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Latin America in Translation
Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance
Exploring the history and importance of corn worldwide, Arturo Warman traces its development from a New World food of poor and despised peoples into a commodity that plays a major role in the modern global economy. The book combines approaches from anthropology, social history, and political economy to tell the story of corn, a "botanical bastard" of unclear origins that cannot reseed itself and is instead dependent on agriculture for propagation. Beginning in the Americas, Warman depicts corn as colonizer. Disparaged by the conquistadors, this Native American staple was embraced by the destitute of the Old World. In time, corn spread across the globe as a prodigious food source for both humans and livestock. Warman also reveals corn's role in nourishingthe African slave trade. Through the history of one plant with enormous economic importance, Warman investigates large-scale social and economic processes, looking at the role of foodstuffs in the competition between nations and the perpetuation of inequalities between rich and poor states in the world market. Praising corn's almost unlimited potential for future use as an intensified source of starch, sugar, and alcohol, Warman also comments on some of the problems he foresees for large-scale, technology-dependent monocrop agriculture.
Hardcover
First published March 10, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 15, 2024
never liked corn anyway
March 4, 2019
I appreciated Warman's critical analysis of corn during colonialism and the growth of capitalism. His call to understand the different histories of corn in different places as a way to examine resistance to hegemony fits in well with an examination of biodiversity conservation that exists in the margins.
January 18, 2019
I always love microhistories that look at things from a new angle.
-- Cotton was one of the few plants cultivated in both old and new worlds, though different species were cultivated. American had advantages as almost all commercial varieties derived from American. "It must have been a fascinating story, that of the migration and replacement of one species of the most important textile plant in the world for another, a plant that also became an important source of oil. Once again, the Industrial Revolution figured in that tale, for cotton fabric was the first large-scale exportable commodity and the textile industry was the motor of industrialization" (11)
Sugar cane was introduced after American contact but became one of the chief products of new world. Went from being an extravagant luxury in 15th century to basic foods in eighteenth. "Sugar was one of the most important sources of calories for workers in their struggle to keep up with the new, faster work pace demanded by the industrial revolution (54).
"Corn was the principal staple food, the dietary mainstay, for the vast human mobilization brought about by the slave trade" (60). Corn had the "fungible/liquid" qualities Scott argues needed for taxation/mobilization of corvee labor: cheap, easy to transport, stored with minimal spoilage, wheat and rice more expensive, tubers and plantains not easy to transport or silo (71).
Despite forced migration and high mortality derived from the slave trade and from war and other calamities associated with it, African population grew esp in second half of 1800s, largely due to corn and cassava calories (82)
Corn could be grown in a vast range of conditions. While sweet potatoes, cassava, and other tubers might provide more calories per acre, they required storage and processing, whereas corn alone could be eaten green as well as dried. Corn had the lowest labor input requirements of any grain except perhaps sorghum, which was important when a part of the pasant workforce, almost always young men, had to migrate or contract out locally for a salary in order to obtain or supplement monetary income. It also implied lower losses in the event of disaster (93). Corn is easy to transport and store, and while the price may not always be great, it can always be sold (95)
Relates the complex history of understandings of pellagra and the understanding that it has to do with niacin and protein processing. The process of cooking corn with lime before grinding in the New World prevented pellagra but did not transfer to the old world. "It started with a nutritional deficiency, itself a complex phenomenon, which in turn was uncovered due to the most acute deficiency: the lack of niacin in the diet" (145)
Outlines the extent to which corn was intimately tied with cotton production. Surface area of corn planted was greater than that of cotton, and the value of the crop was 2/3 that of cotton (161).
"In many ways, the Old South disappeared along with pellagra. Perhaps it could be said that when economic development in the South came to a standstill, so did pellagra. When the majority of southern society was no longer brutally subjugated in the interests of furthering capital accumulation in the modern, industrialized sectors of the economy of the south, then pellagra disappeared. Pellagra was a disease born of development, a product of a type of progress that was imposed, unjust, and unequal." (173)
-- Cotton was one of the few plants cultivated in both old and new worlds, though different species were cultivated. American had advantages as almost all commercial varieties derived from American. "It must have been a fascinating story, that of the migration and replacement of one species of the most important textile plant in the world for another, a plant that also became an important source of oil. Once again, the Industrial Revolution figured in that tale, for cotton fabric was the first large-scale exportable commodity and the textile industry was the motor of industrialization" (11)
Sugar cane was introduced after American contact but became one of the chief products of new world. Went from being an extravagant luxury in 15th century to basic foods in eighteenth. "Sugar was one of the most important sources of calories for workers in their struggle to keep up with the new, faster work pace demanded by the industrial revolution (54).
"Corn was the principal staple food, the dietary mainstay, for the vast human mobilