the basis of Britain’s World War II dietary policy.2 The 1943 Hot Springs conference assembled nutrition experts, not diplomats, and it urged collective action on rising production levels, in distinct contrast to the 1930s.3 The concept of globally adequate diets, first mooted in the 1930s, was forcefully rearticulated in 1943 by the agricultural economist John Black, who urged that “adequate diets are within the reach of all peoples.” The solution would be the creation of international institutions to manage food problems and promote production and organization.4 In 1943, John Boyd Orr stated that Britain would remain at the center of any postwar world food system “because it is the world’s greatest food market” and had food policies with necessarily global reach. He was optimistic that Britain could mobilize its colonial experience to deal with this “world problem” successfully, by increasing production and reducing dietary inequality.5 Orr became the first director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 1945.6 He envisaged a world food board that would orchestrate the food system in a genuinely transnational fashion, building on wartime efforts, notably Roosevelt and Churchill’s Combined Food Board (1942).7 Drawing on such experience, his own research, and League of Nations studies, he proposed using the board to provide loans, equipment, and skills to stimulate agriculture, create and manage stockpiles of food, and control world prices.8 This controlled economy was based on his assertion: “Food, a primary necessity of life, had to be treated differently from other

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goods like motor cars which were not vital.” The food board was, for Orr, a clear step toward world government and global metabolic equality.9 Such genuine attempts to transcend national interests, however, disintegrated rapidly. According to Orr, at an April 1947 meeting to discuss the possible world food board in Washington, DC, the Americans and British “were determined to squash the plan.”10 The US delegation— particularly the State Department— thought such schemes inimical to the priorities of finding free markets for American products and using food aid to pursue geopolitical ends.11 Britain’s concerns were rooted in long-standing reliance on cheap food imports. The Economist complained that the food board scheme would “have a strong tendency to keep the average commercial price of food well above its free market level,” which would “penalise nations importing food on a commercial basis.”12 Britain was also hovering perilously close to bankruptcy, and the food board would have cost it up to ₤35 million.13 Orr suggested that since British wealth had been generated by “the import of cheap food and raw materials produced by natives with wages so low that they lived in abysmal poverty,” the frightening idea of “fair price” threatened “English economic prosperity.” His internationalism, long a source of suspicion, contrasted starkly with Britain’s nationalist desire for cheap food. He claimed that the British government “was only interested in hogging the surplus wheat of Canada with no regard for the millions in other countries liable to die of starvation.”14 Such egalitarianism implied a mitigation of the great global asymmetries of dietary provision manifest in the planetary distribution of malnutrition and famine. This unsettled the often-unstated assumption that the developed world should, ultimately, eat better than the Global South did. One British minister was apparently astonished at the implication that India’s population might have a similar diet to Britain’s.15 Orr’s plans collapsed in 1947. The eighteen-nation World Food Council, based in Geneva, was founded, with a supervisory and statistical role. The FAO moved to Rome in 1951, assuming many of the functions of the old International Institute of Agriculture.16 There would be government through information, without any serious transformation of the structural asymmetries of world food politics.17 By 1945, then, while the concept of a genuinely global food problem had emerged, American and British national interests prevented truly transnational solutions to it. Prewar overproduction problems were mobilized to America’s advantage by stabilizing world prices, reducing market volatility, and quelling incipient unrest by funneling food supplies to underdeveloped regions vulnerable to communism.18 There were profound fears that anticapitalist ideology would thrive in food-deprived areas, so the power to give

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or withhold food was integral to Cold War politics.19 The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights explicitly recognized the right to food.20 In 1951, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Advisory Committee for Agricultural Activities declared that food questions caused “much of the world’s present tension and unrest.” The foundation connected hunger to the Communist threat, urging the application of Western agricultural technique to the developing world.21 The 1954 American Food for Peace Act (PL 480) allowed the use of surplus commodities to expand international trade between America and friendly parts of the world.22 The most obvious manifestation of this American version of globalized vital power, or “American grain power,” was the Green Revolution, which involved the subsidized transplantation of capital-intensive agriculture, high-yielding crops, and abundant fertilizer into areas deemed vulnerable to hunger and political instability, from Mexico to India.23 Although the Green Revolution was an American initiative, we should note the clear links to the British-inspired large-planet philosophy. The Green Revolution further integrated parts of the Global South into the marketized global world food system and discouraged socialist-autarkic agrarian systems. Mexico’s Agricultural Programme, for example, aimed to propel that country away from subsistence toward larger-scale commercial agriculture.24 The Green Revolution offered a mineral fix to the enduring problem of South Asian food security: the FAO promoted huge rises in chemical fertilizer inputs from 1946.25 The food output of developing countries grew significantly. Between the early 1950s and the late 1980s, world cereal output tripled.26 Food production was outrunning world population growth. Estimates suggest that, from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s, food available per capita for direct human consumption rose in developing countries from 2,320 to 2,660 calories daily and in developed countries from 3,160 to 3,410 calories daily.27 Finally, the Green Revolution and other postwar development projects more deeply embedded meat, wheat, and sugar into global diets, along with its attendant affective and ideological apparatus (development, freedom, taste). One 1952 milling history noted how American millers were “raising the standard of living of the vast backward populations of the world, so that they too may become fertile fields for the spread of freedom and enlightenment.”28 Despite its successes, the Green Revolution also generated problems (debt, class tensions, environmental concerns), and rising yield rates proved impossible to sustain. The 1966 President’s Science Advisory Committee Panel on World Food Supply reported that population growth and underdevelopment were linked to resurgent issues of food supply, announcing: “There is no panacea to this global problem.”29 The panel concluded: “To

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achieve such a feat would require capital and technical involvement of developing and developed nations alike on a scale unparalleled in peace time history of man.”30 The California Institute of Technology biologist James Bonner argued more portentously that the “starving population of the under developed nations” would be animalized and regarded as “a race or species apart.” The rich would ultimately “devour” them.31 In the early 1970s, the subsidized American sale of large quantities of grain to the Soviet Union, an El Niño event, poor harvests, and rising oil prices following the OPEC showdown combined to generate the first genuine post-1945 world food crisis.32 International wheat prices rose from around $60 a ton in mid-1972 to $220 a ton in February 1974.33 There were predictions of the end of cheap food.34 Unsettled wheat markets triggered famines from West Africa to Bangladesh. The immediate response to these confluent problems was the 1974 World Food Summit in Rome, the first major food conference since World War II, which made commitments to food security and production in developing countries.35 The 1970s crisis, however, had clearly exposed the increasing inseparability of food and fuel prices, the ongoing volatility of world markets, and the vulnerability of food systems to climate shocks. The crisis also generated renewed but ultimately inconsequential commitment to technological fixes that would escape the territorial constraints of traditional agriculture, including fish protein concentrates, algae production, and petroleum protein.36 From the late 1970s, the neoliberal restructuring of the world economy had major implications for global food production. John Block, US secretary of agriculture, stated in 1986 that the idea that developing countries should feed themselves had become an “anachronism” because they could buy more cheaply from the United States.37 The ensuing policy of “structural adjustment” opened developing economies to world markets, dismantled credit systems and marketing boards, reduced export controls, and encouraged market liberalization.38 Such deregulation was linked to export-oriented neoliberal strategies and increasingly globalized agro– food systems. Developing countries diverted more land to export crops under the pretext that this was now to their comparative advantage, producing a global decline in food self-sufficiency.39 Egypt and the Philippines, for example, have become major importers of wheat and rice, respectively.40 International trade in food increased by over five times from 1961 to 2001.41 The complex relationship between development and food provision, endlessly reprised in the texts of British political economy, remain as evident as ever. The contradictions within this system were exposed in 2007, when the world food system entered another turbulent period. As Jason Moore argues,

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the 2007– 8 crisis is one dimension of a compound crisis of energy, food, finance, development, and climate.42 The rising use of farmland for biofuels and increasing oil prices sent the cost of both food and fertilizer hurtling upward.43 The economic asymmetries of the world food system were equally important: UN General Assembly president Miguel DeSoto Brackman drew attention to “the market distortions generated by developed-country subsidies.”44 Deregulated electronic financial systems and the information economy have stimulated accelerated speculation in basic commodities, in which financial actors trade futures simply for profit, disconnected from any material referent. The increasingly normative practice of speculative trading is causally related to the volatility of commodity markets.45 At the end of 2007, The Economist’s food-price index reached its highest point since 1845, and food prices had risen 75 percent since 2005.46 Although corrections for inflation reduce this figure, the omens are not promising.47 As Paul Krugman noted, global food systems remain reliant on flows, not stocks.48 The FAO food-price index shows significant rises for all commodity prices since 2000, albeit with some decline since peaks in the early 2010s.49 In the West, this was a relatively minor inconvenience for many (although not for all), but, in the developing world, figures suggest that price rises pushed 100 million people “into situations of life-threatening malnutrition.”50 By mid-2009, thirty-three countries were facing “alarming” or “extremely alarming” food shortages, and most experienced food riots. The connection between food crisis and war is becoming endemic: such conflicts are evident in Central America, Mexico, Asia, Sri Lanka, and Rwanda. A 2003 estimate suggested that conflicts involving food supplies were under way in twenty-seven countries.51 Food systems, again, structure and distribute violence across the globe. The Georgia Democrat David Scott noted at the 2008 House of Representatives hearing: “Some experts are calling this crisis more of a threat than terrorism.”52 The twentieth-century cheap food regime was interrupted only three times: during the world wars and the 1970s crisis.53 The world’s cheapest places for food remain the United States and Britain, along with Singapore.54 In Britain, the real price of food fell by 31 percent from 1975 to 2000. The cheapest foods were the most processed— biscuits, frozen chips, ice cream, and crisps.55 Sugar, salt, and fat keep food costs low.56 In 1994, domestically consumed food accounted for 7.4 percent of personal consumption expenditure in the United States and 11.2 percent in Britain. By way of comparison, the corresponding figures for France and India were 14.8 and 51.3 percent, respectively.57 It is hard to imagine how food could be any cheaper. The early twenty-first-century food crisis has, however, unsettled the idea that

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cheap food is inevitable. The United Nations and Wall Street have expressed concerns about the end of cheap food.58 In 2010, Tim Lang suggested that the cheap food era was drawing to a close, and “the old imperialist British view that we can just get food and that others will feed us is probably over.”59 This has never been a complete economic faux pas. Hume was concerned about excessive cheapness, while Ritortus attacked the “treacherous cheapness” of Cobden, and critique of cheapness is growing.60 Meanwhile, the balance between people and available acreage continues to decline regardless of production efficiencies. The planet seems smaller: there is more talk of boundaries, limits, thresholds, safe operating space. There is no third hemisphere to exploit.61 In the 1960s, there was just over an acre available per person for food production: today, that figure stands at 0.6, and it is forecast to reach 0.4 by 2050.62 Meanwhile, the earth’s net primary productivity has more or less plateaued.63 Surging demands for food and biofuels necessitate expansion of cropland. Agriculture currently covers around 30 percent of global land area, and this figure is expanding.64 Recent estimates of global land reserves suggest that “we are getting close to the limit,” making ecosystem management imperative.65 Ecological scarcity is producing diminishing returns, and the costs of moving onto marginal lands are increasing.66 “There are few remaining places with ‘free and easy’ lands,” concludes one recent analysis, although there are examples of developing countries increasing both forested area and agricultural production.67 These are promising signs, despite the growing risks of biodiversity loss, carbon emissions, soil erosion, and disruption of nutrient cycles.68 There are also far more ebulliently optimistic calculations about peak farmland and confident assertions that, while limits exist, they can be deferred until far into the future.69 Any analysis must acknowledge that predictions are extremely difficult but that the weight of the evidence suggests that unalloyed cornucopianism is a dangerous position.70 Hence the rise of “half-planet” philosophies or attempts to estimate limits on agricultural or urban expansion: calculations show that, if we continue with our current diet and rate of expansion, all possible safe operating spaces for food production will be exceeded by 2050.71 Such estimates are not a simple revival of Malthusianism. Such spatial calculations are always relative to the land demands of specific diets, and the globalization of the Anglo diet has amplified the agrarian territory necessary to feed the developing world. The momentum of the Anglo world’s meat love and the large-planet philosophy essential for its generalization continue to skew territorial and resource use toward the carnivorous pioneers of the nutrition transition. “The affluent world,” as Smil pithily notes, “has a clear surplus of dietary

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protein.”72 Increasing animal protein intake involves further intensification of livestock farming and various neo-large-planet maneuvers: reducing meat consumption, even modestly, saves significant amounts of cropland.73 This is the context for what has been called the new global land grab, particularly associated with wealthier Middle Eastern and East Asian nations. As with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century commodity frontiers, the drive to exploit remaining “underutilized” portions of planetary space (for food and biofuels) targets weak states and indigenous regions without Western-style traditions of individual property rights. The decimation of Brazilian and Indonesian forests is simply one example.74 Africa is called, without irony, “the final frontier” or the location of “frontier markets.”75 Novel forms of terra nullius justify claims on putatively empty African land whose ownership systems do not conform to Western norms and whose comparative advantage in a neoliberal world is starkly limited.76 The echoes of colonial displacements and exterminations are obvious. In Ethiopia, people are being relocated from their settlements into centralized villages, with some groups suspecting that depeasantization is de facto genocide. London remains the financial center of such enterprises, with some investors, like Richard Ferguson of Renaissance Capital, excited about the prospect of using such land to promote industrialized agriculture.77 Such institutions, with their desire to turn the whole world into a single field for the untrammeled operation of private capital, perpetuate Victorian political economy. This neocolonial speculation echoes Britain’s violent past. The world’s largest sugar farm— Kenana plantation in Sudan— was financed by Tiny Rowland and his Lonrho company in the 1970s: the scheme ran massively over budget and ultimately required government subsidies to function.78 Agriterra, once under the chairmanship of ex-England slow left-arm spinner Phil Edmonds, has invested heavily in cattle ranching in Mozambique.79 Overall, as Nally concludes, such land grabs “signal the deeper penetration of financial markets into the food system.”80 The new global land grab, the potential end of cheap food, and climate change are interlinked elements of a particularly complex world agrarian wicked problem. A state of food crisis is becoming a form of “creeping normality.”81 According to risk management experts Munich Re, the number of extreme weather events has tripled since 1980, with serious consequences for the world food system.82 Examples include Cyclone Yasi destroying Queensland sugar fields in February 2011 and recent droughts in the United States, Australia, and Ukraine.83 Water scarcity is undermining food security from China to southern Africa. Land degradation worsened in the period 1980– 2003, with soil formation rates close to zero in much of the Global

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South.84 Disturbance of the nitrogen cycle is, again, disproportionately caused by the Anglo world: in a recent calculation of nine countries’ nitrogen footprint, those of Australia, Britain, and the United States were the highest.85 Rampant development, land-use change, and mass livestock farming provide multiple new milieus within which novel pathogens emerge— from E coli O157:H7, BSE, and avian influenza to nipah virus, chikungunya, and hendra virus.86 A supranational apparatus of risk management monitors emergent threats from within agro– food systems: for example, the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement of the World Trade Organization, the Codex Alimentarius Commission, and the European Food Safety Authority.87 The global momentum of the nutrition transition is driving ecological transition. While it might appear deterministic to argue that “all nations converge on a diet higher in meat, milk and sweeteners and deriving 30 to 35 percent of its energy from fat,” the historical connection between development and the adoption of an Anglo-American nutrition profile is indisputable, even if the process should not be regarded as inevitable.88 According to the FAO, world consumption of red meat and poultry surged from fortynine pounds per person in 1961 to ninety-one pounds per person in 2011, a move that stimulated a vast rise in animal feed production and perpetuated Australasia’s and South America’s roles as critical meat exporters.89 Such increases necessitated further scaling up of production and concomitant concerns about mistreatment of animals and workers. Global food production is now responsible for as much as 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, with animal proteins producing the largest environmental footprints of all.90 The British nutrition transition is, despite local idiosyncrasies, being replicated at larger scales and faster speeds in China, India, and Indonesia.91 In 1952, 3.1 percent of China’s protein came from animal foods; by 1992, this was 18.9 percent.92 During the 1990s, China became the world’s biggest meat producer.93 Between 1946 and 1987, Japan’s fat consumption almost tripled, its meat consumption rose almost ninefold, and its milk consumption rose six times.94 “To an uncanny extent,” concludes McMahon, “countries like Japan and South Korea are following in the footsteps of the UK.”95 South Korea imports nearly 90 percent of its wheat and corn, a higher proportion than early twentieth-century Britain.96 The visceral contradictions of the nutrition transition are visible across the world, reproducing the “stuffed and starved” paradox at national and global scales.97 The planet now has around a billion obese people and a billion hungry ones.98 Between 1962 and 2000, world per capita sweetener consumption rose by seventy-four calories, and, by 2014, 422 million people lived with diabetes.99 Despite the greatly improved management of

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global famine and the rise of humanitarianism, many parts of Africa remain profoundly food insecure.100 In Yemen, the Anglo-American imposition of blockade in 2017 is clearly one cause of impending humanitarian crisis.101 Food control is integral to the Israel-Palestine conflict, with Gaza under permanent blockade and forcibly “dedeveloped” and heavily reliant on international aid.102 In 2006, an adviser to Ehud Barak allegedly stated: “We need to make the Palestinians lose weight, but not starve to death.”103 This form of controlled semistarvation indicates the exquisite levels of food power available to developed countries. Earth’s agro–food systems and economic structures disproportionately direct food toward the developed world, just as they did in the late nineteenth-century British Empire. They also perpetuate the profound gender and racial asymmetries inherent in nineteenth-century food systems. Enervation, lassitude, and hunger remain experiences endured more by women and (particularly female) children than by adult men. Some 70 percent of the global hungry are women and girls.104 Over sixteen thousand children die every day from hunger-related diseases.105 Hunger causes stunting and impaired cognitive development. The vital power relations that inflict slow violence on the poor, the weak, women, nonwhites, animals, and ecosystems are articulated at a planetary level.

BRITAIN’S DIET REVISITED The British diet, meanwhile, has undergone significant post-1945 transformation. Queen Elizabeth II’s 1953 coronation celebrations, replete with sausages, canned meats, and candy floss, were defiant, soggy festivals of meat, coal, and cake.106 Ox roasts symbolized victory.107 A year later, when rationing finally ended, women appeared in Trafalgar Square and reaffirmed the enduring affective links between beef and British power and liberty by singing “Roast Beef of Old England.”108 The immediate postwar years saw continuation of wartime trends toward equalization of calorie intake and food fortification.109 Other key dietary tendencies included reduced carbohydrate consumption, rising fat intake (and an increase in the animal-vegetable fat ratio), and increased consumption of chicken, fresh fruit, vegetables, and wholemeal bread.110 The British diet was also transformed by the “culinary revolution” associated with ethnic cuisine, dramatic rises in restaurant eating and supermarket use, and surging consumption of American foods.111 The global appeal of Coca-Cola, Rappaport suggests, “embodied the shift from a British- to an American-dominated world system.”112 The consequences are multiple new sociocultural cleavages: between cosmopolitan foodies and aficionados of meat and potatoes, neopuritan locavores and unapologetic con-

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sumers of processed foods. Such cultural distinctions are always refracted through distinctions of income and geography. Dietary confusion thrives in an atmosphere of fractured nutrition expertise, in which almost any food can mysteriously catalyze allergy, intolerance, or neuropathology.113 World War II hastened the decline of the British commercial empire, and the 1947 Agriculture Act definitively ended policies of economic liberalism.114 The results included increased state support for agriculture and greater self-sufficiency.115 The waning of British global power was inseparable from the recalibration of the systems through which Britain was fed. Britain’s entry into the European Union, which aspired to increased selfsustenance, furthered this trend toward bureaucratic control, subsidies, and self-reliance.116 Beresford argued: “We will have to aim at greater selfsufficiency, being no longer a wealthy trading nation.”117 This coincided with the 1970s food crisis and the rise of environmentalism. Self-sufficiency, recycling, and downscaling were central mantras of A Blueprint for Survival (1972), which urged a shift from “flow fertility” to organic “cyclic fertility.” The Blueprint noted how imported foods— particularly animal feed— meant that “Britain supports a population well in excess of the carrying capacity of the land.”118 At precisely this historical moment, The Limits to Growth outlined the perils of cornucopianism, and E. F. Schumacher was praising “the virtues of smallness” in a world haunted by finitude and fears of nuclear annihilation and social collapse.119 However, the transnational food economy and the rise of air transport ensured that food imports remained high, and the distance traversed by foods consumed in Britain increased by 50 percent between 1978 and 1999.120 Today, the majority of Britain’s food imports come from Europe, which supplied 30 percent of British food in 2017.121 In 2002, London’s ecological footprint was calculated to be 42 times its biocapacity and nearly 250 times its geographic area, and food consumption was estimated to contribute to 41 percent of this total.122 Inequalities of consumption and food access were reinforced by supermarketization, with food deserts becoming evident in Western societies by the 1960s.123 The result is profound confusion about the identity and ideal provenance of British food.124 The variety and volume of food available in Britain throws the inequality of its distribution into stark relief. Public Health England is urging a reduction in sugar consumption, pointing to the pernicious effects of advertising targeting children and retail price promotions, a new technique of cheapening food particularly prevalent in Britain’s supermarkets. One recommendation is a sugar tax.125 In 2013, the British Medical Research Council announced that hunger in the United Kingdom was a “public health emergency,”

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with an estimated 3 million malnourished Britons, mainly aged individuals.126 In 2015– 16, 184,528 hospital bed-days were used for malnutrition cases.127 Inequality of food distribution, with its bodily and psychological fallout, persists and widens as Britain’s social safety net frays and tears. Those below the poverty line still spend a far greater percentage of their income on food than do the wealthy, with many poor people lacking cooking equipment and struggling to afford electricity or gas. Austerity measures, like cutbacks to meals-on-wheels, have pushed more people across the threshold of malnutrition. Fifty-seven percent of malnutrition patients are women. Hungry mothers deny themselves to feed their children. The number of British food banks has increased rapidly since 2010, with over 1 million people receiving emergency food from Trussell Trust food banks in 2014– 15.128 “Food is a weapon in austerity Britain,” argues Jack Monroe. “Hunger, the threat of and the reality of, is used to coerce and control.”129 The stigma of hunger and the vilification of the poor are stoked by tabloid media and “poverty porn.”130 Hunger and its attendant physical and emotional distress disproportionately affect the poor, the old, the sick, women, children, and the mentally ill. As Jonathan Wells argues, nutrition is the most primal vector through which power is viscerally expressed and inequality experienced.131 At an everyday level, inequality of food provision produces, replicates, and perpetuates the most basic affective, emotional, bodily, and psychological differences between social groups. The issue of Brexit (unresolved as I complete this book) poses major issues given the volume of European imports, issues of migrant labor, potential effects on food prices, and logistics, particularly relating to trucking.132 David Rutley, a former Asda and PepsiCo executive, had been appointed overseer of food supplies in case of crisis.133 h Critique of meat eating, food miles, and chemical fertilizers has a long history. And it has intensified over the past few decades. For example, veganism has risen in incidence as a more utopian and radical form of vegetarianism.134 The large-planet philosophy has as its antithesis the rising (and largely middle-class) movement for locally sourced and often more expensive food. The basic thesis here is that the nineteenth-century British food system allowed more people to enjoy a more calorie-rich diet but that this diet involved three critical costs: novel health conditions, various forms of inequality, and manifold ecological problems. When scaled up to fully global level, these three costs fused into a slow crisis that is threatening to engulf

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the world. Today, poor diets are the world’s biggest global human health problem.135 This book’s admittedly pessimistic prognostications should not be read as an argument that the collapse of the world food system is inevitable. As always in history, human populations have the capacity to change course, even if momentum is pulling them in a different direction. The most viable alternatives urge deceleration and downscaling, and more economists are displaying sympathy toward limited growth or degrowth.136 Serge Latouche’s Farewell to Growth declares: “We eat too much meat, too much fat, too much sugar and too much salt.”137 The 2019 EAT-Lancet Commission urges a “Great Food Transformation” that would create a “safe operating space for food systems,” producing diets able to secure human and planetary health.138 This involves rational redesign of food systems, with greater international commitment toward economic incentives rewarding sustainable, efficient farming (with recycling of nitrogen and phosphorus) on a planet that seems increasingly too small for the developed world’s demands.139 For too long, the food and beverage industries have had the power politically and epistemologically to resist attempts to create healthy, sustainable food systems.140 Consumption of meat, sugar, and fossil fuels must be reduced and agricultural expansion seriously limited.141 Moreover, as De Waal concludes, global institutions and social protection systems have the power to avoid famine and reduce nutritional inequality.142 There is no iron law catapulting us into a grim future of system breakdown. Momentum is not determinism. The constraints are, instead, economic, political, and ethical. Cheap meat, boundless sugar, and global production have been hardwired into our economic orthodoxies, political ideologies, subjective tastes, and conceptions of social status. Transformation cannot, obviously, ignore some of the brilliant technological developments of our current age. Bioreactors, algae farming, precision agriculture, mass entomophagy, genetic modification, and synthetic meat substitutes have undeniable worth. However, quixotic and hubristic technological fixes seductively promise the maintenance of large-planet dietary habits without either ecological collapse, economic transition, or, most importantly, shifts in consumption practices. Vertical, subterranean, and extraterrestrial farming are premised on the idea that there is simply insufficient horizontal planetary territory to feed the earth’s population at levels consistent with the nutrition transition. With vertical farms, intracanopy LED towers, hydroponic robot farming, and Martian greenhouses, the decoupling of agriculture from the earth is moving from utopian speculation and economic theory toward material reality.143

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E. O. Wilson concludes his otherwise cautionary Half-Earth by veering toward a technoutopian vision: while half the earth remains unsullied by people, the rest consists of encapsulated humans, surrounded by supercomputers, who experience breathtaking natural sites virtually.144 The vertical farm is promoted explicitly as a form of agriculture that “do[es] not require soil” and “eliminate[s] external natural forces as confounding elements in the production of food,” enveloping plants in an earthless, plastic, computerized world.145 Balkanine, a “nutrient-enriched zeolite,” was successfully used for plant cultivation by Russian, Bulgarian, and later American scientists in the early 1990s.146 The earth’s soil being exhausted, the new large-planet philosophy involves expanding agricultural surface area through utopian deterritorialization. The nurturing of salad in modular, englobed skyscrapers, towering “atmospheric islands,” or distant space station complexes represents the final enfolding of biospheric processes within technospheric systems.147 If the planet is too small, say the cornucopians, ecomodernists, and geoengineers, we will make it physically bigger through multistory agriculture or even abandon it and terraform and colonize other worlds.148 This book has followed Lappé and used food as a tool to explore how the history of dietary transition in the British Isles reveals a tangled, interconnected, world-spanning history of human bodies, animals, social and gender relations, war and violence, economics, energy, power, and ecology.149 How and why Britain came to rely on a globalized diet of meat, wheat, and sugar has, I hope, shown that analyses of today’s complex food crisis must involve more detailed historical analysis. We are too hasty in reducing the history of our current predicaments to a single, recent narrative of postwar Anthropocenic acceleration. No analysis of our current global food crisis can overlook the longer history of how some people in part of northwestern Europe decided to power industrialization by building a food system using commodity frontiers, designer livestock, fossil fuels, and cheap commodity prices. This large-planet philosophy underpinned British industrial development and global power. Reversing this history is, however, necessary for a secure future, for Britain and the world.

A c k n ow l e d g m e n t s

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his book took a long time to write. It would have been impossible without the support, advice, insights, and friendships of many, many people. There is insufficient space here to thank everyone. I would particularly like to thank my two readers, Matt Klingle and Rachel Laudan, for their extraordinarily detailed and insightful comments. The book is far better for their careful reading, although it is, I fear, still a rather pessimistic history. At the University of Chicago Press, I have been fortunate to work with two remarkable, enthusiastic, and erudite editors: Doug Mitchell and Kyle Wagner. Dylan Montanari has been patient and supportive with my interminable questions about images. Many others took time out of their busy lives to read parts of the manuscript and offer thoughtful, detailed comments on chapters in various stages of completion. Thanks here to Peter Atkins, On Barak, Tom Crook, Nadja Durbach, Phil Howell, Samantha Iyer, David Nally, Jacob Steere-Williams, and Dan Vandersommers. James Vernon read the whole manuscript and offered his usual lucid critique of the big picture I was trying to paint. I have benefited greatly from many conversations with Fredrik Albritton Jonsson on food, the Anthropocene, and political economy. Without these, this book would be considerably more vapid. I have been fortunate to be invited to share my work at various workshops and lecture series: the questions and discussions helped sharpen and reformulate most of the book’s chapters. Thanks to Laura Strout and Alice Tsay at the University of Michigan; Rebecca Egli, Tobias Menely, Elizabeth Miller, and Nickolas Perrone at the University of California, Davis; Hosanna Krienke at Northwestern University; Tony Bennett at Western Sydney University; David Serlin at the University of California, San Diego; Andy Lakoff at the University of Southern California; James Hanley at the University of Winnipeg; Daniel Segal at 273

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Pitzer College; Laura Salisbury and Paul Young at the University of Exeter; Martin Collins, Lawrence Kessler, Arwen Mohun, and Adelheid Voskuhl at the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Philadelphia; Alma Igra, Shaheed Naeem, and Sara Tjossem at Columbia University; and Chris Ferguson, Mary-Catherine Harrison, and Bill Meier, who invited me to speak at Texas Christian University. Research for this book was made possible by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and two separate departmental research leaves. Ohio State University’s History Department and wider academic community have provided a collegial and intellectually stimulating environment. This is a wonderful place to be. Particular thanks go to Nick Breyfogle, John Brooke, Alice Conklin, Theodora Dragostinova, Robin Judd, Scott Levi, Geoffrey Parker, Randy Roth, Jenni Siegel, Mary Thomas, and Ying Zhang. I have also been lucky to work with many smart and inspiring graduate students: special thanks to Dylan Cahn, James Esposito, Will Feuss, Jim Harris, Neil Humphrey, Katie Lang, Kirsty Montgomery, and Emily Webster. I have also been fortunate to have the opportunity to discuss or share my work with many others in various fields and contexts. This list is potentially endless. Thanks to Aaron Bobrow-Strain, Dorothee Brantz, John Broich, Ben Cohen, Mary Cox, Elizabeth Dunn, David Fouser, Jodi Frawley, Susanne Freidberg, Aaron Jakes, Jason Kelly, Kelly Sisson Lessens, Laurel MacDowell, Robyn Metcalfe, Ian Miller, Joel Mokyr, Usman Mustaq, Daniel O’Brien, Heather Paxson, Harriet Ritvo, Ed Russell, Dan Smail, Julia Adeney Thomas, Daniel Ussishkin, Helen Veit, John Waller, Laura Wangerin, Vanessa Warne, Alice Weinreb, Amy Whipple, Rebecca Woods, Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, and David Zylberberg. Special thanks to my dear friends Tyler Cann, Jacklyn Maxwell, Maria Miller, Paul Reitter, Alejandra Rojas-Silva, and Kevin Uhalde. Can I thank nonhumans too? If it is ethically apposite, I would like to record my sincere appreciation of my hapless, faithful beagle, Fanny, who has a less complicated relationship with food than humans do. And PG tips, drone and electronic music, Ohio’s wonderful craft breweries, and chess .com. Finally, this book would have been truly impossible without my family. Thanks so much to the indomitable Sayagos (AJ, Ed, Evan, and Andrea) and to my dear parents, Eva and Patrick Otter. My two amazing children, Nicholas and Sam, continue to inspire me. Above all, this book is dedicated to Tina Sessa. Without her love, support, and intelligence, I really could not have written this at all.

Notes

Introduction 1. Walter Willett et al., “Food in the Anthropocene: The EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems,” Lancet, January 16, 2019, 447. 2. Boyd Swinburn et al., “The Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change: The Lancet Commission Report,” Lancet, January 27, 2019, 1. 3. Willett et al., “Food in the Anthropocene,” 450. 4. UN Human Rights Council, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter: Final Report: The Transformative Potential of the Right to Food, A/HRC/25/57 (Geneva, 2014), 5. 5. Tim Lang, “Reshaping the Food System for Ecological Public Health,” Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition 3, nos. 3–4 (2009): 316, 328. 6. Frances Moore Lappé, Diet for a Small Planet (1971; New York: Ballantyne, 1991), xvi, 92. 7. Willett et al., “Food in the Anthropocene,” 449; UN Human Rights Council, Right to Food, 14. 8. Will Steffen, Jacques Grinewald, Paul Crutzen, and John McNeil, “The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369 (2011): 849. 9. For example, Anthony Winson, The Industrial Diet: The Degradation of Food and the Struggle for Healthy Eating (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 3; Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2007), 76–88; Tony Weis, The Ecological Hoofprint: The Global Burden of Industrial Livestock (London: Zed, 2013), 70; and Paul McMahon, Feeding Frenzy: Land Grabs, Price Spikes, and the World Food Crisis (Vancouver: Greystone, 2014), 18. 10. Keller Easterling, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (London: Verso, 2014), 72, 73–75. 11. Thomas Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880– 1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 15. 12. Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of

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Philip II, trans Siân Reynolds, 2 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), 1:586; Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 34–35; Ryan Jones, Empire of Extinction: Russians and the North Pacific’s Strange Beasts of the Sea, 1741–1867 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 124, 127. 13. Milja van Tielhof, “The Rise and Decline of the Amsterdam Grain Trade,” in Food Supply, Demand and Trade: Aspects of the Economic Relationship between Town and Country (Middle Ages-19th Century), ed. Piet van Cruyningen and Erik Thoen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 85; Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600– 1750 (London: Academic, 1980), 41, 131; Jan de Vries, The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age, 1500–1700 (London: Yale University Press, 1974), 170. 14. De Vries, The Dutch Rural Economy, 173; Frank Trentmann, “Before Fair Trade: Empire, Free Trade and the Moral Economies of Food in the Modern World,” in Food and Globalization: Consumption, Markets and Politics in the Modern World, ed. Alexander Nützenadel and Frank Trentmann (Oxford: Berg, 2008), 254; Edward Barbier, Scarcity and Frontiers: How Economies Have Developed through Natural Resource Exploitation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 196. 15. James Galloway, “Metropolitan Food and Fuel Supply in Medieval England: Regional and International Contexts,” in Cruyningen and Thoen, eds., Food Supply, Demand and Trade, 11; James Galloway and Margaret Murphy, “Feeding the City: Medieval London and Its Agrarian Hinterland,” London Journal 16, no. 1 (1991): 11. 16. Tielhof, “The Rise and Decline of the Amsterdam Grain Trade,” 93; J. Peet, “The Spatial Expansion of Commercial Agriculture in the Nineteenth Century: A Von Thunen Interpretation,” Economic Geography 45, no. 4 (October 1969): 294. 17. Lizzie Collingham, The Taste of Empire: How Britain’s Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World (New York: Basic, 2017), 3–28, 41–56. 18. Craig Muldrew, Food, Energy and the Creation of Industriousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 322; B. Slicher van Bath, The Agrarian History of Western Europe, A.D. 500– 1850, trans. Olive Ordish (London: Edward Arnold, 1963), 221–39. 19. Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, Enlightenment’s Frontier: The Scottish Highlands and the Origins of Environmentalism (London: Yale University Press, 2013), 222. 20. John Gascoigne, Science in the Service of Empire: Joseph Banks, the British State and the Uses of Science in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 86. 21. Alison Bashford and Joyce Chaplin, The New Worlds of Thomas Robert Malthus: Rereading the Principle of Population (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 140; Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, “Island, Nation, Planet: Malthus in the Enlightenment,” in New Perspectives on Malthus, ed. Robert Mayhew (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 138. 22. Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population; or, A View of Its Past and Present Effects on Human Happiness; With an Inquiry into Our Prospects Respecting the Future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils Which It Occasions (1803), selected

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and with an introduction by Donald Winch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 168. 23. John Sinclair, Address to the Landed Interest, on the Corn Bill Now Defending in Parliament (London: T. Cadell, 1791), 4 (first quote), 14 (second quote), 22. 24. James Anderson, A Calm Investigation of the Circumstances That Have Led to the Present Scarcity of Grain in Britain, 2nd ed. (London: John Cumming, 1801), 78. 25. William Spence, Britain Independent of Commerce; or, Proofs Deduced from an Investigation into the True Causes of the Wealth of Nations (London: W. Savage, 1807), 85. 26. John Richards, The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), 12. 27. Steven L. Kaplan, Bread, Politics and Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV, 2 vols. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), 2:680, 682. 28. Robert Torrens, An Essay on the External Corn Trade (London: J. Hatchard, 1815). See also Bernard Semmel, The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism: Classical Political Economy, the Empire of Free Trade, and Imperialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 61–64, 79. 29. Robert Torrens, The Economists Refuted; or, An Inquiry into the Nature and Extent of the Advantages Derived from Trade (London: S. A. Oddy, 1808), 34, 45. 30. Torrens, An Essay on the External Corn Trade, 35– 36, 276. See also J. R. McCulloch, The Principles of Political Economy, 5th ed. (Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1864), 433. 31. John Wheatley, A Letter to the Duke of Devonshire on the State of Ireland, and the General Effects of Colonization (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1824), 113– 15, 129; Ritortus, “The Imperialism of British Trade,” Contemporary Review 76 (1899): 295; Nathaniel Wolloch, Nature in the History of Economic Thought: How Natural Resources Became an Economic Concept (London: Routledge, 2017), 151. 32. Paul Young, “The Cooking Animal: Economic Man at the Great Exhibition,” Victorian Literature and Culture 36 (2008): 573, 576. 33. J. Seeley, The Expansion of England (Boston: Roberts Bros., 1883), 51. 34. J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, ed. W. Ashley (Fairfield, NJ: Augustus M. Kelley, 1987), 737. 35. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 744; Barbier, Scarcity and Frontiers, 386. 36. Ritortus, “The Imperialism of British Trade,” 150. 37. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon, 2001), 190. 38. RC Agriculture, Minutes of Evidence, British Parliamentary Papers (1882), xix, cited in E. J. T. Collins, “Food Supplies and Food Policy,” in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 7, 1850– 1914, pt. 1, Agriculture in the Industrial State, ed. E. J. T. Collins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 33– 71, 51. 39. George Bourne, Change in the Village (New York: George H. Doran, 1912), 117. 40. Harriet Friedmann, “The Transformation of Wheat Production in the Era of the World Market, 1873–1935: A Global Analysis of Production and Exchange” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1976), 303.

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41. Erich Zimmermann, World Resources and Industries: A Functional Appraisal of the Availability of Agricultural and Industrial Materials, rev. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1951), 153. 42. Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700– 1850 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 197; David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (Amherst, MA: Prometheus, 1996), 93. 43. Brinley Thomas, “Food Supply in the United Kingdom during the Industrial Revolution,” in The Economics of the Industrial Revolution, ed. Joel Mokyr (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985), 145–46. 44. Pomeranz, The Great Divergence, 11. 45. Donald Worster, Shrinking the Earth: The Rise and Decline of American Abundance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 24. 46. Collins, “Food Supplies,” 40–41. 47. W. Layton, “Wheat Prices and the World’s Production,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England 70 (1909): 99. 48. Andrew Porter, ed., Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 3, The Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 62. 49. Alexander Nützenadel, “A Green International? Food Markets and Transnational Politics, c. 1850–1914,” in Nützenadel and Trentmann, eds., Food and Globalization, 155–57. 50. K. A. H. Murray and Ruth Cohen, The Planning of Britain’s Food Imports: A Quantitative Study of the Effects of Recent Legislation (Oxford: Agricultural Economics Research Institute, 1934), 5. 51. Avner Offer, The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), 81. 52. Christopher Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 260–61. 53. Viscount Astor and B. Seebohm Rowntree, British Agriculture: The Principles of Future Policy (London: Longmans, Green, 1938), 133. 54. Harry Chester, “The Food of the People,” Macmillan’s Magazine 18 (May 1868–October 1868): 484; Paul Kindstedt, Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and Its Place in Western Civilization (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2012), 174. 55. J. Smith, “The Distribution of Dairy Produce,” Journal of the British Dairy Farmers’ Association 4 (1888): 45. 56. S. B. Saul, Studies in British Overseas Trade, 1870– 1914 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press), 1960. See also David Higgins and Mads Mordhorst, “Reputation and Export Performance: Danish Butter Exports and the British Market, c. 1800– c. 1914,” Business History 50, no. 2 (March 2008): 188, 199. 57. Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Milk: Report of Reorganisation Commission for Great Britain (London: HM Stationery Office, 1936), 162. 58. The Agricultural Dilemma: A Report of an Enquiry Organised by Viscount Astor and Mr. B. Seebohm Rowntree (London: P. S. King & Son, 1935), 27. 59. Astor and Rowntree, British Agriculture, 14. 60. Barbier, Scarcity and Frontiers, 501; Steven Topik and Allen Wells, Global Markets Transformed, 1870–1945 (London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012), 113.

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61. Peter T. Marsh, Bargaining on Europe: Britain and the First Common Market, 1860–1892 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 92. 62. Collins, “Food Supplies,” 46; Wilfred Malenbaum, The World Wheat Economy, 1885–1939 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), 34– 35, 154– 70; Nützenadel, “A Green International?” 158. 63. George Zimmer, The Mechanical Handling of Material: Being a Treatise on the Handling of Material Such as Coal, Ore, Timber, &c. by Automatic or Semi-Automatic Machinery (London: Crosby Lockwood & Son, 1905). 64. Per Högselius, Arne Kaijser, and Erik van der Vleuten, Europe’s Infrastructure Transition: Economy, War, Nature (New York: Palgrave, 2016), 107– 40. 65. Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael, “Agriculture and the State System: The Rise and Decline of National Agricultures, 1870 to the Present,” Sociologica Ruralis 29, no. 2 (1989): 95–96. 66. Jason Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital (London: Verso, 2015), 53–54; Aaron Jakes and Ahmad Shokr, “Finding Value in Empire of Cotton,” Critical Historical Studies 4, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 121. 67. Barbier, Scarcity and Frontiers, 225–462. 68. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols. in 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 2:77. 69. William Paley, Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, 9th American ed. (Boston: J. H. A. Frost, 1818), 395; James Caird, The Landed Interest and the Supply of Food (London: Cassell, Petter, Galpin, 1880), 6–7; Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, 3 vols. (London: Penguin, 1981), 3:859; Sofia Henriques and Paul Sharp, “The Danish Agricultural Revolution in an Energy Perspective: A Case of Development with Few Domestic Energy Resources,” Economic History Review 69, no. 3 (2016): 861; Alison Bashford, Global Population: History, Geopolitics, and Life on Earth (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 36. 70. John Weaver, The Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650– 1900 (London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003), 81– 82, 149; Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492– 1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 31–33. 71. Niek Koning, The Failure of Agrarian Capitalism: Agrarian Politics in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and the USA, 1846– 1919 (London: Routledge, 1994), 20. 72. Barbier, Scarcity and Frontiers, 372. 73. Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900– 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 3, 4, 7. 74. Karl-Heinz Erb, Fridolin Krausmann, Wolfgang Lucht, and Helmut Haberl, “Embodied HANPP: Mapping the Spatial Disconnect between Global Biomass Production and Consumption,” Ecological Economics 69 (2009): 330– 31. 75. Stephen Bourne, “On the Increasing Dependence of This Country upon Foreign Supplies for Food,” Transactions of the Manchester Statistical Society, 1876– 77, 174. 76. Lance Davis and Robert Huttenback, Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire: The Economics of British Imperialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 159. 77. J. Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 386.

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78. John Boyd Orr, The White Man’s Dilemma: Food and the Future (New York: British Book Centre, 1954), 106. 79. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 2:33. 80. Richard Whately, Introductory Lectures on Political Economy (London: B. Fellowes, 1831), 109. 81. Caird, The Landed Interest, 111. 82. Collins, “Food Supplies,” 46. 83. Frank Trentmann, Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption, and Civil Society in Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 2. 84. Offer, The First World War, 8. 85. Trentmann, Free Trade Nation, 99. 86. Robert Roberts, The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), 167. 87. James Caird, Our Daily Food, Its Price, and Sources of Supply, 2nd ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1868), 38. 88. Juan Richelet, The Argentine Meat Trade: Meat Inspection Regulations in the Argentine Republic (London: Sté industrielle d’imprimerie, 1929), 131. 89. Jonathan Brown, Agriculture in England: A Survey of Farming, 1870– 1947 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), 7. 90. E. J. T. Collins, “Rural and Agricultural Change,” in Collins, ed., Agriculture in the Industrial State, 72–223, 142. 91. Astor and Rowntree, British Agriculture, 317. 92. Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics: An Introductory Volume, 8th ed. (Philadelphia: Porcupine, 1982), 576; John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 23. 93. Cost of Living in German Towns: Report of an Enquiry by the Board of Trade into Working Class Rents, Housing and Retail Prices, Together with the Rates of Wages in Certain Occupations in the Principal Industrial Towns of Germany (London: HM Stationery Office, 1908), xliii. 94. Cost of Living in French Towns: Report of an Enquiry by the Board of Trade into Working Class Rents, Housing and Retail Prices, Together with the Rates of Wages in Certain Occupations in the Principal Towns of France (London: HM Stationery Office, 1909), xl. 95. Raj Patel and Jason Moore, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet (London: Verso, 2018), 22. 96. Rachel Laudan, Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013), 249; Vincent Knapp, “Major Dietary Changes in Nineteenth-Century Europe,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 31, no. 2 (Winter 1988): 192. 97. Weis, The Ecological Hoofprint, 1–12; S. Bonhommeau, L. Dubroca, O. Le Pape, J. Barde, D. Kaplan, E. Chassot, and A.-E. Nieblas, “Eating Up the World’s Food Web and the Human Trophic Level,” Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences 110, no. 51 (December 17, 2013): 20619. 98. David Southgate, Sheila Bingham, and Jean Robertson, “Dietary Fibre in the British Diet,” Nature 274 (July 6, 1978): 51– 52.

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99. Sydney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (London: Penguin, 1985), 208. 100. David Grigg, “The Nutritional Transition in Western Europe,” Journal of Historical Geography 21, no. 3 (1995): 255. 101. Laudan, Cuisine and Empire, 208. 102. Laudan, Cuisine and Empire, 248. 103. Jaime Rozowski, Oscar Castillo, Yéssica Liberona, and Manuel Moreno, “Nutritional Habits and Obesity in Latin America: An Analysis of the Region,” in Preventive Nutrition: The Comprehensive Guide for Health Professionals (4th ed.), ed. Adrianne Bendich and Richard Deckelbaum (New York: Humana, 2010), 723– 28. 104. Laudan, Cuisine and Empire, 226. 105. Michael Mulhall, “Food,” in The Dictionary of Statistics, 4th ed. (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1903), 285. 106. T. Wood, The National Food Supply in Peace and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917), 8. 107. Ken Albala, Eating Right in the Renaissance (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), 231. 108. Reginald Bray, “The Boy and the Family,” in Studies of Boy Life in Our Cities (1904), ed. E. Urwick (New York: Garland, 1980), 47– 49 (quote 49). 109. W. Fraser, The Coming of the Mass Market, 1850– 1914 (London: Macmillan, 1981), 31. 110. William Crawford and H. Broadley, The People’s Food (London: William Heinemann, 1938), 33. 111. Peter Lund Simmonds, The Curiosities of Food; or, The Dainties and Delicacies of Different Nations Obtained from the Animal Kingdom (1859; Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed, 2001), 6. See also Stephen Mennell, All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 84; George Newman, The Health of the State, 2nd ed. (London: Headley Bros., 1907), 193; Joan Thirsk, Food in Early Modern England: Phases, Fads, Fashions, 1500– 1760 (London: Continuum, 2006), 323; Robin Cherry, Garlic: An Edible Biography: The History, Politics, and Mythology behind the World’s Most Pungent Food (Boston: Roost, 2014), 59; E. E. Mann, Manual of the Principles of Practical Cookery (London: Longmans, Green, 1899), 20; Crawford and Broadley, The People’s Food, 54. 112. The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, 1855– 1918, ed. B. J. Hendrick, 2 vols. (Garden City, NY: Garden City, 1927), 1:158. 113. Cited in Sept. Berdmore, “The Principles of Cooking,” in The Health Exhibition Literature, vol. 4, Health in Diet (London: William Clowes & Sons, 1884), 206. 114. Bee Wilson, Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat (New York: Basic, 2012), 25–28. 115. “National Physique,” British Medical Journal, July 18, 1903, 155; Henry Thompson, Diet in Relation to Age and Activity, with Hints concerning Habits Conducive to Longevity, rev. and enlarged ed. with appendix (London: Frederick Warne, 1902), 16; “The Doctor in the Kitchen,” British Medical Journal, September 27, 1879, 505; “Our Foreign Food,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 151 (August 1892): 190. 116. J. R. Irons, Breadcraft, ed. W. H. Evans (London: Virtue, 1948), 249.

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117. K. G. Fenelon, Britain’s Food Supplies (London: Methuen, 1952), 22; Ronald Lees, A History of Sweet and Chocolate Manufacture (Surbiton: Specialised Publications, 1988), 169–71. 118. George Orwell, “In Defence of English Cooking,” in In Defence of English Cooking (London: Penguin, 2005), 55. 119. E. J. T. Collins, “Dietary Change and Cereal Consumption in Britain in the Nineteenth Century,” Agricultural History Review 23, no. 2 (1975): 112. 120. Cited in “The Dietary of the British Labourer,” Journal of Agriculture, n.s., July 1863–March 1865, 405. 121. D. Noël Paton, J. Craufurd Dunlop, and Elsie Maid Inglis, A Study of the Diet of the Labouring Classes in Edinburgh, Carried Out under the Auspices of the Town Council of the City of Edinburgh (Edinburgh: Otto Schulze, 1902), 78; D. Noël Paton, introduction to Report upon a Study of the Diet of the Labouring Classes in Glasgow, by Dorothy Lindsay (Glasgow: Robert Anderson, 1913), 9. 122. A Welsh medical officer of health cited in Charles Hecht, “Educational Methods among Children and Adults,” in Gateway to Health: Prevention of Diseases of the Teeth, ed. Charles Hecht (London: Food Education Society, 1921), 316. 123. L. A. Clarkson and E. Margaret Crawford, Feast and Famine: Food and Nutrition in Ireland, 1500–1920 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 104. 124. Joanna Blythman, Bad Food Britain: How a Nation Ruined Its Appetite (London: Fourth Estate, 2006), 204. 125. The Times, July 17, 1868. 126. G. Denman, “Milk in Rural Areas,” The Times, November 12, 1936. 127. Gregory Clark, Michael Huberman, and Peter Lindert, “A British Food Puzzle, 1770–1850,” Economic History Review 48, no. 2 (1995): 228; A. B. Hill, “A Physiological and Economic Study of the Diets of Workers in Rural Areas as Compared with Those of Workers Resident in Urban Districts,” Journal of Hygiene 24, no. 2 (October 1925): 225; Ian Gazeley, Poverty in Britain, 1900– 1965 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 73. 128. Staffan Lindeberg, Food and Western Disease: Health and Nutrition from an Evolutionary Perspective (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 104, 170. 129. Kirk Smith, “The Risk Transition,” International Environmental Affairs 2, no. 3 (Summer 1990): 235. 130. “Food for the People.— Horseflesh versus Beef and Mutton,” Reynold’s Newspaper, December 16, 1866. 131. Jonathan Wells, The Metabolic Ghetto: An Evolutionary Perspective on Nutrition, Power Relations and Chronic Disease (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 110–11. 132. Winston Churchill, “Fifty Years Hence,” Strand Magazine 82, no. 492 (1932): 555. 133. Christopher Forth, “On Fat and Fattening: Agency, Materiality and Animality in the History of Corpulence,” Body Politics 3 (2015): 51– 74. 134. Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 2. 135. Stephen Devereux, Theories of Famine (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), 67–73.

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136. J. A. Hobson, The Social Question (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1996), 208. 137. Charles Beresford, “Protection of British Commerce in War Time,” Cassier’s Magazine 14, no. 5 (September 1898): 437– 38. 138. Weaver, The Great Land Rush, 174–75; Benjamin Madley, “Patterns of Frontier Genocide, 1803–1910: The Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia,” Journal of Genocide Research 6, no. 2 (June 2004): 168. 139. John Locke, Two Treatises on Government (London: Whitmore & Fenn, 1822), 225. See also Andrew Fitzmaurice, Sovereignty, Property and Empire, 1500– 2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 140. Stuart Banner, “Why Terra Nullius? Anthropology and Property Law in Early Australia,” Law and History Review 23, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 101– 2, 110, 113. 141. Merete Borch, Conciliation-Compulsion-Conversion: British Attitudes towards Indigenous Peoples, 1763– 1814 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004), 226, 230. 142. Sarah Franklin, Dolly Mixtures: The Remaking of Genealogy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 128; Cameron Muir, The Broken Promises of Agricultural Progress: An Environmental History (London: Routledge, 2014), 92. 143. Madley, “Patterns of Frontier Genocide,” 175–76; Bashford and Chaplin, New Worlds, 234–35. 144. Erika Rappaport, A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), 85–119. 145. Carl Solberg, “Land Tenure and Land Settlement: Policy and Patterns in the Canadian Prairies and the Argentine Pampas, 1880–1930,” in Argentina, Australia and Canada: Studies in Comparative Development, 1870– 1965, ed. D. C. M. Platt and Guido di Tella (London: Macmillan, 1985), 54. 146. Glyn Williams, “Welsh Settlers and Native Americans in Patagonia,” Journal of Latin American Studies 11, no. 1 (May 1979): 58, 62. 147. R. Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 2, 140, 149, 188, and Comparing Cowboys and Frontiers (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 179. 148. Noellie Vialles, Animal to Edible, trans. J. Underwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 22; Timothy Pachirat, Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 4. 149. Rebecca Woods, “From Colonial Animal to Imperial Edible: Building an Empire of Sheep in New Zealand, ca. 1880– 1900,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 35, no. 1 (2015): 119. 150. J. A. Paris, A Treatise on Diet (London: Thomas & George Underwood, 1826), 5. 151. Alan Olmstead and Paul Rhode, Creating Abundance: Biological Innovation and American Agricultural Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 152. E. Russell, Evolutionary History: Uniting History and Biology to Understand Life on Earth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 153. John Hammond, Farm Animals: Their Breeding, Growth, and Inheritance (London: Edward Arnold, 1940), 130. 154. William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: Norton, 1991), 56. 155. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life, 8.

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156. Marina Fischer-Kowalski, “Society’s Metabolism: The Intellectual History of Materials Flow Analysis, Part I, 1860–1970,” Journal of Industrial Ecology 2, no. 1 (1998): 61–78. 157. Heinz Schandl and Fridolin Krausmann, “The Great Transformation: A SocioMetabolic Reading of the Industrialization of the United Kingdom,” in Socioecological Transitions and Global Change: Trajectories of Social Metabolism and Land Use, ed. Marina Fischer-Kowalski and Helmut Haberl (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2007), 111. 158. J. Radkau, Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 193– 94. 159. Marina Fischer-Kowalski and Helmut Haberl, “Conceptualizing, Observing and Comparing Socioecological Transitions,” in Fischer-Kowalski and Haberl, eds., Socioecological Transitions and Global Change, 17. 160. Johan Rockström and Mattias Klum, Big World, Small Planet: Abundance within Planetary Boundaries (London: Yale University Press, 2015), 65; Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (New York: Henry Holt, 2014). 161. Bruce Campbell et al., “Agriculture Production as a Major Driver of the Earth System Exceeding Planetary Boundaries,” Ecology and Society 22, no. 4 (2017): 8. 162. Justin Kitzes et al., “Shrink and Share: Humanity’s Present and Future Ecological Footprint,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 363 (2008): 467– 68. 163. Robert Turnbull, “The Household Food-Supply of the United Kingdom,” Transactions of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, 5th ser., 15 (1903): 197. 164. Georg Borgstrom, Hungry Planet: The Modern World at the Edge of Famine (New York: Collier, 1967), 70–86; William Catton, Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980), 44. 165. William Rees, “Ecological Footprints and Appropriated Carrying Capacity: What Urban Economics Leaves Out,” Environment and Urbanization 4, no. 2 (October 1992): 122. 166. Kenneth Boulding, “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth,” in Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy, ed. H. Jarrett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966), 4; Sabine Höhler, Spaceship Earth in the Environmental Age, 1960–1990 (London: Routledge, 2015), 57–60. 167. George Kimble, The World’s Open Spaces (London: Thomas Nelson, 1939), 28, 62, 151, 157. 168. Carl Alsberg, “The Food Supply in the Migration Process,” in Limits of Land Settlement: A Report on Present-Day Possibilities, comp. Isaiah Bowman (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1937), 31–33. 169. Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, “Can a Collapse of Global Civilization Be Avoided?” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 280, no. 1754 (2013): 1. See also Bashford, Global Population, 93. 170. Catton, Overshoot, 52. 171. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1:165. 172. William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel, “The Shoe Fits, but the Footprint Is Larger Than Earth,” PLOS Biology, November 5, 2013, 1, 2. 173. Willett et al., “Food in the Anthropocene,” 451– 52; E. O. Wilson, Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life (London: Liveright, 2016).

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174. Wilson, Half-Earth, 186. 175. S. Bringezou et al., Assessing Global Land Use: Balancing Consumption with Sustainable Supply (Nairobi: UN Environment Programme, 2013), 2, 34. 176. Alessandro Galli et al., “Questioning the Ecological Footprint,” Ecological Indicators 69 (2016): 225; Linus Blomqvist et al., “Does the Shoe Fit? Real versus Imagined Ecological Footprints,” PLOS Biology, November 5, 2013, 1– 6; Fred Pearce, “Putting Our Foot in It,” New Scientist 220, no. 2944 (November 23, 2013): 28– 29; Patel and Moore, Seven Cheap Things, 204–5. 177. Emma Maris, Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011). 178. Galli et al., “Questioning the Ecological Footprint,” 230.

Chapter One 1. “Beef,” Household Words 13 (February 2, 1856): 49. 2. Florence Nightingale, “Notes on the Health of the British Army,” in Florence Nightingale: The Crimean War, ed. Lynn MacDonald (Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2010), 885. 3. Steven Shapin, “‘You Are What You Eat’: Historical Changes in Ideas about Food and Identity,” Historical Research 87, no. 237 (August 2014): 385– 86. 4. Edward Smith, Practical Dietary: For Families, Schools, and the Labouring Classes (London: Walton & Maberly, 1864), 162. 5. John Fothergill, A Manual of Dietetics (New York: William Wood, 1886), 53. 6. Alvin Sanders, The Cattle of the World: Their Place in the Human Scheme— Wild Types and Modern Breeds in Many Lands (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 1926), 1. 7. P. Craigie, “Twenty Years’ Changes in Our Foreign Meat Supplies,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, 2nd ser., 23, pt. 2, no. 46 (October 1887): 485– 86; R. H. Rew, “The Nation’s Food Supply,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 76, no. 1 (December 1912): 102. 8. George Putnam, Supplying Britain’s Meat (London: George Harrap, 1923), 16. 9. Wilson Warren, Meat Makes People Powerful: A Global History of the Modern Era (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2018), 186. 10. Robert McFall, The World’s Meat (London: D. Appleton, 1927), xvi. 11. Adolf Weber and Ernest Weber, “The Structure of World Protein Consumption and Future Nitrogen Requirements,” European Review of Agricultural Economics 2 (1974–75): 169–92. 12. Weis, The Ecological Hoofprint, 4. 13. Woods Hutchinson, A Handbook of Health (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 25. 14. Along with Sweden, Switzerland, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Merrill Bennett, “International Contrasts in Food Consumption,” Geographical Review 31, no. 3 (July 1941): 371. 15. M. K. Bennett, The World’s Food: A Study of the Interrelations of World Populations, National Diets, and Food Potentials (New York: Harper & Bros., 1954), 213– 26. 16. Frederick Eden, The State of the Poor; or, An History of the Labouring Classes in

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England, from the Conquest to the Present Period (London: J. Davis, 1797); John Boyd Orr, Food Health and Income: Report on a Survey of Adequacy of Diet in Relation to Income, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1937). 17. “Production and Consumption of Meat and Milk: Second Report from the Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Statistics Available as a Basis for Estimating the Production and Consumption of Meat and Milk in the United Kingdom,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 67, no. 3 (September 1904): 380– 82. 18. “Vending of Diseased Meat,” The Era, August 28, 1864. 19. “Beef,” 49. 20. Imperial Economic Committee, Cattle and Beef Survey: A Summary of Production and Trade in British Empire and Foreign Countries (London: HM Stationery Office, 1934), 193. 21. Frank Gerrard, Meat Technology: A Practical Textbook for Student and Butcher (London: Leonard Hill, 1951), 287. 22. Sarah Freeman, Mutton and Oysters: The Victorians and Their Food (London: V. Gollancz, 1989), 56. 23. Maisie Steven, The Good Scots Diet: What Happened to It? (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1985), 47; Peter Brears, Traditional Food in Yorkshire (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1987), 108. 24. John Morton, “On Increasing Our Supplies of Animal Food,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England 10, no. 1 (1849): 355; P. Pusey, “On the Progress of Agricultural Knowledge during the Last Four Years,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England 3 (1842): 205. 25. Hippolyte Taine, Notes on England, trans. and with introduction by E. Hyams (Fair Lawn, NJ: Essential, 1958), 128. 26. Juliet Clutton-Brock, A Natural History of Domesticated Animals, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 40. 27. James Wilson, The Evolution of British Cattle and the Fashioning of Breeds (London: Vinton, 1909), 70, 105. 28. Robert Trow-Smith, A History of British Livestock Husbandry, 1700–1900 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959), 57, 269. 29. W. Youatt and W. C. L. Martin, Cattle: Being a Treatise on Their Breeds, Management, and Diseases, ed. A. Stevens (New York: Orange Judd, 1881), 85. 30. Nicholas Russell, Like Engend’ring Like: Heredity and Animal Breeding in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 138– 39. 31. John Walton, “Pedigree and Productivity in the British and North American Cattle Kingdoms Before 1930,” Journal of Historical Geography 25, no. 4 (1999): 444. 32. Margaret Derry, Masterminding Nature: The Breeding of Animals, 1750– 2010 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 27. 33. Margaret Derry, Bred for Perfection: Shorthorn Cattle, Collies and Arabian Horses since 1800 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 29. 34. Henry Berry, “The Short-Horns,” in Youatt and Martin, Cattle, 103. 35. Henry Evershed, “The Early Fattening of Cattle and Sheep,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, 3rd ser., 1 (1890): 51.

Notes to Pages 25–27

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36. J. Grundy, “The Hereford Bull: His Contribution to New World and Domestic Beef Supplies,” Agricultural History Review 50, no. 1 (2002): 80. 37. J. Watson, James Cameron, and G. Garrad, The Cattle-Breeder’s Handbook (London: Earnest Benn, 1926), 32, 34; Grundy, “The Hereford Bull,” 71. 38. Watson, Cameron, and Garrad, The Cattle-Breeder’s Handbook, 79. See also Grundy, “The Hereford Bull,” 70. 39. Grundy, “The Hereford Bull,” 80. 40. Watson, Cameron, and Garrad, The Cattle-Breeder’s Handbook, 23; Alvin Sanders, A History of Aberdeen-Angus Cattle with Particular Reference to Their Introduction, Distribution and Rise to Popularity in the Field of Fine Beef Production in North America (Chicago: New Breeder’s Gazette, 1928), 29; Wilson, The Evolution of British Cattle, 132. 41. William Housman, Cattle: Breeds and Management; With a Chapter on Diseases of Cattle, by Professor J. Wortley Axe (London: Vinton, 1897), 134. 42. Imperial Economic Committee, Cattle and Beef Survey, 176. 43. R. Hooker, “The Meat Supply of the United Kingdom,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 72, no. 2 (June 1909): 308. 44. Major P. G. Craigie, “The Sources of Our Meat Supply,” in The Health Exhibition Literature, vol. 5, Health in Diet (London: William Clowes, 1884), 6. 45. Collins, “Food Supplies,” 36; Rebecca Woods, The Herds Shot Round the World: Native Breeds and the British Empire, 1800– 1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 117–19. 46. For example, “The Meat Agitation,” Birmingham Daily Post, August 5, 1872. 47. Gardeners Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette, June 7, 1873, 795. 48. Joseph Fisher, Where Shall We Get Meat? The Food Supplies of Western Europe (London: Longmans, Green, 1866), 171. 49. David Esdaile, “Acclimatisation Societies,” in Contributions to Natural History, Chiefly in Relation to the Food of the People (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1865), 344; Jonsson, Enlightenment’s Frontier, 80–83. 50. Esdaile, “Acclimatisation Societies,” 346. 51. Pall Mall Gazette, December 4, 1867; H. Bryden, “The Vanishing Eland,” Chambers’s Journal, 5th ser., 11, no. 565 (October 27, 1894): 675. 52. A. S. Bicknell, Hippophagy: The Horse as Food for Man (London: William Ridgeway, 1868). 53. Chris Otter, “Hippophagy in the UK: A Failed Dietary Revolution,” Endeavour 35, nos. 2–3 (2011): 80–90. 54. A. B. Bruce and H. Hunter, Crop and Stock Improvement (London: Ernest Benn, 1926), 85. 55. “The Story of Meat: IV,” Meat and Live Stock Digest 9, no. 12 (June 1929): 2. 56. John Rouse, World Cattle, 2 vols. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 1:280. 57. L. D. H. Weld, “Foreign Markets for Live Stock and Meats,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 127 (September 1926): 49. 58. Collins, “Food Supplies,” 41.

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Notes to Pages 27–29

59. Astor and Rowntree, British Agriculture, 196. 60. The World Meat Economy (Rome: UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 1965), 6. See also Joseph Grunwald and Philip Musgrove, Natural Resources in Latin American Development (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970), 414. 61. Terry Jordan, North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers: Origins, Diffusion, and Differentiation (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), 208. 62. James MacDonald, Food from the Far West; or, American Agriculture, with Special Reference to the Beef Production and Importation of Dead Meat from America to Great Britain (London: William P. Nimmo, 1878), 281. 63. McFall, The World’s Meat, 129. 64. Sanders, The Cattle of the World, 79. 65. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, ed. J. Carroll (Orchard Park, NY: Broadview, 2003), 114. 66. Sanders, A History of Aberdeen-Angus Cattle, vii. 67. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, 207–59. 68. Jordan, Cattle-Ranching Frontiers, 238, 272–75. 69. Imperial Economic Committee, Cattle and Beef Survey, 267, 268. 70. James Scobie, Argentina: A City and a Nation, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 71–78. 71. Hilda Sabato, Agrarian Capitalism and the World Market: Buenos Aires in the Pastoral Age, 1840– 1890 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990). 72. Morton Winsberg, Modern Cattle Breeds in Argentina: Origins, Diffusion, and Change (Lawrence, KS: Center of Latin American Studies, 1968), 8, 37– 38, 56. 73. “Meat for the Million,” Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, November 6, 1866. 74. John Fraser, The Amazing Argentine: A New Land of Enterprise (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1914), 244. 75. Hooker, “The Meat Supply of the United Kingdom,” 324. 76. A. Pearse, The World’s Meat Future: An Account of the Live Stock Position and Meat Prospects of All Leading Stock Countries of the World with Full List of Freezing Works (London: Constable, 1920), 7. 77. Empire Marketing Board, Meat: A Summary of Figures of Production and Trade Relating to Beef, Cattle, Mutton and Lamb, Sheep, Bacon and Hams, Pigs, Pork and Canned Meat (London: Prepared for British Commonwealth Delegations, 1933), 20. 78. Scobie, Argentina, 193. 79. J. Russell Smith, The World’s Food Resources (New York: Henry Holt, 1919), 273. 80. Rebecca Woods, “Breed, Culture, and Economy: The New Zealand Frozen Meat Trade, 1880–1914,” Agricultural History Review 60, no. 2 (2012): 308; McFall, The World’s Meat, 431–32. 81. David Jones, “New Zealand Trade,” in The Frozen and Chilled Meat Trade: A Practical Treatise by Specialists in the Meat Trade, 2 vols. (London: Gresham, 1929), 1:117. 82. Pearse, The World’s Meat Future, 70; J. Ainsworth-Davis, Crops and Fruits (London: Ernest Benn, 1924), 116.

Notes to Pages 29–30

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83. E. Shanahan, Animal Foodstuffs: Their Production and Consumption with a Special Reference to the British Empire (London: Routledge, 1920), 76. 84. Radhakamal Mukerjee, Races, Lands, and Food: A Program for World Subsistence (New York: Dryden, 1946), 89; Donald Denoon, Settler Capitalism: The Dynamics of Dependent Development in the Southern Hemisphere (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), 55. 85. J. Coatman, “The British Meat Trade and British Imperial Economics,” Pacific Affairs 8, no. 2 (June 1935): 202. 86. Jonathan Bell and Mervyn Watson, A History of Irish Farming, 1750– 1950 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2008), 265; Gerald Leighton and Loudon Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 5 vols. (London: Educational Book Co., 1910), 1:122; McFall, The World’s Meat, 248. 87. Douglas’s Encyclopaedia: The Standard Book of Reference for the Food Trades, 3rd ed. (London: William Douglas & Sons, 1924), 42; George Walworth, Feeding the Nation in Peace and War (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1940), 246– 47. 88. H. Herbert Smith and Ernest Trepplin, “English and Dutch Dairy Farming,” Nineteenth Century 40, no. 237 (November 1896): 805 (first quote); V. C. Fishwick, Pigs: Their Breeding, Feeding and Management, rev. Norman Hicks (London: Crosby Lockwood, 1965), 80 (second quote). See also Earl Shaw, “Swine Industry of Denmark,” Economic Geography 14, no. 1 (January 1938): 31. 89. Lawrence Winters, Animal Breeding, 2nd ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1930), 346 (first quote); “The Bacon-Curing Pig,” Journal of the Royal Society of the Arts 72, no. 3718 (February 22, 1924): 236 (second quote). See also Shaw, “Swine Industry of Denmark,” 32. 90. George Soloveytchik, “The Northern Countries,” Lloyds Bank Monthly Review, n.s., 10, no. 110 (April 1939): 116. See also David Higgins and Mads Mordhorst, “Bringing Home the ‘Danish’ Bacon: Food Chains, National Branding and Danish Supremacy over the British Bacon Market, c. 1900–1938,” Enterprise and Society 16, no. 1 (2015): 166. 91. Higgins and Mordhorst, “Bringing Home the ‘Danish’ Bacon,” 153. 92. J. Russell Smith, “Price Control through Industrial Organization,” in The World’s Food, ed. Clyde King (1917; New York: Arno, 1976), 285. See also Higgins and Mordhorst, “Bringing Home the ‘Danish’ Bacon,” 142. 93. A. D. Hall, Agriculture After the War (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1916), 101. 94. Murray and Cohen, The Planning of Britain’s Food Imports, 1. 95. Tiago Saraiva, Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism (London: MIT Press, 2016), 13, 133. 96. Henriques and Sharp, “The Danish Agricultural Revolution”; Shanahan, Animal Foodstuffs, 117. 97. Warren, Meat Makes People Powerful, 91. 98. Shaw, “Swine Industry of Denmark,” 36. 99. Sofia Henriques and Paul Warde, “Fuelling the English Breakfast: Hidden Energy Flows in the Anglo-Danish Trade, 1870–1913,” Regional Environmental Change 18, no. 4 (April 2018): 969, 975. 100. E. Line, The Science of Meat and the Biology of Food Animals, 2 vols. (London: Meat Trades’ Journal, 1931), 2:158.

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Notes to Pages 30–32

101. Woods, The Herds Shot Round the World, 13, 38– 41, 174. 102. John Thornton, “Shorthorns,” in The Cattle, Sheep and Pigs of Great Britain, ed. John Coleman (London: Horace Cox, 1887), 111, 103. 103. Russell, Evolutionary History. 104. Wilson, The Evolution of British Cattle, 10, 46. 105. Line, The Science of Meat, 2:151– 52, 152–53 (quote). 106. Derry, Bred for Perfection, 11. 107. William Castle, “Recent Discoveries in Heredity and Their Bearing on Animal Breeding,” Popular Science Monthly, July 1905, 207. 108. Derry, Masterminding Nature, 60–62. 109. J. Watkins, “What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years,” Ladies’ Home Journal 18, no. 1 (December 1900): 8. 110. Jamey Lewis et al., “Tracing Cattle Breeds with Principal Components Analysis Ancestry Informative SNPs,” PloS ONE 6, no. 4 (April 2011): 6. 111. M. Turner, J. Beckett, and B. Afton, Farm Production in England, 1700– 1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 209; Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (London: Harvard University Press, 1987), 68–69. 112. Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 1:102. 113. Trow-Smith, A History of British Livestock Husbandry, 258. 114. C. C. Furnas and S. M. Furnas, Man, Bread and Destiny (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1937), 48. 115. J. B. Lawes, “The Pig of the Future,” Journal of the Bath and West of England Society, 3rd ser., 19 (1887–88): 275 (first quote); James Long, “Modern Pig Breeding,” Journal of the Bath and West of England Society, 3rd ser., 1 (1887–88): 43 (second quote); K. J. J. MacKenzie, Cattle and the Future of Beef-Production in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1919), 80 (third quote). See also Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 74–77. 116. Evershed, “Early Fattening of Cattle and Sheep” (1890), 68. 117. Massimo Montanari, The Culture of Food, trans. Carl Ipsen (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 169; Vaclav Smil, Feeding the World: A Challenge for the Twenty-First Century (London: MIT Press, 2000), 169. 118. Henry Tanner, “The Comparative Value of Different Kinds of Food,” Journal of the Bath and West of England Society 8 (1860): 390. 119. Sanders Spencer, The Pig: Breeding, Rearing, and Marketing (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1919), 132. 120. J. B. Lawes and J. H. Gilbert, “On the Composition of Oxen, Sheep, and Pigs, and of Their Increase Whilst Fattening,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England 21 (1860): 479. 121. James Whitaker, Feedlot Empire: Beef Cattle Farming in Illinois and Iowa, 1840–1900 (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1975), 22, 69. 122. Long, “Modern Pig Breeding,” 46. 123. Maxime Schwartz, How the Cows Turned Mad: Unlocking the Mysteries of Mad Cow Disease, trans. Edward Schneider (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004), 189; Vaclav Smil, Should We Eat Meat? Evolution and Consequences of Modern Carnivory (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 128.

Notes to Pages 33–34

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124. David Goodman and Michael Redclift, Refashioning Nature: Food, Ecology and Culture (London: Routledge, 1991), 108; Noel Kingsbury, Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 265; Olmstead and Rhode, Creating Abundance, 312. 125. R. F. Crawford, “Notes on the Food Supply of the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, and Germany,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 62, no. 4 (December 1899): 606. 126. W. Henry and F. Morrison, Feeds and Feeding: A Handbook for the Student and Stockman (Madison, WI: Henry-Morrison, 1916), 443. 127. Nigel Harvey, A History of Farm Buildings in England and Wales (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1970), 131–32; John Childers, “On Shed-Feeding,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England 1 (1840): 169. 128. Léonce De Lavergne, The Rural Economy of England, Scotland, and Ireland (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1855), 185. 129. Field (1886), cited in William Bear, The British Farmer and His Competitors (London: Cassell, 1888), 80–81. 130. Winsberg, Modern Cattle Breeds in Argentina, 36, 50. 131. Henry and Morrison, Feeds and Feeding, 89. 132. Sanders, The Cattle of the World, 43. 133. Watson, Cameron, and Garrad, The Cattle-Breeder’s Handbook, 126. 134. Cited in Henry Evershed, “Early Fattening of Cattle, Especially in the Counties of Surrey and Sussex,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, 2nd ser., 14 (1878): 161. 135. Evershed, “Early Fattening of Cattle” (1878), 156; Astor and Rowntree, British Agriculture, 45. 136. Elliott Stewart, Feeding Animals: A Practical Work upon the Laws of Animal Growth Specially Applied to the Rearing and Feeding of Horses, Cattle, Dairy Cows, Sheep and Swine, 2nd ed. (Lake View, NY: The Author, 1883), 260– 61. 137. Robert Rae, “Systems of Housing for Pigs,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England 97 (1936): 131. 138. Hammond, Farm Animals, 55. 139. William Westgarth, “The Great Frozen Meat Trade of Australia,” in Half a Century of Australasian Progress: A Personal Retrospect (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1889), 349. 140. Robert Peden, “Sheep Breeding in Colonial Canterbury (New Zealand): A Practical Response to the Challenges of Disease and Economic Change, 1850– 1914,” in Healing the Herds: Disease, Livestock Economies, and the Globalization of Veterinary Medicine, ed. Karen Brown and Daniel Gilfoyle (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010), 227. 141. Wilfred Smith, An Economic Geography of Great Britain (New York: Dutton, 1949), 255; James Critchell and Joseph Raymond, A History of the Frozen Meat Trade: An Account of the Development and Present Day Methods of Preparation, Transport, and Marketing of Frozen and Chilled Meats (1912; London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1969), 205; Coatman, “The British Meat Trade,” 202; Henry and Morrison, Feeds and Feeding, 568(quote). 142. Watson, Cameron, and Garrad, The Cattle-Breeder’s Handbook, 137 (first quote);

292

Notes to Pages 34–35

Edwin Ellis cited in Evershed, “Early Fattening of Cattle and Sheep” (1890), 60. See also J. Hunter-Smith and H. Gardner, “Super-English or Baby Beef,” Journal of the Ministry of Agriculture 35, no. 8 (November 1928): 730. 143. Henry and Morrison, Feeds and Feeding, vii; Spencer, The Pig, 132– 33. 144. Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son (London: Bradbury & Evans, 1858), 175. 145. Evershed, “Early Fattening of Cattle and Sheep” (1890), 54. 146. Thomas Shaw, Animal Breeding (New York: Orange Judd, 1909), 264. 147. Sarah Wilmot, “From ‘Public Service’ to Artificial Insemination: Animal Breeding Science and Reproductive Research in Early Twentieth-Century Britain,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Sciences 38 (2007): 423. 148. E. Simpson, “The Cattle Population of England and Wales: Its Breed Structure and Distribution,” Geographical Studies 5 (1958): 50, 52. 149. Derry, Masterminding Nature, 94; Wilmot, “From ‘Public Service’ to Artificial Insemination,” 418. 150. Chris Polge, “The Work of the Animal Research Station, Cambridge,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (2007): 513– 14. 151. I thank Phil Howell for making this point. 152. Victor Cohn, 1999: Our Hopeful Future (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956), 125. 153. John Hammond, ed., The Artificial Insemination of Cattle (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1947), 25. 154. E. B. White, “The Song of the Queen Bee,” New Yorker, December 15, 1945, 37. 155. A. Duckham, Animal Industry in the British Empire: A Brief Review of the Significance, Methods, Problems, and Potentialities of the Live-Stock and Dairying Industries of the British Commonwealth (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), 15. 156. Duckham, Animal Industry in the British Empire, 181. See also Zimmermann, World Resources and Industries, 308. 157. Imperial Economic Committee, Cattle and Beef Survey, 269. 158. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life. 159. William Boyd, Scott Prudham, and Rachel Schurman, “Industrial Dynamics and the Problem of Nature,” Society and Natural Resources 14 (2001): 564 (quote). See also Franklin, Dolly Mixtures, 107. 160. Stewart, Feeding Animals, 276 (first quote); Paul Hemsworth and Grahame Coleman, Human-Livestock Interactions: The Stockperson and the Productivity and Welfare of Intensively Farmed Animals (Wallingford: CABI, 2011), 97 (other quotes). See also Tristram Beresford, We Plough the Fields: Agriculture in Britain Today (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), 153. 161. Rhoda Wilkie, Livestock/Deadstock: Working with Farm Animals from Birth to Slaughter (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010), 42. 162. Derry, Bred for Perfection, 11. 163. Evershed, “Early Fattening of Cattle and Sheep” (1890), 53. 164. “High Steaks: The New Craze for Old Cow,” Guardian, June 20, 2016. 165. Erica Fudge, Quick Cattle and Dying Wishes: People and Their Animals in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), 115; Wilkie, Livestock/ Deadstock, 142. 166. Fudge, Quick Cattle and Dying Wishes, 184, 214 (quote).

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167. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, 256. 168. Fudge, Quick Cattle and Dying Wishes, 160. 169. V. Gattrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the British People, 1770– 1868 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 267. 170. Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 4:1163. 171. Putnam, Supplying Britain’s Meat, 34. 172. Richard Grantham, A Treatise on Public Slaughter-Houses, Considered in Connection with the Sanitary Question (London: J. Weale, 1848), 77– 78. 173. Cited in Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 4:1208–9. 174. Fudge, Quick Cattle and Dying Wishes, 191. 175. C. Cash, Our Slaughter-House System: A Plea for Reform (London: George Bell & Sons, 1907), xii. 176. H. Lester, “The Progress of the Abattoir System in England,” Journal of the Society of Arts, March 22, 1895, 431– 39, 432. 177. Charles Forward, Fifty Years of Food Reform: A History of the Vegetarian Movement in England (London: Ideal Publishing Union, 1898), 63– 64. 178. Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 2:387; Vialles, Animal to Edible, 8–9. 179. Vialles, Animal to Edible, 35, 73. 180. Vialles, Animal to Edible, 28. 181. Victor Whitechurch, “How the Railways Deal with Special Classes of Traffic: VII, The London and North Western Railway and American Meat,” Railway Magazine, October 1899, 360. 182. Joel Novek, “Discipline and Distancing: Confined Pigs in the Factory Farm Gulag,” in Animals and the Human Imagination: A Companion to Animal Studies, ed. Aaron Gross and Anne Vallely (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 122. 183. Annette Reed, “From Sacrifice to Slaughterhouse: Ancient and Modern Approaches to Meat, Animals, and Civilization,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 26 (2014): 119. 184. Ruth Harrison, Animal Machines: The New Factory Farming Industry (London: Vincent Stuart, 1964). 185. Cited in Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, 208. 186. Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Abattoir Design: Report of Technical Committee (London: HM Stationery Office, 1934), 10. 187. Roger Thévenot, A History of Refrigeration throughout the World, trans. J. Fidler (Paris: International Institute of Refrigeration, 1979), 241. 188. McFall, The World’s Meat, 541. 189. Károly Ereky, Biotechnologie der Fleisch-, Fett- und Milchzeugung im landwirtschaftlichen Großbetriebe (Berlin: Paul Arey, 1919); Robert Bud, The Uses of Life: A History of Biotechnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 32; Boyd, Prudham, and Schurman, “Industrial Dynamics and the Problem of Nature,” 565– 66. 190. Kyri Claflin, “La Villette: City of Blood (1867– 1914),” in Meat, Modernity, and the Rise of the Slaughterhouse, ed. Paula Young Lee (Lebanon: University of New Hampshire Press, 2008), 34–38.

294

Notes to Pages 38–40

191. Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 4:1195, 2:371. 192. P. J. Atkins, “The Glasgow Case: Meat, Disease and Regulation, 1889– 1924,” Agricultural History Review 52, no. 2 (2004): 181. 193. T. Wood and L. Newman, Beef Production in Great Britain (Liverpool: R. Silcock & Sons, 1928), 16. 194. Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Abattoir Design, 9; Research Staff of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, Trade Regulations and Commercial Policy of the United Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1943), 113. 195. Grantham, A Treatise on Public Slaughter-Houses, 87; Lester, “The Progress of the Abattoir System,” 433. 196. Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History (New York: Norton, 1969), 240. 197. “Humanity in the Slaughter-House,” Country Gentleman’s Magazine 12 (May 1875): 395. 198. “The Jewish Method of Slaughtering Animals,” British Veterinary Journal and Annals of Comparative Pathology 39 (July 1894): 26. 199. “‘Kosher’ and Other Meat,” British Medical Journal, December 23, 1893, 1393. See also Robin Judd, Contested Rituals: Circumcision, Kosher Butchering, and Jewish Political Life in Germany, 1843– 1933 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007). 200. Kenneth Collins, “A Community on Trial: The Aberdeen Shechita Case, 1893,” Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 30, no. 2 (2010): 75– 92. 201. Jonathan Burt, “Conflicts around Slaughter in Modernity,” in Killing Animals, by the Animal Studies Group (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 132. 202. Derrick Rixson, The History of Meat Trading (Nottingham: Nottingham University Press, 2000), 241. 203. C. Martin, Practical Food Inspection, vol. 1, Meat Inspection, 3rd ed. (London: H. K. Lewis, 1947), 63. 204. Hal Williams, “Modern Abattoir Practice and Methods of Slaughtering,” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 71, no. 3682 (June 15, 1923): 523. 205. J. F. Gracey, Meat Hygiene, 8th ed. (London: Ballière Tindall, 1986), 130, 137– 38, 83. 206. Andrew Johnson, Factory Farming (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 133. 207. D. Anthony and W. Blois, The Meat Industry: A Text-Book for Meat Traders and Others Engaged in the Various Branches of the Meat Industry (London: Ballière, Tindall & Cox, 1931), 173; Burt, “Conflicts around Slaughter in Modernity,” 138. 208. Richard Perren, The Meat Trade in Britain, 1840– 1914 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), 45; Grantham, A Treatise on Public Slaughter-Houses, 8. 209. “The Bye-Products [sic] of Slaughter-Houses,” Public Health 8 (October 1895–September 1896): 169. 210. Pachirat, Every Twelve Seconds, 72. 211. C. Moulton, Meat through the Microscope: Applications of Chemistry and the Biological Sciences to Some Problems of the Meat Packing Industry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1929), 273, 275; R. Bogue, Chemistry and Technology of Gelatin and Glue (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1922); J. Alexander, Glue and Gelatin (New York: Chem-

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ical Catalog Co., 1923); Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 2:626; Hugh Bennett, Animal Proteins (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1921), 260. 212. Putnam, Supplying Britain’s Meat, 93; Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 2:632. 213. Rudolf Clemen, By-Products in the Packing Industry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927), 276. 214. Anthony and Blois, The Meat Industry, 107. 215. Grantham, A Treatise on Public Slaughter-Houses, 12; Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 2:628, 636; Clemen, By-Products in the Packing Industry, 74. 216. Peter Atkins, “The Urban Blood and Guts Economy,” in Animal Cities: Beastly Urban Histories, ed. Peter Atkins (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 100. 217. Francis Vacher, “On Serum Sanguinis as a Therapeutic,” Liverpool and Manchester Medical and Surgical Reports, 1876, 191. 218. Naomi Pfeffer, “How Abattoir ‘Biotrash’ Connected the Social Worlds of the University Laboratory and the Disassembly Line,” in Meat, Medicine and Human Health in the Twentieth Century, ed. David Cantor, Christian Bonah, and Matthias Dörries (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2010), 64. 219. Anthony and Blois, The Meat Industry, 98. 220. Moulton, Meat through the Microscope, 440. 221. Victor Medvei, A History of Endocrinology (Boston: MTP, 1982), 302. 222. W. Lethem, “Slaughterhouse Practice at Home and Abroad: A Comparison between the Systems of Administration of Different Countries, the Methods of Meat Inspection and the Practice of Humane Killing,” Journal of the Royal Sanitary Institute 58, no. 9 (1937): 568; Clemen, By-Products in the Packing Industry, 219. 223. James Pollard, A Study in Municipal Government: The Corporation of Berlin, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1894), 83–84. 224. G. White, “Live-Stock By-Products and By-Product Industries,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 95, no. 3 (1932): 464, 465. 225. Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 5:1566– 68. 226. Stewart, Feeding Animals, 164; Moulton, Meat through the Microscope, 309– 10. 227. Richard Colyer, The Welsh Cattle-Drovers: Agriculture and the Welsh Cattle Trade before and during the Nineteenth Century (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1976), 43. 228. A. Gibson and T. Smout, “Scottish Food and Scottish History,” in Scottish Society, 1500–1800, ed. R. Houston and I. Whyte (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 77. 229. Geoffrey Channon, “The Aberdeenshire Beef Trade with London: A Study in Steamship and Railway Competition,” Transport History 2 (1969): 4, 12. 230. “The Cattle Trade and Meat Supply at Home and Abroad,” Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, December 6, 1856. 231. I. Greg, “Cattle Ships,” Humane Review, April 1903, 45; Richard Perren, Taste, Trade and Technology: The Development of the International Meat Industry since 1840 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 51; Simon Hanson, Argentine Meat and the British Market:

296

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Chapters in the History of the Argentine Meat Industry (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1938), 80. 232. Herbert Gibson, “The Foreign Meat Supply,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, 3rd ser., 2 (1896): 209. 233. Edwin Pratt, Railways and Their Rates with an Appendix on the British Canal Problem (London: John Murray, 1905), 138. 234. Perren, The Meat Trade in Britain, 152. 235. Imperial Economic Committee, Cattle and Beef Survey, 183. 236. Rixson, The History of Meat Trading, 307. 237. Cited in Greg, “Cattle Ships,” 47. 238. “Revelations of the South American Cattle Trade,” Chambers’s Journal 6, no. 1 (January 1898): 70. 239. “The Burning of the Egypt,” Tamworth Herald, August 2, 1890. 240. Bear, The British Farmer, 93. 241. Ken McCarron, Meat at Woodside: The Birkenhead Livestock Trade, 1878– 1981 (Birkenhead: Mersey Port Folios, 1991), 63. 242. Gibson, “The Foreign Meat Supply,” 211. 243. For example, “Pressed Beef and Desiccated Beef-Juice,” Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, July 29, 1871, 88. 244. Substances Used as Food, as Exemplified at the Great Exhibition (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1854), 70. 245. “Cheap Beef,” Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, January 8, 1865. 246. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, 234. 247. Thévenot, A History of Refrigeration, 42; Ross Grant, “Australian Meat Industry,” in The Frozen and Chilled Meat Trade, 1:48. 248. “The Proposed Slaughtering and Freezing Company,” New Zealand Herald, October 12, 1882. 249. G. MacDonald, The Canterbury Frozen Meat Company: The First Seventy-Five Years (Christchurch: Whitcombe & Tombs, 1957), 15, 46, 49. 250. Greg, “Cattle Ships,” 55. 251. Ronald Hope, A New History of British Shipping (London: John Murray, 1990), 331. 252. Bear, The British Farmer, 89. 253. Pedro Bergés, “La industria della carne refrigerata nella Repubblica Argentina,” Anales de la Sociedad Rural Argentina 45, no. 1 (1910): 68. 254. E. Jones, “The Argentine Refrigerated Meat Industry,” Economica 26 (June 1929): 165. 255. Kevin Burley, British Shipping and Australia, 1920–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 85. 256. J. Raymond, “Transport of Refrigerated Meat by Sea,” in The Frozen and Chilled Meat Trade, 2:216. 257. Hanson, Argentine Meat and the British Market, 76; Critchell and Raymond, A History of the Frozen Meat Trade, 342, 343. 258. Claflin, “La Villette,” 44. 259. Jones, “The Argentine Refrigerated Meat Industry,” 164.

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260. M. Thompson in Royal Commission on Agriculture, Minutes of Evidence Taken before Her Majesty’s Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Subject of Agricultural Depression, 3 vols. (London: HM Stationery Office, 1894), 3:420. 261. Woods, The Herds Shot Round the World, 125. 262. Critchell and Raymond, A History of the Frozen Meat Trade, 127. 263. Thévenot, A History of Refrigeration, 83. 264. Imperial Economic Committee, Cattle and Beef Survey, 9; Ambrose Greenway, “Cargo Ships,” in The Golden Age of Shipping: The Classic Merchant Ship, 1900– 1960, ed. Robert Gardiner (London: Conway Maritime, 1994), 46. 265. Thévenot, A History of Refrigeration, 105. 266. Critchell and Raymond, A History of the Frozen Meat Trade, 169. 267. Perren, The Meat Trade in Britain, 177. 268. “A Glut of Frozen Meat,” Leeds Mercury, July 19, 1895. 269. D. Pidgeon, “Cold Storage: Its Principles, Practice, and Possibilities,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, 3rd ser., 7 (1896): 610. 270. Critchell and Raymond, A History of the Frozen Meat Trade, 178; D. Cole, Imperial Military Geography (London: Sifton Praed, 1938), 84. 271. Hanson, Argentine Meat and the British Market, 97. 272. Critchell and Raymond, A History of the Frozen Meat Trade, 344. 273. Keith Harcourt, “Railway Containers in the United Kingdom and Europe during the 1920s and 1930s,” in From Rail to Road and Back Again? A Century of Transport Competition and Interdependency, ed. Ralf Roth and Colin Divall (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 118; Alexander Klose, The Container Principle: How a Box Changes the Way We Think, trans. Charles Marcrum II (London: MIT Press, 2015), 120. 274. Thévenot, A History of Refrigeration, 182–83. 275. William Prentice in “Minutes of Evidence, Thursday 13 March 1856,” in Report of the Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Appropriation of the Site of Smithfield, and the Establishment of a New Metropolitan Meat Market (London: George E. Eyre & William Spottiswoode, 1856), 55. 276. John Hollingshead, “Committed to Newgate Street,” in Odd Journeys in and out of London (London: Groombridge & Sons, 1860), 219, 221. 277. Grantham, A Treatise on Public Slaughter-Houses, 71. 278. Robyn Metcalfe, Meat, Commerce and the City: The London Food Market, 1800–1855 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012). 279. Perren, The Meat Trade in Britain, 48– 49, 102; W. Passingham, London’s Markets: Their Origin and History (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1935), 10. 280. Juan Richelet, “The Argentine Meat Trade,” in The Frozen and Chilled Meat Trade, 1:241. 281. McFall, The World’s Meat, 534. 282. Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 2:473. 283. “Glass Shop Fronts for Butchers,” Medical Officer 30 (August 18, 1923): 84; Hermann Levy, The Shops of Britain: A Study of Retail Distribution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), 52. 284. Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 1:1. 285. McFall, The World’s Meat, 562–63.

298

Notes to Pages 47–50

286. Hooker, “The Meat Supply of the United Kingdom,” 304. 287. Friedmann and McMichael, “Agriculture and the State System,” 105.

Chapter Two 1. Richard Jefferies, Field and Hedgerow, Being the Last Essays of Richard Jefferies (London: Lutterworth, 1948), 146. 2. Christian Petersen, Bread and the British Economy, c. 1770– 1870, ed. Andrew Jenkins (Aldershot: Scolar, 1995), 212, 208. 3. T. B. Wood, “The Composition and Food Value of Bread,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England 72 (1911): 7. 4. Layton, “Wheat Prices,” 99. 5. “Wheat and Its Relations to British Agriculture,” Derby Mercury, December 29, 1886. 6. Collins, “Dietary Change,” 100. 7. Smith, Practical Dietary, 46. 8. Charles Roeder, “Notes on Food and Drink in Lancashire and Other Northern Counties,” Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society 20 (1902): 44. 9. Hart cited in Arthur Young, The Farmer’s Letters to the People of England: Containing the Sentiments of a Practical Husbandman, on Various Subjects of Great Importance, 2 vols., 3rd ed. (London: W. Strahan, 1771), 1:207. 10. Abraham Edlin, A Treatise on the Art of Bread-Making (1805; Totnes: Prospect, 2004), 77. 11. William Guy, “On Sufficient and Insufficient Dietaries, with Especial Reference to the Dietaries of Prisoners,” Journal of the Statistical Society of London 26, no. 3 (September 1863): 245. 12. Wood, The National Food Supply, 9. 13. Hermann Vulté and Sadie Vanderbilt, Food Industries: An Elementary TextBook on the Production and Manufacture of Staple Foods, 3rd ed. (Easton, PA: Chemical Publishing Co., 1920), 49; Paul de Hevesy, World Wheat Planning and Economic Planning in General (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), 46; Trentmann, Free Trade Nation, 89. 14. Bennett, The World’s Food, 258. 15. Robert Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 44. 16. C. Swanson, Wheat Flour and Diet (New York: Macmillan, 1928), 8. See also Muir, The Broken Promises of Agricultural Progress, 95. 17. Churchill, “Fifty Years Hence,” 555. 18. R. McCance and E. Widdowson, Breads White and Brown: Their Place in Thought and Social History (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1956), 1. 19. Turner, Beckett, and Afton, Farm Production in England, 18; V. Smil, Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food Production (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 33. 20. Belich, Replenishing the Earth, 445.

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21. “The Wheat Crop,” The Economist, September 15, 1855. 22. Petersen, Bread and the British Economy, 206; Harriet Friedmann, “State Policy and World Commerce: The Case of Wheat, 1815 to the Present,” in Foreign Policy and the Modern World System, ed. Pat McGowan and Charles Kegley Jr. (London: Sage, 1983), 135. 23. Turner, Beckett, and Afton, Farm Production in England, 141. 24. Smith, Economic Geography of Great Britain, 179. 25. For example, Christopher Middleton in Royal Commission on Agriculture, Minutes, 1:62. 26. Royal Commission on Agriculture, Alphabetical Digest of the Minutes of Evidence on Agricultural Depression (London: HM Stationery Office, 1896), 279. 27. Viscount Astor and Keith Murray, Land and Life: The Economic National Policy for Agriculture (London: Victor Gollancz, 1932), 53. 28. Belich, Replenishing the Earth, 365. 29. Bear, The British Farmer, 52; William Bear, “The Indian Wheat Trade,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, 2nd ser., 24 (1888): 70. 30. R. Crawford, “An Inquiry into Wheat Prices and Wheat Supply,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 58, no. 1 (March 1895): 93. 31. C. Marbut, “Russia and the United States in the World’s Wheat Market,” Geographical Review 21, no. 1 (January 1931): 7. 32. J. Goldstein, The Agricultural Crisis: Is It a Temporary Problem? (New York: John Day, 1935), 182. 33. D. Morgan, Merchants of Grain (New York: Viking, 1979), 65; R. Smith, Wheat Fields and Markets of the World (Saint Louis: Modern Miller, 1908), 80. 34. Malenbaum, The World Wheat Economy, 138. 35. W. Layton, “Argentina and Food Supply,” Economic Journal 15, no. 58 (June 1905): 200. 36. C. Solberg, The Prairies and the Pampas: Agrarian Policy in Canada and Argentina, 1880–1930 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), 41. 37. Friedmann, “The Transformation of Wheat Production,” 195– 96; W. Rutter, Wheat-Growing in Canada, the United States and the Argentine: Including Comparisons with Other Areas (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1911), 203; J. Scobie, Revolution on the Pampas: A Social History of Argentine Wheat, 1860– 1910 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), 92. 38. Solberg, The Prairies and the Pampas, 151. 39. C. Knick Harley, “Transportation, the World Wheat Trade, and the Kuznets Cycle, 1850–1913,” Explorations in Economic History 17 (1980): 227– 28. 40. Barbier, Scarcity and Frontiers, 395. 41. Crawford, “An Inquiry into Wheat Prices and Wheat Supply,” 85. 42. “Breadstuffs for Great Britain,” American Elevator and Grain Trade, November 15, 1892, 160. 43. Friedmann, “The Transformation of Wheat Production,” 164. 44. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, 145. 45. Frank Gohlke, Measure of Emptiness: Grain Elevators in the American Landscape (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).

300

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46. Frank Norris, The Octopus: A Story of California (1901; Minneola, NY: Dover, 2003), 415–18. 47. T. Hammatt, “Can America Export Wheat?” Foreign Affairs 3, no. 1 (September 15, 1924): 129; A. Taylor, “Wheat and Wheat Flour,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 127 (September 1926): 30– 48. 48. M. P. Cowen and R. W. Shenton, Doctrines of Development (London: Routledge, 1996), 205; Caird, The Landed Interest, 173. 49. F. Burton, “Wheat in Canadian History,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne d’economique et de science politique 3, no. 2 (May 1937): 217; Solberg, The Prairies and the Pampas, 13. 50. Peter Russell, How Agriculture Made Canada: Farming in the Nineteenth Century (London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012), 234– 36, 273. 51. Paul Voisey, Vulcan: The Making of a Prairie Community (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 17. 52. Solberg, The Prairies and the Pampas, 78, 85; Caird, The Landed Interest, 173. 53. Gerald Friesen, The Canadian Prairies: A History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 130, 150–51. 54. D. MacGibbon, The Canadian Grain Trade (Toronto: Macmillan, 1932), 55; Solberg, The Prairies and the Pampas, 111; G. Arner, “The Market for American Agricultural Products in the United Kingdom,” Journal of Farm Economics 6, no. 3 (July 1924): 287. 55. Robert Machray, “‘The Granary of the Empire,’” Nineteenth Century 318 (August 1903): 320. 56. Rutter, Wheat-Growing, 47, 52. 57. G. Britnell, The Wheat Economy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1939), 48. 58. Edward Porritt, “Canada’s National Grain Route,” Political Science Quarterly 33, no. 3 (September 1918): 365, 369, 374. 59. J. Stewart, “Marketing Wheat,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 107 (May 1923): 188; MacGibbon, The Canadian Grain Trade, 96– 99; Jeremy Adelman, Frontier Development: Land, Labour, and Capital on the Wheatlands of Argentina and Canada, 1890– 1914 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 205– 6. 60. MacGibbon, The Canadian Grain Trade, 122–23, 129– 32, 185. 61. The Bank of Canada cited in Britnell, The Wheat Economy, 69. 62. Machray, “‘The Granary of the Empire,’” 314. 63. Edward Hepple Hall responding to R. Webster, “England’s Colonial Granaries,” Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute 13 (1881–82): 44. 64. Grant MacEwan, Harvest of Bread (Saskatoon: Western Producer, 1969), 150. 65. Lowell Hill, Grain Grades and Standards: Historical Issues Shaping the Future (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 14, 19, 23, 83, 88, 91, 297. 66. Solberg, The Prairies and the Pampas, 141. 67. MacGibbon, The Canadian Grain Trade, 227. 68. L. Knowles and C. Knowles, The Economic Development of the British Overseas Empire, 3 vols. (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1924), 2:516. 69. MacGibbon, The Canadian Grain Trade, 198. 70. MacGibbon, The Canadian Grain Trade, 199; “From Thresher to Mill: How Canadian Wheat Is Graded and Shipped,” Canada 11 (October 3, 1908): 397; A. H. Reginald

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Buller, Essays on Wheat (New York: Macmillan, 1919), 84– 85; Hill, Grain Grades and Standards, 229. 71. MacGibbon, The Canadian Grain Trade, 200–201. 72. Clarence Piper, Principles of the Grain Trade of Western Canada (Winnipeg: Empire Elevator, 1917), 31. 73. MacGibbon, The Canadian Grain Trade, 218; Buller, Essays on Wheat, 87, 89. 74. Buller, Essays on Wheat, 90. 75. MacGibbon, The Canadian Grain Trade, 177; J. Lockwood, Flour Milling, 2nd ed. (Liverpool: Northern, 1949), 63. 76. Piper, Principles of the Grain Trade, 103. 77. MacGibbon, The Canadian Grain Trade, 143–44. 78. P. Cain, “Economics and Empire: The Metropolitan Context,” in Porter, ed., Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 3, The Nineteenth Century, 32. 79. P. Dondlinger, The Book of Wheat: An Economic History and Practical Manual of the Wheat Industry (New York: Orange Judd, 1908), 315. 80. Crawford, “Notes on the Food Supply,” 607. 81. Layton, “Wheat Prices,” 107. 82. “Wheat and Other Cereals: Nature and Properties,” in The Modern Baker, Confectioner and Caterer (new and rev. ed., 6 vols.), ed. John Kirkland (London: Gresham, 1924), 1:33. 83. John Percival, Wheat in Great Britain, 2nd ed. (London: Duckworth, 1948), 76. 84. William Halliwell, The Technics of Flour Milling: A Handbook for Millers (London: Stalker Bros., 1904), 223. 85. E. Collins, “Why Wheat? Choice of Food Grains in Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” Journal of European Economic History 22 (1993): 30. 86. Aashish Velkar, Markets and Measurements in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 201. 87. J. Perkins, Geopolitics and the Green Revolution: Wheat, Genes, and the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), vi. 88. R. Biffen, “Mendel’s Laws of Inheritance and Wheat Breeding,” Journal of Agricultural Science 1 (1905): 4–48. 89. Darwin, Origin of Species, 99. 90. Perkins, Geopolitics and the Green Revolution, 24– 25, 216; D. MacGibbon, “The Adaptation of Wheat to Northern Regions,” Pacific Affairs 7, no. 4 (December 1934): 418; J. Lelley, Wheat Breeding: Theory and Practice (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1976). 91. Harry Snyder, Bread: A Collection of Popular Papers on Wheat, Flour and Bread (New York: Macmillan, 1930), 200–201; Grant Macewen, Harvest of Bread (Saskatoon: Western Producer, 1969), 131. 92. Kingsbury, Hybrid, 35. 93. Derry, Masterminding Nature, 21; H. Roberts, Plant Hybridization Before Mendel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1929), 122. 94. William Scott, “Wheat, with Special Reference to That Grown in the Ottawa District,” Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club Transactions 2, no. 2 (1885): 237; G. Bell, “Cereal Breeding,” Science Reviews 45, no. 178 (April 1957): 202; Bear, “The Indian Wheat Trade,” 79.

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95. Bear, “The Indian Wheat Trade,” 78. 96. F. L. Engledow, “Rowland Henry Biffen. 1874– 1949,” Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 7, no. 19 (November 1950): 17. 97. Lockwood, Flour Milling, 427. 98. G. Federico, Feeding the World: An Economic History of Agriculture, 1800– 2000 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 85. 99. Smith, Wheat Fields and Markets, 189. 100. A. Olmstead and P. Rhode, “Biological Innovation in American Wheat Production: Science, Policy, and Environmental Adaptation,” in Industrializing Organisms: Introducing Evolutionary History, ed. S. Shrepfer and P. Scranton (London: Routledge, 2004), 71. 101. R. Perren, “Structural Change and Market Growth in the Food Industry: Flour Milling in Britain, Europe, and America, 1850–1914,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 43 (August 1990): 429–30. 102. Rutter, Wheat-Growing, 67, 71, 72. 103. C. Ball, “The History of American Wheat Improvement,” Agricultural History 4, no. 1 (April 1930): 55; Olmstead and Rhode, “Biological Innovation,” 62. 104. Ball, “The History of American Wheat Improvement,” 56; Olmstead and Rhode, “Biological Innovation,” 62. 105. Ball, “The History of American Wheat Improvement,” 56. 106. Buller, Essays on Wheat, 175. 107. Bruce and Hunter, Crop and Stock Improvement, 42. 108. MacEwan, Harvest of Bread, 2. 109. Alan Olmstead and Paul Rhode, “Adapting North American Wheat Production to Climatic Challenges, 1839–2009,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 2 (January 11, 2011): 482. 110. Gary Paulsen and James Shroyer, “The Early History of Wheat Improvement in the Great Plains,” Agronomy Journal 100, suppl. 3 (2008): S-71. 111. Kingsbury, Hybrid, 117. 112. Perkins, Geopolitics and the Green Revolution, 23. 113. Knowles and Knowles, The Economic Development of the British Overseas Empire, 1:233: Scobie, Revolution on the Pampas, 87. 114. Gregory Barton, The Global History of Organic Farming (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 73–74. 115. Goldstein, The Agricultural Crisis, 91; Kingsbury, Hybrid, 208. 116. Bruce and Hunter, Crop and Stock Improvement, 13. 117. G. Freeman, “Producing Bread Making Wheats for Warm Climates,” Journal of Heredity 9, no. 5 (May–June 1918): 225. 118. Perkins, Geopolitics and the Green Revolution, 68. 119. Richard Amasino, “Vernalization, Competence, and the Epigenetic Memory of Winter,” Plant Cell 16 (October 2004): 2553–59. 120. P. Kozmin, Flour Milling: A Theoretical and Practical Handbook of Flour Manufacture for Millers, Millwrights, Flour-Milling Engineers, and Others Engaged in the Flour-Milling Industry, trans. M. Falker and Theodor Fjelstrup (London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1921), 58, 89, 72–73, 92. 121. W. Voller, Modern Flour Milling: A Text-Book for Millers and Others Interested

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214. Jason Moore, “The Modern World System as Environmental History? Ecology and the Rise of Capitalism,” Theory and Society 32 (2003): 315. 215. Rafael Dobado-González, Alfredo García-Hiernaux, and David Guerrero, “The Integration of Grain Markets in the Eighteenth Century: Early Rise of Globalization in the West,” Journal of Economic History 72, no. 3 (September 2012): 674– 75, 677, 672. 216. Spencer Trotter, The Geography of Commerce: A Text-Book (New York: Macmillan, 1906), 142. 217. Collins, “Dietary Change,” 100; Ainsworth-Davis, Crops and Fruits, 52. 218. De Lavergne, Rural Economy, 162. 219. O. Von Engeln, “The World’s Food Resources,” Geographical Review 9, no. 3 (March 1920): 173. 220. Collins, “Food Supplies,” 38; David Grigg, The Agricultural Systems of the World: An Evolutionary Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 262. 221. James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (London: Yale University Press, 2017), 129. 222. Lockwood, Flour Milling, 194, 196–97. 223. Petersen, Bread and the British Economy, 55–56. 224. Milo Ketchum, The Design of Walls, Bins and Grain Elevators (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1919), 3, 351; George Carney, “Grain Elevators in the United States and Canada: Functional or Symbolic?” Material Culture 27, no. 1 (1995): 3. 225. Smith, Wheat Fields and Markets, 4. 226. James Boyle, Speculation and the Chicago Board of Trade (New York: Macmillan, 1920), 59; Piper, Principles of the Grain Trade, 229. 227. Lieutenant-Colonel E. A. Ruggles-Wise responding to A. Humphries, “The International Aspects of the Wheat Market,” International Affairs 10, no. 1 (January 1931): 100. 228. “The World Wheat Situation, 1923–24: A Review of the Crop Year,” Wheat Studies of the Food Research Institute 1, no. 1 (December 1924): 11. 229. Smith, Wheat Fields and Markets, 254; A. Barker, The British Corn Trade from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1920), 72. 230. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, 120–24; Boyle, Speculation and the Chicago Board of Trade, 20. 231. Dondlinger, The Book of Wheat, 237. 232. A. Hooker, The International Grain Trade (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1936), 63–64. 233. Douglas Owen, Ocean Trade and Shipping (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), 71; James Mavor, “The Economic Results of the Specialist Production and Marketing of Wheat,” Political Science Quarterly 26, no. 4 (December 1911): 661. 234. G.T., “Electricity and Grain Elevators,” Electrical Engineer 34 (October 1891): 346; William Wales, “Discharging and Storing Grain at British Ports,” Cassier’s Engineering Illustrated 13, no. 1 (November 1897): 20; Zimmer, Mechanical Handling, 296, 450. 235. Brysson Cunningham, Cargo Handling at Ports: A Survey of the Various Systems in Vogue, with a Consideration of Their Respective Merits, 2nd ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1928), 132–33, 151. 236. Porritt, “Canada’s National Grain Route,” 361.

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Chapter Three 1. G. Allen, “Food and Feeding,” Cornhill Magazine, n.s., 3 (December 1884): 628. 2. Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Physiologie du goût (1825; Teddington: Echo Library, 2008), 29. 3. John Yudkin, Pure, White and Deadly: The Problem of Sugar (London: DavisPoynter, 1972), 147. 4. J. I. Rodale, Sugar: The Curse of Civilization, 2nd ed. (Berkhamsted: Rodale, 1967), 23. 5. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 78. 6. Oliver Cheesman, Environmental Impacts of Sugar Production: The Cultivation and Processing of Sugarcane and Sugar Beet (Wallingford: CABI, 2004), 2. 7. C. F. Bardorf, The Story of Sugar (Easton, PA: Chemical Publishing Co., 1924), 30. 8. William Beinart and Lotte Hughes, Environment and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 26; Philippe Chalmin, The Making of a Sugar Giant: Tate and Lyle, 1859–1989, trans. Erica Long-Michalke (New York: Harwood, 1990), 12; Smith, World’s Food Resources, 462. 9. Jan de Vries, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 159.

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10. Pomeranz, The Great Divergence, 275. 11. C. J. Robertson, World Sugar Production and Consumption: An EconomicGeographical Survey (London: John Bale, Sons & Danielsson, 1934), 111. 12. Chalmin, The Making of a Sugar Giant, 388. See also “Sugar in Australian Diet,” British Medical Journal, November 5, 1938, 953. 13. An Essay on Modern Luxuries (Salisbury: J. Hodson, 1777), 8, 14. 14. G. Porter, The Progress of the Nation, in Its Various Social and Economical Relations, from the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century, new ed. (London: John Murray, 1847), 551. 15. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 183. 16. James Caird, “Home-Grown Sugar,” The Times, May 25, 1872. 17. “The Sugar Question,” Preston Chronicle, June 19, 1841. 18. Robert Giffen, “The Recent Rate of Material Progress in England,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 50, no. 4 (December 1887): 622. 19. “Sugar,” Leeds Mercury, July 1, 1856. 20. H. Willoughby Gardner, “The Dietetic Value of Sugar,” British Medical Journal, April 27, 1901, 1010. 21. Charles Lock, Benjamin Newlands, and John Newlands, Sugar: A Handbook for Planters and Refiners (London: E. & F. Spon, 1888), 693. 22. Roderick Floud, Robert Fogel, Bernard Harris, and Sok Chul Hong, The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World since 1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 159. 23. “Sugar Reduction: The Evidence for Action,” Public Health England, 2015, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment _data/file/470179/Sugar_reduction_The_evidence_for_action.pdf. 24. Gardner, “The Dietetic Value of Sugar,” 1010. 25. Topik and Wells, Global Markets Transformed, 212. 26. “Food Value of Sugar,” The Times, September 25, 1913; Robert Hutchison, Food and the Principles of Dietetics (New York: William Wood, 1902), 271. 27. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life. 28. Harriet Friedmann, “What on Earth Is the Modern Food-System? Foodgetting and Territory in the Modern Era and Beyond,” Journal of World-Systems Research 1, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2000): 501. 29. Beinart and Hughes, Environment and Empire, 34– 35. 30. Andrew Porter, ed., Atlas of British Overseas Expansion (London: Routledge, 1991), 63; Beinart and Hughes, Environment and Empire, 150. 31. Radkau, Nature and Power, 162. 32. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1:412. 33. Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 105; David Richardson, “The Slave Trade, Sugar, and British Economic Growth, 1748–1776,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17, no. 4 (Spring 1987): 740. 34. Richard Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623–1775 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 475, 477; Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, 57–64, 81–84. 35. David Ricardo in Debates at the General Court of Proprietors of East-India Stock

310

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on the 19th and 21st March 1823 on the East-India Sugar Trade (London: Printed for Kingsbury, Parbury & Allen by Cox & Baylis, 1823), 19. 36. William Fox, An Address to the People of Great Britain, on the Propriety of Abstaining from West India Sugar and Rum, 10th ed. (Philadelphia: Daniel Lawrence, 1792), 5. 37. John Hutcheson, Notes on the Sugar Industry of the United Kingdom (Greenock: James McKelvie & Sons, 1901), 101. 38. Anthony Howe, Free Trade and Liberal England, 1846– 1946 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 50–51, 53. 39. Hutcheson, Notes on the Sugar Industry, 102. 40. Howe, Free Trade and Liberal England, 114; Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, 139. 41. William Green, British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great Experiment, 1830–1865 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), 245. 42. C. J. Robertson, “Cane-Sugar Production in the British Empire,” Economic Geography 6, no. 2 (April 1930): 138. 43. Ada Ferrer, Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 5, 10. 44. Luis Martínez-Fernández, “The Sweet and the Bitter: Cuban and Puerto Rican Responses to the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Sugar Challenge,” New West Indian Guide 67, nos. 1–2 (1993): 48; Alan Dye, Cuban Sugar in the Age of Mass Production: Technology and the Economics of the Sugar Central, 1899– 1929 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 35. 45. Frank Rutter, International Sugar Situation (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1904), 81; G. Roger Knight, Sugar, Steam and Steel: The Industrial Project in Colonial Java (Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press, 2014), 31. 46. J. Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry: An Historical Geography from Its Origins to 1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 11. 47. G. C. Stevenson, Genetics and the Breeding of Sugar Cane (London: Longmans, Green, 1965), 133. 48. Noel Deerr, The History of Sugar, 2 vols. (London: Chapman & Hall, 1949), 1:13. See also Sanjida O’Connell, Sugar: The Grass That Changed the World (London: Virgin, 2004), 220. 49. Vladimir Timoshenko and Boris Swerling, The World’s Sugar: Progress and Policy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957), 126; Stuart McCook, States of Nature: Science, Agriculture, and Environment in the Spanish Caribbean, 1760– 1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 80. 50. Stevenson, Genetics and the Breeding of Sugar Cane, 16. 51. Timoshenko and Swerling, The World’s Sugar, 127. 52. Francis Maxwell, Economic Aspects of Cane Sugar Production (London: Norman Rodger, 1927), 143, 132, 133–36. 53. Stevenson, Genetics and the Breeding of Sugar Cane, 69. 54. Stevenson, Genetics and the Breeding of Sugar Cane, 150. 55. McCook, States of Nature, 87. 56. Timoshenko and Swerling, The World’s Sugar, 128; Bill Albert and Adrian Graves,

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311

introduction to The World Sugar Economy in War and Depression, 1914– 1940, ed. Bill Albert and Adrian Graves (London: Routledge, 1988), 15. 57. O. W. Willcox, Nations Can Live at Home (New York: Norton, 1935), 110. 58. Stevenson, Genetics and the Breeding of Sugar Cane, 50. 59. Mark Smith, “Creating an Industrial Plant: The Biotechnology of Sugar Production in Cuba,” in Shrepfer and Scranton, eds., Industrializing Organisms, 86. 60. Stevenson, Genetics and the Breeding of Sugar Cane, 15. 61. Timoshenko and Swerling, The World’s Sugar, 131; Pieter Honig, “Developments in Cane Sugar Production since 1938,” Sugar, September 1950, 23– 24. 37. 62. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 47–51. 63. C. J. Robertson, “Geographical Aspects of Cane-Sugar Production,” Geography 17, no. 3 (September 1932): 170. 64. Green, British Slave Emancipation, 50. 65. Moore, “The Modern World System as Environmental History?” 348. 66. Richard Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600– 1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 64–71. 67. Timoshenko and Swerling, The World’s Sugar, 5. 68. Richards, The Unending Frontier, 425; Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Knopf, 2015), 89. 69. Richard Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1723 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 192. 70. Peter Soames, A Treatise on the Manufacture of Sugar from the Sugar Cane (London: E. & F. Spon, 1872), 20. 71. H. C. Prinsen Geerligs, Practical White Sugar Manufacture (London: Norman Rodger, 1915), 27. 72. Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry, 137. 73. Knight, Sugar, Steam and Steel, 18–19. 74. Soames, A Treatise on the Manufacture of Sugar, 72; Noël Deerr, Sugar and the Sugar Cane: An Elementary Treatise on the Agriculture of the Sugar Cane and on the Manufacture of Cane Sugar (Altrincham: Norman Rodger, 1905), 230. 75. Soames, A Treatise on the Manufacture of Sugar, 75; A. J. Wallis-Tayler, Sugar Machinery: A Descriptive Treatise Devoted to the Machinery and Apparatus Used in the Manufacture of Cane and Beet Sugars, 2nd ed. (London: William Rider, [1924?]), 234, 238; Prinsen Geerligs, Practical White Sugar Manufacture, 96; Dye, Cuban Sugar, 83. 76. Deerr, Sugar and the Sugar Cane, 281. 77. Smith, “Creating an Industrial Plant,” 93. 78. Dye, Cuban Sugar, 75, 87. 79. George Martineau, Sugar, Cane and Beet: An Object Lesson (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1910), 31; John M’Intosh, The Technology of Sugar (London: Scott, Greenwood & Son, 1906), 355; David Singerman, “Inventing Purity in the Atlantic Sugar World, 1860–1930” (PhD diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2014), 11. 80. J. H. Tucker, A Manual of Sugar Analysis: Including the Applications in General of Analytical Methods to the Sugar Industry (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1881), 171– 72; Deerr, Sugar and the Sugar Cane, 311.

312

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81. Martineau, Sugar, Cane and Beet, 28; Soames, A Treatise on the Manufacture of Sugar, 13–14; Sergio Díaz-Briquets and Jorge Pérez-López, Conquering Nature: The Environmental Legacy of Socialism in Cuba (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000), 171. 82. Cheesman, Environmental Impacts of Sugar Production, 153. 83. Chalmin, The Making of a Sugar Giant, 649. 84. Robertson, World Sugar Production and Consumption, 100, 102. 85. Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery, 43. 86. Timoshenko and Swerling, The World’s Sugar, 144. 87. H. C. Prinsen Geerligs, Cane Sugar and Its Manufacture, 2nd rev. ed. (London: Norman Rodger, 1924), 288, 280–83. 88. E. Rice, “Storing and Shipping Bulk Sugar,” in Manufacture and Refining of Raw Cane Sugar (2nd ed.), by V. Baikow (New York: Elsevier, 1982), 245. 89. Geoffrey Fairrie, Sugar (Liverpool: Fairrie, 1925), 57– 59; Vulté and Vanderbilt, Food Industries, 148. 90. Martineau, Sugar, Cane and Beet, 80. 91. Wallis-Tayler, Sugar Machinery, 147–48; M’Intosh, The Technology of Sugar, 118; Bardorf, The Story of Sugar, 169. 92. William Wallace, “On Animal Charcoal, Particularly in Relation to Its Use in Sugar Refining,” Proceedings of the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow 6 (1868): 163. 93. William Crookes, On the Manufacture of Beet-Root Sugar in England and Ireland (London: Longmans, Green, 1870), 163–64. 94. Archibald Clow and Nan Clow, The Chemical Revolution: A Contribution to Social Technology (London: Batchworth, 1952), 524. 95. Peter Borscheid, “Global Insurance Networks,” in The Value of Risk: Swiss Re and the History of Reinsurance, ed. Harold James (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 26. 96. Guilford Spencer and George Meade, Cane Sugar Handbook: A Manual for Cane Sugar Manufacturers and Their Chemists (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1945), 287. 97. Hutcheson, Notes on the Sugar Industry, 69. 98. “Fatal Explosion at Messrs. Finzel’s Sugar Refinery,” Bristol Mercury, November 25, 1865. 99. R. Cecil Smart, The Technology of Industrial Fire and Explosion Hazards, 2 vols. (London: Chapman & Hall, 1947), 1:180, 185. 100. Fraser, The Coming of the Mass Market, 169. 101. J. Watson, A Hundred Years of Sugar Refining: The Story of Love Lane Refinery, 1872–1972 (Liverpool: Tate & Lyle Refineries, 1973), 33. 102. Chalmin, The Making of a Sugar Giant, 76. 103. Fairrie, Sugar, 110. 104. J. Cunningham, Products of the Empire (1920), new ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1928), 85. 105. Chalmin, The Making of a Sugar Giant, 243. 106. Chalmin, The Making of a Sugar Giant, 245, 190; David Clampin and Ron Noon, “The Maverick Mr. Cube: The Resurgence of Commercial Marketing in Postwar Britain,” Journal of Macromarketing 31, no. 1 (2011): 27.

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107. M. Le Compte Chaptal, Chimie appliqué a l’agriculture, 2 vols. (Paris: Madame Huzard, 1823), 2:18. 108. Martineau, Sugar, Cane and Beet, 99; Hans Fischer, “Origin of the ‘Weisse Schlesische Rübe’ (White Silesian Beet) and Resynthesis of Sugar Beet,” Euphytica 41 (1989): 76. 109. E. C. Spary, Feeding France: New Sciences of Food, 1760– 1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 286, 301, 306. 110. E. Lavasseur, Histoire des classes ouvrières et de l’industrie en France (Paris: Arthur Rousseau, 1903), 476; H. C. Prinsen Geerligs, The World’s Cane Sugar Industry: Past and Present (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1912), 16– 17. 111. Dale Tomich, Slavery in the Circuit of Capital: Martinique and the World Economy, 1830–1848 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 61. 112. George Coons, “The Sugar Beet: Product of Science,” Scientific Monthly 68, no. 3 (March 1949): 153. 113. R. W. Allard, Principles of Plant Breeding (London: John Wiley, 1964), 52. 114. Justus Liebig, Familiar Letters on Chemistry, and Its Relation to Commerce, Physiology, and Agriculture, ed. John Gardner (New York: D. Appleton, 1843), 51; E. Muriel Poggi, “The German Sugar Beet Industry,” Economic Geography 6, no. 1 (January 1930): 86. 115. Truman Palmer, Sugar Beet Seed: History and Development (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1918), 11, 101, 9. 116. George Coons, “Improvement of the Sugar Beet,” Yearbook of Agriculture (Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture, 1936), 631, 633. 117. Beet-Breeding at Klein Wanzleben (Leipzig: Sugar Factory Klein Wanzleben, 1904), n.p. 118. R. N. Dowling, Sugar Beet and Beet Sugar (London: Ernest Benn, 1928), 54. 119. Palmer, Sugar Beet Seed, 21–26. 120. Bardorf, The Story of Sugar, 45. 121. T. H. P. Heriot, The Manufacture of Sugar from the Cane and Beet (New York: Longmans, Green, 1920), 14. 122. Charles Griffin, “The Sugar Industry and Legislation in Europe,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 17, no. 1 (November 1902): 10; J. W. Robertson-Scott, Sugar Beet: Some Facts and Some Illusions (London: Horace Cox, 1911), 38– 39. 123. Palmer, Sugar Beet Seed, x; Lock, Newlands, and Newlands, Sugar, 426. 124. Bardorf, The Story of Sugar, 43. 125. Palmer, Sugar Beet Seed, xiii. 126. Dondlinger, The Book of Wheat, 57. 127. Allard, Principles of Plant Breeding, 256–57. 128. Hugo de Vries, The Mutation Theory: Experiments and Observations on the Origin of Species in the Vegetable Kingdom, trans. J. Farmer and A. Darbishire, 2 vols. (Chicago: Open Court, 1909), 1:99. 129. John Crowell, “The Sugar Situation in Europe,” Political Science Quarterly 14, no. 1 (March 1899): 92. 130. Griffin, “The Sugar Industry,” 6; Robertson-Scott, Sugar Beet, 227– 28. 131. Timoshenko and Swerling, The World’s Sugar, 41.

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132. G. Deming, “Breeding Sugar Beets with Root Conformation Adapted to Beet Harvest,” Proceedings of the Fifth Biennial Meeting of the American Society of Sugar Beet Technologists (San Francisco, 1948), 187–91. 133. Martineau, Sugar, Cane and Beet, 40. 134. Wallis-Tayler, Sugar Machinery, 99. 135. H. Claasen, Beet-Sugar Manufacture, trans. William Hall and George Rolfe, 2nd ed. (London: Chapman & Sons, 1910), 81; Robertson-Scott, Sugar Beet, 15; Wallis-Tayler, Sugar Machinery, 127. 136. Robertson-Scott, Sugar Beet, 23. 137. Claasen, Beet-Sugar Manufacture, 283, 293–94. 138. Martineau, Sugar, Cane and Beet, 47; Smith, World’s Food Resources, 459. 139. Crowell, “The Sugar Situation in Europe,” 91. 140. Ulbe Bosma, The Sugar Plantation in India and Indonesia: Industrial Production, 1770– 2010 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 164– 65; Chalmin, The Making of a Sugar Giant, 16; Albert and Graves, introduction to The World Sugar Economy, 7. 141. John Perkins, “The German Beet-Sugar Industry and the Nazi Machtergreifund of 1933,” in Albert and Graves, eds., The World Sugar Economy, 28. 142. Hutcheson, Notes on the Sugar Industry, 125. 143. George Baden-Powell, State Aid and State Interference: Illustrated by Results in Commerce and Industry (London: Chapman & Hall, 1882), 111. 144. Chalmin, The Making of a Sugar Giant, 36. 145. Howe, Free Trade and Liberal England, 205. 146. Cowen and Shenton, Doctrines of Development, 275. 147. “Protest against the Sugar Bounties,” Liverpool Mercury, June 8, 1887. 148. “Confectionery Crisis,” Evening Telegraph, March 17, 1904. 149. Hammond, Food, 3:3. 150. Jonsson, Enlightenment’s Frontier, 108–9. 151. Ricardo, On Protection to Agriculture, 59. 152. Edwin Lankester, Vegetable Substances Used for the Food of Man (London: M. A. Nattali, [1860s?]), 390. 153. “Beet-Root Sugar,” Household Words, n.s., 1, no. 24 (1853): 569. 154. Chalmin, The Making of a Sugar Giant, 29. 155. “The Manufacture of Sugar from Beetroot,” North Wales Chronicle, June 14, 1836. 156. W. Gibbs, “On the Cultivation of Beetroot, and Its Manufacture into Sugar,” Journal of the Society of Arts 16, no. 805 (April 24, 1868): 417. 157. Financial Statements of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1869 and 1870 (London: Robert John Bush, 1870), 30. 158. “Beetroot Distilling,” Engineering 11 (February 10, 1871): 104. 159. James Caird, “English Beetroot Sugar,” The Times, November 17, 1870; Robertson-Scott, Sugar Beet, 43; Chalmin, The Making of a Sugar Giant, 29. 160. John Porter, “Sugar-Beet Cultivation in England,” The Times, June 4, 1884; D. T. Leek, “Sugar Beet-Growing in England,” The Times, November 9, 1869. 161. Lord Denbigh, “The British Sugar Industry,” The Times, February 17, 1913.

Notes to Pages 86–88

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162. W. Mockett, “Sugar Beet in Worcestershire,” Worcestershire Agricultural Chronicle 14–15 (1945): 39. 163. Brown, Agriculture in England, 111; A. Bridges and R. Dixey, British Sugar Beet: Ten Years’ Progress under the Subsidy (Oxford: Agricultural Economics Research Institute, 1934), 8. 164. Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Report on the Sugar Beet Industry at Home and Abroad (London: HM Stationery Office, 1931), 43. 165. Brown, Agriculture in England, 119. 166. Chalmin, The Making of a Sugar Giant, 169. 167. “The Bardney and Brigg Beet Sugar Factories,” Journal of the Ministry of Agriculture 35, no. 11 (February 1929): 1031. 168. Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Report on the Sugar Beet Industry at Home and Abroad, 126. 169. “Sugar-Beet Experiments,” The Times, October 28, 1916; “Sugar Beet,” The Times, August 14, 1925. 170. Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Report on the Sugar Beet Industry at Home and Abroad, 68. 171. Home-Grown Sugar: The Rise and Development of an Industry (London: British Sugar Corp., 1961), 32. 172. Venn, The Foundations of Agricultural Economics, 527; James Watson, Rural Britain To-Day and To-Morrow (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1934), 115. 173. “Power Alcohol within the Empire,” International Sugar Journal 28 (December 1926): 634. 174. “A Decisive Report,” Manchester Guardian, April 11, 1935. 175. “Cost of Beet-Sugar Subsidy,” Manchester Guardian, July 13, 1935. 176. Bridges and Dixey, British Sugar Beet, 75, 76– 77, 82, 91. 177. Cited in Robertson-Scott, Sugar Beet, 296. 178. John Winnifrith, The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962), 72. 179. Gary Cross and Robert Proctor, Packaged Pleasures: How Technology and Marketing Revolutionized Desire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014). 180. Henry Weatherley, A Treatise on the Art of Boiling Sugar, Crystallizing, Lozenge-Making, Comfits, Gum Goods, and Other Processes for Confectionery, Etc. (Philadelphia: Henry Carey Baird, 1875), 98. 181. “The Confectioners and the Sugar Bounties,” Pall Mall Gazette, May 9, 1889. 182. “Modern Confectionery,” Chambers’s Journal, 6th ser., 3 (December 1899–November 1900): 149. 183. “British Trade in Sweets,” The Times, August 20, 1931. 184. Weatherley, A Treatise on the Art of Boiling Sugar, 29, 96– 97. 185. “Modern Confectionery,” 149. 186. “Sweets and Confectionery Trade,” Hull Daily Mail, June 4, 1924. 187. N. F. Scarborough, Sweet Manufacture: A Practical Handbook on the Manufacture of Sugar Confectionery (London: Leonard Hill, 1933), 12–13, 24, 35; Auguste Jacoutot, Chocolate and Confectionery Manufacture (London: MacLaren & Sons, 1903), 178– 79. 188. Scarborough, Sweet Manufacture, 3–7.

316

Notes to Pages 90–91

189. Lees, A History of Sweet and Chocolate Manufacture, 43. 190. Vulté and Vanderbilt, Food Industries, 249; James Grant, Confectioners’ Raw Materials: Their Sources, Modes of Preparation, Chemical Composition, the Chief Impurities and Adulterations, Their More Important Uses and Other Points of Interest (London: Edward Arnold, 1926), 93. 191. Weatherley, A Treatise on the Art of Boiling Sugar, 40. 192. Grant, Confectioners’ Raw Materials, 23. 193. Sally Horrocks, “Technology and Chocolate: Research in the British Food Industry Before 1940,” in Innovations in the European Economy between the Wars, ed. François Caron, Paul Erker, and Wolfram Fischer (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1995), 144. 194. Laura Mason, Sugar-Plums and Sherbet: The Prehistory of Sweets (Totnes: Prospect, 1998), 87. 195. Weatherley, A Treatise on the Art of Boiling Sugar, 49. 196. Nicholas Whittaker, Sweet Talk: The Secret History of Confectionery (London: Phoenix, 1998). 197. Mason, Sugar-Plums and Sherbet, 148. 198. Fitzgerald, Rowntree and the Marketing Revolution, 57, 62, 339. 199. Allison James, “Confections, Concoctions, and Conceptions,” in Consumption: Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences, vol. 4, Objects, Subjects and Mediations in Consumption, ed. Daniel Miller (London: Routledge, 2001), 75. 200. “Shopping in London,” Littell’s Living Age 1, no. 4 (June 8, 1844): 254. 201. Levy, The Shops of Britain, 71. 202. M. F. Billington, “The Cult of Candy,” Woman’s World 3 (1890): 567. 203. Roald Dahl, Boy: Tales of Childhood (London: Puffin, 1986), 33– 34. 204. “Sweets and Bad Teeth,” The Times, June 25, 1921. 205. Our Towns: A Close-Up: A Study Made in 1939– 42 with Certain Recommendations by the Hygiene Committee of the Women’s Group on Public Welfare (in Association with the National Council of Social Service), with a Preface by the Rt. Hon. Margaret Bondfield (London: Oxford University Press, 1943), 22. 206. “Fruit, Sugar, and Fudge,” Daily News (London), September 7, 1888; Frederick Smith, A Brief Introduction to Commercial Geography (London: Blackie & Son, 1903), 122. 207. Cited in “The Jam Makers and the Sugar Bounties,” Pall Mall Gazette, May 11, 1889. 208. Ursula Heinzelmann, Beyond Bratwurst: A History of Food in Germany (London: Reaktion, 2014), 1900. 209. Hutchison, Food and the Principles of Dietetics, 26. 210. William Jago, Jam Manufacture: Its Theory and Practice (London: Maclaren & Sons, 1919), 36. 211. C. Wilson, The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History and Its Role in the World Today (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 75. 212. “Food from Flour,” The Times, June 8, 1914. 213. T. A. B. Corley, Quaker Enterprise in Biscuits: Huntley and Palmers of Reading, 1822–1972 (London: Hutchinson, 1972), 74.

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214. Peek, Frean & Co., 1857– 1957: A Hundred Years of Biscuit Making (London, 1957), 9–10. 215. Corley, Quaker Enterprise in Biscuits, 76–77, 93. 216. Hammond, Food, 3:677. 217. Leonard Williams cited in Harry Campbell, What Is Wrong with British Diet? Being an Exposition of the Factors Responsible for the Undersized Jaws and Appalling Prevalence of Dental Disease among British Peoples (London: William Heinemann, 1936), 78–79. 218. J. F. Liverseege, Adulteration and Analysis of Food and Drugs (London: J. & A. Churchill, 1932), 355. 219. E. J. T. Collins, “Brands and Breakfast Cereals in Britain,” in Adding Value: Brands and Marketing in Food and Drink, ed. Geoffrey Jones and Nicholas Morgan (London: Routledge, 1994), 251. 220. Hutchison, Food and the Principles of Dietetics, 295. 221. Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey (London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1856), 284. 222. John Burnett, Liquid Pleasures: A Social History of Drinks in Modern Britain (London: Routledge, 1999), 104. 223. Ted Collins, “The North American Influence on Food Manufacturing in Britain, 1880–1939,” in Exploring the Food Chain: Food Production and Food Processing in Western Europe, 1850–1990, ed. Yves Segers, Jan Bieleman, and Erik Buyst (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 163. 224. Sweet-Shop Success: A Handbook for the Sweet Retailer (London: Cadbury/ Pitman, 1949), 44. 225. Stephen Halliday, Our Troubles with Food: Fears, Fads and Fallacies (Stroud: History Press, 2009), 45. 226. Arthur Knapp, Cocoa and Chocolate: Their History from Plantation to Consumer (London: Chapman & Hall, 1920), 53. 227. R. Whymper, Cocoa and Chocolate: Their Chemistry and Manufacture (London: J. & A. Churchill, 1912), 41. 228. Knapp, Cocoa and Chocolate, 66. 229. Knapp, Cocoa and Chocolate, 125, 130; Paul Zipperer, The Manufacture of Chocolate and Other Cacao Preparations (3rd ed.), ed. H. Schaeffer (London: E. & F. N. Spon, 1915), 89. 230. Brandon Head, The Food of the Gods: A Popular Account of Cocoa (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1903), 56, 57. 231. Andrea Wiley, Re-Imagining Milk (New York: Routledge, 2011), 43; Gillian Wagner, The Chocolate Conscience (London: Chatto & Windus, 1987), 110. 232. Zipperer, The Manufacture of Chocolate, 230. 233. Tim Richardson, Sweets: A History of Candy (London: Bloomsbury, 2002), 231. 234. William Clarence-Smith, Cocoa and Chocolate, 1765– 1914 (London: Routledge, 2000), 71. 235. James Johnston, A Hundred Years Eating: Food, Drink and the Daily Diet in Britain since the Late Nineteenth Century (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1977), 35.

318

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236. Clarence-Smith, Cocoa and Chocolate, 68. 237. Mason, Sugar-Plums and Sherbet, 77; Clarence-Smith, Cocoa and Chocolate, 75; Andrea Broomfield, Food and Cooking in Victorian England: A History (London: Praeger, 2007), 157. 238. Iolo Williams, The Firm of Cadbury: 1831– 1931 (London: Constable, 1931), 92, 93. 239. John Bradley, Cadbury’s Purple Reign: The Story behind Chocolate’s Best-Loved Brand (Chichester: John Wiley, 2008), 44. 240. Fitzgerald, Rowntree and the Marketing Revolution, 77, 83; Derek Oddy, From Plain Fare to Fusion Food: British Diet from the 1890s to the 1990s (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003), 105. 241. Cross and Proctor, Packaged Pleasures, 103, 110. 242. Clarence-Smith, Cocoa and Chocolate, 27. 243. Clarence-Smith, Cocoa and Chocolate, 80; Bradley, Cadbury’s Purple Reign, 125–46. 244. Lees, A History of Sweet and Chocolate Manufacture, 122; “The Sweetmeat Automatic Delivery Company, Limited,” Railway Times 52 (November 26, 1887): 695. 245. Edward Cadbury, Experiments in Industrial Organization (London: Longmans, Green, 1912), 68, 69, 70–77, 85, 215, 216. 246. Bradley, Cadbury’s Purple Reign, 66. 247. Cadbury, Experiments in Industrial Organization, 93, 103, 237. 248. Morgan Witzel, Fifty Key Figures in Management (London: Routledge, 2003), 43–48. 249. Lees, A History of Sweet and Chocolate Manufacture, 127; Catherine Higgs, Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery and Colonial Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2012), 9. 250. Lowell Satre, Chocolate on Trial: Slavery, Politics and the Ethics of Business (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005), 41. 251. Henry Nevinson, “The Angola Slave Trade,” Fortnightly Review, n.s., 82 (July– December 1907): 495. 252. Satre, Chocolate on Trial, 85. 253. Wagner, The Chocolate Conscience, 101. 254. Higgs, Chocolate Islands, 148; Satre, Chocolate on Trial, 187. 255. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 149. 256. Julia Csergo, “Le sucre: De l’idealisation à l’ostracisme,” Cahiers de nutrition et de dietetique 43, no. 2 (2008): 2S58. 257. C. Goudiss, The Strength We Get from Sweets: How Sugar— One of the Chief Sources of Heat and Energy— Serves Man at Every Age (New York: People’s Home Journal, 1921), 5. 258. Thomas Oliver, “Our Workmen’s Diet and Wages,” Fortnightly Review 334 (October 1, 1894): 520. 259. Edwin Slosson, Creative Chemistry: Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries (New York: Century, 1920), 175. 260. F. Spencer Chapman, Northern Lights: The Official Account of the British Arctic

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Air-Route Expedition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1934), 177; “Diet at Great Heights,” Chemistry and Industry 59, no. 5 (February 3, 1940): 68. 261. “Historicus” (Richard Cadbury), Cocoa: All about It (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1896), 77. 262. Paul Chrystal and Joe Dickinson, Chocolate: The British Chocolate Industry (Oxford: Shire, 2011), 65. 263. Vaughan Harley, “Sugar as a Food in the Producer of Muscular Work,” Proceedings of the Royal Society 54 (1893): 480. 264. Gardner, “The Dietetic Value of Sugar,” 1011. 265. Harley, “Sugar as a Food,” 486. 266. Vaughan Harley, “The Value of Sugar and the Effect of Smoking on Muscular Work,” Journal of Physiology 16, nos. 1–2 (1894): 117–18. 267. B. T. Stokvis, “On the Influence of the Use of Sugar on Muscular Work,” British Medical Journal, November 23, 1895, 1282. 268. Wood, The National Food Supply, 11. 269. Mary Hall, Candy-Making Revolutionized: Confectionery from Vegetables (New York: Sturgis & Walton, 1912), 41. 270. Howard Haggard and Leon Greenberg, Diet and Physical Efficiency (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1935), 95. 271. Leonard Hirshberg, “New Discoveries about Sugar,” Confectioner’s Journal, May 1914, 111; Goudiss, The Strength We Get from Sweets, 17. 272. A. Stayt Dutton, “Sweets in Childhood,” British Medical Journal, February 17, 1912, 396. 273. Cheesman, Environmental Impacts of Sugar Production, 7. 274. Cheesman, Environmental Impacts of Sugar Production, 7; Smil, Feeding the World, 27, 128. 275. Charles Fielding, Food (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1923), 164. 276. For example, R. H. Cottrell, ed., Beet-Sugar Economics (Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1952), 20. 277. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 105–6; Elizabeth Abbot, Sugar: A Bittersweet History (London: Penguin, 2008), 53–54. 278. Florence Nightingale, Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not (New York: D. Appleton, 1932), 72. 279. W. G. Aitchison Robertson, “The Value of Saccharine Foods as Articles of Diet,” Scottish Medical and Surgical Journal 3 (July 1898): 37. 280. Hutchison, Food and the Principles of Dietetics, 273. 281. “A Harley Street Doctor,” Nottingham Evening Post, June 16, 1930; “Children Need Sweets,” Nottingham Evening Post, June 16, 1930. 282. Vaughan Harley, “Sugar as a Food,” British Medical Journal, November 23, 1895, 1283. 283. Herbert Spencer, Education, Intellectual, Moral and Physical (New York: Appleton, 1860), 237–38. 284. William Beveridge, British Food Control (London: Oxford University Press, 1928), 250–51.

320

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285. Jonathan Klein, Randall Thomas, and Erika Sutter, “History of Childhood Candy Cigarette Use Is Associated with Tobacco Smoking by Adults,” Preventive Medicine 45 (July 2007): 26–30. 286. Robert Proctor, Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011), 33. 287. Steve Berry and Phil Norman, The Great British Tuck Shop (London: Friday, 2012), 263. 288. Cited in French and Phillips, Cheated Not Poisoned? 149. 289. Sweet-Shop Success, 72. 290. Alexandra Vignolles and Paul-Emmanuel Pichon, “A Taste of Nostalgia: Links between Nostalgia and Food Consumption,” Qualitative Market Research 17, no. 3 (2014): 234. 291. Robertson, World Sugar Production and Consumption, 121. 292. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 187. 293. Daniel Smail, On Deep History and the Brain (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008), 162. 294. Michael Moss, Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us (New York: Random House, 2013), 10. 295. Jorian Jenks, The Stuff Man’s Made Of: The Positive Approach to Health through Nutrition (New York: Devin-Adair, 1959), 193.

Chapter Four 1. Cited in C. A. Spinage, Cattle Plague: A History (New York: Kluwer Academic/ Plenum, 2003), 223. 2. Trentmann, Free Trade Nation, 8. 3. Layton, “Argentina and Food Supply,” 197. 4. Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, trans. M. Ritter (London: Sage, 1992). 5. Christopher Ansell and David Vogel, “The Contested Governance of European Food Safety Regulation,” in What’s the Beef? The Contested Governance of European Food Safety, ed. Christopher Ansell and David Vogel (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 5. 6. See also Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, “Beck Back in the 19th Century: Towards a Genealogy of Risk Society,” History and Technology 23, no. 4 (December 2007): 334. 7. William Savage, Food Poisoning and Food Infections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920), 195. 8. “Economics of the Tin Opener,” The Economist, July 2, 1938, 5. 9. Smith, World’s Food Resources, 408. 10. Savage, Food Poisoning and Food Infections, 202. 11. Vulté and Vanderbilt, Food Industries, 237. 12. Knowles and Knowles, The Economic Development of the British Overseas Empire, 3:194. 13. Susanne Freidberg, Fresh: A Perishable History (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009).

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14. Greenway, “Cargo Ships,” 48. 15. A. C. Hardy, The Book of the Ship: An Exhaustive Pictorial and Factual Survey of World Ships, Shipping, and Shipbuilding (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1949), 145. 16. Franklin Kidd and Cyril West, “The Gas Storage of Fruit: II, Optimum Temperatures and Atmospheres,” Journal of Pomology and Horticultural Science 8 (1930): 74. 17. Peter Sloterdijk, Foams: Plural Spherology, trans. Wieland Hoban (South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext[e], 2016), 165. 18. E. W. Shanahan, Refrigeration as Applied to the Transportation and Storage of Food Products (London: Gee, 1929), 2, 8. 19. Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies (New York: Basic, 1984), 99. 20. Peter Atkins, Liquid Materialities: A History of Milk, Science and the Law (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 18–19. 21. A. Hassall, Food: Its Adulterations, and the Methods for Their Detection (London: Longmans, Green, 1876), 128, 116; Rappaport, A Thirst for Empire, 121– 25. 22. Adulteration of Food, Drink, and Drugs: Being the Evidence Taken before the Parliamentary Committee (London; David Bryce, 1855), 40. 23. French and Phillips, Cheated Not Poisoned? 185. 24. Hassall, Food, 870. 25. “Saccharine and Adulteration,” Beet Sugar Gazette 1, no. 4 (June 1899): 8. 26. Herbert Spencer, Social Statics; or, The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, and the First of Them Developed (New York: D. Appleton, 1890), 368. 27. John Bryan, “Case of Poisoning with Arsenite of Copper; With Remarks,” Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal 12, no. 14 (July 12, 1848): 374, 377. 28. James Whorton, The Arsenic Century: How Victorian Britain Was Poisoned at Home, Work, and Play (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 140– 41, 160– 65, 327, 334. 29. Liverseege, Adulteration and Analysis of Food and Drugs, 310. 30. Frank Tillyard, The Worker and the State: Wages, Hours, Safety and Health (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1923), 265. 31. French and Phillips, Cheated Not Poisoned? 32. B. Dyer, The Society of Public Analysts and Other Analytical Chemists: Some Reminiscences of Its First Fifty Years, and a Review of Its Activities (by C. Ainsworth Mitchell) (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1932), 39. 33. Liverseege, Adulteration and Analysis of Food and Drugs, 78. 34. French and Phillips, Cheated Not Poisoned? 127, 149, 123. 35. Atkins, Liquid Materialities, 104; B. G. Bannington, English Public Health Administration (London: P. S. King & Son, 1915), 100. 36. Liverseege, Adulteration and Analysis of Food and Drugs, 9. 37. R. C. Chirnside and J. H. Hamence, The “Practising Chemists”: A History of the Society for Analytical Chemistry, 1874–1974 (London: Society for Analytical Chemistry, 1974), 60–64; Jacob Steere-Williams, “A Conflict of Analysis: Analytical Chemistry and Milk Adulteration in Victorian Britain,” Ambix 61, no. 3 (August 2014): 279– 98. 38. Atkins, Liquid Materialities, 107. 39. W. H. Bassett, Environmental Health Procedures, 3rd ed. (London: Chapman & Hall, 1992), 322.

322

Notes to Pages 105–107

40. C. R. A. Martin, Practical Food Inspection, vol. 2, Fish, Poultry and Other Foods, 3rd ed. (London: H. K. Lewis, 1948), 247. 41. Francis Vacher, The Food-Inspector’s Handbook, 4th ed. (London: Sanitary Publishing Co., 1905), 39–40; Martin, Fish, Poultry and Other Foods, 247. 42. Liverseege, Adulteration and Analysis of Food and Drugs, 17, 29. 43. Chirnside and Hamence, The “Practising Chemists,” 29– 31. 44. Cited in Glenn Taylor, Forensic Enforcement: The Role of the Public Analyst (Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2010), 20. 45. Liverseege, Adulteration and Analysis of Food and Drugs, 3, 7. 46. “Modern Confectionery,” 149; H. Robinson and Cecil Cribb, The Law and Chemistry of Food and Drugs (London: F. J. Rebman, 1895), 322. 47. Atkins, Liquid Materialities, 109. 48. Bannington, English Public Health Administration, 169; Atkins, Liquid Materialities, 93. 49. Taylor, Forensic Enforcement, 8. 50. Wigston Urban Council, Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health for the Year 1970, 15, https://archive.org/details/b30278028/page/n1?q=wigston+1970. 51. On scandals involving rice and potatoes, see Bee Wilson, Swindled: From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee— the Dark History of the Food Cheats (London: John Murray, 2008), 288–89, 293. 52. Alexander Blyth, A Manual of Public Health (London: Macmillan, 1890), 611; Henry Lemmoin-Cannon, The Sanitary Inspector’s Guide: A Practical Treatise on the Public Health Act, 1875, and the Public Health Acts Amendment Act, 1890, So Far as They Affect the Inspector of Nuisances (London: P. S. King & Son, 1902), 148. 53. Kozmin, Flour Milling, 237; Claasen, Beet-Sugar Manufacture, 176. 54. Shirley Murphy, “The Inspection of Food by Riparian Sanitary Authorities,” Public Health 20 (February 1908): 300. 55. Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 4:1167. 56. John Walton, Fish and Chips and the British Working Class, 1870– 1940 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992), 96; City of Bradford, Annual Report of Medical Officer 1915 (Bradford: Wm. Byles & Sons, 1915), 104. 57. D. R. Campbell, “Markets Department,” in Municipal Glasgow: Its Evolution and Enterprises (Glasgow: Glasgow Corporation, 1914), 139; George Dodd, The Food of London (Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1856), 257. 58. Allen, “Food and Feeding,” 621; Hassall, Food, 832. 59. “The Purity of Our Food Supply,” British Medical Journal, December 2, 1899, 1565. 60. “Food Standards and Labels,” British Medical Journal, March 3, 1934, 386. 61. Grant, Your Bread and Your Life, 144. 62. Xaq Frohlich, “The Informational Turn in Food Politics: The US FDA’s Nutrition Label as Information Infrastructure,” Social Studies of Science 47, no. 2 (2017): 150, 162, 164–65. 63. Trow-Smith, A History of British Livestock Husbandry, 317. 64. Collins, “Rural and Agricultural Change,” 97.

Notes to Pages 107–109

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65. Rixson, The History of Meat Trading, 300; Sherwin Hall, “The Cattle Plague of 1865,” Medical History 6, no. 1 (January 1962): 50. 66. Hall, “The Cattle Plague of 1865,” 45. 67. John Gamgee, The Cattle Plague; With Official Reports of the International Veterinary Congresses Held in Hamburg, 1863, and in Vienna, 1865 (London: Robert Hardwicke, 1866), 341, 356. 68. Spinage, Cattle Plague, 165. 69. Michael Worboys, Spreading Germs: Diseases, Theories, and Medical Practice in Britain, 1865–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 49; Gamgee, The Cattle Plague, 206. 70. Gamgee, The Cattle Plague, 261. 71. Spinage, Cattle Plague, 297. 72. Perren, The Meat Trade in Britain, 108– 9, 109–10. 73. “The Cattle Plague— Precautionary Measures in Anglesey and Carnarvonshire,” North Wales Chronicle, January 13, 1866. 74. “The Cattle Plague,” Aberdeen Journal, February 28, 1866. 75. Spinage, Cattle Plague, 294, 167. 76. A North Shropshire Vicar, “The Cattle Plague,” The Times, April 10, 1866. 77. Gamgee, The Cattle Plague, 93–103. 78. William Smith, “The Cattle Plague in Norfolk,” Journal of the Statistical Society of London 31, no. 4 (December 1868): 396; Gamgee, The Cattle Plague, 113– 14, 123. 79. Rev. J. Atkinson, Forty Years in a Moorland Parish: Reminiscences and Researches in Danby in Cleveland (London: Macmillan, 1891), 104– 6 (quote 105). 80. Spinage, Cattle Plague, 185. 81. George Turner, Cattle Traffic and Cattle Diseases: Their Influence on the Price of Meat: An Appeal to the Public (London: George Matthews, 1878), 32. 82. “The Recent Outbreak of Cattle Plague,” Leeds Mercury, November 4, 1872. 83. “Destruction of 58 Cattle Suffering from the Plague,” York Herald, August 3, 1872. 84. Spinage, Cattle Plague, 208. 85. Mark Harrison, Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 220–21. 86. Anthony and Blois, The Meat Industry, 235. 87. James Kay Shuttleworth, “Cattle Plague Insurance,” The Times, October 5, 1865. 88. Gamgee, The Cattle Plague, 158; “Mr. Gladstone on the Cattle Plague,” Leeds Mercury, January 9, 1866. 89. Parliamentary Debates, Commons (February 14, 1866), vol. 181, col. 491, https:// api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1866/feb/14/second-reading. 90. “The Cattle Plague: True and False Modes of Dealing with It,” The Economist, November 18, 1865. 91. Christopher Hamlin, Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick, 1800–1854 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 92. Spinage, Cattle Plague, 328. 93. The Times, June 29, 1868.

324

Notes to Pages 109–111

94. Polanyi, The Great Transformation, 136. 95. John Gamgee, The Meat Question: Free Trade and Food Taxes: Being an Address Delivered on the 9th of May 1877 at the St James’s Hall (London: W. Hannaford, 1877), 14. 96. John Gamgee, “Losses among Cattle,” The Times, November 13, 1863. 97. Gamgee, The Meat Question, 19–20. 98. The Times, December 14, 1865. 99. John Parkin, The Causes, Prevention, and Treatment of the Cattle Plague (London: Hatchard, 1865). 100. Worboys, Spreading Germs, 16–17, 44–45. 101. William Budd, “The Siberian Cattle Plague; or, The Typhoid Fever of the Ox,” British Medical Journal, August 19, 1865, 170. 102. Turner, Cattle Traffic and Cattle Diseases, 12– 13. 103. John Paterson, “Thoughts on the Cattle Plague,” Aberdeen Journal, February 21, 1866. 104. J. F. M. Clark, Bugs and the Victorians (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 137; Index to the Statutory Rules and Orders in Force on December 31, 1906, 5th ed. (London: HM Stationery Office, 1907), 177. 105. Dennis Hill, Agricultural Insect Pests of Temperate Regions and Their Control (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 45. 106. Dorothee Brantz, “How Parasites Make History: On Pork and People in Nineteenth-Century Germany and the United States,” GHI Bulletin 36 (Spring 2005): 70. 107. William Cochran, “Trichinatous Pork,” Food Journal 2 (February 1, 1871): 20. 108. John Phin, Trichinae (Pork Worms or Flesh Worms): How to Detect Them; and How to Avoid Them (Rochester: Bausch & Lomb Optical Co., 1881), 7– 8. 109. William Campbell, “Modes of Transmission,” in Trichinella and Trichinosis, ed. William Campbell (New York: Plenum, 1983), 426–33. 110. Vernon Van Someren, “The Occurrence of Subclinical Trichinosis in Britain: Results from 200 London Necropsies,” British Medical Journal, December 11, 1937, 1162. 111. “Trichinosis from Eating Sausages,” British Medical Journal, May 8, 1880, 710. 112. Cochran, “Trichinatous Pork,” 22. 113. “Trichinosis,” British Medical Journal, September 24, 1898, 914. 114. Albert Leffingwell, American Meat: Its Methods of Production and Influence on Public Health (New York: Theo E. Schulte, 1910), 90. 115. Leffingwell, American Meat, 90; John Gignilliat, “Pigs, Politics, and Protection: The European Boycott of American Pork, 1879–1891,” Agricultural History 35, no. 1 (January 1961): 4–5; “Exclusion of American Pork,” British Medical Journal, March 12, 1881; Harrison, Contagion, 225. 116. “Trichinae in Pork,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, April 16, 1881. 117. Leffingwell, American Meat, 95. 118. J. Sheldon, “An Outbreak of Trichiniasis in Wolverhampton and District,” Lancet 237, no. 6129 (February 15, 1941): 205. 119. Harold Swithinbank and George Newman, Bacteriology of Milk (London: John Murray, 1903), 19. 120. Walter Pakes, “The Application of Bacteriology to Public Health,” Sanitary Record 25 (January 26, 1900): 68.

Notes to Pages 113–114

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121. Ernest Hart, A Report on the Influence of Milk in Spreading Zymotic Disease with a Tabular Analysis of Forty-Eight Outbreaks (London: Smith, Elder, 1897), 3. 122. Michael Taylor, “On the Transmission of the Infection of Fevers by Means of Fluids,” British Medical Journal, December 10, 1870, 623. 123. Michael Taylor, “On the Communication of the Infection of Fever by Ingesta,” Edinburgh Medical Journal 3, no. 11 (May 1858): 994, 998. See also William Savage, Milk and the Public Health (London: Macmillan, 1912), 71; Swithinbank and Newman, Bacteriology of Milk, 259; Jacob Steere-Williams, “The Perfect Food and the Filth Disease: Milk-Borne Typhoid and Epidemiological Practice in Late Victorian Britain,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 64, no. 4 (2010): 519– 20; David Davies, Report on a Localised Outbreak of Typhoid Fever in Bristol, during the Months of July and August, 1878, Traced to the Use of Impure Milk (Bristol: Rose & Harris, 1879), 6. 124. Edward Willoughby, Milk: Its Production and Uses; With Chapters on Dairy Farming, the Diseases of Cattle, and on the Hygiene and Control of Supplies (London: Charles Griffin, 1903), 177. 125. R. L. Huckstep, Typhoid Fever and Other Salmonella Infections (Edinburgh: E. S. Livingstone, 1962), 21. 126. J. Russell and Arch. Chalmers, Report on an Outbreak of Scarlet Fever in Glasgow Connected with an Epidemic Teat Eruption on Milch Cows at Jaapston, with a Report by E. Klein, M.D., F.R.S. on Certain Materials Sent Him (Glasgow: Robert Anderson, 1893), 12. 127. Leonard Wilson, “The Historical Riddle of Milk-Borne Scarlet Fever,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 60, no. 3 (1986): 321– 42; E. Wilkinson, “Milk-Borne Streptococcus Epidemics,” British Medical Journal, September 12, 1931, 496. 128. Arthur Newsholme, “On an Outbreak of Scarlet Fever and Scarlatinal Sore Throat due to Infected Milk,” Public Health 19 (1906– 7): 757– 58. 129. “The Importance of Being Able to Identify the Exact Source of Milk Supply,” copy of circular letter sent to dairymen in 1905 appended to Newsholme, “On an Outbreak of Scarlet Fever,” 771. 130. Worboys, Spreading Germs, 195. 131. J. Winchester, “Diagnosis and Prevention of Tuberculosis,” Veterinary Magazine 1, no. 7 (1894): 480. 132. Arthur Littlejohn, “Meat as a Source of Infection in Tuberculosis,” Veterinary Journal 16 (1909): 239; J. Myers and James Steele, Bovine Tuberculosis Control in Man and Animals (St. Louis: Warren H. Green, 1969), 269. 133. Evelyn Sprawson, “Raw Milk and Sound Teeth,” Public Health 47 (September 1934): 394 (first quote); Thomas Walley, The Four Bovine Scourges: Pleuro-Pneumonia, Foot-and-Mouth Disease, Cattle Plague, Tubercle (Scrofula); With an Appendix on the Inspection of Live Animals and Meat (Edinburgh: MacLachlan & Stewart, 1879), 143 (second quote). 134. Harold Sessions, Cattle Tuberculosis: A Practical Guide to the Agriculturalist and Inspector, 2nd ed. (New York: William R. Jenkins, 1911), 19. 135. “Medicine and Milk,” British Medical Journal, March 9, 1907, 585. 136. J.-A. Villemin, Études sur la tuberculose: Preuves rationnelles et expérimentales de sa spécificité et de son inoculabilité (Paris: J.-B. Ballière & fils, 1868), 529– 40.

326

Notes to Pages 114–116

137. Sheridan Delépine, “Tuberculosis and the Milk Supply,” Journal of Meat and Milk Hygiene 1 (1911): 544. 138. Keir Waddington, The Bovine Scourge: Meat, Tuberculosis and Public Health, 1850–1914 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), 43. 139. Delépine, “Tuberculosis and the Milk Supply,” 546. 140. Waddington, The Bovine Scourge, 115. 141. G. C. Frankland, “Boiling Milk,” Nineteenth Century 40 (September 1896): 456. 142. “Tuberculosis in Milk,” The Times, December 28, 1907. 143. F. B. Smith, The Retreat of Tuberculosis, 1850– 1950 (London: Croon Helm, 1988), 186. 144. Linda Bryder, Below the Magic Mountain: A Social History of Tuberculosis in Twentieth-Century Britain (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 3. 145. “Tuberculosis in Children,” British Medical Journal, October 15, 1932, 720– 21. 146. “Milk-Borne Tuberculosis,” British Medical Journal, February 29, 1936, 423; Myers and Steele, Bovine Tuberculosis Control, 271–72. 147. Hugh Macewen, The Public Milk Supply (Glasgow: Blackie & Son, 1910), 39. 148. Swithinbank and Newman, Bacteriology of Milk, 456. 149. John Eyler, Sir Arthur Newsholme and State Medicine, 1885– 1935 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 263. 150. John Harris, British Government Inspection as a Dynamic Process: The Local Services and the Central Departments (New York: Frederick Praeger, 1955), 56– 57. 151. J. Maggs in “Discussion: By What Means Can Pure Milk Be Obtained and at What Cost?” British Medical Journal, August 8, 1925, 252. 152. Spinage, Cattle Plague, 7. 153. Savage, Milk and the Public Health, 135. 154. “Tuberculosis in Meat,” British Medical Journal, May 4, 1895, 997. 155. R. Dixey, Tuberculin-Tested Milk: A Study of Re-Organization for Its Production (Oxford: Agricultural Economics Research Institute, 1937), 12. 156. Savage, Milk and the Public Health, 322; Herbert Maxwell, “Tuberculosis in Man and Beast,” Nineteenth Century 44, no. 260 (October 1898): 680; Barbara Orland, “Cow’s Milk and Human Disease: Bovine Tuberculosis and the Difficulties Involved in Combating Animal Diseases,” Food and History 1, no. 1 (2003): 195– 96; Ainsworth Wilson, Tuberculosis in Dairy Cows, with Special Reference to the Udder and the Tuberculin Test (Witham: B. C. Afford, 1908), 8. 157. Orland, “Cow’s Milk and Human Disease,” 197. 158. H. D. Bishop, “Tuberculous Milk,” British Medical Journal, October 30, 1920, 682. 159. Sheridan Delépine, “The Manchester Milk Supply from a Public Health Point of View,” Transactions of the Manchester Statistical Society 61 (1909– 10): 6– 7. 160. Delépine, “Tuberculosis and the Milk Supply,” 569. 161. Savage, Milk and the Public Health, 325. 162. Cited in Savage, Milk and the Public Health, 326. 163. “Tuberculosis and the Control of Our Milk Supplies,” The Times, November 11, 1898.

Notes to Pages 117–118

327

164. P. J. Atkins, “White Poison? The Social Consequences of Milk Consumption, 1850–1930,” Social History of Medicine 5, no. 2 (1992): 225. 165. E. Crossley, “Developments in Milk Distribution in Britain,” British Agricultural Bulletin 4, no. 18 (March 1952): 325– 29. 166. Peter Atkins, “The Pasteurisation of England: The Science, Culture and Health Implications of Milk Processing, 1900–1950,” in Food, Science, Policy and Regulation in the Twentieth Century: International and Comparative Perspectives, ed. David Smith and Jim Phillips (London: Routledge, 2000), 41. 167. J. C. Drummond, “Changes in the Digestibility and Nutritive Value of Milk Induced by Heating,” in Conference on the Milk Question: Reprinted from the Dairyman, May, 1923 (N.p.: Royal Society of Arts, 1923), 4– 5. 168. E. C. Kingsford, “A Plea for Unboiled Milk,” British Medical Journal, August 24, 1901, 502; L. Loat, Pasteurisation of Milk: The Case against Compulsion (London: AntiVaccination League, 1937), 30. 169. “Children and Pasteurised Milk,” Livestock Journal 117 (January 20, 1933): 65. 170. Smith, The Retreat of Tuberculosis, 190. 171. Loat, Pasteurisation of Milk, 1–2. 172. Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1963), 271. 173. French and Phillips, Cheated Not Poisoned? 177. 174. Atkins, “The Pasteurisation of England,” 40. 175. “Milk and Pasteurization,” British Medical Journal, May 6, 1933, 792– 93. 176. Bernard Myers, “Raw or Pasteurized Milk,” British Medical Journal, March 5, 1938, 538. 177. William Harvey and Harry Hill, Milk: Production and Control (London: H. K. Lewis, 1936), 299. 178. Crossley, “Developments in Milk Distribution in Britain,” 329. 179. Atkins, “The Pasteurisation of England,” 47. 180. Harvey and Hill, Milk, 226; A. Mattick, The Production and Distribution of Clean Milk (London: The Dairyman, 1927), 74. 181. Myers and Steele, Bovine Tuberculosis Control, 271. 182. John Ritchie, “The Eradication of Bovine Tuberculosis and Its Importance to Man and Beast,” Conquest 52, no. 155 (January 1964): 10, 4, 10. 183. R. Hardie and J. Watson, “Mycobacterium bovis in England and Wales: Past, Present and Future,” Epidemiology and Infection 109 (1992): 27. 184. Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 3:770; Perren, The Meat Trade in Britain, 67. 185. Henry O’Neill, “Our Meat Supply and How to Improve It,” Transactions of the Royal Academy in Ireland 19 (1901): 332; W. Wylde, The Inspection of Meat: A Guide and Instruction Book to Officers Supervising Contract-Meat and to All Sanitary Inspectors (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1890), 45–46. 186. “Public Health and Dead Meat,” The Era, February 24, 1861. 187. Robert Ostertag, Handbook of Meat Inspection, trans. Earley Wilcox, 3rd ed. (New York: William R. Jenkins, 1912), 241.

328

Notes to Pages 118–119

188. “Slink Meat: A Blackburn Dealer Heavily Fined,” Lancashire Evening Post, August 21, 1895. 189. “Poisoning the Public by ‘Meat Not Fit for Dogs,’” Liverpool Mercury, January 13, 1870. 190. “The Slink Meat Traffic in Preston,” Preston Chronicle, October 29, 1892. 191. “Diseased Meat and Milk in Edinburgh,” Caledonian Mercury, August 21, 1863. 192. James Higgins, “On Diseased Meat,” Edinburgh Veterinary Review and Annals of Comparative Pathology 5 (1863): 672. 193. “The Cattle-Road to Ruin,” Household Words 1, no. 14 (June 29, 1850): 330. 194. John Gamgee, Diseased Meat Sold in Edinburgh, and Meat Inspection, in Connection with the Public Health and with the Interests of Agriculture (Edinburgh: Sutherland & Knox, 1857), 25. 195. Hugh Macewen, Food Inspection: A Practical Handbook (London: Blackie & Son, 1909), 46. 196. Gerrard, Meat Technology, 97; “The Chemistry of Sausages,” Appleton’s Popular Science Monthly 55 (1899): 185; Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets (London: Chapman & Hall, 1907), 270. 197. “Extraordinary Bad Meat Case,” Western Mail, July 15, 1874. 198. “Bad Meat and Sausages,” British Medical Journal, November 14, 1891, 1059. 199. Fothergill, A Manual of Dietetics, 73. 200. Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, vol. 1, The London StreetFolk: Book the First (London: George Woodfall & Son, 1851), 196; James Rymer, The String of Pearls; or, The Barber of Fleet Street: A Domestic Romance (London: E. Lloyd, 1850). 201. Cited in “Sale of Diseased Meat in Glasgow,” Glasgow Herald, April 20, 1889. 202. Joseph Gamgee, The Cattle Plague and Diseased Meat (London: T. Richards, 1857), 14, 13. 203. Ostertag, Handbook of Meat Inspection, 31. 204. R. Maxwell, Handbook on the Law Relating to Slaughter-Houses and Unsound Food, Including the Slaughter of Animals Act, 1933, and the Public Health (Meat) Regulations (1924), 2nd ed. (London: Sanitary Publishing Co., 1934), 4; Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 5:1581–83. 205. William Saunders, Disposal of Refuse: Report to the Sanitary Committee of the Honourable the Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London, upon Some New Methods of Disposing of All Kinds of Refuse by Cremation (London: Charles Skipper & East, 1881), 84. 206. Saunders, Disposal of Refuse, 101–8; A. M. Trotter, “The Inspection of Meat and Milk in Glasgow,” Journal of Comparative Pathology and Therapeutics 14 (1901): 86; Alexander Fraser, “The Disposal of Unsound Meat,” Sanitary Record 36 (October 5, 1905): 293. 207. Maxwell, Handbook on the Law Relating to Slaughter-Houses, 7, 12. 208. Gerald Leighton, The Principles and Practice of Meat Inspection (Edinburgh: William Hodge, 1927), 204–9; Anthony and Blois, The Meat Industry, 247– 48. 209. Philip Jones, The Butchers of London: A History of the Worshipful Company of the Butchers of the City of London (London: Secker & Warburg, 1976), 135.

Notes to Pages 120–122

329

210. Waddington, The Bovine Scourge, 74. 211. Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 4:1130, 1131, 3:790–92. 212. Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 3:1057; Leighton, The Principles and Practice of Meat Inspection, 11. 213. Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 3:808, 809. 214. Maxwell, “Tuberculosis in Man and Beast,” 683; Francis Vacher, “The Control and Inspection of Imported Meat,” Journal of the Sanitary Institute 20 (1899): 580. 215. Lemmoin-Cannon, The Sanitary Inspector’s Guide, 147. 216. Waddington, The Bovine Scourge, 133. 217. Line, The Science of Meat, 1:389. 218. Bannington, English Public Health Administration, 101. 219. Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 3:1049. 220. William Savage, “The Working of the 1924 Meat Regulations in Rural Areas,” Journal of State Medicine 34 (1926): 717–18. 221. William Savage, “Prepared Meat Foods in Relation to Disease Causation,” Public Health 31 (April 1918): 83, and “Meat Inspection in Rural Districts,” Journal of the Royal Sanitary Institute 38, no. 1 (March 1917): 103; E. Hope, “The Administration of the Meat Supply of a Large Community,” Public Health 2, no. 13 (May 1889): 5; John Gamgee, “The System of Inspection in Relation to the Traffic in Diseased Animals or Their Produce,” Edinburgh Veterinary Review and Annals of Comparative Pathology 5, no 13 (November 1863): 668. 222. “Butcher’s Mad Attack on a Meat Inspector,” Sheffield Daily Telegraph, July 30, 1904. 223. W. H. Bloye, “The Veterinary Aspects of Public Health,” Journal of State Medicine 10 (1902): 599. 224. Anne Hardy, “John Bull’s Beef: Meat Hygiene and Veterinary Public Health in England in the Twentieth Century,” Review of Agricultural and Environmental Studies 91, no. 4 (2010): 387. 225. J. Mason, “Inspection of Food at Our Ports,” Public Health 19 (July 1907): 600. 226. Lieut.-Colonel T. Young, “Meat Inspection,” in The Frozen and Chilled Meat Trade, 2:158. 227. Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 5:1587. 228. “Chucks, Butts, and Pork,” British Medical Journal, February 8, 1908, 343. 229. Gerald Leighton, Report on an Enquiry into a Uniform System and Standard of Meat Inspection in Scotland (Edinburgh: HM Stationery Office, 1921), 19. 230. Waddington, The Bovine Scourge, 147; Mason, “Inspection of Food at Our Ports,” 596. 231. Herbert Williams, “Food Inspection in the Port of London,” Journal of State Medicine 12, no. 2 (February 1904): 66. 232. Mason, “Inspection of Food at Our Ports,” 599. 233. Port of London Sanitary Committee, Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health for 31st December 1902 (London: Charles Skipper & East, 1903), 41 (“Inspection of Food”). 234. Williams, “Food Inspection in the Port of London,” 71.

330

Notes to Pages 122–125

235. Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 5:1588, 1598, 1599. 236. Martin, Meat Inspection, 291. 237. Walworth, Feeding the Nation, 135; “Marking of Imported Meat,” The Times, January 4, 1935; Lethem, “Slaughterhouse Practice at Home and Abroad,” 565. 238. Putnam, Supplying Britain’s Meat, 87. 239. Ian MacLachlan, Kill and Chill: Restructuring Canada’s Beef Commodity Chain (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 131. 240. H. Rider Haggard, Rural Denmark and Its Lessons (London: Longmans, Green, 1911), 247. 241. Shaw, “Swine Industry of Denmark,” 35; Higgins and Mordhorst, “Bringing Home the ‘Danish’ Bacon,” 151. 242. Higgins and Mordhorst, “Bringing Home the ‘Danish’ Bacon,” 151. 243. Grant, “Australian Meat Industry,” 67; “An International Standard of Meat Inspection,” Ice and Cold Storage 14, no. 157 (April 1911): 80; Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 5:1515. 244. Jones, “New Zealand Trade,” 150; Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 4:1277, 1282. 245. “Meat Inspection as Conducted in New Zealand,” Report of the Medical Officer of Health for the City of London for the Year 1921 (London: Drake, Driver & Leaver, 1922), 36. 246. Felicity Barnes, New Zealand’s London: A Colony and Its Metropolis (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2012), 159–60. 247. Bergés, “La industria della carne refrigerata,” 66– 67; Young, “Meat Inspection,” 159. 248. McFall, The World’s Meat, 590. 249. Cited in Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 4:1140. 250. Leighton, Report on an Enquiry into a Uniform System and Standard of Meat Inspection in Scotland, 7. 251. J. Drabble, Textbook of Meat Inspection (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1936), 145. 252. Sir Graham Wilson, introduction to W. Charles Cockburn, Joan Taylor, E. Anderson, and Betty Hobbs, Food Poisoning: Symposium (London: Royal Society of Health, 1962), 1. 253. Victor Vaughan, “Food Poisoning,” Popular Science Monthly 56 (November 1899): 47. 254. Anne Hardy, “Food, Hygiene, and the Laboratory: A Short History of Food Poisoning in Britain, circa 1850–1950,” Social History of Medicine 12, no. 2 (1999): 295. 255. Margaret Pelling, Cholera, Fever and English Medicine, 1825– 1865 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 123. 256. Arthur Luff, The Ptomaines or Animal Alkaloids and Their Relation to Disease (London: Morton & Burt, 1888), 4, 7. 257. Savage, Food Poisoning and Food Infections, 7, 66. 258. Betty Hobbs, Food Poisoning and Food Hygiene, 2nd ed. (London: Edward Arnold, 1968), 7.

Notes to Pages 125–126

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259. J. H. McCoy, “Trends in Salmonella Food Poisoning in England and Wales, 1941– 72,” Journal of Hygiene 74 (1975): 273–74. 260. V. P. McDonagh and H. G. Smith, “The Significance of the Abattoir in Salmonella Infection in Bradford,” Journal of Hygiene 56, no. 2 (June 1958): 277; Mildred Galton, W. V. Smith, Hunter McElrath, and Albert Hardy, “Salmonella in Swine, Cattle and the Environment of Abattoirs,” Journal of Infectious Diseases 95, no. 3 (November– December 1954): 236–45. 261. Elliott Dewberry, Food Poisoning, Food-Borne Infection and Intoxication, Nature, History, and Causation: Measures for Prevention and Control, 4th ed. (London: Leonard Hill, 1959), 363, 96–97. 262. “The Handling of Food,” British Medical Journal, September 6, 1925, 575. 263. McCoy, “Trends in Salmonella Food Poisoning,” 271. 264. R. Gilbert and I. Maurer, “The Hygiene of Slicing Machines, Carving Knives and Can-Openers,” Journal of Hygiene 66, no. 3 (1968): 447. 265. William Savage, “Problems of Salmonella Food-Poisoning,” British Medical Journal, August 11, 1956, 319. 266. Savage cited in Dewberry, Food Poisoning, 31. 267. T. H. Pennington, When Food Kills: BSE, E. Coli and Disaster Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 104; Sebastian Amyes, Bacteria: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 21; Carl Zimmer, Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life (New York: Pantheon, 2008), 8. 268. Hobbs, Food Poisoning and Food Hygiene, 7. 269. Madeline Drexler, Emerging Epidemics: The Menace of New Infections (New York: Penguin, 2010), 90. 270. B. Zane Horowitz, “The Ripe Olive Scare and Hotel Loch Maree Tragedy: Botulism under Glass in the 1920’s,” Clinical Toxicology 49 (2011): 345– 47. 271. J. B. S. Haldane, “Food Poisoning,” in Possible Worlds and Other Papers (New York: Harper & Bros., 1928), 107. 272. W. Cockburn, “Reporting and Incidence of Food Poisoning,” in Cockburn et al., Food Poisoning, 8. 273. M. de Bartolomé, “The Welbeck Poisoning Cases,” British Medical Journal, July 31, 1880, 189. 274. A. Christie and M. Christie, Food Hygiene and Food Hazards for All Who Handle Food (London: Faber & Faber, 1971), 57. 275. George Newman, “Outbreak of Pork-Pie Poisoning,” Public Health 20 (February 1908): 312. 276. C. Peckham, “An Outbreak of Pork Pie Poisoning at Derby,” Journal of Hygiene 22, no. 1 (October 1923): 76. 277. William Savage, Canned Foods in Relation to Health (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923), 66, 68, 27, 133–34. 278. Anne Hardy, Salmonella Infections, Networks of Knowledge, and Public Health in Britain, 1880–1975 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 46, 47. 279. “Sewage Contamination of Oysters and Mussels,” British Medical Journal, January 3, 1903, 33.

332

Notes to Pages 126–131

280. Anne Hardy, “Exorcizing Molly Malone: Typhoid and Shellfish Consumption in Urban Britain, 1860–1960,” History Workshop Journal 55 (2003): 82. 281. Hardy, Salmonella Infections, 160, 193. 282. Dewberry, Food Poisoning, 3. 283. “Hotel and Restaurant Kitchens,” Medical Officer 24 (December 18, 1920): 259. 284. T. Lindsay, “Some Practical Effects of a Clean Food Campaign,” Journal of the Royal Sanitary Institute 73, no. 3 (May 1953): 256. 285. Cecil Ash, “Food Hygiene,” in Dewberry, Food Poisoning, 169; Hardy, Salmonella Infections, 202. 286. Hobbs, Food Poisoning and Food Hygiene, 41, 9, 134– 35. 287. Christie and Christie, Food Hygiene and Food Hazards, 155; A. Hisano, “Cellophane, the New Visuality, and the Creation of Self-Service Food Retailing,” Working Paper no. 17-106 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School, 2017), 18– 21. 288. “Watch Urged on Food Industry Trends,” The Times, October 8, 1969. 289. Dewberry, Food Poisoning, 100. 290. Betty Hobbs, “Staphylococcal and Clostridium Welchii Food Poisoning,” in Cockburn et al., Food Poisoning, 57. 291. Ministry of Health, Clean Catering: A Handbook on Premises, Equipment and Practices for the Promotion of Hygiene in Food Establishments (London: HM Stationery Office, 1963), 83. 292. Ministry of Health, Clean Catering, 33. 293. D. Jukes, Food Legislation of the UK: A Concise Guide (London: Butterworths, 1984), 6. 294. Ash, “Food Hygiene,” 171. 295. L. Kluth, “Control of Infestation,” in Hobbs, Food Poisoning and Food Hygiene, 187, 189; Ministry of Health, Clean Catering, 27. 296. E. O. Wilson, afterword to Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson (Boston: Mariner, 2002), 360. 297. Alec Lerner, “Food Hygiene in Marks and Spencer Ltd.,” Transactions of the Association of Industrial Medical Officers 4, no. 2 (July 1954): 45– 46. 298. Goronwy Rees, St. Michael: A History of Marks and Spencer (London: Pan, 1969), 223–24. 299. Rees, St. Michael, 226; Lerner, “Food Hygiene in Marks and Spencer,” 46. 300. “Reaction at Marks and Spencer to the Typhoid Outbreak at Aberdeen,” Sanitarian, July 1964, 413–14. 301. “Only the Best for Staff, Too,” Newcastle Chronicle, August 13, 1970. 302. Food Standards Agency, Red Meat Safety and Clean Livestock (London: Food Standards Agency, 2002), 14. 303. “Spotlight,” “Food Hygiene— ‘New Deal,’” The Sanitarian, February 1956, 239. 304. Susanne Freidberg, French Beans and Food Scares: Culture and Commerce in an Anxious Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 117, 200– 201. 305. Barbara Adam and Joost van Loon, “Introduction: Repositioning Risk: The Challenge for Social Theory,” in The Risk Society and Beyond: Critical Issues for Social Theory, ed. Barbara Adam, Ulrich Beck, and Joost van Loon (London: Sage, 2000), 7. 306. Susanne Freidberg, “Footprint Technopolitics,” Geoforum 55 (2014): 183.

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307. Pennington, When Food Kills, 1–24. 308. Edwin Jordan, Food Poisoning and Food-Borne Infection, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931), 1. 309. Food Standards Agency, Red Meat Safety, 8. 310. J. M. Farber and P. I. Peterkin, “Listeria monocytogenes, a Food-Borne Pathogen,” Microbiological Reviews 55, no. 3 (1991): 487. 311. Hannah Landecker, “Food as Exposure: Nutritional Epigenetics and the New Metabolism,” BioSocieties 6, no. 2 (2011): 167–94.

Chapter Five 1. Cited in Peter Wallensteen, “Scarce Goods as Political Weapons: The Case of Food,” Journal of Peace Research 4, no. 13 (1976): 277. 2. Nixon, Slow Violence, 7; Wells, The Metabolic Ghetto, 243. 3. Michael Watts, Silent Violence: Food, Famine, and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria, new ed. (London: University of Georgia Press, 2013). 4. Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (London: Bodley Head, 2015), 323. 5. Carl Schmitt, Land and Sea: A World-Historical Meditation (1942), trans. Samuel Zeitlin (Candor, NY: Telos, 2015), 75. 6. A. Appleby, “Grain Prices and Subsistence Crises in England and France, 1590– 1740,” Journal of Economic History 39 (1979): 867. 7. C. H. Firth, Then and Now, or, A Comparison between the War with Napoleon and the Present War (London: Macmillan, 1918), 20. 8. John Bohstedt, The Politics of Provisions: Food Riots, Moral Economy, and Market Transition in England, c. 1550– 1850 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 238; Stern, “The Bread Crisis in Britain,” 185. 9. Stern, “The Bread Crisis in Britain,” 172. 10. Roger Knight, Britain against Napoleon: The Organization of Victory, 1793– 1815 (London: Allen Lane, 2013), 411. 11. John Post, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis in the Western World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 70. 12. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, 245; Liverpool cited in Petersen, Bread and the British Economy, 97. 13. Roger Wells, Wretched Faces: Famine in Wartime England (New York: St. Martin’s, 1988), 258, 280–81. 14. Bohstedt, The Politics of Provisions, 240, 243. 15. Edmund Burke, Thoughts and Details upon Scarcity, Originally Presented to the Right Hon. William Pitt, in the Month of November, 1795 (London: F. & C. Rivington, 1800); Smith, Wealth of Nations, 2:33; Wells, Wretched Faces, 234. 16. Marcus Olson, The Economics of Wartime Shortage: A History of British Food Supplies in the Napoleonic War and in World Wars I and II (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1963), 67. 17. Outhwaite, “Dearth and Government Intervention,” 399. 18. Stern, “The Bread Crisis in Britain,” 179.

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19. Knight, Britain against Napoleon, 158. 20. Wells, Wretched Faces, 288–89, 317. 21. W. Galpin, The Grain Supply of England during the Napoleonic Period (New York: Macmillan, 1925), 194; Knight, Britain against Napoleon, 404, 396, 175. 22. Post, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis, 1, 72, 88, 100, 129, 44, 49. 23. Robert Fogel, The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700– 2100: Europe, America, and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); James Vernon, Hunger: A Modern History (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007). 24. Fogel, The Escape from Hunger. 25. Vernon, Hunger, 257. 26. Robert Giffen, “The Progress of the Working Classes in the Last Half-Century,” Journal of the Statistical Society of London 46, no. 4 (December 1883): 602. 27. Clarkson and Crawford, Feast and Famine, 127. 28. Cormac Ó Gráda, “Ireland’s Great Famine: An Overview,” in When the Potato Failed: Causes and Effects of the “Last” European Subsistence Crisis, 1845– 1850, ed. Cormac Ó Gráda, Richard Paping, and Eric Vanhaute (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 43. 29. Cormac Ó Gráda, “The Lumper Potato and the Famine,” History Ireland 1 (1993): 22–23. 30. Rebecca Earle, “Promoting Potatoes in Eighteenth-Century Europe,” EighteenthCentury Studies 51, no. 2 (Winter 2018): 154– 56. 31. Joel Mokyr, Why Ireland Starved: A Quantitative and Analytical History of the Irish Economy, 1800– 1850 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983), 9; David Davies, The Case of Labourers in Husbandry Stated and Considered with an Appendix Containing a Collection of Accounts Shewing the Earnings and Expenses of Labouring Families in Different Parts of the Kingdom (1795; Fairfield, NJ: Augustus M. Kelley, 1977), 35. 32. William Buchan, Observations concerning the Diet of the Common People, Recommending a Method of Living Less Expensive, and More Conducive to Health, Than the Present (London: A. Strahan, 1797), 9, 30. 33. Mokyr, Why Ireland Starved, 7. 34. “Report Respecting the Irish Poor,” Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal 9, no. 450 (September 12, 1840): 267. 35. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, 127– 28, 297– 98; Thomas Malthus, Principles of Political Economy Considered with a View to Their Practical Application, 2nd ed. (1836; New York: Augustus Kelley, 1968), 349. 36. Cobbett, Cottage Economy, 44. 37. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1:180. 38. Líam Kennedy, Paul Ell, E. M. Crawford, and L. A. Clarkson, Mapping the Great Irish Famine: A Survey of the Famine Decades (Dublin: Four Courts, 1999), 66; “A Sketch of the State of Ireland, Past and Present,” Edinburgh Review 12, no. 24 (July 1, 1808): 343. 39. Bashford and Chaplin, New Worlds, 215–16. 40. Wheatley, A Letter to the Duke of Devonshire, 32. 41. Charles Trevelyan, “The Irish Crisis,” Edinburgh Review 87, no. 175 (January 1848): 310. 42. Richard Cobden, “Free Trade IV,” in Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by

Notes to Pages 135–137

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Richard Cobden, M.P., ed. John Bright and James Thorold Rogers (London: Macmillan, 1903), 32. 43. Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 214. 44. Cited in Peter Gray, Famine, Land and Politics: British Government and Irish Society, 1843–50 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1999), 323. 45. John O’Rourke, The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847, with Notices of Earlier Irish Famines, 2nd ed. (Dublin: McGlashan & Gill, 1875), 223. 46. Christine Kinealy, A Death-Dealing Famine: The Great Hunger in Ireland (London: Pluto, 1997), 62; Wheatley, A Letter to the Duke of Devonshire, 17. 47. O’Rourke, The History of the Great Irish Famine, 225. 48. A. R. G. Griffiths, “The Irish Board of Works in the Famine Years,” Historical Journal 13, no. 4 (December 1970): 635; Trevelyan, “The Irish Crisis,” 260. 49. “Extracts from Narrative of William Edward Forster’s Visit in Ireland, from the 18th to the 26th of First Month, 1847,” in Distress in Ireland: Extracts from Correspondence Published by the Central Relief Committee by the Society of Friends, 3 vols. (Dublin: Webb & Chapman, 1847), 2:36. 50. Trevelyan, “The Irish Crisis,” 267. 51. Patrick Hickey, Famine in West Cork: The Mizen Peninsular Land and People, 1800–1852 (Cork: Mercier, 2000), 272. 52. Noel Kissane, The Irish Famine: A Documentary History (Dublin: National Library of Ireland, 1995), 120. 53. David Nally, Human Encumbrances: Political Violence and the Great Irish Famine (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), 157. 54. Hickey, Famine in West Cork, 169–70. 55. Sailor on the Tartarus, Cork Constitution, March 11, 1847, cited in Hickey, Famine in West Cork, 188. 56. Clarkson and Crawford, Feast and Famine, 148, 150. 57. O’Rourke, The History of the Great Irish Famine, 257– 60. 58. Richard Webb, February 19, 1847, in Correspondence from January to March 1847 Relating to the Measures Adopted for the Relief of the Distress in Ireland (London: William Clowes, 1847), 164. 59. T. O’Connor, The Parnell Movement; With a Sketch of Irish Parties from 1848, 5th ed. (New York: Benziger Bros., 1886), 61. 60. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 950; “Medicines Which Will Not Cure Ireland,” The Economist, May 2, 1846, 563. 61. Nally, Human Encumbrances, 52. 62. George Nicholls, A History of the Irish Poor Law (1856; New York: Augustus Kelley, 1967), 166 (“First Report,” November 15, 1836). 63. G. Stoddart, The True Cure for Ireland, the Development of Her Industry, 2nd ed. (London: Trelawny Saunders, 1847), 9. 64. “Ireland— Its Permanent Evils and Their Remedy— No. III,” The Economist, October 3, 1846. 65. Trevelyan, “The Irish Crisis,” 233. 66. “The Agricultural Condition of Ireland,” The Economist, September 25, 1847, 1105.

336

Notes to Pages 137–139

67. “A Sketch of the State of Ireland,” 352; Thoughts on Ireland (London: James Ridgway, 1847), 21. 68. Stoddart, The True Cure for Ireland, 13, 12. 69. “View of Public Affairs,” Christian Observer, April 1846, 255. 70. Nicholls, A History of the Irish Poor Law, 357. 71. A Gentleman of Lincoln’s Inn, Important Suggestions in Relation to the Irish Poor Law (Dublin: John Hoare, 1842), 28. 72. James Donnelly Jr., The Great Irish Potato Famine (Stroud: Sutton, 2001), 109. 73. C. Trevelyan, “Distress in Ireland,” The Times, October 12, 1847. 74. Thoughts on Ireland, 37. 75. James Caird, The Plantation Scheme; or, The West of Ireland as a Field for Investment (London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1850), 131. 76. “Potatoe Famine,” Leeds Times, October 18, 1845; Thoughts on Ireland, 38. 77. “The Condition of Ireland and Its Cure,” The Economist, December 25, 1847; “Ireland,” The Economist, February 27, 1847, 226. 78. Trevelyan, “The Irish Crisis,” 231. 79. Mokyr, Why Ireland Starved, 280. 80. Jonathan Pim, The Conditions and Prospects of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges & Smith, 1848), 124. 81. Jasper Rogers, The Potato Truck System of Ireland: The Main Cause of Her Periodical Famines and of the Non-Payment of Her Rents (London: James Ridgway, 1847), 5. 82. The Times, September 22, 1846. 83. Gray, Famine, Land and Politics, 285. 84. Cited in Landecker, “Food as Exposure,” 188. 85. Wheatley, A Letter to the Duke of Devonshire, 4 (first quote), 6, 8, 27 (second quote), 31 (third quote), 41. 86. Nassau Senior, Journals, Conversations and Essays Relating to Ireland, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1868), 2:282; Perelman, The Invention of Capitalism, 318– 19. 87. McCulloch, The Principles of Political Economy, 324. 88. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, 3 vols. (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1977), 1:658. 89. John Mitchel, The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps) (1861), ed. Patrick Maune (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2005), 120. 90. Joseph Hodge, “Writing the History of Development (Part 1: The First Wave),” Humanity, Winter 2015, 452. 91. The Times, April 2, 1849. 92. Thomas Scott, Ireland Estimated as a Field for Investment (London: Thomas Harrison, 1854), vii. 93. Jonsson, Enlightenment’s Frontier, 233. 94. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1:439. 95. Senior, Journals, 2:282. 96. “The Evictions,” Limerick and Clare Examiner, May 31, 1848. 97. Marx, Capital (1977), 1:666. 98. Cited in Gray, Famine, Land and Politics, 309.

Notes to Pages 139–140

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99. Bashford and Chaplin, New Worlds, 235. 100. “Poor Laws (Ireland)— Rate in Aid Bill— Adjourned Debate,” Parliamentary Debates, Commons (March 30, 1849), vol. 104, cols. 68– 132, col. 117 (Peel). 101. “Comprehensive Policy for Ireland,” The Economist, April 15, 1849. I thank David Nally for pointing this out to me. 102. “Comprehensive Policy for Ireland.” 103. “Ireland’s Necessity, England’s Opportunity: An Unpalatable and Severe Truth,” The Economist, September 2, 1848 (first quote); Nally, Human Encumbrances, 230– 31 (second quote). 104. W. Trench, Realities of Irish Life (London: Longmans, Green, 1869), 105. 105. The Census of Ireland for the Year 1851 (Dublin, 1856), cited in John Killen, The Famine Decade: Contemporary Accounts, 1841– 1851 (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1995), 253. 106. Janam Mukherjee, Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 254. See also Nally, Human Encumbrances, 173; and Alex de Waal, Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine (Cambridge: Polity, 2018), 35. 107. Mukherjee, Hungry Bengal, 255. 108. Cited in George Pellew, In Castle and Cabin; or, Talks in Ireland in 1887, 3rd ed. (London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1889), 260. 109. Marx, Capital (1977), 1:657. 110. Andy Bielenberg, “The Irish Economy, 1815–1880: Agricultural Transition, the Communications Revolution and the Limits of Industrialization,” in The Cambridge History of Ireland, vol. 3, 1730– 1880, ed. James Kelly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 183. 111. Donnelly, The Great Irish Potato Famine, 64; Nally, Human Encumbrances, 205; Imperial Economic Committee, Cattle and Beef Survey, 54. 112. Shanahan, Animal Foodstuffs, 126. 113. Robert Herbert, “Statistics of Live Stock and Dead Meat for Consumption in the Metropolis,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England 20 (1859): 474. 114. Rouse, World Cattle, 1:176. 115. B. M. Bhatia, Famines in India: A Study in Some Aspects of the Economic History of India with Special Reference to the Food Problem, 1860– 1990, 3rd ed., rev. (Delhi: Konark, 1991), 7. 116. Leela Visaria and Pravin Visaria, “Population (1757– 1947),” in The Cambridge Economic History of India (2 vols.), ed. Dharma Kumar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 2:528–31. 117. B. Tomlinson, The Economy of Modern India, 1860– 1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 51. 118. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 122. 119. Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (London: Verso, 2001), 7. 120. Bhatia, Famines in India, 89. 121. Hari Srivastava, The History of Indian Famines and Development of Famine Policy, 1858–1918 (Agra: Sri Ram Mehra, 1968), 143.

338

Notes to Pages 140–142

122. William Digby, The Famine Campaign in Southern India (Madras and Bombay Presidencies and Province of Mysore), 1876– 1878, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1878), 2:414, 287. 123. Aidan Forth, Barbed-Wire Imperialism: Britain’s Empire of Camps, 1876– 1903 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2017), 59, 61. 124. David Hall-Matthews, Peasants, Famine and the State in Colonial Western India (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 194. 125. Srivastava, The History of Indian Famines, 145. 126. Cited in Digby, The Famine Campaign in Southern India, 1:26. 127. Cited in “Sir Richard Temple’s Experiments on the Madras Famine,” Medical Times and Gazette, May 19, 1877, 544. 128. “Sir Richard Temple’s Experiment,” 542. 129. David Hall-Matthews, “Inaccurate Conceptions: Disputed Measures of Nutritional Needs and Famine Deaths in Colonial India,” Modern Asian Studies 42, no. 6 (November 2008): 1195. 130. W. Cornish to Additional Secretary to the Government of Madras, May 20, 1877, Accounts and Papers: East India, 32–33. 131. Digby, The Famine Campaign in Southern India, 2:177, 179, 185; Cornish to Additional Secretary to the Government of Madras, 33. 132. R. Christison, April 18, 1877, cited in Digby, The Famine Campaign in Southern India, 2:258. 133. Smil, Feeding the World, 218, 244–45. 134. Ian Kerr, Building the Railways of the Raj, 1850– 1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 180. 135. Bashford, Global Population, 150. 136. Digby, The Famine Campaign in Southern India, 2:304, 311; Forth, Barbed-Wire Imperialism, 110. 137. Cited in Digby, The Famine Campaign in Southern India, 2:219. 138. “The Indian Famine,” The Era, March 31, 1861. 139. Digby, The Famine Campaign in Southern India, 2:208– 9, 149, 153. 140. “Neglected Aspects of the Indian Famine,” The Economist, March 28, 1874, 378. 141. W. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, 5th ed. (London: Smith, Elder, 1872), 260. 142. S. Ambirajan, “Malthusian Population Theory and Indian Famine Policy in the Nineteenth Century,” Population Studies 30, no. 1 (1976): 6. 143. Prasannan Parthasarathi, Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600– 1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 71, 75; Tomlinson, The Economy of Modern India, 38. 144. “The Indian Famine,” Aberdeen Weekly Journal, October 18, 1877; Digby, The Famine Campaign in Southern India, 2:345, 348. 145. Famine Commission Report, 1880, app. 1, p. 110, cited in Hall-Matthews, Peasants, Famine and the State, 182. 146. Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts, 26; Digby, The Famine Campaign in Southern India, 1:148–49; Grove, Green Imperialism, 445–46. 147. Hall-Matthews, Peasants, Famine and the State, 84.

Notes to Pages 142–145

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148. William Digby, “Prosperous” British India: A Revelation from Official Records (London: T. F. Unwin, 1901), 269; Tomlinson, The Economy of Modern India, 61. 149. Hall-Matthews, Peasants, Famine and the State, 68, 93, 117, 122. 150. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1946), 299. 151. Srivastava, The History of Indian Famines, 169. 152. S. Ambirajan, Classical Political Economy and British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 94–96. 153. Digby, “Prosperous” British India, 122. 154. Dadabhai Naoroji, Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1962), iv, 55, 340. 155. Bhatia, Famines in India, 239. 156. Malabika Chakrabarti, The Famine of 1896– 1897 in Bengal: Availability or Entitlement Crisis? (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2004), 287. 157. Bhatia, Famines in India, 251, 261. 158. George Dick, “The Indian Famine,” Glasgow Herald, May 18, 1900. 159. J. Scott, In Famine Land: Observations and Experiences in India during the Great Drought of 1899–1900 (New York: Harper & Bros., 1904), 36; H. Sharp, “In a Barren and Dry Land: I,” Cornhill Magazine, April 1900, 501; “The Indian Famine,” Glasgow Herald, April 14, 1900. 160. Srivastava, The History of Indian Famines, 242. 161. Devereux, Theories of Famine, 22. 162. S. G. Rudler, “Indian Famine,” Liverpool Mercury, April 2, 1897; Scott, In Famine Land, 16. 163. Ira Klein, “Urban Development and Death: Bombay City, 1870– 1914,” Modern Asian Studies 20, no. 4 (1986): 746. 164. Chakrabarti, The Famine of 1896– 1897 in Bengal, 98, 428. 165. Indian Famine Commission, Report of the Famine Commission, 1898 (New Delhi: Agricole Publishing Academy, 1979), 208, and Report of the Indian Famine Commission, 1901 (New Delhi: Agricole Publishing Academy, 1979), 7. 166. Indian Famine Commission, Report . . . 1898, 233. 167. Chakrabarti, The Famine of 1896– 1897 in Bengal, 436– 37. 168. Robert Giffen, “The Wealth of the Empire, and How It Should Be Used,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 66, no. 3 (September 1903): 588. 169. Watts, Silent Violence, 186, 369. 170. Gilbert Rist, The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith, trans. Patrick Camiller (London: Zed, 2008), 232. 171. Hobson, The Social Question, 208. See also De Waal, Mass Starvation, 98. 172. De Waal, Mass Starvation, x. 173. Forth, Barbed-Wire Imperialism, 145; Simon Webb, British Concentration Camps: A Brief History from 1900– 1975 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2016), 12, 20. 174. Simon Naylor, “Spacing the Can: Empire, Modernity, and the Globalization of Food,” Environment and Planning A 32 (2000): 1633. 175. John Bews, “The Botanical Survey of Africa” (n.d., typescript), cited in Peder

340

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Anker, Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, 1895–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 160. 176. C. Fletcher and Rudyard Kipling, A School History of England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911), 236. 177. J. W. Cross, “The Future of Food,” Contemporary Review 54 (July– December 1888): 871. 178. Cited in “The Wheat Supply of England,” The Standard, December 24, 1895. 179. Captain Bedford Pim responding to Webster, “England’s Colonial Granaries,” 49, 50. 180. H. Seton-Karr, “England’s Food Supply in Time of War,” North American Review 164, no. 487 (June 1897): 651, 653, 661. 181. R. B. Marston, War, Famine and Our Food Supply (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1897), xxii. 182. R. B. Marston, “Corn Stores for War Time,” Nineteenth Century 39 (February 1896): 239. 183. Marston, War, Famine and Our Food Supply, 185. 184. Thomas Read, Land and Water, February 13, 1897, cited in Marston, War, Famine and Our Food Supply, 133. 185. Stewart Murray, “Our Food Supply in Time of War, and Imperial Defence,” Journal of the Royal United Service Institution 45, no. 1 (January/June 1901): 679, 681, 686. 186. A. C. Doyle, “Great Britain and the Next War,” Fortnightly Review, n.s., 93 (February 1913): 233–34. 187. Royal Commission on Supply of Food and Raw Materials in Time of War (RCSFRM), Report of the Royal Commission on Supply of Food and Raw Materials in Time of War; With Minutes of Evidence and Appendices, vol. 1, The Report (London: HM Stationery Office, 1905), 6. 188. “Annex C: Analysis of Storage Schemes,” in RCSFRM, Report, 134, 144. 189. “Annex B: Memorandum on the Operations of Shipping in Relation to the Supply of the United Kingdom of Foodstuffs and Raw Materials, Prepared by the Chairman, Sir J. Colomb, K.C.M.G., M.P, and Mr. Emmott, M.P.,” in RCSFRM, Report, 117; RCSFRM, Report, 28, 32–33. 190. RCSFRM, Report, 53. 191. Offer, The First World War, 220, 244. 192. Frank Coller, A State Trading Adventure (London: Oxford University Press, 1925), 4. 193. “Reservations and Memoranda Appended to Signatures of the Report,” in RCSFRM, Report, 92. 194. RCSFRM, Report, 34. 195. L. Margaret Barnett, British Food Policy during the First World War (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985), 9–10. 196. Lord Milner reporting on a conversation with Lucas cited in Barnett, British Food Policy, 27. 197. Cited in Offer, The First World War, 324. 198. F. Le Gros Clark, “Britain’s Food Supplies in War,” in Our Food Problem:

Notes to Pages 148–150

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A Study of National Security, by F. Le Gros Clark and Richard Titmus (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1939), 11. 199. Belinda Davis, Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War I Berlin (London: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 22. 200. Cited in Barnett, British Food Policy, 15. 201. Barnett, British Food Policy, 44. 202. Beveridge, British Food Control, 68. 203. Coller, A State Trading Adventure, 69–70; Beveridge, British Food Control, 60; Barnett, British Food Policy, 127. 204. “Food Control,” Parliamentary Debates, Lords (July 26, 1917), vol. 26, cols. 49–73, col. 52 (Rhondda). 205. Frank Chambers, The War behind the War (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939), 422; Beveridge, British Food Control, 163–64. 206. Beveridge, British Food Control, 13; Barnett, British Food Policy, 173. 207. Beveridge, British Food Control, 109–10. 208. Beveridge, British Food Control, 96–97; “Bread Changes in Force To-Day,” The Times, March 12, 1917; “State Milling,” The Times, April 24, 1917; “Less Bread,” The Times, May 11, 1917. 209. P. Dewey, British Agriculture in the First World War (London: Routledge, 1989), 168. 210. Cited in Dewey, British Agriculture in the First World War, 226. 211. Coller, A State Trading Adventure, 34–35. 212. Ernest Starling, The Feeding of Nations: A Study in Applied Psychology (London: Longmans, Green, 1919), 130. 213. Walter Hadwen, “War Bread from a Health and Economic Standpoint,” Medical Times, April 21, 1917, 216; Robert Hutchison, “The Effects of War Bread on Health,” Practitioner, December 1917, 504–5. 214. Hanson, Argentine Meat and the British Market, 207; Thomas Middleton, Food Production in War (Oxford: Clarendon, 1923), 336. 215. Archibald Hurd, The Merchant Navy, 3 vols. (London: John Murray, 1921– 29), 2:234. 216. Ian Kumekawa, “Meat and Economic Expertise in the British Imperial State during the First World War,” Historical Journal 62, no. 1 (2019): 180. 217. “Meat Trade Control,” The Times, November 30, 1917. 218. Wood, The National Food Supply, 30. 219. Starling, Feeding of Nations, 107. 220. Beveridge, British Food Control, 257. 221. Starling, Feeding of Nations, 91. 222. The Food Supply of the United Kingdom: A Report Drawn Up by a Committee of the Royal Society at the Request of the President of the Board of Trade (London: HM Stationery Office, 1917), 26. 223. Wood, The National Food Supply, 37, 38. 224. Dewey, British Agriculture in the First World War, 214. 225. “Tame Rabbits and Wild Fowl,” The Times, February 13, 1918.

342

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226. Barnett, British Food Policy, 150; Beveridge, British Food Control, 114. 227. H. Clemsha, Food Control in the North-West Division (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1922), 77. 228. Alonzo Taylor, “International and National Food Control,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 78 (July 1918): 155. 229. Rachel Duffett, The Stomach for Fighting: Food and the Soldiers of the Great War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), 79. 230. Starling, Feeding of Nations, 133. 231. Robert Graves, Good-Bye to All That (New York: Blue Ribbon, 1930), 324. 232. Charles Bathurst, “Sugar for Jam,” The Times, June 27, 1918; T. N. Wilson, “Sugar for Jam,” The Times, June 25, 1918. 233. “Sugar for Jam,” The Times, February 26, 1918; R.T.D.S., “Sugar for Jam,” The Times, September 1, 1919. 234. Middleton, Food Production in War, 169. 235. Peter Dewey, “British Farming Profits and Government Policy during the First World War,” Economic History Review, n.s., 37, no. 3 (August 1984): 378. 236. Dewey, British Agriculture in the First World War, 103; Venn, The Foundations of Agricultural Economics, 509. 237. R. Henry Rew, Food Supplies in Peace and War (London: Longmans, Green, 1920), 51; “Food Production on Golf Courses,” Sussex Agricultural Express, January 25, 1918. 238. “Vegetable Growing: The Husbanding of the Meat Supply: Potato Cultivation,” The Times, June 5, 1916; Beveridge, British Food Control, 158. 239. Duffett, The Stomach for Fighting, 50; “Scurvy and Potatoes,” Daily Record (Glasgow), June 29, 1917. 240. Ministry of Food, Thirty-Four Ways to Use Potatoes Other Than as Vegetables (London, 1918); Barnett, British Food Policy, 76–77. 241. Edmund Spriggs, Food and How to Save It (London: HM Stationery Office, 1917), 12–13. 242. “Waste of Bread,” The Times, September 2, 1916. 243. “Bread Saving,” The Times, June 25, 1917. 244. “The Bread Peril,” The Times, April 30, 1917. 245. Ministry of Food, Food Economy Handbook (London: HM Stationery Office, 1917), 1. 246. Tim Cooper, “Challenging the ‘Refuse Revolution’: War, Waste and the Rediscovery of Recycling, 1900–1950,” Historical Research 81, no. 214 (2007): 7; “National Salvage Council,” Proceedings of the Institution of Municipal Engineers 44 (1917– 18): 328–29; “Nut Shells and Fruit Stones,” Grantham Journal, August 10, 1918. 247. King’s Lynn and District Central War Savings Committee Food Economy Section, The Voice of King’s Lynn on the Subject of the Food Economy Campaign (King’s Lynn: Lynn News and County Press, 1917), 4, 13, 9. 248. “Feeding 14 Dogs on Bread,” Edinburgh Evening News, September 8, 1917; “Feeding Birds with Crusts,” Western Times (Exeter), June 12, 1917. 249. “Where He Drew the Line,” Hull Daily Mail, May 3, 1918. 250. Beveridge, British Food Control, 239–40; “Food Surrender Week,” The Times,

Notes to Pages 152–153

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February 11, 1918; “The ‘Accidental Surplus’: Results of an Advertisement in ‘The Times,’” The Times, February 7, 1918. 251. Ian Miller, Reforming Food in Post-Famine Ireland: Medicine, Science and Improvement, 1845–1922 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), 185– 91. 252. Anthony Coles, “The Moral Economy of the Crowd: Some Twentieth-Century Food Riots,” Journal of British Studies 18, no. 1 (Autumn 1978): 173. 253. “Food Queues,” Sheffield Evening Telegraph, December 21, 1917; Barnett, British Food Policy, 142. 254. Beveridge, British Food Control, 192–93; Barnett, British Food Policy, 146– 48. 255. The Food Supply of the United Kingdom, 4; Starling, Feeding of Nations, 30, 33–34. 256. “The Food Requirements of the Sedentary Worker,” British Medical Journal, December 22, 1917, 832. 257. Beveridge, British Food Control, 221. 258. Barnett, British Food Policy, 111. 259. Devonport (1917) cited in Barnett, British Food Policy, 106. 260. Coller, A State Trading Adventure, 185. 261. Kumekawa, “Meat and Economic Expertise.” 262. Coller, A State Trading Adventure, 151. 263. Matthew Hilton, Consumerism in Twentieth-Century Britain: The Search for a Historical Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 66– 78. 264. R. Tawney, “The Abolition of Economic Controls, 1918– 21,” Economic History Review 12 (1943): 7. 265. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, 6 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1934), 3:199. 266. Beveridge, British Food Control, 245–46. 267. Coller, A State Trading Adventure, 191. 268. Beveridge, British Food Control, 314. 269. Spriggs, Food and How to Save It, 5. 270. Coller, A State Trading Adventure, 150. 271. Barnett, British Food Policy, 149. 272. W. Arbuthnot Lane, The Prevention of the Diseases Peculiar to Civilization (London: Faber & Faber, 1929), 60. 273. Jay Winter, The Great War and the British People, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 2. 274. Cited in Linda Bryder, “The First World War: Healthy or Hungry?” History Workshop Journal 24, no. 1 (1987): 146. 275. Nigel Hawkins, The Starvation Blockades (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 2002), 92; Paul Halpern, A Naval History of World War I (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1994), 293. 276. Alexander Downes, Targeting Civilians in War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 113. 277. Cited in Hans Hanssen, Diary of a Dying Empire, trans. Oscar Winther (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955), 165. 278. Hurd, The Merchant Navy, 3:122, 117, 111, 120– 21, 124– 25.

344

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279. Hurd, The Merchant Navy, 3:215; Peter Forbes, Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage (London: Yale University Press, 2009), 91. 280. Hurd, The Merchant Navy, 1:243, 255; Hawkins, The Starvation Blockades, 105. 281. Hurd, The Merchant Navy, 3:36; Halpern, A Naval History of World War I, 344. 282. Hawkins, The Starvation Blockades, 217. 283. Sir Herbert Russell, Sea Shepherds: Wardens of Our Food Flocks (London: John Murray, 1941), 131; Halpern, A Naval History of World War I, 362. 284. Hawkins, The Starvation Blockades, 226; Halpern, A Naval History of World War I, 369. 285. Hawkins, The Starvation Blockades, 24–25; Halpern, A Naval History of World War I, 291; Neil Heyman, Daily Life during World War I (London: Greenwood, 2002), 198. 286. D. A. Janicki, “The British Blockade during World War I: The Weapon of Deprivation,” Student Pulse 6 (2014): 4–5. 287. Greg Kennedy, “Intelligence and the Blockade, 1914– 1917: A Study in Administration, Friction and Command,” Intelligence and National Security 22, no. 5 (October 2007): 699–721. 288. Downes, Targeting Civilians in War, 95. 289. Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, 1911– 1918, abridged and rev. ed. (London: Free Press, 2005), 686. 290. Downes, Targeting Civilians in War, 96. 291. Paul Eltzbacher, ed., Germany’s Food: Can It Last? Germany’s Food and England’s Plan to Starve Her Out (1914), ed. S. Russell Wells (London: University of London Press, 1915), 77, 81, 83–85. 292. Eltzbacher, ed., Germany’s Food, 1, xxxi; Alice Weinreb, Modern Hungers: Food and Power in Twentieth-Century Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 17. 293. Offer, The First World War, 28; Ernest Starling, “The Food Supply of Germany during the War,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 83, no. 2 (March 1920): 234. 294. Weinreb, Modern Hungers, 23. 295. Davis, Home Fires Burning, 85. 296. Starling, “The Food Supply of Germany,” 225– 26; Heinzelmann, Beyond Bratwurst, 243. 297. Robert Whalen, Bitter Wounds: German Victims of the Great War, 1914– 1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), 72–73; Mary Cox, “Hunger Games; or, How the Allied Blockade in the First World War Deprived German Children of Nutrition, and Allied Food Subsequently Saved Them,” Economic History Review 68, no. 2 (2015): 600. 298. Starling, “The Food Supply of Germany,” 237. 299. “Report by Lieutenant-Colonel E. Fitzg. Dillon, D.S.O., on a Visit to Cassel, 26th–30th January, 1919,” in Reports by British Officers on the Economic Conditions Prevailing in Germany, December, 1918– March, 1919 (London: HM Stationery Office, 1919), 23. 300. John Williams, The Other Battleground: The Home Fronts: Britain, France and Germany, 1914–1918 (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1972), 158. 301. Starling, “The Food Supply of Germany,” 244. 302. Erich Ebstein, “Diabetes, Sugar Consumption and Luxury through the Ages,” in Diabetes: Its Medical and Cultural History, ed. Dietrich von Engelhardt (London:

Notes to Pages 155–158

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Springer, 1989), 105; P. E. Baldry, The Battle against Heart Disease: A Physician Traces the History of Man’s Achievements in This Field for the General Reader (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 119–20. 303. Lina Richter, Family Life in Germany under the Blockade (London: National Labour Press, 1919), 25; Janicki, “The British Blockade,” 9, 10– 11. 304. Andrew Donson, Youth in the Fatherless Land: War Pedagogy, Nationalism and Authority in Germany, 1914– 1918 (London: Harvard University Press, 2010), 127. 305. Davis, Home Fires Burning, 132–33. 306. Telegram from Imperial Chancellor to Hintze, November 10, 1918, in Preliminary History of the Armistice: Official Documents Published by the German National Chancellory by Order of the Ministry of State (London: Oxford University Press, 1924), 149. 307. R. Rummel, Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900 (Charlottesville, VA: Center for National Security Law, 1997), 229; Bruno Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918– 1924 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 276; Weinreb, Modern Hungers, 29. 308. Downes, Targeting Civilians in War, 87; De Waal, Mass Starvation, 73– 74. 309. N. Howard, “The Social and Political Consequences of the Allied Food Blockade, 1918–19,” German History 11, no. 2 (1993): 184. 310. George Bernard Shaw, preface to Richter, Family Life in Germany under the Blockade, 8. 311. Cox, “Hunger Games,” 629–30. 312. Tehila Sasson, “From Empire to Humanity: The Russian Famine and the Imperial Origins of International Humanitarianism,” Journal of British Studies 55, no. 3 (July 2016): 519–37; Michelle Tusan, “‘Crimes against Humanity’: Human Rights, the British Empire, and the Origins of the Response to the Armenian Genocide,” American Historical Review 119, no. 1 (February 2014): 52. 313. “Report of Brigadier-General H. C. Rees on the Condition of Affairs in Germany, 12th–15th December, 1918,” in Reports by British Officers, 4. 314. Coller, A State Trading Adventure, 222–23. 315. Cited in “Food Outlook,” The Times, February 10, 1919. 316. Snyder, Bread, 101. 317. Trentmann, Free Trade Nation, 309. 318. Alan Wilt, Food for War: Agriculture and Rearmament in Britain Before the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 18. 319. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 229. 320. Snyder, Black Earth, 7, 35; De Waal, Mass Starvation, 101– 2. 321. Davis, Home Fires Burning, 245. 322. Saraiva, Fascist Pigs, 105. 323. Radkau, Nature and Power, 262; C. Helstosky, Garlic and Oil: Politics and Food in Italy (Oxford: Berg, 2004), 95; Saraiva, Fascist Pigs, 34– 35. 324. Snyder, Black Earth, 18. 325. Paulo Giaccaria and Claudio Minca, “Life in Space, Space in Life: Nazi Topographies, Geographical Imaginations, and Lebensraum,” Holocaust Studies 22, nos. 2– 3 (2016): 157.

346

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326. Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Second Book, trans. K. Smith (New York: Enigma, 2006), 16. 327. Helstosky, Garlic and Oil, 77. 328. J. Hurstfield, The Control of Raw Materials (London: HM Stationery Office, 1953), 163. 329. The Agricultural Dilemma, 38. 330. “Food Production in War,” The Economist, June 10, 1939, 589. 331. “Mr. Chamberlain’s Speech at Kettering,” Bulletin of International News 15, no. 14 (July 16, 1938): 15. 332. Fenelon, Britain’s Food Supplies, 48. 333. M. K. Bennett, Food for Postwar Europe: How Much and What? (Stanford, CA: Stanford University, Food Research Institute, 1944), 5, 6. 334. “Prosperity for England,” Land Union Journal, February 1929, 15– 16. 335. “Rules Waves, but Not Food Supply,” Science 17, no. 464 (March 1, 1930): 130. 336. Viscount Lymington, Famine in England (London: Witherby, 1938), 55. 337. H. V. Morton, I, James Blunt (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1942), 72. 338. Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls and Consumption, 1939– 1955 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 14. 339. R. J. Hammond, “British Food Supplies, 1914– 1939,” Economic History Review 16, no. 1 (1946): 12. 340. R. J. Hammond, Food, 1:47. 341. Hammond, Food, 1:51; Ministry of Food, The Urban Working-Class Household Diet: First Report of the National Food Survey Committee (London: HM Stationery Office, 1951), 8. 342. J. MacGregor, “Britain’s Wartime Food Policy,” Journal of Farm Economics 25, no. 2 (May 1943): 384. 343. “Only Four Loaf Shapes Soon,” Dundee Courier, August 10, 1940. 344. “No More Wrapped Bread,” Nottingham Evening Post, June 18, 1941. 345. Oddy, From Plain Fare to Fusion Food, 139. 346. Samuel Lepkovsky, “The Bread Problem in War and in Peace,” Physiological Reviews 24, no. 2 (April 1944): 251. 347. McCance and Widdowson, Breads White and Brown, 87; W. Kent-Jones and A. J. Amos, “The Milling Aspects of Fortified Flour,” Lancet 237, no. 6145 (1941): 731. 348. T. Moran and J. C. Drummond, “Reinforced White Flour,” Nature 3691 (July 27, 1940): 118. 349. N. Bosanquet, “Wholemeal Bread,” The Times, November 2, 1940. 350. Alan Milward, War, Economy and Society, 1939– 1945 (London: Allen Lane, 1977), 252. 351. Lizzie Collingham, The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food (New York: Penguin, 2012), 390. 352. Collingham, The Taste of War, 14; Hammond, Food, 2:145. 353. “Potatoes and Bread,” The Times, January 5, 1943. 354. Collingham, The Taste of War, 90. 355. International Labour Office, Food Control in Great Britain (Montreal: International Labour Office, 1942), 11. 356. International Labour Office, Food Control in Great Britain, 78– 79.

Notes to Pages 160–161

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357. David Edgerton, Britain’s War Machine: Weapons, Resources, and Experts in the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); “Control of Meat,” The Times, October 25, 1943. 358. Peter Thorsheim, Waste into Weapons: Recycling in Britain during the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 255. 359. J. C. Drummond and Anne Wilbraham, The Englishman’s Food: A History of Five Centuries of English Diet, rev. Dorothy Hollingsworth (London: Pimlico, 1991), 453; W. K. Hancock and M. M. Gowing, British War Economy (London: HM Stationery Office, 1949), 418–19; Hammond, Food, 1:224. 360. Collingham, The Taste of War, 99. 361. Hammond, Food, 3:327. 362. “Tame Rabbit Meat Production,” Aberdeen Journal, August 23, 1941. 363. Theodora Fitzgibbon, With Love (London: Century, 1982), 124. 364. Vicomte de Mauduit, They Can’t Ration These (1940; London: Persephone, 2004), 27, 33, 98, 117, 123, 140. 365. Katherine Knight, Rationing in the Second World War: Spuds, Spam and Eating for Victory (Stroud: History Press, 2007), 65–66. 366. Halliday, Our Troubles with Food, 173; J. R. B. Branson, Grass for All (n.p., 1939). 367. International Labour Office, Food Control in Great Britain, 127. 368. “Waste of Milk Bottles,” The Times, February 17, 1943. 369. “Milk Bottle Caps,” Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette, January 2, 1942; “75,000,000 Wasted!” Biggleswade Chronicle, April 30, 1943. 370. “Busy Sugar Beet Workers,” The Times, December 13, 1943; Hammond, Food, 3:74. 371. Hammond, Food, 3:24–25. 372. International Labour Office, Food Control in Great Britain, 96. 373. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain, 15. 374. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain, 16; Hammond, Food, 1:111. 375. Hammond, Food, 1:41. 376. Hammond, Food, 2:648. 377. Cited in Collingham, The Taste of War, 361. 378. John Boyd Orr, As I Recall (New York: Doubleday, 1967), 121. 379. Milward, War, Economy and Society, 282–83. 380. David Smith, “The Rise and Fall of the Scientific Food Committee during the Second World War,” in Smith and Phillips, eds., Food, Science, Policy and Regulation, 107; Vernon, Hunger, 140. 381. Fenelon, Britain’s Food Supplies, 67. 382. Helen MacKay, R. Dobbs, Lucy Wills, and Kaitlin Bingham, “Anaemia in Women and Children on War-Time Diets,” Lancet 240, no. 6202 (July 11, 1942): 32; “Wanted: A Nutrition Policy,” British Medical Journal, November 28, 1942, 640; “Tuberculosis in Wartime,” British Medical Journal, October 10, 1942, 436– 37; Oddy, From Plain Fare to Fusion Food, 160–61. 383. Dr. W. M. Ash, Derbyshire medical officer of health, cited in “Fewer Sweets, but Children Eat Their Dinners Now: School Health in War,” Derby Daily Telegraph, May 28, 1943.

348

Notes to Pages 161–164

384. Hammond, Food, 1:369. 385. Robert Mackay, Half the Battle: Civilian Morale in Britain during the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 204. 386. Fenelon, Britain’s Food Supplies, 70–71. 387. D. J. P. Barker and C. Osmond, “Diet and Coronary Heart Disease in England and Wales during and after the Second World War,” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 40, no. 1 (March 1986): 38. 388. Chief medical officer cited in Wilson, Swindled, 220; James Rorty and N. Norman, Tomorrow’s Food: The Coming Revolution in Nutrition (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1947), 197. 389. “Sweets and Sugar,” The Times, February 22, 1949. 390. Warren Kimball, ed., Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, 3 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1:103. 391. Edgerton, Britain’s War Machine, 164. 392. Kevin Smith, Conflict over Convoys: Anglo-American Logistics Diplomacy in the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 45. 393. Hammond, Food, 2:334. 394. Collingham, The Taste of War, 92; W. A. Campbell, “The Nitrogen Industry,” in Chemistry, Society and Environment: A New History of the British Chemical Industry, ed. Colin Russell (Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2000), 128; Mirko Lamer, The World Fertilizer Economy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957), 228– 29. 395. “Protection of Food from Gas,” Dundee Evening Telegraph, August 30, 1940; Hammond, Food, 2:286; “Contamination of Food by Poison Gas,” Western Daily Press, August 23, 1940; Ministry of Food, Food and Its Protection against Poison Gas, 2nd ed. (London: HM Stationery Office, 1941), 6. 396. Ministry of Food, Food and Its Protection, 5; Hammond, Food, 2:287, 332– 33, 1:159. 397. Science in War (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1940), 92. 398. Hammond, Food, 2:375. 399. Knight, Rationing in the Second World War, 154. 400. Hammond, Food, 2:285, 296–97. 401. “Conservation of Milk,” British Medical Journal, August 12, 1939, 361. 402. “Britain’s ‘Shadow Larder,’” Sunderland Echo and Shipping Gazette, August 15, 1941. 403. International Labour Office, Food Control in Great Britain, 133, 143. 404. Hammond, Food, 2:414–15; “Pies for Rural Workers,” Western Gazette (Yeovil), June 12, 1942. 405. Winnifrith, The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, 187– 88. 406. Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, “Bread Rationing in Britain, July 1946– July 1948,” Twentieth Century British History 4, no. 1 (1993): 57. 407. Oddy, From Plain Fare to Fusion Food, 167; J. M. Harries and Dorothy Hollingsworth, “Food Supply, Body Weight, and Activity in Great Britain, 1943– 9,” British Medical Journal, January 10, 1953, 76. 408. Fenelon, Britain’s Food Supplies, 113.

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409. Susan Cooper, “Snoek Piquante,” in Age of Austerity, ed. Michael Sissons and Philip French (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1963), 51. 410. “Bread Rationing,” The Times, July 15, 1946. 411. Derek Oddy, “The Stop-Go Era: Restoring Food Choice in Britain After World War II,” in The Rise of Obesity in Europe: A Twentieth Century Food History, ed. Derek Oddy, Peter Atkins, and Virginie Amilien (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 63. 412. “Nutrients in Bread,” British Medical Journal, May 26, 1956, 1223. 413. H. Sinclair, “Nutritional Aspects of High-Extraction Flour,” Proceedings of the Nutrition Society 17, no. 1 (1958): 37. 414. Collingham, The Taste of War, 1, 32– 48. 415. Cited in Boris Shub, Starvation over Europe (Made in Germany) (New York: Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1943), 33. 416. Violetta Hionidou, Famine and Death in Occupied Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 2–3, 11–19. 417. Wells, The Metabolic Ghetto, 71. 418. Madhusree Mukerjee, Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II (New York: Basic, 2010), ix; Mukherjee, Hungry Bengal, 9, 187. 419. Cited in Smith, Conflict over Convoys, 159. 420. Mukherjee, Hungry Bengal, 252, 96, 175, 18. 421. Collingham, The Taste of War, 124–25. 422. D.P.E., “Food for Post-War Europe: Shortage of World Supplies,” Bulletin of International News 22, no. 11 (May 26, 1945): 466. 423. Collingham, The Taste of War, 467. 424. Cited in Maggie Black, A Cause for Our Times: Oxfam— the First Fifty Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 12. 425. “Food for War and Peace,” The Times, October 28, 1943. 426. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1978), 137.

Chapter Six 1. Karl Guggenheim, Nutrition and Nutritional Diseases: The Evolution of Concepts (Lexington, Mass: Collamore, 1981), 112–13; Claude Bernard, An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, trans. Henry Green (New York: Dover, 1957), 163– 64. 2. Karl Guggenheim, Nutrition and Nutritional Diseases: The Evolution of Concepts (Lexington, MA: Collamore, 1981), 112; Frederic Holmes, Between Biology and Medicine: The Formation of Intermediary Metabolism (Berkeley: Office for History of Science and Technology, University of California, Berkeley, 1992), 77–102. 3. Holmes, Between Biology and Medicine, 77. 4. Felix Hoppe-Seyler, Physiologische Chemie (1881), cited in Holmes, Between Biology and Medicine, 30. 5. Steven Vogel, Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle (New York: Norton, 2001), 51.

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Notes to Pages 168–170

6. Holmes, Between Biology and Medicine, 82–83. 7. Landecker, “Food as Exposure,” 169. 8. Fischer-Kowalski, “Society’s Metabolism,” 63; Harris Solomon, Metabolic Living: Food, Fat, and the Absorption of Illness in India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 10–11; Heinz Schandl and Niels Schulz, “Changes in the United Kingdom’s Natural Relations in Terms of Society’s Metabolism and Land-Use from 1850 to the Present Day,” Ecological Economics 41 (2002): 205. 9. Sébastien Rioux, “Capitalism and the Production of Uneven Bodies: Women, Motherhood and Food Distribution in Britain c. 1850–1914,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 40 (2015): 2, 3. 10. Alain Corbin, “A History and Anthropology of the Senses,” in Time, Desire and Horror: Towards a History of the Senses, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Polity, 1995), 192. 11. Jane Humphries, “Standard of Living, Quality of Life,” in A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Britain, ed. Chris Williams (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 288; Amartya Sen, The Standard of Living, ed. Geoffrey Hawthorn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 16 (“Lecture I: Concepts and Critiques”); Stanley Engerman, “The Standard of Living Debate in International Perspective: Measures and Indicators,” in Health and Welfare during Industrialization, ed. Richard Steckel and Roderick Floud (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 33. 12. J. Cairnes, “How Far Have Our Working Classes Benefited by the Increase in Our Wealth?” Littell’s Living Age 120 (January 24, 1874): 633; Robert Giffen, “Further Notes on the Progress of the Working Classes in the Last Half Century,” Journal of the Statistical Society 49 (1886): 28–100. 13. “The Best Fed Nation,” Pall Mall Gazette, February 15, 1894. 14. Humphries, “Standard of Living,” 295. See also Charles Feinstein, “Pessimism Perpetuated: Real Wages and the Standard of Living in Britain during and after the Industrial Revolution,” Journal of Economic History 58, no. 3 (September 1998): 625– 58; P. K. O’Brien and S. L. Engerman, “Changes in Income and Its Distribution during the Industrial Revolution,” in The Economic History of Britain since 1700, vol. 1, 1700– 1860, ed. Roderick Floud and Donald McCloskey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 174–75; and Roderick Floud and Bernard Harris, “Health, Height, and Welfare: Britain, 1700–1980,” in Steckel and Floud, eds., Health and Welfare, 97. 15. Jay Winter, “Unemployment, Nutrition and Infant Mortality in Britain, 1920– 50,” in The Working Class in Modern British History: Essays in Honour of Henry Pelling, ed. Jay Winter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 253. 16. Thomas McKeown, The Modern Rise of Population (New York: Academic, 1976), 129. 17. Floud, Fogel, Harris, and Hong, The Changing Body, 26. 18. S. Szreter, “The Importance of Social Intervention in Britain’s Mortality Decline, c. 1850–1914: A Re-Interpretation of the Role of Public Health,” Social History of Medicine 1, no. 1 (April 1988): 1– 38, 26, 37. 19. Robert Woods and P. R. Andrew Hinde, “Mortality in Victorian England: Models and Patterns,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18, no. 1 (Summer 1987): 54. 20. Bennett, The World’s Food, 70.

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21. Massimo Livi-Bacci, Population and Nutrition: An Essay on European Demographic History, trans. Tania Croft-Murray with the assistance of Carl Ipsen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 81. 22. Rob Dunn, “Everything You Know about Calories Is Wrong,” Scientific American 309, no. 3 (September 2013): 58. 23. Smil, Feeding the World, 192. 24. David Grigg, The World Food Problem, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 30; Muldrew, Food, Energy and the Creation of Industriousness. 25. Muldrew, Food, Energy and the Creation of Industriousness, 13. 26. Carole Shammas, “The Eighteenth-Century English Diet and Economic Change,” Explorations in Economic History 21, no. 3 (July 1984): 256. 27. Fogel, The Escape from Hunger, 9; Grigg, “The Nutritional Transition in Western Europe,” 249. 28. Ian Gazeley and Andrew Newell, “Urban Working-Class Food Consumption and Nutrition in Britain in 1904,” Discussion Paper no. 6988 (Bonn: IZA, November 2012), 17. 29. Oddy, From Plain Fare to Fusion Food, 129. 30. Hill, “Physiological and Economic Study,” 194. 31. Gazeley, Poverty in Britain, 73. 32. A. Carr-Saunders, D. Jones, and C. Moser, A Survey of Social Conditions in England and Wales (Oxford: Clarendon, 1958), 209; “Eating Well and Ill,” The Economist, September 25, 1965. 33. Smil, Feeding the World, 205. 34. Jane O’Hara-May, “Measuring Man’s Needs,” Journal of the History of Biology 4, no. 2 (1971): 254, 273; A. E. Harper, “Evolution of Recommended Dietary Allowances— New Directions?” Annual Review of Nutrition 7 (1987): 511. 35. John Welshman, “School Meals and Milk in England and Wales, 1906– 45,” Medical History 41 (1997): 16; “The Nutrition Question,” British Medical Journal, May 19, 1934, 900. 36. “The Nutrition Question,” 901. 37. F. W. Pavy, A Treatise on Food and Dietetics, Physiologically and Therapeutically Considered, 2nd ed. (London: J. & A. Churchill, 1875), 453. 38. Michael Nelson, “Social-Class Trends in British Diet, 1860– 1980,” in Food, Diet and Economic Change Past and Present, ed. Catherine Geissler and Derek Oddy (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1993), 112. 39. Fogel, The Escape from Hunger, 83. 40. Paul Clayton and Judith Rowbotham, “An Unsuitable and Degraded Diet? Part Two, Realities of the Mid-Victorian Diet,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 101 (2008): 354. 41. Richard Steckel, “Stature and the Standard of Living,” Journal of Economic Literature 33 (December 1995): 1903. 42. Roderick Floud, Kenneth Wachter, and Annabel Gregory, Height, Health and History: Nutritional Status in the United Kingdom, 1750– 1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 17. 43. Floud, Wachter, and Gregory, Height, Health and History, 216, 134; G. Galofré-

352

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Vilà, A. Hinde, and A. Guntupalli, “Heights across the Last 2000 Years in England,” Oxford Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History, no. 151 (Oxford: Oxford University, Economics Department, January 2017), 23. 44. Floud, Wachter, and Gregory, Height, Health and History, 135. 45. Floud, Fogel, Harris, and Hong, The Changing Body. 46. Partha Dasgupta, “Nutritional Status, the Capacity for Work, and Poverty Traps,” Journal of Econometrics 77 (1997): 18. 47. Floud, Fogel, Harris, and Hong, The Changing Body, 127, 23. 48. Gazeley and Newell, “Urban Working-Class Food Consumption,” 23. 49. “Waste and Over-Eating,” 214. 50. Alysa Levene, “The Meanings of Margarine in England: Class, Consumption and Material Culture from 1918 to 1953,” Contemporary British History 28, no. 2 (2014): 158. 51. Ellen Ross, Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 47–48. 52. Orr, Food Health and Income, 42. 53. Cited in B. Seebohm Rowntree and May Kendall, How the Labourer Lives: A Study of the Rural Labour Problem (1913; New York: Arno, 1975), 44. 54. Crawford and Broadley, The People’s Food, 220. 55. J. C. Drummond, “Food in Relation to Health in Great Britain: The Historical Background,” British Medical Journal, June 8, 1940, 943. 56. Herbert Maxwell, “Diet of the Poor,” The Times, February 8, 1936. 57. Hutchison, Food and the Principles of Dietetics, 17. 58. Rowntree and Kendall, How the Labourer Lives, 221– 22. 59. Geoffrey Warren, ed., The Foods We Eat: A Survey of Meals, Their Content and Chronology by Season, Day of the Week, Region, Class and Age, Conducted in Great Britain by the Market Research Division of W. S. Crawford Limited (London: Cassell, 1958), 67. 60. F. Petty, “Case Papers,” in The Pudding Lady: A New Departure in Social Work (new ed.), by Miss Bibby, Miss Colles, Miss Petty, and the Late Dr. Skyes (Westminster: National Food Reform Association, 1916), 43. 61. Lady Bell, At the Works: A Study of a Manufacturing Town (Middlesbrough) (1907; New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1969), 62. 62. P. Mathias, “The British Tea Trade in the Nineteenth Century,” in Oddy and Miller, eds., The Making of the Modern British Diet, 91. 63. Crawford and Broadley, The People’s Food, 41. 64. Newman, The Health of the State, 33. 65. Alan MacFarlane, The Savage Wars of Peace: England, Japan and the Malthusian Trap (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 140–43. 66. Walton, Fish and Chips, 166. 67. George Newman, The Building of a Nation’s Health (1939; London: Garland, 1985), 348. 68. Walton, Fish and Chips, 156. 69. Our Towns, 42. 70. Charles Smith, Britain’s Food Supplies in Peace and War (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1940), 166.

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71. George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (New York: Harcourt, 1958), 95. 72. “Smith’s Potato Crisps (1929),” The Times, May 18, 1939. 73. Cited in John Henley, “Crisps: A Very British Habit,” Guardian, September 1, 2010. 74. Elizabeth Roberts, “Working-Class Standards of Living in Barrow and Lancaster, 1890–1914,” Economic History Review 30, no. 2 (1977): 314. 75. Crawford and Broadley, The People’s Food, 246. 76. Roger Scola, Feeding the Victorian City: The Food Supply of Manchester, 1770– 1870, ed. W. A. Armstrong and Pauline Scola (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), 122; Kingsbury, Hybrid, 69–70; Angeliki Torode, “Trends in Fruit Consumption,” in Our Changing Fare: Two Hundred Years of British Food Habits, ed. T. C. Barker, J. C. McKenzie, and John Yudkin (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1966), 115. 77. John Boyd Orr and David Lubbock, Feeding the People in War-Time (London: Macmillan, 1940), 38; J. G. Williamson, A British Railway behind the Scenes (London: Ernest Benn, 1933), 154–55. 78. Time to Spare: What Unemployment Means by Eleven Unemployed (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1935), 69. 79. Liverpool Economic and Statistical Society, How the Casual Labourer Lives (Liverpool: Northern, 1909), xxiv. 80. Cited in Grant, Your Bread and Your Life, 111. 81. Andrew Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures; or, An Exposition of the Scientific, Moral, and Commercial Economy of the Factory System of Great Britain (London: Frank Cass, 1967), 385. 82. George Holyoake, History of Cooperation, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1879), 2:24. 83. Edgar Saxon, Sensible Food for All in Britain and the Temperate Zones (Ashingdon: C. W. Daniel, 1949), 25. 84. Vernon, Hunger, 133–34. 85. League of Nations, The Problem of Nutrition, 3:24; “The Food of the Poor,” The Times, February 11, 1936; Line, The Science of Meat, 2:46. 86. Orr, Food Health and Income, 55. 87. Lindsay, Report upon a Study of the Diet of the Labouring Classes, 27; Maud Pember Reeves, Round about a Pound a Week (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1913), 221. 88. Alan Gillie, “The Origin of the Poverty Line,” Economic History Review, n.s., 49, no. 4 (November 1996): 718. 89. P. F. William Ryan, “Scenes from Shop and Store London,” in Living London: Its Work and Its Play, Its Humour and Its Pathos, Its Sights and Its Scenes (3 vols.), ed. George Sims (London: Cassell, 1902), 3:143. 90. Anna Davin, Growing Up Poor: Home, School and Street in London, 1870– 1914 (London: Rivers Oram, 1996), 61. 91. Roberts, “Working-Class Standards of Living,” 317; Doris Coates, Tuppenny Rice and Treacle: Cottage Housekeeping (1900– 20) (London: David & Charles, 1975), 70; Jeremy Seabrook, The Unprivileged (London: Longmans, Green, 1967), 21. 92. Coates, Tuppenny Rice and Treacle, 54, 77– 78. 93. Paul Thompson, The Edwardians: The Remaking of British Society (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975), 5; Seabrook, The Unprivileged, 10.

354

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94. Carl Chinn, They Worked All Their Lives: Women and the Urban Poor in England, 1880– 1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 70– 71; Thompson, The Edwardians, 175. 95. G. Mulder, The Chemistry of Vegetable and Animal Physiology, trans. P. Fromberg (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1849), 291. 96. Liebig, Familiar Letters on Chemistry, 108–9. 97. Harmke Kamminga, “Nutrition for the People; or, The Fate of Jacob Moleschott’s Contest for a Humanist Science,” in The Science and Culture of Nutrition, 1840– 1940, ed. Harmke Kamminga and Andrew Cunningham (Atlanta: Rodolpi, 1995), 32– 33. 98. Pavy, A Treatise on Food and Dietetics, 123. 99. Joseph Fruton, Proteins, Enzymes, Genes: The Interplay of Chemistry and Biology (London: Yale University Press, 1999), 161–233. 100. Pavy, A Treatise on Food and Dietetics, 446; Kenneth Carpenter, Protein and Energy: A Study of Changing Ideas in Nutrition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 68. 101. Pavy, A Treatise on Food and Dietetics, 445. 102. Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), 126. 103. Rabinbach, The Human Motor; Edgar Collis and Major Greenwood, The Health of the Industrial Worker (Philadelphia: P. Blakiston’s Son, 1921), 87– 88. 104. Lindsay, Report upon a Study of the Diet of the Labouring Classes, 18. 105. Haggard and Greenberg, Diet and Physical Efficiency, 18. 106. James Jeans, “On the Comparative Efficiency and Earnings of Labour at Home and Abroad,” Journal of the Statistical Society 47 (December 1884): 614– 65; Francesco Nitti, “The Food and Labour Power of Nations,” Economic Journal 6, no. 21 (March 1896): 30–63; Helstosky, Garlic and Oil, 45. 107. Rabinbach, The Human Motor, 129; Paul Langford, Englishness Identified: Manners and Character, 1650– 1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 48– 49, 143. 108. F. Longet, Traité de physiologie, 3rd ed., 3 vols. (Paris: Germer Ballière, 1868), 1:104. Austin Flint, Human Physiology (New York: D. Appleton, 1889), 183. 109. Gerhart von Schulze-Gävernitz, The Cotton Trade in England and on the Continent: A Study in the Field of the Cotton Industry, trans. Oscar Hall (Manchester: Marsden, 1895), 138. 110. Major D. McCay, The Protein Element in Nutrition (London: Edward Arnold, 1912), 166. 111. McCay, The Protein Element in Nutrition, 203; Vernon, Hunger, 106. 112. James McLester, Nutrition and Diet in Health and Disease (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1949), 12–13. 113. Vernon, Hunger, 112. 114. W. O. Atwater, Methods and Results of Investigations on the Chemistry and Economy of Food (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1895), 212. 115. Atwater, The Chemistry and Economy of Food, 211– 13; Richard Cummings, The American and His Food: A History of Food Habits in the United States, rev. ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941), 126; Raymond Pearl, The Nation’s Food: A Statistical Study of a Physiological and Social Problem (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1920), 248.

Notes to Pages 177–181

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116. W. Peter Ward, Birth Rate and Economic Growth: Women’s Living Standards in the Industrializing West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 96– 97. 117. “Cooked and Eaten,” National Magazine 5 (1859): 140. 118. Werner Sombart, Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? trans. Patricia Hocking and C. Husbands (White Plains, NY: IASP, 1976), 106. 119. Shanahan, Animal Foodstuffs, 35. 120. Fogel, The Escape from Hunger, 34. 121. Ward, Birth Rate and Economic Growth, 10. 122. de Vries, The Industrious Revolution, 26–29. 123. Joanna Bourke, “Housewifery in Working-Class England, 1860– 1914,” Past and Present 143 (May 1994): 176; De Vries, The Industrious Revolution, 199. 124. Ross, Love and Toil, 222. 125. Samuel Barnett, “The Public Feeding of Children,” Independent Review 6 (May– August 1905): 154. 126. William Grisewood, The Poor of Liverpool: Notes on Their Condition, Based on an Inquiry Made by the Liverpool Central Relief and Charity Organisation Society (Liverpool: D. Marples, 1897), 15. 127. Newman, The Health of the State, 194. 128. Yuriko Akiyama, Feeding the Nation: Nutrition and Health in Britain Before World War One (London: I. B. Tauris, 2008), 33– 34; Vernon, Hunger, 201. 129. Vernon, Hunger, 219; League of Nations, The Problem of Nutrition, 3:212; I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body: Beauty, Health, and Fitness in Britain, 1880–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 135. 130. Roderick Lawrence, “The Organization of Domestic Space,” Ekistics 46, no. 275 (March/April 1979): 135. 131. Anthony Wohl, The Eternal Slum: Housing and Social Policy in Victorian London (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002), 152–53. 132. S. C. Leslie, “The Case for Gas— Kensal House,” in Flats, Municipal and Private Enterprise (London: Ascot Gas Water Heaters, 1938), 281. 133. Alison Ravetz, “The Victorian Coal Kitchen and Its Reformers,” Victorian Studies 11, no. 4 (1968): 439–42. 134. Broomfield, Food and Cooking in Victorian England, 113. 135. Stephen Mosley, The Chimney of the World: A History of Smoke Pollution in Victorian and Edwardian Manchester (Cambridge: White Horse, 2001), 50. 136. Anne Clendinning, “Gas Cooker,” Victorian Review 34, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 60. 137. Stirling Everard, The History of the Gas Light and Coke Company, 1812– 1949 (London: Ernest Benn, 1949), 277. 138. Zylberberg, “Fuel Prices, Regional Diets and Cooking Habits.” 139. De Vries, The Industrious Revolution, 197; G. Abbott, “Gas in the Home,” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 95, no. 4749 (August 15, 1947): 632. 140. Caroline Davidson, A Woman’s Work Is Never Done: A History of Housework in the British Isles, 1650–1950 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1986), 68. 141. Seabrook, The Unprivileged, 42. 142. Margery Spring Rice, Working-Class Wives, 2nd ed. (London: Virago, 1981), 76. 143. Davidson, A Woman’s Work Is Never Done, 63; Alexander Fenton, “Hearth and

356

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Kitchen: The Scottish Example,” in Food and Material Culture, ed. Martin Schärer and Alexander Fenton (Phantassie: Tuckwell, 1998), 45. 144. Berdmore, “The Principles of Cooking,” 172– 73. 145. Smith, Practical Dietary, 204; Reeves, Round about a Pound a Week, 56. 146. Roberts, The Classic Slum, 108. 147. Brears, Traditional Food in Yorkshire, 13; Marian Cuff responding to Gertrude Irons, “The Teaching of Food Values, Domestic Catering and Cookery in Public Elementary Schools,” in Rearing an Imperial Race, ed. Charles Hecht (London: National Food Reform Association, 1913), 178. 148. Class 1, “Budget No. 9,” cited in B. Seebohm Rowntree, Poverty: A Study of Town Life, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1910), 277; Rice, Working-Class Wives, 152. 149. Hugh Ashby, Infant Mortality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915), 50. 150. Savage, Milk and the Public Health, 271; Atkins, “White Poison?” 214. 151. Reeves, Round about a Pound a Week, 52; W. Horton Date, “Housing Difficulties in Rural Areas,” Public Health 37 (February 1924): 116; W. G. Auger, “The Cooking of the Poorer Classes,” in Bibby et al., Pudding Lady, 18. 152. Savage, Milk and the Public Health, 297. 153. Edward Bowmaker, The Housing of the Working Classes (London: Methuen, 1895), 92. 154. Retail Dairyman 1, no. 2 (April 1910): 9; Harvey and Hill, Milk, 277; Joint Committee on Milk of the National Health Society and the National League for Physical Education and Improvement, Milk Supply: Instructions for Ensuring the Supply of Clean Milk: Leaflet C. to Housewives and All Consumers of Milk (London: National League for Physical Education and Improvement, n.d.), [3] (leaflet unpaginated); George Carpenter, “Infant Feeding,” Edinburgh Medical Journal, n.s., 4 (1898): 30; “A Milk-Bottle Cover,” British Medical Journal, October 3, 1931, 611. 155. Crawford and Broadley, The People’s Food, 117. 156. Dolores Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981). 157. E. M. King, “Co-Operative Housekeeping,” Building News, April 24, 1874, 459. 158. M. Wolff, Food for the Million: A Plan for Starting Public Kitchens (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1884), 10– 11, 18. 159. Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Domestic Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York: Basic, 1983). 160. A. Kenealy, “Travelling Kitchens and Co-Operative Housekeeping,” Lady’s Realm 11 (February 1902): 516. 161. H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), 217. 162. Nickie Charles and Marion Kerr, Women, Food and Families (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 42. 163. E. M. Widdowson and R. A. McCance, “A Study of English Diets by the Individual Method: Part II, Women,” Journal of Hygiene 36, no. 3 (July 1936): 295. 164. Marion Nestle and Malden Nesheim, Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012), 81– 82.

Notes to Pages 182–185

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165. Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson, The Evolution of Sex, rev. ed. (London: Walter Scott, 1914), 18. 166. William Thomas, Sex and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1907), 3–4. 167. Bruce Webster, Helen Harrington, and L. M. Wright, “The Standard Metabolism of Adolescence,” Journal of Pediatrics 19, no. 3 (September 1941): 354. 168. Widdowson and McCance, “A Study of English Diets,” 295. 169. Hilary Marland, Health and Girlhood in Britain, 1874– 1920 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 157. 170. Thomas Oliver, “The Diet of Toil,” Lancet 145, no. 3748 (June 29, 1895): 1634. 171. Oddy, From Plain Fare to Fusion Food, 66. 172. John MacNicol, The Movement for Family Allowances, 1918– 45: A Study in Social Policy Development (London: Heinemann, 1980), 57. 173. Widdowson and McCance, “A Study of English Diets,” 297, 298. 174. Robert Millward and Frances Bell, “Infant Mortality in Victorian Britain: The Mother as Medium,” Economic History Review 54, no. 4 (November 2001): 720– 21. 175. Widdowson and McCance, “A Study of English Diets,” 298. 176. Cited in Rowntree and Kendall, How the Labourer Lives, 213. 177. Guggenheim, Nutrition and Nutritional Diseases, 151– 52. 178. Ross, Love and Toil, 33. 179. Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), 125. 180. Reeves, Round about a Pound a Week, 156. 181. Smith, Practical Dietary, 200. 182. Isabella Beeton, Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management (London: S. O. Beeton, 1861), 967, 1667. 183. Newman, The Health of the State, 185. 184. Steven Thompson, Unemployment, Poverty and Health in Interwar South Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), 85. 185. Standish Meacham, A Life Apart: The English Working Class, 1890– 1914 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1977), 88. 186. Father Joe: The Autobiography of Joseph Williamson (New York: Abingdon, 1963), 42. 187. Robertson in City of Birmingham Health Department, Report on the Industrial Employment of Married Women and Infantile Mortality (1909), 19, cited in Chinn, They Worked All Their Lives, 50. 188. Rice, Working-Class Wives, 98, 37. 189. Scott, Against the Grain, 108. 190. D. Noel Paton, “On the Influence of Diet in Pregnancy on the Weight of the Offspring,” Lancet 162, no. 4166 (July 4, 1903): 21; Ward, Birth Rate and Economic Growth, 126. 191. Rice, Working-Class Wives, 87. 192. Mrs. Layton, “Memories of Seventy Years,” in Life as We Have Known It, ed. Margaret Davis (New York: Norton, 1975), 37. 193. Paton, “On the Influence of Diet in Pregnancy,” 22.

358

Notes to Pages 185–187

194. Ward, Birth Rate and Economic Growth, 17– 18, 21; Wells, The Metabolic Ghetto, 67; Kathleen Abu-Saad and Drora Fraser, “Maternal Nutrition and Birth Outcomes,” Epidemiologic Reviews 32 (2010): 11. 195. Landecker, “Food as Exposure,” 174; Wells, The Metabolic Ghetto, 314. 196. Landecker, “Food as Exposure,” 177. 197. Robert Waterland and Karin Michels, “Epigenetic Epidemiology of the Developmental Origins Hypothesis,” Annual Review of Nutrition 27 (2007): 363– 88. 198. Emilia Kanthack, The Preservation of Infant Life: A Guide for Health Visitors (London: H. K. Lewis, 1907), 8. 199. Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration: Volume I (London: HM Stationery Office, 1904), 56. 200. Deborah Dwork, “The Milk Option: An Aspect of the History of the Infant Welfare Movement in England, 1898–1908,” Medical History 31 (1987): 52. 201. Winter, The Great War and the British People, 9. 202. Anne Hardy, “Rickets and the Rest: Child-Care, Diet and the Infectious Children’s Diseases, 1850–1914,” Social History of Medicine 5 (1992): 395; Ashby, Infant Mortality, 77. 203. “Infantile Diarrhoea,” British Medical Journal, April 29, 1882, 632; H. Meredith Richards, “The Factors Which Determine the Local Incidence of Fatal Infantile Diarrhoea,” Journal of Hygiene 3, no. 3 (July 1903): 343; Eyler, Sir Arthur Newsholme and State Medicine, 42. 204. Sheridan Delépine, “Some of the Ways in Which Milk Becomes Pathogenic,” British Medical Journal, January 22, 1898, 205. 205. Robert Woods, The Demography of Victorian England and Wales (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 305. 206. J. T. C. Nash, “House Flies as Carriers of Disease,” Journal of Hygiene 9, no. 2 (September 1909): 151–52. 207. Ashby, Infant Mortality, 201. 208. C. G. Hewitt, House-Flies and How They Spread Disease (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), 106–7. 209. Arthur Newsholme, “Remarks on the Causation of Epidemic Diarrhoea, Including the Discussion of Professor Delépine’s Paper,” Transactions of the Epidemiological Society of London, n.s., 12 (1902–3): 40. 210. R. Snell, “Insanitation and Infant Mortality,” Journal of the Royal Institute of Public Health 16, no. 1 (January 1908): 16. 211. Mr. G. E. Taylor (St. Helens) responding to Joseph Cates, “Measures to Be Taken to Prevent Contamination of Food by Flies,” Journal of the Royal Sanitary Institute 38, no. 1 (March 1917): 55. 212. Anthony Shelmerdine, “The Distribution and Sale of Humanized and Sterilized Milk,” Journal of Preventive Medicine 13, no. 5 (May 1905): 352. 213. Henry Chapin, “The Influence of Breast Feeding on the Infant’s Development,” Archives of Pediatrics 21 (August 1904): 579. 214. Helen MacMurchy, “Infant Mortality,” Special Report for the Province of Ontario, Canada (1911), cited in Ashby, Infant Mortality, 13.

Notes to Pages 187–188

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215. Charles Judson and J. Claxton Gittings, The Artificial Feeding of Infants, Including a Critical Review of the Recent Literature of the Subject (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1902), 91. 216. Arthur Meigs, Milk Analysis and Infant Feeding: A Practical Treatise on the Examination of Human and Cows’ Milk, Cream, Condensed Milk, Etc., and Directions as to the Diet of Young Infants (Philadelphia: P. Blakiston, Son, 1885), 74. 217. Linda Bryder, “From Breast to Bottle: A History of Modern Infant Feeding,” Endeavour 33, no. 2 (2009): 56. 218. Eric Pritchard, The Physiological Feeding of Infants, 2nd ed. (Chicago: W. T. Keener, 1904), 13. 219. R. J. Blackham, “Cow’s Milk in Infant Feeding,” British Medical Journal, August 25, 1923, 323; W. B. Cheadle, On the Principles and Exact Conditions to Be Observed in the Artificial Feeding of Infants: The Properties of Artificial Foods; And The Diseases Which Arise from Faults of Diet in Early Life (London: Smith, Elder, 1902), 243. 220. Pritchard, The Physiological Feeding of Infants, 76. 221. Shelmerdine, “The Distribution and Sale of Humanized and Sterilized Milk,” 352. 222. G. McCleary, Infantile Mortality and Infants Milk Depôts (London: P. S. King & Son, 1905), 38–39. 223. H. Cooper Pattin speaking in discussion of G. F. McCleary, “Municipal Milk Depots and Milk Sterilisation,” Journal of the Royal Sanitary Institute 26, no. 4 (1905): 233. 224. James Crichton-Browne, “Milk and Health,” Journal of State Medicine 26, no. 5 (May 1918): 146. 225. Furnas and Furnas, Man, Bread and Destiny, 178. 226. Woods, The Demography of Victorian England and Wales, 285. 227. Valerie Fildes, “Breast-Feeding in London, 1905–19,” Journal of Biosocial Science 24 (1992): 55–59. 228. Jane Lewis, “The Social History of Social Policy: Infant Welfare in Edwardian England,” Journal of Social Policy 9, no. 4 (1980): 471. 229. J. M. Fortescue-Brickdale, “Lac Vinum Infantum: A Review of the Work of Infant Milk Depôts,” Bristol Medico-Chirurgical Journal 22 (1904): 203. 230. Alice Reid, “Infant Feeding and Post-Neonatal Mortality in Derbyshire, England, in the Early Twentieth Century,” Population Studies 56, no. 2 (July 2002): 164. 231. McCleary, Infantile Mortality, 70, 71. 232. Bernard Harris, The Health of the Schoolchild: A History of the School Medical Service in England and Wales (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1995), 23. 233. T. B. Mepham, “‘Humanizing’ Milk: The Formulation of Artificial Feeds for Infants (1850–1910),” Medical History 37 (1993): 240. 234. “Infantile Diarrhoea,” 145, 146; “Milk and Diarrhoea,” British Medical Journal, August 19, 1899, 481. 235. “Infantile Diarrhoea,” 148–49. 236. McCleary, Infantile Mortality, 73, 76–77. 237. Savage, Milk and the Public Health, 358.

360

Notes to Pages 188–190

238. Savage, Milk and the Public Health, 166; Lawrence Weaver, “In the Balance: Weighing Babies and the Birth of the Infant Welfare Clinic,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 84, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 50. 239. Deborah Dwork, War Is Good for Babies and Other Young Children: A History of the Infant and Child Welfare Movement in England, 1898– 1918 (London: Tavistock, 1987), 118, 122. 240. Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich, Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Woolwich: 1910 (Woolwich: H. Pryce & Sons, 1910), 108. 241. W. Robertson, “The Practical Side of an Infants’ Milk Depôt,” Edinburgh Medical Journal, n.s., 19 (1906): 496. 242. Janet Lane-Claypon, “Phases of the Development of the Infant Welfare Movement in England in England,” The Child 1, no. 9 (November 1912): 25. 243. Atkins, “White Poison?” 224. 244. “The First Infant Welfare Centre,” British Medical Journal, May 9, 1931, 807. 245. Carol Dyhouse, “Working-Class Mothers and Infant Mortality in England, 1895– 1914,” Journal of Social History 12, no. 2 (Winter 1978): 257. 246. H. Kerr, “Modern Educative Methods for the Prevention of Infantile Mortality,” Public Health 23 (January 1910): 131. 247. “The Inspection and Sterilisation of Milk,” Belfast News-Letter, October 16, 1900. 248. Paton, introduction to Report upon a Study of the Diet of the Labouring Classes, 3. 249. “Cheaper Milk in Poor Homes,” The Times, July 9, 1937. 250. Janet Golden, Message in a Bottle: The Making of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (London: Harvard University Press, 2005), 25; “Mothers and Alcohol,” Medical News 76 (May 12, 1900): 749. 251. Ashby, Infant Mortality, 72. 252. Dyhouse, “Working-Class Mothers and Infant Mortality,” 250; Winter, “Unemployment, Nutrition and Infant Mortality,” 234. 253. Peter McKinlay, “The Decline in Infant Mortality,” Journal of Hygiene 27, no. 4 (June 1928): 424. 254. R. I. Woods, P. A. Watterson, and J. H. Woodward, “The Causes of Rapid Infant Mortality Decline in England and Wales, 1861–1921: Part II,” Population Studies 43 (1989): 130. 255. Millward and Bell, “Infant Mortality in Victorian Britain,” 715. 256. Anna Davin, “Loaves and Fishes: Food in Poor Households in Late NineteenthCentury London,” History Workshop Journal 41, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 168. 257. A. Anderson, “An Investigation of the Diet of School Children,” British Medical Journal, June 13, 1936, 1221–22. 258. Fraser Brockington, “Influence of the Growing Family upon the Diet,” Journal of Hygiene 38, no. 1 (January 1938): 61; Robert Hunter, “The Social Significance of Underfed Children,” International Quarterly 12, no. 1 (October 1905): 343. 259. Cited in Hunter, “The Social Significance of Underfed Children,” 347. 260. Cited in Charles Segal, Penn’orth of Chips: Backward Children in the Making (London: Victor Gollancz, 1939), 79–80.

Notes to Pages 190–193

361

261. Floud, Wachter, and Gregory, Height, Health and History, 246. 262. Cheadle, The Artificial Feeding of Infants, 196– 97. 263. Harris, The Health of the Schoolchild, 42. 264. Welshman, “School Meals,” 12. 265. G. M’Gonigle and J. Kirby, Poverty and Public Health (1936; London: Garland, 1985), 53. 266. F. Kelly, “Fifty Years of Nutritional Science,” Medical Officer 53 (February 16, 1935): 65. 267. Hunter, “The Social Significance of Underfed Children,” 343. 268. A. D. Edwards, “Evolution, Economy, and the Child,” Westminster Review 171 (January 1909): 83. 269. “The Problem of Feeding School Children,” British Medical Journal, October 1, 1904, 850. 270. “After Bread, Education”: A Plan for the State Feeding of School Children (London: Fabian Society, 1905), 10–11. 271. T. J. Macnamara, “Physical Condition of Working-Class Children,” Nineteenth Century and After 56 (August 1904): 309. 272. William Anson, “Provision of Food for School-Children in Public Elementary Schools,” Economic Journal 16, no. 62 (June 1906): 184. 273. John Burnett, Plenty and Want: A Social History of Diet in England from 1850 to the Present Day (London: Nelson, 1966), 212; Phyllis Winder, The Public Feeding of Elementary School Children (London: Longmans, Green, 1913), 24. 274. Vernon, Hunger, 164, 179. 275. Peter Atkins, “School Milk in Britain, 1900– 1934,” Journal of Policy History 19, no. 4 (2007): 400–401. 276. J. Kinloch, “Prefatory Note,” in Milk Consumption and the Growth of School Children: Report on an Investigation in Lanarkshire Schools, by Gerald Leighton and Peter McKinlay (Edinburgh: HM Stationery Office, 1930), 7; Student, “The Lanarkshire Milk Experiment,” Biometrika 23, nos. 3–4 (December 1931): 398. 277. R. Stenhouse Williams, “Nutritional Value of Milk,” British Medical Journal, June 13, 1931, 1048. 278. Atkins, “School Milk in Britain,” 409–10. 279. Welshman, “School Meals,” 20. 280. Atkins, “School Milk in Britain,” 416. 281. K. A. H. Murray and R. S. G. Rutherford, Milk Consumption Habits: Preliminary Report (Oxford: Agricultural Economics Research Institute, 1941), 53, 54. 282. Harvey and Hill, Milk, 476. 283. Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, 32.

Chapter Seven 1. Denis Burkitt, “Some Diseases Characteristic of Modern Western Civilization,” British Medical Journal, February 3, 1973, 274, 276, 277. 2. “Doctors’ Orders Are Healthier Hamburger and Safer Sausage,” Glasgow Herald, October 27, 1980.

362

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3. Charles Rosenberg, “Pathologies of Progress: The Idea of Civilization as Risk,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 72 (1998): 728. 4. John Cope, Cancer: Civilization: Degeneration: The Nature, Causes and Prevention of Cancer, Especially in Its Relation to Civilization and Degeneration (London: H. K. Lewis, 1932), 119. 5. Stanley Ulijasek, Neil Mann, and Sarah Elton, Evolving Human Nutrition: Implications for Human Health (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 121; Loren Cordain et al., “Origins and Evolution of the Western Diet: Health Implications for the 21st Century,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 81 (2005): 350. 6. Arbuthnot Lane, preface to Maori Symbolism: Being an Account of the Origin, Migration, and Culture of the New Zealand Maori as Recorded in Certain Sacred Legends, by Ettie Rout (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1926), xi. 7. W. Arbuthnot Lane, “An Address on Chronic Intestinal Stasis and Cancer,” British Medical Journal, October 27, 1923, 745. 8. S. Henning Belfrage, What’s Best to Eat? (London: William Heinemann 1926), 56. 9. Freidberg, Fresh. 10. Collingham, The Taste of Empire, 185. 11. T. L. Cleave, Fat Consumption and Coronary Disease: The Evolutionary Answer to This Problem (New York: Philosophical Library, 1958), 18; James Crichton-Browne, Parcimony in Nutrition (London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1909), 77. 12. William Paveley, “From Aretaeus to Crosby: A History of Coeliac Disease,” in The History of Gastroenterology, ed. T. S. Chen and P. S. Chen (London: Pantheon, 1995), 167–72; Matthew Smith, Another Person’s Poison: A History of Food Allergy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). 13. Yudkin, Pure, White and Deadly, 24. 14. Swinburn et al., “Syndemic,” 17. 15. Robert McCarrison, “Faulty Food in Relation to Gastro-Intestinal Disorder,” Journal of the American Medical Association 78, no. 1 (January 7, 1922): 3. 16. Doris Grant, Housewives Beware (London: Faber & Faber, 1958), 63– 64. 17. Frederick Hoffman, Cancer and Diet, with Facts and Observations on Related Subjects (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1937), 664, 652, 197. 18. Frederick Marwood, What Is the Root Cause of Cancer? Is It the Excessive Consumption of Common Salt, Salted Foods and Salt Compounds? (London: John Bale, 1927), 16; Dr. Braithwaite, “Excess of Salt in the Diet a Probable Factor in the Causation of Cancer,” in Marwood, What Is the Root Cause of Cancer? 29. 19. T. L. Cleave and G. D. Campbell, Diabetes, Coronary Thrombosis, and the Saccharine Disease (Bristol: John Wright & Sons, 1969), vi, 6, 7. 20. Ulijasek, Mann, and Elton, Evolving Human Nutrition, 291; Goudiss, The Strength We Get from Sweets, 5. 21. Michael Worboys, “The Discovery of Colonial Malnutrition between the Wars,” in Imperial Medicine and Indigenous Societies, ed. David Arnold (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 210. 22. R. H. A. Plimmer and Violet Plimmer, Food and Health (London: Longmans, Green, 1925), 5.

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23. Weston Price, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: A Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects (New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1939), 42, 44, 49, 209. 24. Campbell, What Is Wrong with British Diet? 12. 25. For example, Cottrell, ed., Beet-Sugar Economics, 12– 15; Swinburn et al., “Syndemic,” 31. 26. Lindeberg, Food and Western Disease, 135. 27. “Food and the Child,” British Medical Journal, March 10, 1934, 436. 28. E. P. Cathcart, “Food and Nutrition,” British Medical Journal, February 27, 1937, 438. 29. Arthur Keith, The Human Body (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1936), 233, and “Concerning Certain Structural Changes Which Are Taking Place in Our Jaws and Teeth,” in Five Lectures on “The Growth of the Jaws, Normal and Abnormal, in Health and Disease” (London: Dental Board of the United Kingdom, 1924), 135– 36. 30. Medical Research Council, Reports of the Committee for the Investigation of Dental Disease: II, The Incidence of Dental Disease in Children (London: HM Stationery Office, 1925), 42; League of Nations, The Problem of Nutrition1:43. 31. R. Pedley and Frank Harrison, Our Teeth: How Built Up, How Destroyed, How Preserved (London: Blackie & Son, 1908), v. 32. Richard Steckel et al., “Skeletal Health in the Western Hemisphere from 4000 B.C. to the Present,” Evolutionary Anthropology 11 (2002): 146; W. J. Moore, “Dental Caries in Britain from Roman Times to the Nineteenth Century,” in Geissler and Oddy, eds., Food, Diet and Economic Change, 58; Ursula Witwer-Backofen and Felix Engel, “The History of European Oral Health: Evidence from Dental Caries and Antemortem Tooth Loss,” in The Backbone of Europe: Health, Diet, Work, and Violence over Two Millennia, ed. Richard Steckel, Clark Larsen, Charlotte Roberts, and Joerg Baten (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 111, 123. 33. J. Campbell, Those Teeth of Yours: A Popular Guide to Better Teeth (London: William Heinemann, 1929), 78. 34. J. A. MacDonald, What a Newspaper Man Saw in Britain (Toronto: Globe, 1909), 7. 35. F. Truby King, The Story of the Teeth and How to Save Them (Auckland: Whitcombe & Tombs, 1917), 6; James Wheatley, “Dental Caries as a Field for Preventive Medicine,” Public Health 25 (August 1912): 407–8. 36. Mrs. Garrett, “The Evils of Sweet Eating,” National Health (July 1913), cited in Hecht, ed., Gateway to Health, 43. 37. J. G. Adami, “Inaugural Address,” in Hecht, ed., Gateway to Health, 163. 38. Kurt Thoma, Teeth, Diet and Health (London: Century, 1923), 59. 39. Drummond and Wilbraham, The Englishman’s Food, 161– 62. 40. Ed. Jas. Wenyon, “The Teeth and Civilization,” Nature 50, no. 1285 (June 14, 1894): 148. 41. Price, Nutrition, 54. 42. Steven, The Good Scots Diet, 132. 43. Albert Carter, Vaccination a Cause of the Prevalent Decay of the Teeth (London: Mothers’ Compulsory Anti-Vaccination League, 1877); R. Russell, Strength and Diet: A Practical Treatise with Special Regard to the Life of Nations (London: Longmans, Green,

364

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1905), 413; Cope, Cancer, 88; Cyril Howkins, “The Teeth of the Present Generation,” British Journal of Dental Science 49 (February 15, 1906): 154. 44. L. S. Bevington, “How to Eat Bread,” Nineteenth Century 4 (September 1881): 349; Committee for the Investigation of Dental Disease, The Influence of Diet on Caries in Children’s Teeth (London: HM Stationery Office, 1936), 2– 3. 45. J. Sim Wallace, Oral Hygiene (London: Ballière, Tindall & Cox, 1923), 15, 34. 46. M. Nicolson and G. Taylor, “Scientific Knowledge and Clinical Authority in Dentistry: James Sim Wallace and Dental Caries,” Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh 39 (2009): 66. 47. Martha Koehne and R. Bunting, “Studies in the Control of Dental Caries: II,” Journal of Nutrition 7, no. 6 (1934): 673. 48. Bengt Gustafsson et al., “The Vipeholm Dental Caries Study: The Effect of Different Levels of Carbohydrate Intake on Caries Activity in 436 Individuals Observed for Five Years,” Acta Odontologica Scandinavica 11, nos. 3–4 (September 1954): 232– 65. 49. Christina Adler et al., “Sequencing Ancient Calcified Dental Plaque Shows Changes in Oral Microbiota with Dietary Shifts of the Neolithic and Industrial Revolutions,” Nature Genetics 45, no. 4 (April 2013): 453, 454. 50. Campbell, What Is Wrong with British Diet? 227. 51. J. Sim Wallace, “Some Experiments on Bread, with Special Reference to the Causation and Prevention of Dental Caries,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine (June 1911), cited in Hecht, ed., Gateway to Health, 87. 52. Harry Critchley, Hygiene in School: A Manual for Teachers (London: Allman & Son, 1906), 72; S. Mervyn Herbert, Britain’s Health (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1939), 148. 53. Campbell, What Is Wrong with British Diet? 243. 54. Salop County Council Elementary Education Department, “Prevention of Decay of Teeth” (1912), cited in Wheatley, “Dental Caries as a Field for Preventive Medicine,” 410. 55. F. M. Holborn, “Pyorrhoea,” in Hecht, ed., Gateway to Health, 249. 56. Thoma, Teeth, Diet and Health, 154. 57. Austin Furniss, “Preventive Dentistry: The Public Health Aspect,” Medical Officer 29 (June 16, 1923): 293. 58. Marland, Health and Girlhood in Britain, 166. 59. Joel Levy, Really Useful: The Origins of Everyday Things (Buffalo, NY: Firefly, 2002), 70. 60. Karen Dunnell, “Are We Healthier?” in The Health of Adult Britain, 1841– 1994 (2 vols.), ed. John Charlton and Mike Murphy (London: HM Stationery Office, 1997), 2:179. 61. Olivia Timbs and Lorraine Fraser, “Winning the War against Tooth Decay,” The Times, June 14, 1985. 62. D. White, G. Tsakos, N. Pitts, E. Fuller, G. Douglas, J. Murray, and J. Steele, “Adult Dental Health Survey 2009: Common Oral Health Conditions and Their Impact on the Population,” British Journal of Dentistry 213, no. 11 (December 8, 2012): 568. 63. Children’s Dental Health Survey: Executive Summary: England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 2013, https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications

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/statistical/children-s-dental-health-survey/child-dental-health-survey-2013-england -wales-and-northern-ireland. 64. K. Hill, B. Chadwick, R. Freeman, I. O’Sullivan, and J. Murray, “Adult Dental Health Survey 2009: Relationships between Dental Attendance Patterns, Oral Health Behaviour and the Current Barriers to Dental Care,” British Dental Journal 214, no 1 (January 12, 2013): 27. 65. Cope, Cancer, 126. 66. Campbell, Those Teeth of Yours, 16–17. 67. Keith, The Human Body, 235. 68. Daniel Lieberman, The Evolution of the Human Head (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 278. 69. Cope, Cancer, 111. 70. D. Davies, The Influence of Teeth, Diet, and Habits on the Human Face (London: William Heinemann, 1972), 41. 71. Lieberman, The Evolution of the Human Head, 248– 49. 72. Matthew Baillie, Lectures and Observations on Medicine (London: Richard Taylor, 1825), 188. 73. Guthrie Rankin, “Dyspepsia and Its Treatment by Antiseptics,” British Medical Journal, November 29, 1902, 1698–99. 74. Thomas Trotter, A View of the Nervous Temperament (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, & Orme, 1807), 203. 75. Fothergill, A Manual of Dietetics, 13. 76. J. Barker, Cancer: How It Is Caused; How It Can Be Prevented (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1924), 335. 77. Felicity Edwards and John Edwards, “Tea-Drinking and Gastritis,” Lancet 268, no. 6942 (September 15, 1956): 545; J. Yeo, “Food Accessories: Their Influence on Digestion,” Nineteenth Century 19 (1886): 278; Martin Priest and C. G. Moor, “Preservatives in Food,” Sanitary Record, 37, suppl. (March 16, 1900): 19. 78. Fothergill, A Manual of Dietetics, 231; Max Einhorn, Diseases of the Stomach: A Text-Book for Practitioners and Students, 4th ed. (New York: William Wood, 1906), 141. 79. John Goodfellow, The Dietetic Value of Bread (London: Macmillan, 1892), 124. 80. Russell, Strength and Diet, 380. 81. William Tibbles, Dietetics; or, Food in Health and Disease (Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1914), 275. 82. Rankin, “Dyspepsia and Its Treatment by Antiseptics,” 1700; George Niles, “The Philosophy of Mastication,” Public Health Journal 4, no. 5 (May 1913): 294. 83. William Harvey, On Corpulence in Relation to Disease; With Some Remarks on Diet (London: Henry Renshaw, 1872), 72; Fothergill, A Manual of Dietetics, 85; Rankin, “Dyspepsia and Its Treatment by Antiseptics,” 1700. 84. Rankin, “Dyspepsia and Its Treatment by Antiseptics,” 1701. 85. Einhorn, Diseases of the Stomach, 39–56. 86. “The Surgery of Chronic Dyspepsia,” Lancet 160, no. 4121 (August 23, 1902): 513. 87. Nicholas Talley, “Dyspepsia and Non-Ulcer Dyspepsia: An Historical Perspective,” in Chen and Chen, eds., The History of Gastroenterology, 125.

366

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88. Jon Nguyen-Van-Tam and Richard Logan, “Digestive Disease,” in Charlton and Murphy, eds., The Health of Adult Britain, 2:131. 89. Cleave and Campbell, Diabetes, 91; G. Lloyd, “White Bread and Peptic Ulcer,” British Medical Journal, April 24, 1948, 810. 90. T. L. Cleave, Peptic Ulcer: A New Approach to Its Causation, Prevention, and Arrest, Based on Human Evolution (Bristol: John Wright, 1962), 12, 29, 77, 78 (quotes). 91. C. A. Wells, “High Gastric Ulcer: A Suggested Operation,” British Medical Journal, May 6, 1933, 778; R. Milnes Walker, “The Surgical Management of High Gastric Ulcers,” British Medical Journal, November 14, 1936, 967– 68. 92. Arthur Hurst, Constipation and Allied Intestinal Disorders, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1921), 73. 93. Whorton, Inner Hygiene, 30–37. 94. Henry Collett, “On the Treatment of Habitual or Chronic Constipation,” Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal 15, no. 23 (November 12, 1851): 625. 95. Belfrage, What’s Best to Eat? 86. 96. J. H. Kellogg, The Itinerary of a Breakfast (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1923), 37. 97. Samuel Gant, Constipation and Intestinal Obstruction (Obstipation) (London: W. B. Saunders, 1909), 17. 98. Arbuthnot Lane, “The Sewage System of the Human Body,” American Medicine, May 1923, 267. 99. F. A. Hornibrook, The Culture of the Abdomen: The Cure of Obesity and Constipation (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1933), 9; Kellogg, The Itinerary of a Breakfast, 25. 100. Alcinous Jamison, Intestinal Ills: Chronic Constipation, Indigestion, Autogenetic Poisons, Diarrhea, Piles, Etc., Also Auto-Infection, Auto-Intoxication, Anemia, Emaciation, Etc. Due to Proctitis and Colitis (New York: Knickerbocker, 1913), 275; Alfred Jordan, Chronic Intestinal Stasis (Arbuthnot Lane’s Disease): A Radiological Study (London: Henry Frowde/Hodder & Stoughton, 1923), v. 101. J. Barker, Chronic Constipation: The Most Insidious and the Most Deadly of Diseases, Its Cause, Grave Consequences and Natural Cure (London: John Murray, 1927), 27. 102. Jordan, Chronic Intestinal Stasis, 4. 103. Lane, The Prevention of the Diseases Peculiar to Civilization, 67. 104. J. Granville, “Three Prescriptions for Habitual Constipation,” British Medical Journal, May 26, 1883, 1001. 105. Jamison, Intestinal Ills, 25. 106. Charles Bouchard, Leçons sur les auto-intoxications dans la maladie (Paris: F. Savy, 1887). 107. Leonard Williams, “The Medical Aspects of Intestinal Stasis,” in The Operative Treatment of Chronic Intestinal Stasis (4th ed.), by W. Arbuthnot Lane (London: Oxford University Press, 1918), 260. 108. Hornibrook, The Culture of the Abdomen, 11, 39. 109. Lane, “An Address on Chronic Intestinal Stasis and Cancer,” 746; W. Arbuthnot Lane, “An Address on Chronic Intestinal Stasis,” British Medical Journal, November 1, 1913, 1126; Lane, “The Sewage System of the Human Body,” 271.

Notes to Pages 205–207

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110. Tibbles, Dietetics, 348. 111. William Mayo, “Diverticulitis of the Sigmoid,” British Medical Journal, September 28, 1929, 574. 112. Edmund Spriggs, “Diverticulitis,” British Medical Journal, September 28, 1929, 569. 113. Nguyen-Van-Tam and Logan, “Digestive Disease,” 132. 114. David Barker, “Rise and Fall of Western Diseases,” Nature 338 (March 30, 1989): 371; Picton, “Brown Bread versus White,” 939. 115. G. D. Campbell, “Diet and Diverticulitis,” British Medical Journal, July 22, 1967, 243; Barker, Chronic Constipation, 170. 116. Kellogg, The Itinerary of a Breakfast, 108. 117. Cleave and Campbell, Diabetes, 83. 118. Hornibrook, The Culture of the Abdomen, 76. 119. James Sawyer, “A Clinical Lecture on the Treatment of Constipation,” Lancet 178, no. 4594 (September 16, 1911): 811. 120. Gant, Constipation and Intestinal Obstruction, 67, 69; Hurst, Constipation and Allied Intestinal Disorders, 148. 121. Hornibrook, The Culture of the Abdomen, 77. 122. Gant, Constipation and Intestinal Obstruction, 207. 123. William Walsh, The Conquest of Constipation (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1923), 65–66. 124. Gant, Constipation and Intestinal Obstruction, 68. 125. Walsh, The Conquest of Constipation, 69. 126. Arthur Hurst, “An Address on the Sins and Sorrows of the Colon,” British Medical Journal, June 17, 1922, 943. 127. Cited in Patrick Black, “Clinical Lecture on Obstinate Constipation and Obstruction of the Bowels,” British Medical Journal, January 28, 1871, 84. 128. Walsh, The Conquest of Constipation, 146, 148. 129. Whorton, Inner Hygiene, 45–46, 51. 130. Cleave and Campbell, Diabetes, 83. 131. Eva Otter, personal communication, July 2, 2015. 132. Walsh, The Conquest of Constipation, 181. 133. Jane Grigson, Vegetable Book (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), 291. 134. Hurst, Constipation and Allied Intestinal Disorders, 327; F. Weber, “Prepared Bran and the Prevention of Constipation,” British Medical Journal, February 15, 1941, 252; Whorton, Inner Hygiene, 174– 75; Campbell, What Is Wrong with British Diet? 27. 135. Harold Edwards, “Diverticulitis: A Clinical Review,” British Medical Journal, June 2, 1934, 974. 136. Whorton, Inner Hygiene, 173. 137. Arthur Keith, “The Functional Nature of the Caecum and Appendix,” British Medical Journal, December 7, 1912, 1599. 138. Hurst, Constipation and Allied Intestinal Disorders, 397, 402– 3. 139. Lane, “The Sewage System of the Human Body,” 257. 140. Hurst, Constipation and Allied Intestinal Disorders, 402– 3.

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141. F. P. Bremner, “The Value of Shortcircuiting the Colon for Severe Constipation,” Lancet, vol. 179, no. 4617 (February 12, 1912). 142. Lane, “An Address on Chronic Intestinal Stasis,” 1127– 28; Michaela SullivanFowler, “Doubtful Theories, Drastic Therapies: Autointoxication and Faddism in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 50 (1995): 384. 143. Whorton, Inner Hygiene, 65–69. 144. Hurst, Constipation and Allied Intestinal Disorders, 137; Kellogg, The Itinerary of a Breakfast, 122. 145. Alfred Barrs, “Operative Treatment of Results of Constipation,” Lancet 164, no. 4244 (December 31, 1904): 1888. 146. Walsh, The Conquest of Constipation, 197. 147. “Real and Imaginary Constipation,” Lancet 222, no. 5742 (September 16, 1933): 661. 148. George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma (New York: Penguin, 1954), 103. 149. Lane, The Operative Treatment of Chronic Intestinal Stasis, 59. 150. Michael Power and Jay Schulkin, The Evolution of Obesity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 208; Ann Dally, Fantasy Surgery, 1880– 1930: With Special Reference to Sir William Arbuthnot Lane (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), 127. 151. T. S. Clouston, Unsoundness of Mind (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1911), 143. 152. J. F. Goodhart, “Discussion on Chronic Constipation and Its Treatment,” British Medical Journal, October 8, 1910, 1039. 153. Francis Brook, “Discussion on Alimentary Toxaemia: Its Sources, Consequences, and Treatment,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 6 (1913): 344– 52 (quote 348); Alison Bested, Alan Logan, and Eva Selhub, “Intestinal Microbiota, Probiotics and Mental Health: From Metchnikoff to Modern Advances: Part I, Autointoxication Revisited,” Gut Pathogens 5, no. 5 (2013): 7, 8– 10; N. Norman and A. Eggston, “Pyogenic Infections of the Intestinal Tract and Their Biological Treatment,” New York Medical Journal, April 19, 1922, 455. 154. Barker, Chronic Constipation, 153. 155. Geri Brewster, “The Biochemical Connection between the Gut and the Brain: How Food, Bugs, and the Gut Barrier Affect Health, Behavior, and Cognition,” in Bugs, Bowels, and Behavior: The Groundbreaking Story of the Gut-Brain Connection, ed. Teri Arranga, Claire Viadro, and Lauren Underwood (New York: Skyhorse, 2013), 9. 156. Michael Gillings and Ian Paulsen, “Microbiology of the Anthropocene,” Anthropocene 5 (2014): 2–3; Erica Sonnenburg et al., “Diet-Induced Extinctions in the Gut Microbiota Compound over Generations,” Nature 529 (January 14, 2016): 212. 157. Talley, “Dyspepsia and Non-Ulcer Dyspepsia,” 127; Sir Francis Jones, “Management of Constipation in Adults,” in Management of Constipation, ed. Sir Francis Jones and Edmund Godding (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), 104. 158. Michael Gershon, The Second Brain: A Groundbreaking New Understanding of Nervous Disorders of the Stomach and Intestine (New York: HarperCollins, 1998); Giulia Enders, Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Under-Rated Organ (London: Scribe, 2014). 159. “Diabetes: Facts and Stats,” https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes-prevalence

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183. Baldry, The Battle against Heart Disease, 124. 184. John Charlton, Mike Murphy, Kay-tee Khaw, Shah Ebrahim, and George Davey Smith, “Cardiovascular Diseases,” in Charlton and Murphy, eds., The Health of Adult Britain, 2:68; Wells, The Metabolic Ghetto, 62; Landecker, “Food as Exposure,” 179. 185. Logan, “Mortality in England and Wales,” 142. 186. Tessa Pollard, Western Diseases: An Evolutionary Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 47. 187. Alastair Frazer, “Nutritional and Dietetic Aspects,” in Margarine: An Economic, Social and Scientific History, 1869– 1969, ed. J. van Stuyvenberg (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 151. 188. Allbutt, Diseases of the Arteries, 1:5. 189. James Holmes, “Milk and Arterio-Sclerosis,” British Medical Journal, December 6, 1924, 1082. 190. Norman Jolliffe, “Fats, Cholesterol, and Coronary Heart Disease: A Review of Recent Progress,” Circulation 10 (July 1959): 124, 117. 191. David Schleifer, “The Perfect Solution: How Trans Fats Became the Healthy Replacement for Saturated Fats,” Technology and Culture 53, no. 1 (2012): 106. 192. Franklin Bicknell, Chemicals in Food and in Farm Produce: Their Harmful Effects (London: Faber & Faber, 1960), 125. 193. Hillel Schwartz, Never Satisfied: A Cultural History of Diets, Fantasies, and Fat (New York: Anchor, 1990), 219; J. A. Gardner, “Cholesterol Metabolism in Disease,” British Medical Journal, August 27, 1932, 392. 194. B. Bronte-Stewart, A. Keys, and J. F. Brock with the collaboration of A. Moodie, M. Keys, and A. Antonis, “Serum-Cholesterol, Diet, and Coronary Heart-Disease: An InterRacial Survey in the Cape Peninsula,” Lancet 266, no. 6900 (November 26, 1955): 1106. 195. Joseph Goldstein and Michael Brown, “A Century of Cholesterol and Coronaries: From Plaques to Genes to Statins,” Cell 161, no. 1 (March 26, 2015): 4; Z. A. Leitner, “Cholesterol and Vascular Disease,” British Medical Journal, December 1, 1956, 1303– 4. 196. Karin Garrety, “Social Worlds, Actor-Networks and Controversy: The Case of Cholesterol, Dietary Fat and Heart Disease,” Social Studies of Science 27 (1997): 754; G. Thompson, “History of the Cholesterol Controversy in Britain,” Quarterly Journal of Medicine 102, no. 2 (February 2009): 81–86. 197. Yudkin, Pure, White and Deadly, 88; Harvey Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America, rev. ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), 191. 198. Cleave and Campbell, Diabetes, 113. 199. I. Snapper, Chinese Lessons to Western Medicine: A Contribution to Geographical Medicine from the Clinics of Peiping Union Medical College (New York: Interscience, 1941), 160. 200. Susan Allport, The Queen of Fats: Why Omega-3s Were Removed from the Western Diet and What We Can Do to Replace Them (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007), 105, 142–43. 201. M. Crawford, “Fatty-Acid Ratios in Free-Living and Domestic Animals,” Lancet 291, no. 7556 (June 22, 1968): 1329.

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202. T. Khosla and C. Lowe, “Height and Weight of British Men,” Lancet 291, no. 7545 (April 6, 1968): 743. 203. Andrew Prentice and Susan Jebb, “Obesity in Britain: Gluttony or Sloth?” British Medical Journal, August 21, 1995, 437. 204. Cited in Elizabeth Furdell, Fatal Thirst: Diabetes in Britain until Insulin (Boston: Brill, 2009), 162. 205. Smith, Practical Dietary, 163. 206. Thomas Short, A Discourse Concerning the Causes and Effects of Corpulency: Together with the Method for Its Prevention and Cure, 2nd ed. (London: J. Roberts, 1728), 68–69, 74; Malcolm Flemyng, A Discourse on the Nature, Causes and Cure of Corpulency (London: L. Davis & C. Reymers, 1760), 19– 20. 207. William Cullen, Lectures on the Materia Medica, 2nd ed. (Dublin: W. & H. Whitestone, 1781), 83. 208. William Wadd, Comments on Corpulency, Lineaments of Leanness, Mems on Diet and Dietetics (London: John Ebers, 1829), 25– 26. 209. “A British Disease,” Washington Post, April 17, 1879. 210. Silus Wier Mitchell, Fat and Blood: An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria, 6th ed. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1891), 21. 211. William Banting, Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: A. Roman, 1865), 3, 9, 13, 17. 212. “Banting on Corpulence,” review from Blackwood’s Magazine, in Letter on Corpulence, 30, 31. 213. Fothergill, A Manual of Dietetics, 227. 214. Wilhelm Ebstein, Corpulence and Its Treatment, on Physiological Principles, trans. and adapted by Emil W. Hoeber (New York: Brentano Bros., 1884), 27. 215. Lindeberg, Food and Western Disease, 131. 216. Georges Vigarello, The Metamorphoses of Fat: A History of Obesity, trans. C. Jon Delogu (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 159. 217. Russell Chittenden, “A Discussion on Over-Nutrition and Under-Nutrition,” British Medical Journal, October 27, 1906, 1100. 218. Peter Stearns, Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West (New York: New York University Press, 2002). 219. Hoffman, Cancer and Diet, 663. 220. Forth, “On Fat and Fattening,” 52, 54, 56, 65, 72, 74. 221. Banting, Letter on Corpulence, 27. 222. E. Lankester, “Height and Weight,” Nature, July 21, 1870, 230. 223. Hornibrook, The Culture of the Abdomen, 82. 224. John Hutchinson, The Spirometer, the Stethoscope, and Scale-Balance; Their Use in Discriminating Diseases of the Chest, and Their Value in Life Offices; With Remarks on the Selection of Lives for Life Assurance Companies (London: John Churchill, 1852), 56. 225. Sherry Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (New York: Penguin, 2015), 90. 226. Garabed Eknoyan, “Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874)— the Average Man and Indices of Obesity,” Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation 23 (2008): 50; Ancel Keys et al., “Indices of Relative Weight and Obesity,” Journal of Chronic Diseases 25 (1972): 331.

372

Notes to Pages 213–215

227. W. F. Christie, Surplus Fat and How to Reduce It (London: William Heinemann, 1927), 34; Edmund Cautley, “Diet in Obesity,” in A System of Diet and Dietetics (2nd ed.), ed. G. A. Sutherland (New York: Physicians and Surgeons Book Co., 1925), 459; Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body, 220. 228. Thompson, Diet in Relation to Age and Activity, 43. 229. Pritchard, The Physiological Feeding of Infants, 172. 230. June Lloyd, O. H. Wolff, and W. S. Whelen, “Childhood Obesity,” British Medical Journal, July 15, 1961, 145, 147. 231. “Helping Obese Children,” Lancet 311, no. 8075 (June 3, 1978): 1189. 232. Cope, Cancer, 229. 233. “Work Is Best for Health,” The Times, December 1, 1961. 234. R. Passmore, “Daily Energy Expenditure by Man,” Proceedings of the Nutrition Society 15, no. 1 (January 1956): 86. 235. Solomon, Metabolic Living, 173. 236. Ulijasek, Mann, and Elton, Evolving Human Nutrition, 143. 237. Jonathan Wells, The Evolutionary Biology of Human Body Fatness: Thrift and Control (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 258. 238. Lieberman, The Story of the Human Body, 257. 239. Robert Lustig, Fat Chance: Beating the Odds against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease (New York: Hudson Street, 2013), 47. 240. Nestle and Nesheim, Why Calories Count, 103. 241. Mark Jackson, The Age of Stress: Science and the Search for Stability (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 91. 242. Lustig, Fat Chance, 68. 243. Susan Torres and Caryl Nowson, “Relationship between Stress, Eating Behavior, and Obesity,” Nutrition 23 (2007): 892; Ruth Bell, Amina Aitsi-Selmi, and Michael Marmot, “Subordination, Stress, and Obesity,” in Insecurity, Inequality, and Obesity in Affluent Societies, ed. Avner Offer, Rachel Pechey, and Stanley Ulijasnek (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 105–28. 244. Avner Offer, Rachel Pechey, and Stanley Ulijaszek, “Obesity under Affluence Varies by Welfare Regimes: The Effect of Fast Food, Insecurity, and Inequality,” Economics and Human Biology 8 (2010): 297. 245. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger (London: Bloomsbury, 2009), 100. 246. Ernest Bulmer, “The Menace of Obesity,” British Medical Journal, June 4, 1932, 1024. 247. Lindeberg, Food and Western Disease, 135; George Bray, “History of Obesity,” in Obesity: Science to Practice, ed. Gareth Williams and Gema Frühbeck (Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2009), 10. 248. Ronald Ma, Gary Ko, and Juliana Chan, “Health Hazards of Obesity: An Overview,” in Williams and Frühbeck, eds., Obesity, 228; David Haslam and W. Philip James, “Obesity,” Lancet 366, no. 9492 (October 1, 2005): 1201– 2. 249. Timothy Alborn, Regulated Lives: Life Insurance and British Society, 1800– 1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 263, 266–67.

Notes to Pages 215–216

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250. Hannah Landecker, “Postindustrial Metabolism: Fat Knowledge,” Public Culture 25, no. 3 (2013): 516. 251. Yeo, “Food Accessories,” 273. 252. W. Towers-Smith, “The Treatment of Obesity,” British Medical Journal, November 24, 1888, 1186; Thomas Dutton, Obesity: Its Cause and Treatment (London: Henry Kimpton, 1896), 23–24; Kerry Segrave, Obesity in America: A History of Social Attitudes and Treatment (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008), 73–75. 253. Susanne Wiesner and Jens Jordan, “Managing Obesity: General Approach and Lifestyle Intervention,” in Williams and Frühbeck, eds., Obesity, 402. 254. Contrast, say, Gary Taubes, Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health (New York: Anchor, 2008), with Nestle and Nesheim, Why Calories Count, 158–64. 255. “The Composition of Certain Secret Remedies: V.— Obesity Cures,” British Medical Journal, July 6, 1907, 25. 256. Dutton, Obesity, 32. 257. William MacLennan, “On the Treatment of Obesity and Myxoedema by a New Preparation of Thyroid (‘Thyroglandin’),” British Medical Journal, July 9, 1898, 80. 258. W. J. Hoyten, “Thyroid Gland in Obesity,” British Medical Journal, July 28, 1906, 198. 259. John Rendle Short, “Obesity in Childhood,” British Medical Journal, March 5, 1960, 704. 260. Christie, Surplus Fat and How to Reduce It, 79– 80; C. L. Williamson and C. H. Broomhead, “Treatment of Obesity by Ultra-Violet Rays,” Lancet 211, no. 5449 (February 4, 1928): 232. 261. A. Stewart Truswell, “Medical History of Obesity,” Nutrition and Medicine 1, no. 1 (2013): 2013. 262. Christie, Surplus Fat and How to Reduce It, 96. 263. Torben With, “Treatment of Obesity by Intestinal Operation,” Lancet 276, no. 7143 (July 23, 1960): 207. 264. Dr. Silverstone, “Treatment of Obesity: Round Table Discussion,” in Obesity Syndrome: Proceedings of a Servier Research Institute Symposium Held in December 1973, ed. W. L. Burland, Pamela Samuel, and John Yudkin (Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 1974), 355. 265. “Jaw Trap and Obesity Belt the Latest Slimming Aids,” The Times, Friday March 13, 1981. 266. The argument here complements that in Joan Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (December 1986): 1053– 75. 267. Sylvia Tara, The Secret Life of Fat: The Science behind the Body’s Least Understood Organ and What It Means for You (New York: Norton, 2017), 134– 41; Betty Wu and Anthony O’Sullivan, “Sex Differences in Energy Metabolism Need to Be Considered with Lifestyle Modifications in Humans,” Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism, 2011, 1. 268. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage, 2000), 50–54; Walter Vandereycken and Ron Van Deth, From Fasting Girls to Anorexic Saints (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 39– 40.

374

Notes to Pages 216–218

269. Brumberg, Fasting Girls, 65–73. 270. Anna Krugovoy Silver, Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 145. 271. Brillat-Savarin, Physiologie du goût, 261; “Bantingism Abroad,” British Medical Journal, January 14, 1865, 43. 272. Annette Kellermann, Physical Beauty: How to Keep It (New York: George H. Doran, 1918), 24, 114. 273. Ann Delafield, “Success in Reducing,” in Your Weight and How to Control It, ed. Morris Fishbein (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1949), 228; Forth, “On Fat and Fattening,” 67. 274. “Obesity: Its Causes and Cure,” British Medical Journal, December 24, 1881, 1023. 275. A Specialist, Beauty and Hygiene for Women and Girls (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1893), 40, 31, 31n; Anna Kingsford, Health, Beauty, and the Toilet (London: Fredrick Warne, 1886). 276. Silver, The Anorexic Body, 26; Vigarello, The Metamorphoses of Fat, 146. 277. Sabine Melchior-Bonnet, The Mirror: A History, trans. Katherine Jewett (London: Routledge, 2001), 272. 278. Helena Rubenstein, The Art of Feminine Beauty (New York: Horace Liverlight, 1930), 255. 279. Silver, The Anorexic Body, 36. 280. Silver, The Anorexic Body, 55; Marland, Health and Girlhood in Britain, 159. 281. Etiquette for Ladies and Gentlemen; With Coloured Plates (London: Frederick Warne, 1876), 37. 282. Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 100; Susie Orbach, Hunger Strike: Starving amidst Plenty, new ed. (New York: Other, 2001), 10. 283. Arthur Newsholme, School Hygiene: The Laws of Health in Relation to School Life (London: Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey, 1887), 97. 284. Orbach, Hunger Strike, 43. 285. Robert McCarrison, Studies in Deficiency Disease (London: Henry Frowde/ Hodder & Stoughton, 1921), 8. 286. E. Lloyd Jones, Chlorosis: The Special Anaemia of Young Women: Its Causes, Pathology, and Treatment (London: Baillière, Tindall & Cox, 1897), 58; Leigh Summers, Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 111. 287. W. A. F. Browne, “Morbid Appetites of the Insane,” Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology, n.s., 1 (1875): 240. 288. Robert Saundby, “Abstract of the Ingleby Lectures on the Common Forms of Dyspepsia in Women,” Lancet 143, no. 3681 (March 17, 1894): 663. 289. Thomas Chambers, The Indigestions; or, Diseases of the Digestive Organs Functionally Treated (Philadelphia: Henry C. Lea, 1868), 217. 290. Edward Shorter, “The First Great Increase in Anorexia Nervosa,” Journal of Social History 21 (Fall 1987): 70. 291. Brumberg, Fasting Girls, 6. 292. William Gull, “Anorexia Nervosa (Apepsia Hysterica, Anorexia Hysterica),” Transactions of the Clinical Society of London 7 (1874): 22– 28.

Notes to Pages 219–224

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293. Brumberg, Fasting Girls, 121, 123. 294. Vandereycken and Van Deth, From Fasting Girls to Anorexic Saints, 178. 295. Brumberg, Fasting Girls, 29. 296. Morag MacSween, Anorexic Bodies: A Feminist and Sociological Perspective on Anorexia Nervosa (London: Routledge, 1993), 41. 297. Brumberg, Fasting Girls, 27. 298. Elizabeth Williams, “Neuroses of the Stomach: Eating, Gender, and Psychopathology in French Medicine, 1800–1870,” Isis 98, no. 1 (March 2007): 56; Brumberg, Fasting Girls, 117–18. 299. Vandereycken and Van Deth, From Fasting Girls to Anorexic Saints, 188. 300. Brumberg, Fasting Girls, 137; Vandereycken and Van Deth, From Fasting Girls to Anorexic Saints, 189. 301. Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 58–59, 62. 302. Brumberg, Fasting Girls, 23, 142–43. 303. “Statistics,” Anorexia and Bulimia Care, August 26, 2016, http://www .anorexiabulimiacare.org.uk/about/statistics. 304. Orbach, Hunger Strike, 3. 305. Baldry, The Battle against Heart Disease, 124; Barry Popkin, “The Emerging Obesity Epidemic: An Introduction,” in Geographies of Obesity: Environmental Understandings of the Obesity Epidemic, ed. Jamie Pearce and Karen Witten (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 29.

Chapter Eight 1. Catton, Overshoot, 136; Jean-Baptiste Fressoz and Christophe Bonneuil, The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us (London: Verso, 2016), 249– 50. 2. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life, 63; Fressoz and Bonneuil, The Shock of the Anthropocene, 236. 3. Rockström and Klum, Big World, Small Planet, 65. 4. Swinburn et al., “Syndemic,” 11. 5. Marcia Bjornerud, Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 158. 6. Peet, “The Spatial Expansion of Commercial Agriculture,” 290. 7. de Hevesy, World Wheat Planning, 214. 8. Marx, Capital (1981), 3:949. 9. William Vogt, Road to Survival (New York: William Sloane, 1948), 67. 10. A Blueprint for Survival (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), 22. 11. Federico, Feeding the World, 88. 12. Turner, Beckett, and Afton, Farm Production in England, 71. 13. Mauro Ambrosoli, The Wild and the Sown: Botany and Agriculture in Western Europe, 1350–1850, trans. Mary Salvatorelli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 393; Smil, Enriching the Earth, 32. 14. T. Kjærgaard, “A Plant That Changed the World: The Rise and Fall of Clover, 1000–2000,” Landscape Research 28, no. 1 (2003): 47. 15. Liebig, Familiar Letters on Chemistry, 137.

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16. T. Wrigley, Continuity, Chance and Change: The Character of the Industrial Revolution in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 14, 35; Ambrosoli, The Wild and the Sown, 389. 17. Gregory Clark, “Yields per Acre in English Agriculture, 1250– 1860: Evidence from Labour Inputs,” Economic History Review 54, no. 3 (1991): 458; Liam Brunt, “Where There’s Muck, There’s Brass: The Market for Manure in the Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review, n.s., 60, no. 2 (May 2007): 366. 18. C. P. H. Chorley, “The Agricultural Revolution in Northern Europe, 1750– 1880: Nitrogen, Legumes, and Crop Productivity,” Economic History Review, n.s., 34, no. 1 (February 1981): 92. 19. J. V. Beckett, The Agricultural Revolution (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 19. 20. Peter Jones, Agricultural Enlightenment: Knowledge, Technology, and Nature, 1750–1840 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 21. Richard Aulie, “Boussingault and the Nitrogen Cycle,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 114, no. 8 (1970): 444– 46, 451– 52, 468, 471– 72. 22. Smil, Enriching the Earth, 15, 12. 23. Liebig, Familiar Letters on Chemistry, 173. 24. A. D. Hall, Fertilisers and Manures (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1909), 107. 25. Campbell, “Nitrogen Industry,” 107. 26. Campbell, “Nitrogen Industry,” 109; Hall, Fertilisers and Manures, 120. 27. Campbell, “Nitrogen Industry,” 109–11; Smil, Enriching the Earth, 56. 28. William Buckland, “On the Discovery of Coprolites, or Fossil Faeces, in the Lias at Lyme Regis, and in Other Formations,” Transactions of the Geological Society of London, ser. 2, 3 (1829): 231, 223. 29. Trevor Ford and Bernard O’Connor, “A Vanished Industry: Coprolite Mining,” Mercian Geologist 17, no. 2 (2009): 96, 98, 99. 30. Liebig, Familiar Letters on Chemistry, 179–80; Barbier, Scarcity and Frontiers, 372. 31. S. Hoare Collins, Chemical Fertilizers and Parasiticides (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1920), 127. 32. Donald Hopkins, Chemicals, Humus, and the Soil: A Simple Presentation of Contemporary Knowledge and Opinions about Fertilizers, Manures, and Soil Fertility (Brooklyn, NY: Chemical Publishing Co., 1948), 164; Hall, Fertilisers and Manures, 126. 33. Dana Cordell, Jan-Olof Drangert, and Stuart White, “The Story of Phosphorus: Global Food Security and Food for Thought,” Global Environmental Change 19 (2009): 295, 298. 34. Fressoz and Bonneuil, The Shock of the Anthropocene, 8. 35. Smil, Feeding the World, 77. 36. R. Warington, Sulphate of Ammonia: Its Characteristics and Practical Value as a Manure (London: Sulphate of Ammonia Committee, 1900), 8, 13– 14, 34. 37. Warington, Sulphate of Ammonia, 10; “Growing Importance of Sulphate of Ammonia,” Chemical World 1, no. 1 (January 1912): 35. 38. Hall, Fertilisers and Manures, 265; Thomas Newbigging, The Gas Manager’s Handbook; Consisting of Tables, Rules, and Useful Information for Gas Engineers, Managers, and Others Engaged in the Manufacture and Distribution of Coal Gas, 4th ed. (London: Walter King, 1885), 281.

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39. Robert Hamilton, “Recovery of By-Products from Blast Furnace Gases,” Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry 35, no. 12 (June 30, 1916): 663– 65. 40. George Scott Robertson, Basic Slags and Rock Phosphates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), 2–4. 41. B. C. Aston, “Basic Slag: The Philosopher’s Stone of the Pastoralist,” New Zealand Journal of Agriculture 4 (June 15, 1912): 454. 42. Robertson, Basic Slags and Rock Phosphates, 7. 43. Gregory Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 172. 44. James Johnston, “On Guano,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England 2 (1841): 312; Jonathan Levin, The Export Economies: Their Pattern of Development in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 28– 29. 45. Rory Miller and Robert Greenhill, “The Fertilizer Commodity Chains: Guano and Nitrate, 1840–1930,” in From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500– 2000, ed. Steven Topik, Carlos Marichal, and Zephyr Frank (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 243; W. Mathew, “Peru and the British Guano Market, 1840–1870,” Economic History Review, n.s., 23, no. 1 (April 1970): 114. 46. Mathew, “Peru and the British Guano Market,” 112– 13. 47. Harrison, Contagion, 233. 48. Mathew, “Peru and the British Guano Market,” 112– 13; J. Way, “On the Composition and Money Value of the Different Varieties of Guano,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England 10 (1849): 196–230. 49. “Guano,” Farmer’s Magazine 5 (April 1854): 314. 50. J. Nesbit, On Peruvian Guano; Its History, Composition and Fertilizing Qualities; With the Best Mode of Its Application to the Soil, 5th ed. (London: Longman, 1852), 8. 51. J. J. Mechi, A Series of Letters on Agricultural Improvement; With an Appendix (London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1845), 11, 23, 24. 52. Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World, 48– 49. 53. Edward Melillo, “The First Green Revolution: Debt Peonage and the Making of the Nitrogen Fertilizer Trade, 1840–1930,” American Historical Review 117, no. 4 (October 2012): 1039. 54. Levin, The Export Economies, 88; John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York, The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000), 361. 55. Smil, Enriching the Earth, 42. 56. Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World, 45, 59. 57. Dondlinger, The Book of Wheat, 138. 58. Hugh Gorman, The Story of N: A Social History of the Nitrogen Cycle and the Challenge of Sustainability (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2013), 66; Miller and Greenhill, “The Fertilizer Commodity Chains,” 229. 59. Simon Collier and William Sater, A History of Chile, 1808– 2002, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 87. 60. Smil, Enriching the Earth, 46; Levin, The Export Economies, 109; Gorman, The Story of N, 67; Miller and Greenhill, “The Fertilizer Commodity Chains,” 233.

378

Notes to Pages 227–230

61. Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 144; Michael Monteon, “John T. North, the Nitrate King, and Chile’s Lost Future,” in Mining Tycoons in the Age of Empire, 1870– 1945: Entrepreneurship, High Finance, Politics and Territorial Expansion, ed. Raymond E. Dumett (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 113–15; Robert Greenhill, “The Nitrate and Iodine Trades, 1880–1914,” in Business Imperialism, 1840–1930: An Inquiry Based on British Experience in Latin America, ed. D. Platt (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), 261. 62. Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 162– 63. 63. Collier and Sater, A History of Chile, 161; Monteon, “John T. North, the Nitrate King,” 121. 64. Gorman, The Story of N, 67; Monteon, “John T. North, the Nitrate King,” 115. 65. Hall, Fertilisers and Manures, 46. 66. Lamer, The World Fertilizer Economy, 99; Alfred Lotka, Elements of Physical Biology (Baltimore: Williams & Watkins, 1925), 238. 67. Malenbaum, The World Wheat Economy, 156. 68. William Crookes, The Wheat Problem: Based on Remarks Made in the Presidential Address to the British Association at Bristol in 1898: Revised, with an Answer to Various Critics (London: John Murray, 1900), 46 (“The World’s Wheat Supply”). 69. Smil, Enriching the Earth, 51–55, 199. 70. Brown, Agriculture in England, 55. 71. Arnaud Page, “‘The Greatest Victory Which the Chemist Has Won in the Fight ( . . . ) against Nature’: Nitrogenous Fertilizers in Great Britain and the British Empire, 1910s–1950s,” History of Science 54, no. 4 (2016): 387, 389, 394. 72. Jenks, The Stuff Man’s Made Of, 62; Lamer, The World Fertilizer Economy, 230. 73. Lamer, The World Fertilizer Economy, 638. 74. Lotka, Elements of Physical Biology, 241. 75. Warington, Sulphate of Ammonia, 51. 76. Hopkins, Chemicals, Humus, and the Soil, 21, 75. 77. Frederick Keeble, Fertilizers and Food Production on Arable and Grass Land (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932), 22. 78. Liebig, Familiar Letters on Chemistry, 117. 79. Smith, World’s Food Resources, 375. 80. Nicholas Goddard, “‘A Mine of Wealth’? The Victorians and the Agricultural Value of Sewage,” Journal of Historical Geography 22, no. 3 (1996): 276. 81. George Poore, Essays on Rural Hygiene, 2nd ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1894), 272, 284–85. 82. Hall, Fertilisers and Manures, 245. 83. George Waring, Earth Closets and Earth Sewage (New York: Tribune Association, 1870), 54; Dana Simmons, “Waste Not, Want Not: Excrement and Economy in Nineteenth-Century France,” Representations 96, no. 1 (Fall 2006): 73– 98. 84. Hopkins, Chemicals, Humus, and the Soil, 90. 85. Sykes, Humus and the Farmer, 101; L. Brunt, “The Recovery and Treatment of Organic Matter from Municipal Wastes,” Journal of the Royal Sanitary Institute 70 (1950): 531. 86. J. C. Wylie, Fertility from Town Wastes (London: Faber & Faber, 1955), 25. 87. Jones, Agricultural Enlightenment, 227.

Notes to Pages 230–232

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88. James Galloway et al., “The Nitrogen Cascade,” BioScience 53, no. 4 (April 2003): 342, 343. 89. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life, 63; Pomeranz, The Great Divergence; Weis, The Ecological Hoofprint, 37; Mark Elvin, The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 470. 90. Baden-Powell, State Aid and State Interference, 147, 173. 91. Crawford, “Notes on the Food Supply,” 607. 92. R. Rew, “The Progress of British Agriculture,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 85, no. 1 (January 1922): 7. 93. Kimble, The World’s Open Spaces, 29. 94. George Knibbs, The Shadow of the World’s Future (London: Ernest Benn, 1928), 22, 21. 95. Bashford, Global Population, 103. 96. E. Levy, Grasslands of New Zealand, 3rd ed. (Wellington: A. R. Shearer, 1970), 345. 97. Astor and Rowntree, British Agriculture, 38. 98. Peet, “The Spatial Expansion of Commercial Agriculture,” 296. 99. John Brooke, Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 496. 100. Adelman, Frontier Development, 62. 101. Cited in Report of the Scottish Commission on Agriculture to Canada, 1908 (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1909), 129. 102. Voisey, Vulcan, 77–97. 103. Barry Potyondi, “Loss and Substitution: The Ecology of Production in Southwestern Saskatchewan, 1860–1930,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association/ Revue de la Société historique du Canada 5, no. 1 (1994): 225– 28, 226, 234. 104. Vaclav Smil, Harvesting the Biosphere: What We Have Taken from Nature (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013), 170; Richard Tucker, Insatiable Appetite: The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the Tropical World (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 303. 105. Borgstrom, Hungry Planet, 275. 106. W. Bowron, The Manufacture of Cheese, Butter, and Bacon in New Zealand (Wellington: George Didsbury, 1883), 1; Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking, “The Contours of Transformation,” in Seeds of Empire: The Environmental Transformation of New Zealand, ed. Tom Brooking and Eric Pawson (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 26. 107. Saul, Studies in British Overseas Trade, 213. 108. Robert Peden, “Pastoralism and the Transformation of the Open Grasslands,” in Brooking and Pawson, eds., Seeds of Empire, 87; Levy, Grasslands of New Zealand, 245; Peter Holland, Paul Star, and Vaughan Wood, “Pioneer Grassland Farming: Pragmatism, Innovation and Experimentation,” in Brooking and Pawson, eds., Seeds of Empire, 63; Kenneth Cumberland, “A Century’s Change: Natural to Cultural Vegetation in New Zealand,” Geographical Review 31, no. 4 (October 1941): 544. 109. Pawson and Brooking, “The Contours of Transformation,” 19. 110. Charles Dilke, Greater Britain, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1869), 1:330. 111. R. Stapledon, A Tour in Australia and New Zealand: Grass Land and Other Studies (London: Oxford University Press, 1928), 64, 67.

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112. Cumberland, “Natural to Cultural Vegetation,” 529. 113. Levy, Grasslands of New Zealand, preface to the 2nd ed., 313. 114. Lamer, The World Fertilizer Economy, 121; Holland, Star, and Wood, “Pioneer Grassland Farming,” 70, 170; Cumberland, “Natural to Cultural Vegetation,” 541. 115. Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World, 131. 116. Levy, Grasslands of New Zealand, 330. 117. Smil, Harvesting the Biosphere, 153–54; Erle Ellis, Erica Antill, and Holger Kreft, “All Is Not Loss: Plant Biodiversity in the Anthropocene,” PLoS ONE 7, no. 1 (January 2012): 5; Kevin Laland and Michael O’Brien, “Niche Construction Theory and Archaeology,” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 17 (2010): 316. 118. Winson, The Industrial Diet, 153; Mark Williams et al., “The Anthropocene Biosphere,” Anthropocene Review 2, no. 3 (2015): 206. 119. Colin Duncan, The Centrality of Agriculture: Between Humankind and the Rest of Nature (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996), 15. 120. P. Matson, W. Parton, A. Power, and M. Swift, “Agricultural Intensification and Ecosystem Properties,” Science 277 (July 25, 1997): 505; Julian Cribb, The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010), 100–101. 121. Carol Kennedy, ICI: The Company That Changed Our Lives, 2nd ed. (London: Paul Chapman, 1993), 139, 143, 145; Turner, Beckett, and Afton, Farm Production in England, 94; Collins, Chemical Fertilizers, 243, 250; Kenneth Blaxter and Noel Robertson, From Dearth to Plenty: The Modern Revolution in Food Production (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 96; Daniel Vasey, An Ecological History of Agriculture: 10,000 B.C.– A.D. 10,000 (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1992), 226– 28. 122. G. R. Conway, “Agroecosystems,” in Systems Theory Applied to Agriculture and the Food Chain, ed. J. G. W. Jones and P. R. Street (London: Elsevier, 1990), 211. 123. Linda Nash, “The Fruits of Ill-Health: Pesticides and Workers’ Bodies in Post– World War II California,” Osiris, 2nd ser., 19 (2004): 204; Winnifrith, The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, 146. 124. Landecker, “Food as Exposure,” 183. 125. Walter Hamilton, “The Requisites of a National Food Policy,” Journal of Political Economy 26, no. 6 (June 1918): 620. 126. W. S. Jevons, The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-Mines, 3rd ed., rev. (1906; New York: A. M. Kelley, 1965), 410. 127. Turner, Beckett, and Afton, Farm Production in England, 92. 128. J. Allen Ransome, The Implements of Agriculture (London: J. Ridgway, 1843), 17; Turner, Beckett, and Afton, Farm Production in England, 91. 129. V. Smil, Energy in World History (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994), 70– 71. 130. Ransome, The Implements of Agriculture, 139; Beckett, Agricultural Revolution, 27–28. 131. Turner, Beckett, and Afton, Farm Production in England, 93. 132. Collins, “Rural and Agricultural Change,” 129. 133. Astor and Rowntree, British Agriculture, 405.

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134. Claude Culpin, Farm Machinery, 9th ed. (London: Crosby Lockwood Staples, 1976), 4. 135. Deborah Fitzgerald, Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture (London: Yale University Press, 2003), 6–7. 136. Fred Shannon, The Farmer’s Last Frontier: Agriculture, 1860– 1897 (White Plains, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1977), 125. 137. G. Britnell and V. Fowke, Canadian Agriculture in War and Peace, 1935– 50 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962), 410; Federico, Feeding the World, 92. 138. Harvey, A History of Farm Buildings, 146–47. 139. Francois Bernard, “The World’s Wheat Production,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 50, no. 4 (December 1887): 683. 140. Lotka, Elements of Physical Biology, 180. 141. Colin Clark, “Agriculture: Liability or Asset?” Spectator, April 23, 1937, 755. 142. “Nuisance Caused by Whey,” Medical Officer 24 (July 3, 1920): 9; B. Owens, A Report on an Investigation into the Desiccation of Sugar Beet and the Extraction of Sugar; With a Note on the Treatment of Sugar Beet Effluents (London: HM Stationery Office, 1927), 79. 143. Wrigley, Continuity, Chance and Change, 30. 144. Wrigley, Continuity, Chance and Change, 53; Christopher Kennedy, John Cuddihy, and Joshua Engel-Yan, “The Changing Metabolism of Cities,” Journal of Industrial Ecology 11, no. 2 (2007): 55; Edgar Dunn, The Location of Agricultural Production (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1967), 55, 61. 145. Richard Adams, Paradoxical Harvest: Energy and Explanation in British History, 1870–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 76. 146. Jevons, The Coal Question, 315. 147. Edgerton, Britain’s War Machine, 22. 148. Fressoz and Bonneuil, The Shock of the Anthropocene, 245. 149. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life, 153; Cross, “The Future of Food,” 878. 150. Scola, Feeding the Victorian City, 55–56, 109. 151. Cited in “Railways in India: No. 5, Lord Dalhousie’s Minute of 1853,” Railway Engineer 4, no. 4 (April 1883): 90. 152. Michael Williams, Deforesting the Earth: From Prehistory to Global Crisis: An Abridgement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 339. 153. A. Kirkaldy, British Shipping: Its History, Organisation and Importance (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1919), 131–33. 154. R. Fremdling, “European Foreign Trade Policies, Freight Rates and the World Markets of Grain and Coal during the 19th Century,” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 2 (2003): 90, 94. 155. Luigi Pascali, “The Wind of Change: Maritime Technology, Trade and Economic Development,” Working Paper no. 764 (Barcelona: Barcelona Graduate School of Economics, 2014), 2. 156. Hope, A New History of British Shipping, 332. 157. Carl McDowell and Helen Gibbs, Ocean Transportation (New York: McGrawHill, 1954), 45.

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158. Hope, A New History of British Shipping, 338; Michael Miller, Europe and the Maritime World: A Twentieth-Century History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 72. 159. Hardy, The Book of the Ship, 148. 160. G. Billen, S. Barles, P. Chatzimpiros, and J. Garnier, “Grain, Meat and Vegetables to Feed Paris: Where Did and Do They Come From? Localising Paris Food Supply Areas from the Eighteenth to the Twenty-First Century,” Regional Environmental Change 12 (2012): 329, 321. 161. Peet, “The Spatial Expansion of Commercial Agriculture,” 295. 162. Tim Lang, “Crisis? What Crisis? The Normality of the Current Food Crisis,” Journal of Agrarian Change 10, no. 1 (January 2010): 91. 163. Ralph Borsodi, The Distribution Age: A Study of the Economy of Modern Distribution (1927; New York: Arno, 1976), 61. 164. Thomas Hodgskin, Popular Political Economy: Four Lectures Delivered at the London Mechanics’ Institution (London: Charles Tait, 1827), 85. 165. Thomas Edmonds, An Enquiry into the Principles of Population, Exhibiting a System of Regulations for the Poor; Designed Immediately to Lessen, and Finally to Remove, the Evils Which Have Hitherto Pressed upon the Labouring Classes of Society (London: James Duncan, 1832), 60–62 (quote 62). 166. Cross, “The Future of Food,” 880. 167. P. Kropotkin, “The Coming Reign of Plenty,” Nineteenth Century 23 (June 1888): 819; W. Atwater, “The Food-Supply of the Future,” Century Magazine 44 (1891): 112. 168. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 177, 176, 196. 169. For the Mill-Crookes connection, see Ritortus, “The Imperialism of British Trade,” 285. 170. Crookes, The Wheat Problem, 16. 171. “The Future Wheat Supply of the World,” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 57, no. 2964 (September 10, 1909): 890. 172. Erastus Wiman, “The Farmer on Top,” North American Review 153, no. 416 (July 1891): 14; C. Wood Davis, A Compendium of the World’s Food Production and Consumption (Goddard, KS, 1891). 173. Silvanus Thompson, “When Wheat Fails,” Harper’s Weekly, June 15, 1907, 874, 875. 174. Crookes, The Wheat Problem, 146. 175. Bashford, Global Population, 46, 51. 176. Perkins, Geopolitics and the Green Revolution, 122. 177. Smith, World’s Food Resources, 69. 178. C. Peterson, “Another Lease of Life,” Canadian Magazine 14, no. 2 (December 1899): 140. 179. J. Unstead, “The Climatic Limits of Wheat Cultivation, with Special Reference to North America (Continued),” Geographical Journal 39, no. 4 (May 1912): 425, 436. 180. John Lawes and J. Gilbert, “The World’s Wheat Supply,” The Times, December 2, 1898. 181. R. Enfield, “The World’s Wheat Situation,” Economic Journal 41, no. 164 (December 1931): 550.

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182. Smith, World’s Food Resources, 415–16, 332–33. 183. The Earl of Birkenhead, The World in 2030 A.D. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1930), 21. 184. Willcox, Nations Can Live at Home, 138; J. S. Haldane, “Enzymes,” in Possible Worlds and Other Papers, 53; Watson, Rural Britain, 63. 185. William Beveridge, “Mr. Keynes’s Evidence for Over-Population,” Economica 10 (February 1924): 18; Bashford, Global Population, 134. 186. “Our Daily Bread,” The Times, February 4, 1925. 187. “Saskatchewan Wheat Yield,” The Times, October 6, 1928. 188. Thomas Smith, “The Wheat Surplus,” Geographical Review 25, no. 1 (January 1935): 108; de Hevesy, World Wheat Planning, 1. 189. Venn, The Foundations of Agricultural Economics, 20; The Agricultural Dilemma, 2. 190. “Agriculture as a World Problem,” Geneva Special Studies 2, no. 5 (May 1931): 3. 191. de Hevesy, World Wheat Planning, vi, vii (quote). 192. J. R. McNeill, Something New under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (London: W. W. Norton, 2000), 35; Barbier, Scarcity and Frontiers, 66; Markus Dotterweich, “The History of Human-Induced Soil Erosion: Geomorphic Legacies, Early Descriptions and Research, and the Development of Soil Conservation— a Global Synopsis,” Geomorphology 201 (2013): 4. 193. Richards, The Unending Frontier, 421. 194. D. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (London: University of California Press, 2008), 123. 195. Keeble, Fertilizers and Food Production, 8. 196. G. Jacks and R. Whyte, Vanishing Lands: A World Survey of Soil Erosion (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1939), 14–15. 197. Charles Lyell, A Second Visit to the United States of North America, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1849), 2:23. 198. Jacks and Whyte, Vanishing Lands, 17, 21, 10 (quote). 199. The Earl of Portsmouth, preface to Ill Fares the Land: Migrants and Migratory Labor in the United States, by Carey McWilliams (London: Faber & Faber, 1945), 11. 200. Vogt, Road to Survival, 63, 202. 201. Bashford, Global Population, 195; Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s, 25th anniversary ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 4; Paul Sears, Deserts on the March (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1935), 167; Geoff Cunfer, On the Great Plains: Agriculture and Environment (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005), 156. 202. Worster, Dust Bowl, 89. 203. H. Bennett, “Soil Erosion and Its Prevention,” in Our Natural Resources and Their Conservation (2nd ed.), ed. A. Parkins and J. Whitaker (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1939), 71–72; Vogt, Road to Survival, 124. 204. F. Taussig, Principles of Economics, 4th ed., 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1939), 2:105. 205. Fairfield Osborne, Our Plundered Planet (1948; New York: Pyramid, 1970), 143. 206. Hannah Holleman, “De-Naturalizing Ecological Disaster: Colonialism, Racism

384

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and the Global Dust Bowl of the 1930s,” Journal of Peasant Studies 44, no. 1 (2017): 234–60. 207. David Jones, Empire of Dust: Settling and Abandoning the Prairie Dry Belt (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1987), 127–33, 220. 208. G. Britnell, “The Rehabilitation of the Prairie Wheat Economy,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 3, no. 4 (November 1937): 511; Jacks and Whyte, Vanishing Lands, 184–85. 209. Evelyn Wrench, “The Canadian ‘Dust-Bowl,’” The Times, August 18, 1937. 210. Kimble, The World’s Open Spaces, 152. 211. Edward Hyams, Soil and Civilization (New York: Harper Colophon, 1976), 90. 212. Dotterweich, “The History of Human-Induced Soil Erosion,” 21; J. MacDonald Holmes, Soil Erosion in Australia and New Zealand (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1946), 3, 16–20; Muir, The Broken Promises of Agricultural Progress, 137. 213. [H. Guthrie-Smith], “The Changing Land,” Making New Zealand, 2 vols. (Wellington: New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs, 1940), 2, chap. 30:21. 214. William Beinart, The Rise of Conservation in South Africa: Settlers, Livestock, and the Environment, 1770– 1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 367. 215. J. Smuts, “We Are Destroying Our Country,” African Observer 1, no. 4 (1934): 14. 216. Jacks and Whyte, Vanishing Lands, 52. 217. Peter Delius and Stefan Schirmer, “Soil Conservation in a Racially Ordered Society: South Africa, 1930–1970,” Journal of Southern African Studies 26, no. 4 (December 2000): 721, 729, 734; Harold Tempany, The Practice of Soil Conservation in the British Empire (Harpenden: Commonwealth Bureau of Soil Science, 1949), 38. 218. Barton, The Global History of Organic Farming, 142. 219. A. Daniel Hall, The Improvement of Native Agriculture in Relation to Population and Public Health (London: Oxford University Press, 1936), 58. 220. The Colonial Problem: A Report by a Study Group of Members of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), 145. 221. William Beinart, “Soil Erosion, Conservation and Ideas about Development: A Southern African Exploration, 1900–1960,” Journal of Southern African Studies 11, no. 1 (1984): 74. 222. Jacks and Whyte, Vanishing Lands, 275. 223. Watts, Silent Violence, 82. 224. Jacks and Whyte, Vanishing Lands, 33; R. Maclagan Corrie, “The Problem of Soil Erosion in the British Empire with Special Reference to India,” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 86, no. 4471 (July 29, 1938): 912. 225. de Hevesy, World Wheat Planning, 349. 226. de Hevesy, World Wheat Planning, 139; H. Fornari, Bread upon the Waters: A History of United States Grain Exports (Nashville: Aurora, 1973), 86. 227. Jacks and Whyte, Vanishing Lands, 104–9; Holmes, Soil Erosion in Australia and New Zealand, 33; MacEwan, Harvest of Bread, 121; Tempany, The Practice of Soil Conservation, 22–25. 228. C. Anderson, A History of Soil Erosion by Wind in the Palliser Triangle of Western Canada (Ottawa: Research Branch, Canada Department of Agriculture, 1975), 11; Jacks and Whyte, Vanishing Lands, 255.

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258. Leighton and Douglas, The Meat Industry and Meat Inspection, 5:1459– 61, 1462 (first quote), 1463 (second quote). 259. W. Boyd, “Making Meat: Science, Technology, and American Poultry Production,” Technology and Culture 42, no. 4 (October 2001): 633, 638– 40, 645; Duckham, Animal Industry in the British Empire, 64. 260. Leonard Robinson, Modern Poultry Husbandry (London: Crosby Lockwood, 1961), 248. 261. Andrew Godley and Bridget Williams, “Democratizing Luxury and the Contentious ‘Invention of the Technological Chicken’ in Britain,” Business History Review 83, no. 2 (Summer 2009): 269. 262. Boyd, “Making Meat,” 645. 263. Robinson, Modern Poultry Husbandry, 419–20. 264. Geoffrey Sykes, Poultry: A Modern Agribusiness (London: Crosby Lockwood, 1963), 149; Godley and Williams, “Democratizing Luxury,” 281. 265. W. Naish, “Integration and Agribusiness,” in Blount, ed., Intensive Livestock Farming, 173; J. Walker, “The Broiler Industry— Transmission of Salmonella Infection,” Royal Society of Health Journal 9 (1960): 143; Andrew Godley and Bridget Williams, “The Chicken, the Factory Farm, and the Supermarket: The Emergence of the Modern Poultry Industry in Britain,” in Food Chains: From Farmyard to Shopping Cart, ed. Warren Belasco and Roger Horowitz (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 55. 266. “200,000 Chickens a Week,” Mass Production, September 1960, 121; Nichole Hoplin and Ron Robinson, Funding Fathers: The Unsung Heroes of the Conservative Movement (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2008), 155. 267. Godley and Williams, “Democratizing Luxury,” 279, 286. 268. Godley and Williams, “The Chicken, the Factory Farm, and the Supermarket,” 56–57, 59. 269. Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell, and Colin Tudge, The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control (London: Harvard University Press, 2001). 270. Carys Bennett et al., “The Broiler Chicken as a Signal of a Human Reconfigured Biosphere,” Royal Society Open Science 5 (2018): 7, 8. 271. Beresford, We Plough the Fields, 177. 272. Hoplin and Robinson, Funding Fathers, 155–60. 273. Warren, Meat Makes People Powerful, 112. 274. Smith, World’s Food Resources, 309. 275. Robinson, Modern Poultry Husbandry, 75. 276. Harrison, Animal Machines, 40. 277. Watson, Rural Britain, 10. 278. W. Blount, Hen Batteries (London: Ballière, Tindall & Cox, 1951), 49, 18. 279. Watson, Rural Britain, 11. 280. Blount, Hen Batteries, 30–31, 159; W. Blount, “Housing Systems and Controlled Environments for Poultry,” in Blount, ed., Intensive Livestock Farming, 185; Freidberg, Fresh, 109–14. 281. Blount, Hen Batteries, 59–60. 282. Hammond, Food, 2:65; “The National Mark Egg Packing Stations,” “The Poultry World” Annual, 1930, 170–71.

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283. “The Cheltenham Egg Packing Station,” Journal of the Ministry of Agriculture 35, no. 9 (December 1928): 833, 836. 284. Blaxter and Robertson, From Dearth to Plenty, 242. 285. Grigg, World Food Problem, 130. 286. Campbell, What Is Wrong with British Diet? 30. 287. I. Michael Lerner, Population Genetics and Animal Improvement as Illustrated by the Inheritance of Egg Production (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 42. 288. Peter Atkins and Ian Bowler, Food in Society: Economy, Culture, Geography (London: Arnold, 2001), 239; Johnson, Factory Farming, 29; Blount, Hen Batteries, 246. 289. Blount, Hen Batteries, 184–85, 191–97. 290. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction, 135– 59; J. Clark, “Ecological Biopower, Environmental Violence against Animals, and the ‘Greening’ of the Factory Farm,” Journal for Critical Animal Studies 10, no. 4 (2012): 120; Dinesh Wadiwel, The War against Animals (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 84. 291. H. E. Swepstone, Eggs from Every Cage: Describing Laying Battery Management (Worcester: Littlebury, 1948), 49. 292. Johnson, Factory Farming, 136–37. 293. George Monbiot, Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea and Human Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 163–64. 294. Fudge, Quick Cattle and Dying Wishes, 223; Wilkie, Livestock/Deadstock, 141. 295. Astor and Murray, Land and Life, 104. 296. Wilmot, “From ‘Public Service’ to Artificial Insemination,” 419. 297. John Martin, The Development of Modern Agriculture: British Farming since 1931 (London: Macmillan, 2000), 125. 298. Janet Dohner, The Encyclopedia of Historic and Endangered Livestock and Poultry Breeds (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 415, 6. 299. Hammond, Farm Animals, 157. 300. K. Dobney and G. Larson, “Genetics and Animal Domestication: New Windows on an Elusive Process,” Journal of Zoology 269 (2006): 263; Weis, The Ecological Hoofprint, 116. 301. E. Khafipour et al., “Effects of Grain Feeding on Microbiota in the Digestive Tract of Cattle,” Animal Frontiers 6, no. 2 (April 2016): 17. 302. Weis, The Ecological Hoofprint, 117. 303. W. Blount, “Factory Farming— Animal Machines?” in Blount, ed., Intensive Livestock Farming, 530. 304. V. Smil, “Eating Meat: Evolution, Patterns, and Consequences,” Population and Development Review 28, no. 4 (December 2002): 618. 305. Stephen Meyer, The End of the Wild (London: MIT Press, 2006), 4. 306. Willett et al., “Food in the Anthropocene,” 474. 307. Wilmot, “Artificial Insemination,” 418–19. 308. Darwin, Origin of Species, 163. 309. Bell and Watson, A History of Irish Farming, 271. 310. Dohner, Encyclopedia, 219, 240, 246. 311. Dohner, Encyclopedia, 14; Woods, The Herds Shot Round the World, 167; Lawrence Alderson, The Chance to Survive: Rare Breeds in a Changing World (London:

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Cameron & Tayleur, 1978), 155, and “The Work of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust,” in Genetic Conservation of Domestic Livestock (2 vols.), ed. Lawrence Alderson (Wallingford: C.A.B. International, 1990), 1:36. 312. Brillat-Savarin, Physiologie du goût, 172. 313. “Food and Drink: Part III,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 511, no. 83 (May 1858): 521. 314. Anthony and Blois, The Meat Industry, 24. 315. Campbell, What Is Wrong with British Diet? ix. 316. Alexander Monro, An Essay on Comparative Anatomy (London: John Nourse, 1744), 17. 317. Russell, Strength and Diet, 80, 277. 318. Lappé, Diet for a Small Planet, 13. 319. Kellogg, The Itinerary of a Breakfast, 184. 320. Anna Kingsford, The Perfect Way in Diet: A Treatise Advocating a Return to the Natural and Ancient Food of Our Race (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1889), 114. 321. Anthony and Blois, The Meat Industry, 27. 322. Charles Evans, Principles of Human Physiology, 11th ed. (London: J. & A. Churchill, 1952), 816; Moulton, Meat through the Microscope, 472; McFall, The World’s Meat, 12–13. 323. William Thomas, “Health of a Carnivorous Race,” Journal of the American Medical Association 88, no. 20 (May 14, 1927): 1559– 60. 324. Russell, Strength and Diet, 281. 325. Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Vindication of Natural Diet, new ed. (London: F. Pitman, 1884), 27. 326. John Harvey Kellogg, The New Dietetics: What to Eat and How: A Guide to Scientific Feeding in Health and Disease (Battle Creek, MI: Modern Medicine Publishing Co., 1921), 31. 327. Otto Carque, The Folly of Meat-Eating: How to Conserve Our Food Supply ([1918?]; St. Catharine’s, ON: Provoker, 1970), 20. 328. Ernest Tipper, The Cradle of the World and Cancer: A Disease of Civilization (London: Charles Murray, 1927), 9–10; Lane, The Prevention of the Diseases Peculiar to Civilization, 56; “Meat Eating in Relation to Cancer,” Ipswich Journal, April 7, 1900; Fothergill, A Manual of Dietetics, 206; Arthur Hunter, “Blood Pressure; What Affects It?” Proceedings of the 17th Annual Meeting of the Association of Life Insurance Presidents (New York, 1923), 79; A. Rendle Short, “The Causation of Appendicitis,” British Journal of Surgery 8 (July 1920–April 1921): 180–83; “Appendicitis and Vegetarianism,” British Medical Journal, September 25, 1926, 580; H. Williamson, “Appendicitis and Vegetarianism,” British Medical Journal, October 16, 1926, 714; “Flesh-Eating and Decayed Teeth,” Literary Digest 22 (December 15, 1900): 736; “General Paralysis of the Insane,” Lancet 135, no. 3475 (April 5, 1890): 753. 329. Montanari, The Culture of Food, 78. 330. William Smellie, The Philosophy of Natural History (Edinburgh, 1790), 60– 61. 331. Anonymous cited in “Remarks on Cruelty to Animals,” in The Literary Miscellany (Manchester: G. Nicholson, 1795), 15.

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332. Shelley, A Vindication of Natural Diet, 17; Arnold Lorand, Health and Longevity through Rational Diet: Practical Hints in Regard to Food and the Usefulness or Harmful Effects of the Various Articles of Diet (Philadelphia: F. A. Davis, 1918), 383. 333. Carque, The Folly of Meat-Eating, 7–8. 334. Charles Forward, The Food of the Future: A Summary of Arguments in Favour of a Non-Flesh Diet (London: George Bell & Sons, 1904), 114. 335. Eustace Miles, A Boy’s Control and Self-Expression (New York: Dutton, 1905), 105, 121. 336. Paley, Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, 385; Martin, The Development of Modern Agriculture, 32. 337. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1:165. 338. Thomas Newenham, A Statistical and Historical Inquiry into the Progress and Magnitude of the Population of Ireland (London: C. & R. Baldwin, 1805), 337. 339. Lappé, Diet for a Small Planet, 89. 340. Shelley, A Vindication of Natural Diet, 20. 341. Tristram Stuart, The Bloodless Revolution: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism from 1600 to Modern Times (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 206, 243. 342. Samuel Pratt, Humanity; or, The Rights of Nature: A Poem in Two Books (London: T. Cadell, 1788). 343. John Newton, The Return to Nature; or, A Defence of the Vegetable Regimen (London: T. Cadell, 1811), 4–6. 344. Shelley, A Vindication of Natural Diet, 9. 345. Stuart, The Bloodless Revolution, 373; Shelley, A Vindication of Natural Diet, 20–21. 346. Freeman, Mutton and Oysters, 250; Derek Antrobus, A Guiltless Feast: The Salford Bible Christian Church and the Rise of the Modern Vegetarian Movement (Salford: City of Salford Education and Leisure, 1997), 52. 347. Timothy Morton, Shelley and the Revolution in Taste: The Body and the Natural World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 16. 348. James Gregory, Of Victorians and Vegetarians: The Vegetarian Movement in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London: Tauris Academic, 2007), 6, 22. 349. Perren, Taste, Trade and Technology, 189; Alain Drouard, “Reforming Diet at the End of the Nineteenth Century in Europe,” in Food and the City in Europe since 1800, ed. Peter Atkins, Peter Lummel, and Derek Oddy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 218; Antrobus, A Guiltless Feast, 64; Forward, Fifty Years of Food Reform, 29. 350. Gregory, Of Victorians and Vegetarians, 26, 100. 351. Forward, The Food of the Future, 106– 7. 352. Perren, Taste, Trade and Technology, 191. 353. Forward, The Food of the Future, 94. 354. Bernarr MacFadden, “How Scientific Dieting Builds Strength,” Physical Culture 23 (1910): 454. 355. Forward, Fifty Years of Food Reform, 154; L. Margaret Barnett, “‘Every Man His Own Dietician’: Dietetic Fads, 1890–1914,” in Kamminga and Cunningham, eds., The Science and Culture of Nutrition, 161–62; A. Payen, Des substances alimentaires et

390

Notes to Pages 252–255

des moyens de les améliorer, de les conserver et d’en reconnaître les altérations (Paris: L. Hachette, 1853), 384–85. 356. Barnett, “‘Every Man His Own Dietician,’” 161– 62. 357. George Allen, From Land’s End to John O’Groats (London: L. N. Fowler, 1905), 85–87. 358. Gregory, Of Victorians and Vegetarians, 131–32. 359. “Vegetarianism,” British Medical Journal, March 2, 1901, 535. 360. Furnas and Furnas, Man, Bread and Destiny, 222. See also Line, The Science of Meat, 2:69. 361. Line, The Science of Meat, 2:64. 362. Edmund Cautley, “Diet Cures and Special Diets,” in Sutherland, ed., A System of Diet and Dietetics, 196. 363. Woods Hutchinson, “Some Diet Delusions,” McClure’s Magazine 25, no. 6 (April 1906): 616. 364. Barton, The Global History of Organic Farming, 45– 47. 365. Colin Spencer, Vegetarianism: A History (London: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000), 274. 366. Alun Howkins, The Death of Rural England: A Social History of the Countryside since 1900 (London: Routledge, 2003), 223. 367. Stuart, The Bloodless Revolution, 57. 368. A Vice-President of the Vegetarian Society, “No More Meat,” Pall Mall Gazette, October 24, 1885. 369. Jenks, The Stuff Man’s Made Of, 181. 370. John Langdon-Davies, “Vitamins,” Picture Post, December 17, 1938, 83. 371. Brent, Housing the Pig, 4. 372. William Longgood, The Poisons in Your Food (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960), 3. 373. Viscount Lymington, Horn, Hoof, and Corn: The Future of British Agriculture (London: Faber & Faber, 1932), 136. 374. Albert Howard, An Agricultural Testament (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), 18. 375. Philip Conford, The Origins of the Organic Movement (Edinburgh: Floris, 2001), 39. 376. E. Balfour, The Living Soil and the Haughley Experiment (London: Faber & Faber, 1975), 27. 377. Howard, An Agricultural Testament, 37. 378. Howard, An Agricultural Testament, 196. 379. Vladimir Vernadsky, The Biosphere, trans. M. McMenamin (New York: Copernicus, 1998), 142, 145. 380. Howard, An Agricultural Testament, 26, 27, x. 381. Michael Graham, Soil and Sense (London: Faber & Faber, 1941), 45. 382. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening: Soil Fertility Renewal and Preservation (New York: Anthroposophic, 1938), 44. 383. Pfeiffer, Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening, 54. See also Wylie, Fertility from Town Wastes, 121–23.

Notes to Pages 255–257

391

384. Barton, The Global History of Organic Farming, 148. 385. Wylie, Fertility from Town Wastes, 109–13; R. A. Slater and J. Frederickson, “Composting Municipal Waste in the UK: Some Lessons from Europe,” Resources, Conservation and Recycling 32 (2001): 362. 386. Conford, The Origins of the Organic Movement, 75. 387. Cited in Conford, The Origins of the Organic Movement, 78. 388. Wylie, Fertility from Town Wastes, 144. 389. John Seymour, The Self-Sufficient Gardener: A Complete Guide to Growing and Preserving All Your Own Food (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979), 15. 390. Philip Conford, The Development of the Organic Network: Linking People and Themes, 1945– 95 (Edinburgh: Floris, 2011), 199. 391. Grant, Housewives Beware, 136. 392. Of the Land and the Spirit: The Essential Lord Northbourne on Ecology and Religion, ed. Christopher James and Joseph Fitzgerald (Bloomington: World Wisdom, 2008), 12. 393. Martin, The Development of Modern Agriculture, 184. 394. David Matless, Landscape and Englishness (London: Reaktion, 1998), 104. 395. John Seymour, The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It (New York: DK, 2003), 13. 396. Tim Lang and Michael Heasman, Food Wars: The Global Battle for Mouths, Minds and Markets (London: Earthscan, 2004), 235. 397. H. Massingham, introduction to Natural Order: Essays in the Return to Husbandry, ed. H. Massingham (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1945), 7, 11. 398. Oyler, Feeding Ourselves, 103. 399. Lymington, Famine in England, 198. 400. Graham, Soil and Sense, 242–43. 401. Seymour, Fat of the Land (1961), cited in Seymour, The Self-Sufficient Life, 92. 402. Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 179. 403. Arthur Mol and Harriet Bulkley, “Food Risks and the Environment: Changing Perspectives in a Changing Social Order,” Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning 4 (2002): 192. 404. Sykes, Humus and the Farmer, 247. 405. Balfour, The Living Soil, 127–28. 406. Sykes, Humus and the Farmer, 308, 10, 174, 277. 407. “Nutrition, Soil Fertility, and the National Health,” British Medical Journal, April 15, 1939, 157–59. 408. Conford, The Development of the Organic Network, 21. 409. Barton, The Global History of Organic Farming, 165– 66. 410. Howard, An Agricultural Testament, 219. 411. Massingham, “Work and Quality,” in Massingham, ed., Natural Order, 32. 412. “Cheapness Is Expensive,” Organic Farming Digest 1, no. 5 (April– June 1947): 15. 413. Sykes, Humus and the Farmer, 16–18. 414. Hyams, Soil and Civilization, 75, 81.

392

Notes to Pages 260–262

Chapter Nine 1. Swinburn et al., “Syndemic,” 1. 2. Orr, As I Recall, 118; Amy Staples, The Birth of Development: How the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Health Organization Changed the World, 1945–1965 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006), 75. 3. Staples, Birth of Development, 76–77. 4. John Black, “The International Food Movement,” American Economic Review 33, no. 4 (December 1943): 801 (quote), 810. 5. John Boyd Orr, Food and the People (London: Pilot, 1943), 42. 6. McMahon, Feeding Frenzy, 126. 7. Bryan McDonald, Food Power: The Rise and Fall of the Postwar American Food System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 29. 8. Staples, Birth of Development, 85–86. 9. Orr, As I Recall, 173, 172. 10. Orr, As I Recall, 191. 11. Staples, Birth of Development, 88; Amy Staples, “To Win the Peace: The Food and Agriculture Organization, Sir John Boyd Orr, and the World Food Board Proposals,” Peace and Change 38, no. 4 (October 2003): 505; Vernon, Hunger, 154. 12. “A Food Policy,” The Economist, February 15, 1947, 270. 13. Staples, “To Win the Peace,” 506. 14. Orr, As I Recall, 193, 169. 15. Matthew Connelly, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 131. 16. Staples, Birth of Development, 94, 96. 17. Vernon, Hunger, 156. 18. McDonald, Food Power, 6. 19. Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle against Poverty in Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); Perkins, Geopolitics and the Green Revolution, 119. 20. Swinburn et al., “Syndemic,” 28–29. 21. Rockefeller Foundation Advisory Committee for Agricultural Activities, The World Food Problem, Agriculture and the Rockefeller Foundation, June 21, 1951, Rockefeller Archive Center, Rockefeller Foundation Records, Administration, Program and Policy, RG 3.1, ser. 908, box 14, folder 144, pp. 3, 4, 7. 22. McDonald, Food Power, 97. 23. Peter Wallensteen, “Scarce Goods as Political Weapons: The Case of Food,” Journal of Peace Research 13, no. 4 (1976): 284. 24. Perkins, Geopolitics and the Green Revolution, 115, 108. 25. Barton, The Global History of Organic Farming, 120– 21. 26. Grigg, World Food Problem, 81. 27. Sara Millman et al., “Organization, Information and Entitlement in the Emerging Global Food System,” in Hunger in History: Food Shortage, Poverty, and Deprivation, ed. Lucile F. Newman (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990), 311.

Notes to Pages 262–264

393

28. John Storck and Walter Teague, Flour for Man’s Bread: A History of Milling (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1952), 330. 29. H. Robinson, “Dimensions of the World Food Crisis,” BioScience 19, no. 1 (January 1969): 26. 30. Cited in Robinson, “Dimensions of the World Food Crisis,” 28. 31. Cited in Robinson, “Dimensions of the World Food Crisis,” 24. 32. McDonald, Food Power, 163; Christian Gerlach, “Illusions of Global Governance: Transnational Agribusiness inside the UN System,” in Nützenadel and Trentmann, eds., Food and Globalization, 193. 33. Atkins and Bowler, Food in Society, 176. 34. Beresford, We Plough the Fields, xxv. 35. McDonald, Food Power, 183. 36. Lester Brown, “The Next Crisis? Food,” Foreign Policy 13 (Winter 1973–74): 11–12. 37. Cited in McMahon, Feeding Frenzy, 234. 38. Della McMillan and Thomas Reardon, “Food Policy Research in a Global Context: The West African Sahel,” in Food in Global History, ed. Raymond Grew (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999), 140. 39. Utsa Patnaik, “Origins of the Food Crisis in India and Developing Countries,” in Agriculture and Food in Crisis: Conflict, Resistance, and Renewal, ed. Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010), 95; McMahon, Feeding Frenzy, 41; David Rieff, The Reproach of Hunger: Food, Justice, and Money in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 124. 40. McMahon, Feeding Frenzy, 41, 43. 41. Eric Lambin and Patrick Meyfroidt, “Global Land Use Change, Economic Globalization, and the Looming Land Scarcity,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 9 (March 1, 2011): 3465. 42. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life, 2. 43. Testimony of Raj Patel, US House of Representatives, Hearing before the Committee on Financial Services, “Contributing Factors and International Responses to the Global Food Crisis” (Appendix), Second Session, Wednesday, May 14, 2008, 43. 44. Cited in Samuel Loewenberg, “Global Food Crisis Looks Set to Continue,” Lancet 372 (October 4, 2008): 1210. 45. McMahon, Feeding Frenzy, 143–44, 152. 46. “Cheap No More,” The Economist, December 8, 2007, 83. 47. De Waal, Mass Starvation, 163. 48. Paul Krugman, “Grains Gone Wild,” New York Times, April 7, 2008. 49. UN Food and Agriculture Organization, “World Food Situation” (May 10, 2017), http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en. 50. Richard Swift, “Year of Living Dangerously: Global Food Crisis Being Worsened by the Economic Crisis,” CCPA Monitor, February 2009, 6. 51. Cribb, The Coming Famine, 5, 19, 20. 52. Testimony of David Scott, US House of Representatives, Hearing before the Committee on Financial Services, “Contributing Factors,” Second Session, Wednesday, May 14, 2008, 3.

394

Notes to Pages 264–266

53. McMahon, Feeding Frenzy, 100. 54. Alex Gray, “Which Countries Spend the Most on Food? This Map Will Show You,” World Economic Forum, December 7, 2016, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016 /12/this-map-shows-how-much-each-country-spends-on-food. 55. Hillary Shaw, The Consuming Geographies of Food: Diet, Food Deserts and Obesity (London: Routledge, 2014), 13, 120. 56. Moss, Salt Sugar Fat, 340. 57. M. Heller and G. Keoleian, “Assessing the Sustainability of the US Food System: A Life Cycle Perspective,” Agricultural Systems 76 (2003): 1028. 58. Rieff, The Reproach of Hunger, 89. 59. Cited in Shiv Malik, “Food Prices Expected to Rise After Second Wettest Summer on Record,” Guardian, October 10, 2012. 60. Perelman, The Invention of Capitalism, 155; Semmel, Free Trade, 64– 65; Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (New York: Penguin, 2006); Ritortus, “The Imperialism of British Trade,” 297. 61. Worster, Shrinking the Earth, 25. 62. Cribb, The Coming Famine, 48. 63. Wilson, Half-Earth, 172. 64. Bringezou et al., Assessing Global Land Use, 9. 65. Eric Lambin, “Global Land Availability: Malthus versus Ricardo,” Global Food Security 1 (2012): 84–85. 66. Barbier, Scarcity and Frontiers, 682; Lambin, “Global Land Availability,” 86. 67. E. F. Lambin et al., “Estimating the World’s Potentially Available Cropland Using a Bottom-Up Approach,” Global Environmental Change 23 (2013): 900; Lambin and Meyfroidt, “Global Land Use Change,” 3465. 68. Bringezou et al., Assessing Global Land Use, 23. 69. Jesse Ausubel, Iddo Wernick, and Paul Waggoner, “Peak Farmland and the Prospect for Land Sharing,” Population and Development Review 38, suppl. (2012): 239; Worster, Shrinking the Earth, 169. 70. Lambin and Meyfroidt, “Global Land Use Change,” 3471. 71. Bringezou et al., Assessing Global Land Use, 24. 72. Vaclav Smil, “Nitrogen and Food Production: Proteins for Human Diets,” Ambio 31, no. 2 (March 2012): 128. 73. Bringezou et al., Assessing Global Land Use, 32. 74. Willett et al., “Food in the Anthropocene,” 468. 75. Emma Dunkley, “Africa Is the Final Frontier for the Bold and Patient Investor,” Independent, June 1, 2013. 76. De Waal, Mass Starvation, 164. 77. Fred Pearce, The Land Grabbers: The New Fight over Who Owns the Earth (Boston: Beacon, 2012), 10, 12, 90, 291. 78. Pearce, Land Grabbers, 240; Robert Collins, A History of Modern Sudan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 119. 79. Pearce, Land Grabbers, 247. 80. David Nally, “Governing Precarious Lives: Land Grabs, Geopolitics, and ‘Food Security,’” Geographical Journal 181, no. 4 (December 2015): 343.

Notes to Pages 266–268

395

81. Lang, “Crisis? What Crisis?” 95. 82. McMahon, Feeding Frenzy, 62. 83. McMahon, Feeding Frenzy, 61; Pearce, Land Grabbers, 22– 23. 84. Cribb, The Coming Famine, 41, 52–53. 85. Xia Liang et al., “Beef and Coal Are Key Drivers of Australia’s High Nitrogen Footprint,” Scientific Reports, December 23, 2016, 2. 86. Cribb, The Coming Famine, 116; Chris Otter, “Toxic Foodways: Agro– Food Systems, Emerging Foodborne Pathogens, and Evolutionary History,” Environmental History 20, no. 4 (2015): 751–64. 87. Mol and Bulkley, “Food Risks and the Environment,” 191. 88. Adam Drewnowski, “Fat and Sugar in the Global Diet: Dietary Diversity in the Nutrition Transition,” in Grew, ed., Food, 194. 89. Warren, Meat Makes People Powerful, 103, 105– 6. 90. Willett et al., “Food in the Anthropocene,” 449, 471. 91. McMahon, Feeding Frenzy, 33. 92. Shafa Du, Bing Lu, Fengying Zhai, and Barry Popkin, “A New Stage of the Nutrition Transition in China,” Public Health Nutrition 5, no. 1A (2002): 171. 93. Warren, Meat Makes People Powerful, 126. 94. Drewnowski, “Fat and Sugar in the Global Diet,” 200. 95. McMahon, Feeding Frenzy, 36. 96. Pearce, Land Grabbers, 204. 97. Patel, Stuffed and Starved. 98. “Global Food Crisis Challenge Looms,” Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton, Queensland), July 3, 2009. 99. Barry Popkin and Samara Nielsen, “The Sweetening of the World’s Diet,” Obesity Research 11, no. 11 (November 2003): 1325–32; World Health Organization, Diabetes Factsheet, July 2017, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes. 100. John Vidal, “Across Africa, the World Food Crisis since 1985 Looms for 50 Million,” Guardian, May 22, 2016. 101. De Waal, Mass Starvation, 189. 102. Jean-Pierre Filiu, Gaza: A History, trans. John King (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 324–25. 103. Numerous variants of this quote have been reported. This version was cited in Tamer Qarmout and Daniel Béland, “The Politics of International Aid to the Gaza Strip,” Journal of Palestine Studies 41, no. 4 (Summer 2012): 37. 104. Testimony of Raj Patel, US House of Representatives, Wednesday May 14, 2008, 48. 105. Testimony of Eva Clayton, US House of Representatives, Hearing before the Committee on Financial Services, “Contributing Factors and International Responses to the Global Food Crisis” (Appendix), Second Session, Wednesday, May 14, 2008, 35. 106. “Food for Street Parties: Coronation Sugar Bonus,” Dundee Courier, January 28, 1953. 107. “Ox Roasting Schedule,” Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, June 2, 1953. 108. “Housewives to Sing-In End of Rationing,” Birmingham Daily Post, July 3, 1954. 109. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain, 44; J. Greaves and Dorothy

396

Notes to Pages 268–270

Hollingsworth, “Trends in Food Consumption in the United Kingdom,” World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics 6 (1966): 70–75. 110. Martin, The Development of Modern Agriculture, 146; Oddy, “The Stop-Go Era,” 67; Ulijasek, Mann, and Elton, Evolving Human Nutrition, 266. 111. Panikos Panayi, Spicing up Britain: The Multicultural History of British Food (London: Reaktion, 2008), 121–22; Andrew Rosen, The Transformation of British Life, 1950–2000: A Social History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 16, 21; Blythman, Bad Food Britain, 69. 112. Rappaport, A Thirst for Empire, 351. 113. Bee Wilson, “Why We Fell for Clean Eating,” Guardian, August 11, 2017. 114. Michael Butterwick and Edmund Neville-Rolfe, Food, Farming, and the Common Market (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), 21. 115. Butterwick and Rolfe, Food, Farming, and the Common Market, 22; Winnifrith, The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, 30. 116. McMahon, Feeding Frenzy, 37. 117. Beresford, We Plough the Fields, 221. 118. A Blueprint for Survival, 35, 46. 119. Worster, Shrinking the Earth, 163; E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as If People Mattered (London: Harper & Row, 1975), 66; Höhler, Spaceship Earth, 63. 120. Clive Aslet, “Clocking Up Food Miles: The Ingredients of a Family Meal May Have Travelled a Long Way to Reach the Plate,” Financial Times, February 23, 2002. 121. Food Statistics Pocketbook 2017, https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics /food-statistics-pocketbook-2017. 122. Chartered Institution of Wastes Management Environmental Body, City Limits: A Resource Flow and Ecological Footprint Analysis of Greater London (London: Best Foot Forward, 2002), 6. 123. Jean Mayer, “A Report on the White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health,” Nutrition Reviews 27, no. 9 (September 1969): 249. 124. Collingham, The Taste of Empire, 272. 125. “Sugar Reduction,” 6, 7. 126. Cited in Rieff, The Reproach of Hunger, 148. 127. Denis Campbell, “Huge Rise in Hospital Beds in England Taken Up by People with Malnutrition,” Guardian, November 25, 2016. 128. Kayleigh Garthwaite, Hunger Pains: Life Inside Foodbank Britain (Bristol: Policy, 2016), 5, 49–51, 2. 129. Jack Monroe, “I Am Daniel Blake— and There Are Millions More Like Me,” Guardian, October 22, 2016. 130. Garthwaite, Hunger Pains, 137. 131. Wells, The Metabolic Ghetto, 428. 132. Tim Lang, “Brexit Poses Serious Threats to the Availability and Affordability of Food in the United Kingdom,” Journal of Public Health 40, no. 4 (2018): e608– e609. 133. Sarah Butler, “UK Appoints Food Supplies Minister amid Fears of No-Deal Brexit,” Guardian, September 26, 2018. 134. Warren, Meat Makes People Powerful, 173.

Notes to Pages 271–272

397

135. Swinburn et al., “Syndemic,” 13. 136. Worster, Shrinking the Earth, 199. 137. Serge Latouche, Farewell to Growth, trans. David Macey (Cambridge: Polity, 2009), 1. 138. Willett et al., “Food in the Anthropocene,” 476. 139. Smil, Feeding the World; UN Human Rights Council, Right to Food, 9; Willett et al., “Food in the Anthropocene,” 465; Bringezou et al., Assessing Global Land Use, 29. 140. Swinburn et al., “Syndemic,” 26–27. 141. Willett et al., “Food in the Anthropocene,” 470, 469. 142. De Waal, Mass Starvation, 201. 143. Daniel Oberhaus, “Space Lettuce: Inside NASA’s Space Farming Labs,” Motherboard, February 25, 2017. 144. Wilson, Half-Earth, 192. 145. Dickson Despommier, The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century (New York: Picador, 2011), 22, 26. 146. Frank Salisbury, “Growing Crops for Space Explorers on the Moon, Mars, or in Space,” in Advances in Space Biology and Medicine (vol. 7), ed. S. Bonting (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1999), 142. 147. Sloterdijk, Foams, 315, 329. 148. For a case in point, see Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (New York: Viking, 2018), 128. 149. Lappé, Diet for a Small Planet, 8.

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. abattoir system, 36– 38 Accles, George, 39 Achard, Franz Karl, 80 Adami, John, 198 adulteration, 103– 4, 105, 175 Adulteration Act (1860), 104 Africa, 95, 241– 42 Agricultural Gazette (periodical), 26 Agriculture Act (1947), 269 Agriculture (Poisonous Substances) Act (1952), 233 agro– food systems, 7– 8 Allbutt, Clifford, 209 Allen, George, 252 Allen, Grant, 72, 106 Allen, Robert, 49, 192 Allinson, Thomas, 63 Alsberg, Carl, 19 aluminum, 158, 161 American Food for Peace Act (1954), 262 analysis of food. See inspection Anderson, A., 190 Anderson, James, 4– 5 Anichkov, Nikolai, 210 anorexia nervosa, 216– 20, 218, 219 Anson, William, 191 anthromes, 231, 233, 242 Anthropocene, 2– 3, 222– 23, 245, 249, 272 appendicitis, 193, 205, 251 Argentina: as commodity frontier, 8, 9, 16; frontier expansion impact, 230– 31, 240;

meat industry, 9, 28– 29, 34, 37, 43, 47, 124, 150; wheat production, 50– 51, 58, 124 Arnott, W., 209– 10 arsenic, 104 artificial insemination, 34– 35, 248– 49 artificialization, 16– 17, 90, 186– 88, 254– 55 Ashby, Hugh, 186, 189 assize of bread, 64– 65 Astor, Viscount, 7, 158, 234, 243 athletes, 252, 253 Atwater, W. O., 177, 237 austerity, 270 Australia: as commodity frontier, 6, 8– 9, 15– 16, 230, 239; ecological history, 165, 232, 241, 242, 267; meat industry, 35, 42, 43– 45, 123, 267; sugar consumption, 73; wheat production, 50 autointoxication, 204 bacon, 6, 7, 12, 24, 29– 30, 111, 123– 24, 134, 150, 152, 158, 160, 173, 187, 195, 235, 243, 249 Baden-Powell, George, 230 Baillie, Matthew, 202 bakers’ eczema, 60 Bakewell, Robert, 24 baking practices, 59– 62, 61, 62 balkanine, 272 Ball, Carleton, 57 Banfield, John, 64 Banks, Joseph, 4

399

400

index

Banting, William, 212, 213 Barbados, 75, 76, 77, 142, 239 Bardorf, Charles, 81 Barker, David, 205 Barker, J. Ellis, 202 barley bread, 49 Barr, Robert, 91 Bashford, Alison, 238 Beck, Ulrich, 102 beef: Argentinian, 29; baby beef, 33– 34, 150; bull beef, 119; and cattle, 25, 26; chilled, 43– 45; and class, 27; consumption levels, 22, 176– 77; frozen, 43– 45; and gender, 24; Irish, 134; jerked, 43; material form, 33; Scottish, 38; symbolism, 12, 21, 31, 268; Txuleta, 35 Beeton, Isabella, Household Management, 183 beet sugar, 80– 84, 82, 85– 88, 87, 226 Bengal Famine, 165 Bennett, Merrill, 22, 170 Bennett’s Law, 22, 23, 239 Bennion, Edmund, 60 Beresford, Charles, 15, 269 Bernard, Claude, 167, 212 Bernard, François, 235 Berry, Henry, 25 Besant, Annie, 252 Beveridge, William, 98, 239 Bews, John, 145 Bicknell, Algernon Sidney, 26 Biffen, Rowland, 57 biodynamic farming, 255 biofuels, 264, 265, 266 biotechnology, 37 Birchall, Robert, 118 Birkenhead, Earl of, 238 biscuits, 89, 90– 91, 92 Bjornerud, Marcia, 223 Black, John, 260 Blackwood’s Magazine, 212 bleaching wheat, 59 bliss point, 100 Block, John, 263 blockade, 15, 132, 133, 148, 155, 157, 165, 166, 268 blood: animal, 40– 41, 160; pressure, 196, 251; sugar, 208– 9 Bloye, W. H., 120 body mass index, 213 Bolton, Frederick, 148 Bonner, James, 263 Bonneuil, Christophe, 222

Booth, Charles, 175 Boothby, Robert, 159 Bordo, Suzanne, 220 Borgstrom, Georg, 18, 231 Borsodi, Ralph, 237 botulism, 126 Boulding, Kenneth, 19 bounty systems, 84– 85 Bourne, Stephen, 8 Boussingault, Jean-Baptiste, 224 bovine pleuropneumonia, 107 Brackman, Miguel DeSoto, 264 Braudel, Fernand, 170 bread riots, 133 breakfast, 12, 30, 76, 88, 91, 173, 191 breast feeding, 186– 88 breeding practices: meat, 24– 25, 31– 32, 34– 35, 244, 248– 49; sugar beets, 81– 83; wheat, 56– 58 Bremner, F. P., 207 Breusing, Admiral von, 148– 49 Brexit, 270 Bridges, A., 87– 88 Bright, John, 76, 103– 4 Brillat-Savarin, Jean-Anthelme, 72, 216, 249 British Medical Association Committee, 171 British Medical Journal, 172, 196, 209, 210, 216 Broadley, H., 12, 167 Brook, Francis, 208 Brown, Edward, 244 Bruce, Maye, 255 Bruch, Hilde, 219 Buchan, William, 134 Buckland, William, 225 Budd, William, 110 Building News, 182 Bulmer, Ernest, 214 Burke, Edmund, 133 Burkitt, Denis, 193 Burnley, 210 Butz, Earl, 132 by-products, meat, 40– 41, 41, 245 Cadbury, Edward, 95 Cadbury, Paul, 99 Cadbury chocolate, 94– 95 Caird, James, 9, 51, 74 cakes, 12, 56, 72, 90, 94, 129, 150, 160, 196, 252, 268 caliche, 226, 227 calories. See metabolism

index Campbell, G. D., 205, 208– 9, 211 Campbell, Harry, 193, 196, 200 Campbell, Robert, 86 Canada: as commodity frontier, 8– 9, 138, 158, 230; ecological history, 231, 241, 242; frontier expansion impact, 230, 231, 241, 242; meat industry, 123; mechanization of agriculture in, 234; sugar consumption, 73; wheat production, 51– 55, 53, 57, 69, 158, 238– 39, 261 cancer, 194, 195, 205, 207, 215, 251, 257 cane sugar, 75– 78, 80 canned food, 102, 126, 164 Caprivi, Chancellor, 148 carbohydrates. See sugar; wheat cardiovascular disease, 209– 11 Caribbean colonies, 75– 76 Carlyle, Thomas, 119, 135, 202 Carque, Otto, 250, 251 Carr-Saunders, A., 170 Cash, Christopher, 39 Castle, William, 31 Cathcart, Edward, 196 cattle: Aberdeen Angus, 25, 26, 28, 33; breeding practices, 24– 25, 32– 33, 34– 35; diseased, 34, 101, 107– 9, 113– 15, 114, 118; droving, 42; global industry, 26– 29, 27, 28; Hereford, 17, 25, 26, 27, 28, 32, 33, 81, 100; in Ireland, 138, 139– 40; Kerry, 140, 240; shorthorn, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 33, 140, 249; Texas longhorn, 27; transportation, 42– 43; zebu, 30 Cattle Diseases Prevention Act (1866), 108, 109 Catton, William, 18, 19 Cavill, Frederick, 96 Chamberlain, Joseph, 85 Chamberlain, Neville, 158 Chapin, Henry, 186– 87 Chaptal, Jean-Antoine, 80 Charles, Havelock, 209 Chauveau, Jean-Baptiste Auguste, 96, 114 cheap food, 9– 11, 10, 60, 65, 74, 75, 223, 243, 257– 58, 261, 263, 264– 65, 266 chicken, 16, 24, 126, 244– 49, 245, 246, 247, 268 children: discourses on health of, 185– 92; obesity, 213; sugar consumption, 90, 98– 99; tooth decay, 196– 200, 197, 200; wartime health, 155, 161 Chilean nitrates, 226– 27, 227 China, nutrition transition in, 267

401

chips, 151, 173– 74, 175, 190, 264 Chittenden, Russell, 212 chocolate industry, 93– 95, 93 Chorleywood Baking Process, 61 Christian Observer (periodical), 137 Christie, W. F., 215 Christison, Robert, 141 Churchill, Winston, 14, 154, 162, 165 Cipolla, Carlo, 170 civilization, conceptions of, 22, 49– 50, 135, 194 Clark, Colin, 235 class: and Irish famine, 137– 38; and kitchen spaces and devices, 179– 81; and meat consumption, 22– 24, 172– 73; and palate, 175; and sugar consumption, 95– 96, 173 Cleave, T. L., 203, 205, 208– 9, 211 climate change, 1, 3, 18, 230, 260, 266 Clouston, Thomas, 208 coal, 235 Coates, George, 25 Cobbett, William, 59, 135 Cobden, Richard, 135 Coca-Cola, 91, 268 Cochran, William, 110 Cohn, Victor, 34– 35 cold chain, 45 cold stores, 45, 46, 122, 162 colectomies, 207 Coller, Frank, 148 Collie, R. J., 190 colonies and colonization, 75– 76, 95, 165. See also India Colorado beetle, 110 commodity frontiers, 8– 11, 15– 16, 37, 43, 100, 132, 223, 230– 31, 233, 239– 40, 266, 272 comparative advantage, 6, 7, 9, 20, 85, 233, 241, 243, 263 compost, 255 confectionery industry, 88– 90, 98– 99, 99, 104 constipation, 203– 8, 204, 206, 257 consumerism, 98– 100, 99 containers, 45 controlled atmospheric storage, 102, 236 cookers, gas and electric, 179– 81, 180 Cope, John, 194 coprolites, 8, 225 Corbin, Alain, 169 Cornfield, William, 104 Cornish, Robert, 141 Corn Laws, 9, 65– 66, 137 cornucopianism, 134, 238, 265, 269

402

index

corpulence, 211– 15 Country Gentleman’s Magazine, 21 Cowherd, William, 252 Crawford, R. F., 230 Crawford, William, 12, 167 crisps, 12, 173– 74, 264 Cronon, William, 17, 27, 35– 36 Crookes, William, 227– 28, 237– 38; The Wheat Problem, 238 Crosby, Alfred, 8 Cross, John, 237 Cruickshank, Amos, 25 crumpets, 149 Cuba, sugar industry, 76, 78 culinary knowledge, 178, 179 Cullen, William, 211 Dahl, Roald, 90; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 98 dairy. See milk and milk products Dairy Milk (chocolate), 90, 94, 95 Dalhousie, Lord, 236 Darwin, Charles, 27, 56, 249 David, Elizabeth, 210 Davies, David Samuel, 36, 134 Davis, C. Wood, 238 Davis, Mike, 140 dazzle painting, 153 DDT, 129, 233 Deerr, Noel, 76 de Hevesy, Paul, 239, 242 Dembo, Isaac, 38 Denbigh, Lord, 86 Denmark, 7, 8, 29– 30, 73, 111, 116, 123, 159, 240, 243, 256 dental disease, 196– 202, 197, 199, 200, 201 Derby Mercury (newspaper), 48 development: and diet, 74, 192, 195, 212, 230, 259– 60, 262, 263, 267, 272; and Indian famines, 140, 141, 142, 145; and Irish famine, 135, 137– 39; and meat, 22, 23, 254; and sugar, 75, 84, 86; underdevelopment, 135, 137, 145, 262; and wheat, 66, 173 Devonport, Lord, 152 de Waal, Alex, 145, 271 diabetes, 208– 9 Dickens, Charles, Dombey and Son, 34 Digby, William, 143 Dilke, Charles, 232 disease and death, 193– 221; anorexia nervosa, 216– 20, 218, 219; cardiovascular disease,

209– 11; diabetes, 208– 9; gastrointestinal conditions, 202– 8, 204, 206; infant mortality, 185– 86, 189– 90; from infected meat, 101, 107– 11; from infected milk, 111– 18; obesity, 211– 15; and paradoxes of nutrition transition, 194– 96; from starvation, 136, 143– 44, 164; tooth decay, 196– 202, 197, 199, 200, 201 disposition, as concept, 3 diverticulitis, 205 Dixey, R., 87– 88 Do-Maker baking process, 61 domestic discourse, 178– 82, 179, 184 Dondlinger, Peter, 71, 226 Douglas, Loudon, 47, 244 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 146 Drummond, J. C., 117, 159, 173 Duncan, James, 86 Dunlap, Derrick, 213 Dust Bowl, 240– 41 Dutch economic model, 4, 5 earth closets, 229 Easter eggs, 94 Easterling, Keller, 3 Eastwood, J. B., 245 EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems (2019), 1, 2, 271 Ebstein, William, 212 ecological footprint, 18– 20, 26, 269 ecology, 222– 59; frontier expansion and monoculture, 230– 33, 232; machine technique, 233– 37, 234; and meat industry, 243– 49; nitrogen and phosphorus, 223– 30, 227, 228; and omnivore debate, 249– 54; organic farming, 255– 57; and political economy, 237– 39; soil erosion, 239– 43, 240; transformations, overview, 16– 20 Economist, The (newspaper), 109, 137, 139, 142, 170, 261, 264 Edie, E., 64 Edmonds, Phil, 266 Edmonds, Thomas, 237 Education (Provision of Meals) Act (1906), 191 eggs, 6, 122, 126, 158, 160, 235, 246– 48 Ehrlich, Paul, 19 Eichholz, Alfred, 186 Einhorn, Max, 202 elevators, grain, 51, 53– 55, 53, 55, 67, 69, 70 Elliot, John, 144

index Elliott, Charles, 142 Ellis, Edwin, 34 Ellul, Jacques, 63 Eltzbacher, Paul, 154 Engeln, Oscar Von, 67 entomophagy, 271 epigenetics, 185 epizootics, 101, 107– 11, 118– 24, 121, 123 Era, The (newspaper), 141 Escherichia coli (E. coli), 125, 131, 267 Esdaile, David, 26 Evans, John, 174 Evershed, Henry, 25 extinction, 1, 18, 31, 223, 249 Eyre, John Vargas, 63 Fairrie, Geoffrey, 79 Family Physician, The, 208 famine: as entitlement crisis, 14– 15; Famine Commissions, 142, 144; in India, 140– 45, 143, 144, 165; in Ireland, 134– 40, 136; wartime, 155, 156 FAO (UN Food and Agriculture Organization), 260– 61, 262, 267 farming: fertilizers, 223– 30, 227, 228; frontier expansion and monoculture, 230– 33, 232; machine technique, 233– 35, 234; organic, 255– 57; soil erosion, 239– 43, 240 fasting, 216 fat consumption, 11, 32, 171, 176, 210– 11 fatigue, 96 fecal transplants, 208 femininity, and weight, 216– 17, 218 Ferguson, Adam, 251 Ferguson, Richard, 266 fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, 189 Fielding, Charles, 98, 158 Fife, David, 57 Findley, L., 170 fish and chips, 173, 174 Fisher, Antony, 245– 46 Fisher, Charles, 119 Fisher, Joseph, 26 Fison, Joseph, 225 Fitzgibbon, Theodora, 160 Fletcher, C., 145– 46 flies, on food, 186 Floud, Roderick, 170 Fogel, Robert, 134, 170, 177 Food and Drugs Act (1955), 129 food crises: food security measures, 145– 49,

403

147, 157– 59; supplies during WWI, 149– 56, 154; supplies during WWII, 159– 65, 163. See also famine food deserts, 269 food labels, 105, 106– 7, 126, 131, 245 food miles, 256, 258, 270 food poisoning: as term, 124; history, 124– 31 food safety, 101– 31; food-borne pathogens, 124– 31, 127, 128, 130; infected meat, 101, 107– 11, 118– 24, 121, 123; infected milk, 111– 18. See also inspection food systems: accelerated global food system, 260– 68; as concept, 3; ecological transformations, 16– 20; meat-wheat-sugar nutrition transition, 11– 14; outsourcing practices, 3– 11; power dynamics, 14– 16 foot-and-mouth disease, 107, 110 Forster, William Edward, 136 Foster, John, 28 Fothergill, John, 98, 202 Foucault, Michel, 166 Fox, William, 75 France, 67, 80– 81 Frankland, Edward, 176 free trade, 4, 7, 9, 66, 75– 76, 84– 86, 109, 146 Fressoz, Jean-Baptiste, 222 frontier expansion and monoculture, 230– 33, 232 frozen meat, 43– 45, 43, 46, 122, 245 fruit: apples, 80, 89, 102, 174, 256; bananas, 102, 149, 174; canned, 102; flavoring, 90; fruitarian cakes, 252; for jam, 91, 150– 51, 161; pears, 102; sugar content, 92, 174, 268 Fry, Joseph Storrs, 94 Fudge, Erica, 35, 36 futures trading, 71, 264 Gamgee, John, 101, 108, 109 Gamgee, Joseph, 119 Gandhi, Mahatma, 1, 165 Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette (periodical), 26 Gärtner, Gustav, 125 gastrointestinal conditions, 202– 8, 204, 206 Gaza, 268 Gazeley, Ian, 170, 172 gender: and calorie intake, 171, 182– 83; and meat consumption, 22, 24, 183, 217. See also women George, Lloyd, 86, 152 George III (king of England), 133

404

index

George V (king of England), 126 Germany: meat industry, 30, 39, 41, 110– 11; nitrate imports, 226, 227; sugar industry, 81, 84, 226; wartime and interwar food supplies, 15, 148– 49, 153– 58, 164– 65 ghost acreage, 18, 55, 230 Giedion, Siegfried, 38 Giesecke, Julius, 81 Giffen, Robert, 5– 6, 74, 85, 169 Gilbert, Joseph, 32, 224 Gilbey, Walter, 21 Girl’s Own Paper, 217 Gladstone, William, 202 gluten, 17, 56, 91, 194, 195 Gohlke, Frank, 51 Goodhart, J. F., 208 Göring, Hermann, 165 Goudiss, C. Houston, 96 government regulations. See regulations and policies Graham, Michael, 256 grain elevators, 43, 51, 53, 54, 55, 69, 194, 222 Grant, Doris, 107, 174– 75, 256 Graves, Robert, 150 Great Acceleration, 2– 3 Green Revolution, 262 Grigson, Jane, 206 Grimsby, 108 Gröber, Adolf, 153 guano, 8, 226, 228, 232 Guernsey, 116 Gull, William, 218– 19, 220 gut-brain axis, 208 Guthrie-Smith, Herbert, 241 Haber, Fritz, 228 Habershon, Samuel, 205 Hadwen, Walter, 149– 50 Haldane, J. B. S., 126 Hall, A. Daniel, 241– 42 Hall, Edward Hepple, 53 Hamilton, Walter, 233 Hammond, John, 17, 33, 248 Harley, Vaughan, 96 Harris, Bernard, 170 Hart, Ernest, 111– 13 Harvey, William, 212 Hassall, Arthur, 103, 106 health and nutrition: of bakers, 60; impacted by nutrition transition, overview, 13, 14; of livestock, 34; and omnivore debate, 249– 54; and sugar consumption, 74, 95– 98,

97, 198– 200, 202, 203, 208– 9; during war, 152, 153, 154– 55, 159– 60, 161– 62, 164– 65; and wheat consumption, 63– 64, 159, 198, 199. See also disease and death; food safety; metabolism heart disease, 209– 11 Heberden, William, 209 height, and nutrition, 171– 72 Highland Clearances, 16, 138 Hincks, Francis, 51 Hinde, P. R. Andrew, 170 Hintze, Paul von, 155 Hitler, Adolf, 39, 157– 58 Hitzenberger, K., 214 Hobson, J. A., 15, 145, 238 Hodgskin, Thomas, 237 Hoffman, Frederick, 212 Hollingshead, John, 45 Holyoake, George, 175 Hopkins, Donald, 229 Hornibrook, F. A., 213 horses, 9, 26, 160 Household Words (magazine), 21 Hovis bread, 32 Howard, Albert, 255, 257 Hueppe, Ferdinand, 252 Hughes, Thomas, 3 humus, 255 Huntley and Palmers, 91 Hurst, Arthur, 203, 207 Hutcheson, John, 79 Hutchinson, John, 213 Hutchinson, Woods, 22 Hutchison, Robert, 98, 150 Hyams, Edward, 241, 257 hybridization, 56– 57, 244. See also breeding practices hygiene, 126– 30, 127, 128, 130 Imported Food Regulations (1938), 122 Improvement of Livestock (Licensing of Bulls) Act (1931), 25 Inch, Thomas, 63 India: diabetes in, 209; famine in, 140– 45, 143, 144, 165; and metabolic consumption, 141, 177; wheat industry, 50 industrious revolution, 178, 183 infant nutrition and mortality, 185– 90, 189 inspection: of meat, 107– 11, 118– 24, 121, 123; of milk, 115, 116; as regulatory procedure, 104– 7; of wheat, 53– 54, 54 International Institute of Agriculture, 260

index intestinal and stomach conditions, 202– 8, 204, 206 intestinal stasis, 203– 5, 204 Ireland: and British “internal outsourcing,” 4, 6, 50; famine in, 134– 40, 136; food supplies during WWI, 151– 52; frontier expansion, 230; meat industry, 42; sugar industry, 86 Iron Brew (Irn-Bru), 91 irritable bowel syndrome, 208 Italy, 157– 58 Jacks, G., 239, 242 Jacob, Sarah, 216 Jago, W. and W. C., 65 jam, 89, 90– 91, 92, 150, 152, 161 Jamaica, 75, 142 James, Philip, 211 Japan, nutrition transition in, 267 Java, 76– 77, 100, 150 Jeans, James, 176 Jefferies, Richard, 48, 71 Jenks, Jorian, 100, 254 Jevons, W. S., 233, 235 Jolliffe, Norman, 210 Jones, D., 170 Jones, Peter, 224 Jonsson, Fredrik Albritton, 4 Jordan, Edwin, 131 Kanthack, Emilia, 185 Kaplan, Steven, 5 Kaufmann, M., 96 Keeble, Frederick, 229 Keighran, Patricia, 63 Keith, Arthur, 196, 207 Kellermann, Annette, 216 Kellogg, J. H., 203, 205, 207, 250 Keynes, John Maynard, 157, 238, 239 Keys, Ancel, 210 Kimble, George, 19, 241 Kinealy, Christine, 135 King, F. Truby, 198 Kingsford, Anna, 252 Kipling, Rudyard, 145– 46 Kirby, J., 190 kitchens, 178– 82, 180 Kjeldahl, Johan, 56 Klum, Mattias, 18, 223 Knight, Thomas, 56 Koch, Robert, 114– 15, 116 Kölreuter, J. G., 56 Krausmann, Fridolin, 18

405

Kropotkin, P., 237 Krugman, Paul, 264 Kylin, E., 214 Lancet (journal), 207, 211 Landecker, Hannah, 131, 168 Lane, John, 233 Lane, W. Arbuthnot, 63, 153, 194, 203– 5, 207 Lane-Claypon, Janet, 188 Lang, Tim, 1, 256, 265 Lankester, Edwin, 85, 213 Lappé, Frances Moore, 1– 2, 250 large-planet philosophy, as concept, 5– 9 Latouche, Serge, 271 Lavergne, Léonce De, 33, 67, 243 Lawes, John, 32, 224– 25 laws. See regulations and policies laxatives, 206 Layton, Walter, 101 League of Nations, 260 Leeds Times (newspaper), 137– 38 Leffingwell, Albert, 111 legumes, 224, 225, 226 Leighton, Gerald, 47, 244 Lend-Lease Act (1941), 162 Levy, Bruce, 232 Levy, E., 230 Lewis, William, 119 Liebig, Justus, 81, 224, 229 Lindeberg, Staffan, 196 Lindsay, Dorothy, 176 Lindt, Rodolphe, 93 lipectomy, 215 listeriosis, 131 Liverseege, J. F., 105 livestock. See meat Livestock Industry Act (1937), 38 Livi-Bacci, Massimo, 170 living standards, 169– 72 Loftus, Pierse, 64 Lombroso, Cesare, 212 London Standard (newspaper), 95 Long, Alan, 193 Longgood, William, 101, 254 Lorand, Arnold, 251 Lotka, Alfred, 227, 228 Lowe, Robert, 86 Lucas, Lord, 148 Lyell, Charles, 239 Lyle, Abram, 79 Lymington, Viscount, 158– 59, 239– 40, 254– 55, 256

406

index

Lysenko, Trofim, 58 Lyttelton, Oliver, 164 Lytton, Lord, 140, 142 Macaulay, Thomas, 66 MacDonald, James, 21 MacFadden, Bernarr, 252 MacFadyean, John, 115 machine technique, 233– 37, 234 Macnamara, Thomas, 191 malnutrition, 155, 164, 183, 190, 195, 210, 261, 264, 270 malocclusion, 201 Malthus, Thomas Robert, 4, 133, 135 Manchester General Powers Act (1899), 116 Manchester Guardian (newspaper), 87 manure, 229, 255 marbling, 32, 33, 211 margarine, 7, 12, 14, 40, 41, 150, 152, 172– 73, 183, 190, 210, 211, 218 Marggraf, Andreas, 80 Marks and Spencer, 129 marmalade, 91 Marquis (wheat), 57, 100 Marsh, C. W. and W. W., 234 Marston, Robert, 146 Marx, Karl, 75, 138, 139, 223 masculinity, and meat consumption, 22, 24, 183, 217 Massingham, Harold, 256, 257 Matless, David, 256 Matthews, Bernard, 246 Mauduit, Georges de, 160 Maynard, Charles, 90 McCance, R. A., 49– 50, 183 McCarrison, Robert, 177, 195 McCay, Major D., 177 McCleary, George, 187, 188 McCollum, E., 209 McCulloch, J. R., 138, 146 McKeown, Thomas, 169– 70 McKinlay, Peter, 189 McMahon, Paul, 267 McPhail, James, 106 meat, 21– 47; avoidance, 217; breeding and feeding practices, 24– 25, 31– 35, 243– 45, 245, 248– 49; by-products, 40– 41, 41, 245; diseased, 101, 107– 11, 118– 24, 121, 123; domestic production, 24– 26; and egg industry, 246– 48; globalized production, 26– 31; human-livestock relations, 35– 36; and meat-wheat-sugar nutrition transition,

11– 14; and omnivore debate, 249– 54; and power, 21– 22, 176– 77, 183, 217; rise in modern consumption, 1– 2; slink, 118; transportation and storage logistics, 42– 47, 44, 46, 245; trends in consumption, 22– 24; wartime supplies, 150, 160. See also cattle; pigs; sheep; slaughter and slaughterhouses Meat and Livestock Digest (periodical), 26 Mechi, J. J., 226 Mediterranean diet, 210 Meigs, Arthur, 187 Mellanby, Edward, 190 Mendelian theories, 31, 56 mental illness, 207– 8, 218– 20 mercantilism, 4, 66, 75, 78 metabolism, 167– 92; calorie intake during rationing, 152, 153, 155, 161; calories from potatoes, 134– 35; calories from sugar, 74; data assessment, 170– 72, 176; gendered, 22, 24, 171, 178– 85, 184, 216– 20, 218, 219; of infants and children, 185– 92; intermediary, 167– 68, 168; of livestock, 33; and living standards, 169– 72, 175; and obesity, 213– 15; social, 18, 172– 78, 214 Metchnikoff, Élie, 207– 8 Meyer, Stephen, 249 M’Gonigle, G., 190 Mier, Carl Alexander, 255 Miles, Eustace, 252 Milk Act (1930), 191 Milk and Dairies Order (1926), 115 milk and milk products: adulteration, 103; bacteria in, 111– 18; bottles, 160, 181, 189; and cardiovascular disease, 210; depots, 188, 189; for infants and children, 186– 89, 189, 191; pasteurization of, 103, 116– 17, 124, 131; rise in outsourcing, 6– 7; school, 191– 92; sterilized, 116– 17, 182; supplies during WWII, 160– 61 Milk Marketing Board, 157 Mill, J. S., 5, 109, 137, 140 milling practices: sugar, 77– 78; wheat, 58– 59 Ministry of Food, 149– 51, 159– 60, 162 Ministry of Health, 171, 183 Mintz, Sydney, 72, 74, 75, 99 mirrors, 217 Mitchel, John, 132, 138, 165 Mitchell, Silus Weir, 212 Mokyr, Joel, 6 Moleschott, Jacob, 138, 171 momentum, as concept, 3 monocultures, 52, 230– 33, 232

index Monro, Alexander, 250 Monroe, Jack, 270 Moore, Jason, 11, 17– 18, 74, 263– 64 moral economy, 65 Moran, T., 159 Morgan, Herbert, 173 Morris, J. N., 206 Morton, H. V., I, James Blunt, 159 Moser, C., 170 Mosso, Angelo, 96 Mott, Albert, 69 Moullin, Charles Mansell, 207 muffins, 149 Mukherjee, Janam, 132, 139, 141, 165 Mulder, Gerardus, 176 Muldrew, Craig, 170 multiplier, as concept, 3 Mumford, Lewis, 117 Murray, George, 215 Murray, James, 224 Murray, Stewart, 146 Myers, Bernard, 117 Nally, David, 137, 266 Naoroji, Dadabhai, 143 Napoleon Bonaparte, 251 Nash, J. T. C., 186 Neel, James, 213– 14 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 142 Neolithic, 11, 185, 239 Nesbit, John, 226 Nevinson, Henry, 95 Newell, Andrew, 170, 172 Newgate market, 36, 45, 119 new global land grab, 266 Newman, George, 153, 173 Newsholme, Arthur, 113, 186, 217 New Zealand: as commodity frontier, 8– 9, 230; frontier expansion impact, 230, 231– 32, 232, 241; meat industry, 29, 43, 44, 123– 24 Nicholls, George, 137 Nicloux, Maurice, 189 Nightingale, Florence, 98 nitrates, Chilean, 226– 28, 227, 228, 238 nitrates, synthetic, 162, 222, 228– 29 nitrogen, 223– 30, 227, 228 Nitti, Francesco, 176 Nixon, Rob, 14 Norman, N., 162 Norris, Frank, The Octopus, 51 North, Thomas, 227

407

Northbourne, Lord, 255, 256 Northwest Rebellion, 16 Nuisances Removal Acts (1855), 106 nutrition transition: in China, 267; as concept, 11– 14; as evolutionary phenomenon, 194, 195– 96; as global phenomenon, 267– 68; and grains, 49– 50, 173; and human health, 194, 195– 96, 198, 199, 201, 214, 217; in Ireland, 133– 40; in Japan, 267; and power, 14; in South Korea, 267; and war, 153, 164 oats, 13, 49 obesity, 1, 13, 14, 193, 211– 15, 216, 221, 260 obesogenic environments, 213– 14 Offer, Avner, 6, 9, 148 Oliver, Thomas, 96, 183 omnivore debate, 249– 54 Orbach, Susie, 220 organic farming, 255– 57 Organic Farming Digest, 257 Orr, John Boyd, 132, 161, 172– 73, 175, 260– 61 Orwell, George, 1, 12, 173, 256 Osborne, Fairfield, 241 Osler, William, 209 Ossa, José Santos, 226 Ostertag, Robert, 118, 119 outsourcing, as practice, 3– 11 Oyler, Philip, 222, 243, 256 oysters, 126 Pachirat, Timothy, 40 Page, Walter Hines, 12 Paget, Lady, 251 Paleo diet, 196 Paley, William, 251 Pall Mall Gazette (newspaper), 60, 169, 254 Paris, John, 16 Parkin, John, 109 Parr, Old Tom, 250 Parsley, James, 252, 253 Passmore, R., 213 pasteurization, 103, 116– 17, 124, 131 Patagonia, 16 Patel, Raj, 11 Paterson, John, 110 Paton, D. Noel, 170, 185 Pavlov, Ivan, 207 Pavy, Frederick, 171, 176 Peek Freans, 91, 92 Peel, Robert, 66, 135, 139 Peruvian guano, 226 pesticides, 233

408

index

Peter, Daniel, 93 phosphorus, 223– 30, 232 pies, 24, 106, 119, 126, 129, 164, 190 pigs, 17, 24, 29– 30, 34, 110– 11, 122– 23, 123, 154, 243– 44 Pim, Bedford, 146 Pitman, Isaac, 252 planetary boundaries, 18, 223 Polanyi, Karl, 5 polariscope, 78, 81 policies. See regulations and policies political economy: and agrarian crisis, 237– 39; and food security, 146– 48; free trade, 4, 7, 9, 66, 75– 76, 84– 86, 109, 146; and largeplanet philosophy, 5– 9; of sugar, 84– 87; of wheat, 64– 66 Pomeranz, Kenneth, 6 Poore, George, 229 Porter, George, 74 potatoes, 134– 39, 151, 160, 173 poultry, 24, 244– 48, 245, 246, 247 poverty line, 175 power: and famine, 141, 145; and food, 14– 17; in meat consumption discourse, 21– 22, 176– 77, 183, 217; nutrition transition dynamics, 14– 16; and wartime food supplies, 15, 155– 56, 165 pregnancy, 185 Preludin, 215 preservation: canning, 102, 164; and food storage methods, 181– 82; freezing, 43– 45, 43, 46, 122, 245; pasteurization, 116– 17; refrigeration, 44– 45, 46, 102– 3, 127– 29 Preston Chronicle (newspaper), 74 Price, F. J., 141 Price, Weston, 196, 198 primitive accumulation, 59, 242 prions, 41 Pritchard, Eric, 187 property rights, 15– 16 protectionism, 9, 65, 84– 85, 148, 157 protein theory, 176 psychology, 207– 8, 218– 20 ptomaine theory, 125, 207 Public Health Act (1857), 36 Public Health Act (1866), 115 Public Health Act (1872), 122 Public Health Act (1875), 106, 115 Public Health Act (1907), 122 Public Health (Meat) Regulations (1924), 119 Public Health (Preservatives, etc., in Food) Regulations (1925), 104

Puelma, Francisco, 226 Putnam, George, 123 Quetelet index, 213 Rabbethge, Matthias, 81 rabbit, 24, 160 race, and metabolic difference, 141, 177 Rad, Jakub Kryštof, 79 Rankin, Guthrie, 202 Rappaport, Erika, 268 Ratcliffe, Derek, 233 rationing: during WWI, 149, 152, 154– 55; during WWII, 159, 161, 164 Raw, Nathan, 115 Read, Thomas, 146 Red Fife (wheat), 17, 57, 81 redundant population, 138, 139 Rees, William, 18 Reeves, Maud Pember, 181 refined sugar, 78– 80 refrigeration, 44– 45, 46, 102– 3, 127– 29 regulations and policies: bull licensing, 25; for kitchens, 129; school meal programs, 190– 91; for slaughterhouses, 36– 40; during WWI, 149– 51; during WWII, 159– 60. See also inspection Rhondda, Lord, 149 Ricardo, David, 65– 66, 75, 85, 133 Rice, Margery Spring, 181, 185 rickets, 190 rinderpest, 101, 107– 10 Rioux, Sébastien, 60 risk society, 102 Roberts, Elizabeth, 174 Roberts, Robert, 9, 181 Robertson, C. J., 99 Robertson, John, 115, 116 Robertson, William, 190 Rockström, Johan, 18, 223 Rodale, J. I., 73 Rogers, Jasper, 138 roller milling, 58– 59 Roman economic model, 4, 5 Rorty, James, 162 Ross, Ellen, 183 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 251 Rowland, Tiny, 266 Rowntree, B. Seebohm, 7, 158, 173, 181, 234, 243 Rowntree sweets: fruit gums, 90; fruit pastilles, 90; polo mints, 90

index Rubenstein, Helena, 217 Rubner, Max, 176 rural vs. urban diets, 13, 170, 208 Russell, John, 84 Russell, R., 250 Rutley, David, 270 rye bread, 49 Sale of Food and Drugs Act (1875), 104, 115 Sale of Food and Drugs Act (1899), 104, 106 salmonella, 125– 26, 131, 245 Sanders, Alvin, 27 Saraiva, Tiago, 30 Saunders, Charles, 57 sausages, 24, 40, 41, 105, 110– 11, 119, 126, 268 Savage, William, 102, 125, 126, 181 Saxon, J. Edgar, 167, 175 scales, 217 scarlet fever, 111– 13 Schandl, Heinz, 18 Schmitt, Carl, 132 Schofield, R. S., 169 school meal programs, 190– 91 Schulze-Gävernitz, Gerhart von, 177 Schumacher, E. F., 269 Schutter, Olivier de, 259 Scotland, 4, 42, 49, 79, 107, 139, 198, 230 Scott, David, 264 Scott, James C., 67 Scunthorpe, 210 Scurfield, H., 90 Seabrook, Jeremy, 181 Second Earth, 6 second nature, 17, 47, 52, 67, 259 selective breeding. See breeding practices Senior, Nassau, 138, 139 Seton-Karr, Henry, 146 sewage removal, 229 Seymour, John, 256 Shanahan, E. W., 102– 3, 140, 177 Shaw, George Bernard, 155, 252; The Doctor’s Dilemma, 207 shechita (slaughtering method), 38– 39, 40 sheep, 17, 24– 25, 29, 33– 34 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 251– 52 shipping, 43, 148, 153, 160, 162, 174, 236 Shirreff, Patrick, 56 Shouler, Robert, 119 Shuttleworth, James Kay, 109 Simpson, G., 64 Sinclair, Hugh, 164 Sinclair, John, 4, 134

409

Sinclair, Upton, 37 slaughter and slaughterhouses: concealment of, 16, 36– 37; humane vs. inhumane practices, 38– 40, 39; inspections, 106, 118– 24, 123 Slaughterhouse Act (1974), 39– 40 Slaughter of Animals Act (1933), 39 Slaughter of Pigs (Anaesthesia) Regulations (1958), 39 slavery, 75– 76, 95 sliced bread, 61, 159 slink meat, 118 Slosson, Edward, 96 Sloterdijk, Peter, 102 slow violence, 14– 15, 132, 268 Smellie, William, 251 Smil, Vaclav, 265– 66 Smith, Adam, 8, 75, 133, 134, 135, 139, 251; The Wealth of Nations, 9, 19 Smith, Edward, 171, 176, 181, 183, 211 Smith, J. Russell, World Food Resources, 238 Smithfield, 44, 45 Smuts, J., 241 Snapper, Isidore, 211 Society of Public Analysts, 105 soda (beverage), 91– 92 soil erosion, 239– 43, 240 Solomon, Harris, 213 Sombart, Werner, 177 soup kitchens, 133, 135 Southey, Robert, 91 South Korea, nutrition transition in, 267 space farming, 272 Spence, William, 5 Spencer, Herbert, 98, 104 Spriggs, Edmund, 153, 205 Standard, The (newspaper), 146 standard dietaries, 171 standardization: of apples, 256; of clothes sizes, 217; of grain, 53– 56; of meat, 30, 34; of sugar, 78 Stanley, Henry, 91 Stapledon, R., 232, 242 starvation. See famine; food crises steam-powered technologies, 42, 235– 37 Stewart, Elliott, 33 Stoddart, G., 137 stomach and intestinal conditions, 202– 8, 204, 206 storage space, 181– 82, 186 stress: animal, 38, 249; human, 181, 185, 196, 209, 214, 215

410

index

Stuart, Richard, 215 stunning pistols, 39– 40 submarine warfare, 153, 162 subsistence mentality, 4– 5 Suez Canal, 50 sugar, 72– 100; addiction, 209; from beets, 80– 84, 82, 85– 88, 87, 226; breeding, 76– 77; chocolate industry, 93– 95, 93; and consumerism, 98– 100, 99; cubes, 79; and diabetes, 208– 9; and energy, 95– 100; and gastrointestinal conditions, 202, 203; infant consumption, 187; and meat-wheat-sugar nutrition transition, 11– 14; milling, 77– 78; nutritional value, 74, 95– 98, 97; political economy of, 84– 87; production processes, 75– 80, 80; as psychotropic food, 74, 98, 100; ratoon crops, 77; refining, 78– 79; rise in consumption, overview, 73– 74; staple dietary uses, 88– 92; and tooth decay, 198– 200; wartime supplies, 150– 51, 161 Sullivan, William, 189 Sunday roast, 12, 172– 73 superphosphates, 224 Swanson, Charles, 59 sweet shops, 90, 99, 198 sweets industry, 88– 90, 98– 99, 99, 104 Swepstone, H. E., 248 Sykes, Friend, 256– 57 Taine, Hippolyte, 24 Tate, Henry, 79 Tate and Lyle, 79– 80 Taussig, Frank, 241 Tawney, R., 152 Taylor, Alonzo, 150 Taylor, Bill, 105 Taylor, Michael, 113 teacakes, 149 tea consumption, 13, 74, 103, 173, 183, 198 technophysio evolution, 172 technosphere, 272 teeth. See dental disease telegraphy, 7, 52, 69, 71 Temple, Richard, 141 Temple, William, 165 terra nullius, 15, 138, 266 Thatcher, Margaret, 246 Thoma, Kurt, 198 Thomas, William Beach, 243 Thompson, E. P., 65 Thompson, Silvanus, 238 Thorne, Richard, 116

threshing machines, 52, 234, 234 Thünen, J. von, 69, 235 Times, The (newspaper), 13, 59, 109, 138, 165, 239 Tizer, 91 tobacco, 98– 99 Tobey, James, 60 Tolstoy, Leo, 252 toothbrushes, 40, 200– 201 tooth decay, 196– 202, 197, 199, 200, 201 Torrens, Robert, 5 Towns Improvement Clauses Act (1847), 36 tractors, 222, 234, 239 trans fats, 210 transportation: of meat, 42– 47, 44, 46, 122; steam-powered technologies, 235– 37; of sugar, 78; of wheat, 67, 69 Trench, William, 139 Trentmann, Frank, 9 Trevelyan, Charles, 135, 137 trichinosis, 110– 11 Trotter, Thomas, 202 tuberculin, 115– 17 tuberculosis, 113– 18, 136, 155, 190 Turkey wheat, 57 Turnbull, Robert, 18 Turner, Alan, 105 turnip winter (Kohlrübenwinter), 155 typhoid, 111– 13, 112 ulcers, gastric, 202– 3 UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 260– 61, 262, 267 United States: calorie intake, 177; Dust Bowl, 240– 41; and global food regulation, 261– 63; meat industry, 27– 28, 111, 122– 23; wheat industry, 51, 53, 57 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), 262 urban vs. rural diets, 13, 170, 208 Ure, Andrew, 175 Vague, J., 214 Vaughan, Victor, 124 vegetables, 6, 12, 92, 102, 161, 172, 174, 191, 250, 251, 252, 268 vegetarianism, 252– 54, 253 vending machines, 90, 94 Venn, J. A., 87 Vernadsky, Vladimir, 255 Vernon, James, 134, 191 vertical farming, 271, 272

index Villemin, Jean-Antoine, 114 Vilmorin, Philippe-Andre de, 81 Vimto, 91 Vipeholm Hospital study, 198 Vogt, William, 223 Vries, Hugo de, 83 Vries, Jan de, 178 Wadd, William, 211 Wallace, James Sim, 198, 200 Walley, Thomas, 120 Walsh, William, 205, 207 Waring, George, 229 waste removal, 229 Watkins, John, 31 Watson, Hugh, 25 Watson, James, 87 Watts, Michael, 145 Weatherley, Henry, 88 Webb, Richard, 136 Weber, Adolf and Ernest, 22 Webster, John, 24 weight: anorexia nervosa, 216– 20, 218, 219; obesity, 211– 15 Wells, H. G., A Modern Utopia, 182 Wells, Jonathan, 270 Western diseases, and diet, 195– 96 Whately, Richard, 9 wheat, 48– 71; adulteration, 103; breeding practices, 55– 58; British production of, 50; and fertilizers, 223– 30; in global economy, 66– 71, 68; globalized production, 50– 55; hybridization of, 56– 57; and meat-wheatsugar nutrition transition, 11– 14; milling and baking practices, 58– 62, 61, 62; political economy of, 64– 66; rise in popularity, 49– 50; and soil erosion, 239– 43; symbolism, 49– 50; and tooth decay, 198, 199; transportation logistics, 67, 69; wartime supplies, 149– 50, 159; white vs. wholemeal bread controversy, 62– 64 Wheat Act (1932), 242 Wheatley, James, 5, 72 Wheatley, John, 135, 138 Wheat Studies (periodical), 67, 71 White, E. B., 35 Whitechurch, Victor, 37 Whorton, James, 203 Whyte, R., 239, 242 Widdowson, E. M., 49– 50, 183

411

Wilkie, Rhoda, 35 Wilkinson, James, 124 Willcox, Oswin, 77 Williams, Eric, 75 Williams, Herbert, 122 Williams, Leonard, 204– 5 Williams, R. Stenhouse, 117 Williamson, Joseph, 185 Wilson, E. O., 129, 272 Wilson, Graham, 124 Wilson, James, 31, 65 windmills, 59 wine gums, 90 Winter, Jay, 153 Witzel, Morgan, 95 Wolff, M., 182 women: calorie intake, 171, 182– 85; and domestic discourse, 178– 82, 179, 184; emergence of anorexia nervosa, 216– 20, 218, 219; as housewives, 151, 171, 178– 79, 182, 192; infant-feeding methods, 187– 90; meat consumption, 22, 24, 183, 217; vegetarianism, 252 Wood, T., 150 Woods, Rebecca, 16, 30 Woods, Robert, 170 Woolton, Lord, 161, 164 world ecology, 17, 75, 222 World Food Council, 261 world food crisis: 1970s, 263, 269; twentyfirst century, 1– 2, 3, 11, 20, 263– 68, 270– 72 World War I, 15, 132, 149– 56, 154 World War II, 64, 117, 159– 65, 163, 269 Worms, Henry de, 85 Worster, Donald, 6, 242 wrapped bread, 61, 159 Wrench, Evelyn, 241 Wrigley, E. A., 169 Wylie, J. C., 229, 256 yak, 26 Yellowlees, Walter, 193 Yemen, 268 Young, Ada, 206 Young, Arthur, 134, 251 Yudkin, John, 72– 73, 211 Z-commodities, 178 Zimmermann, Erich, 6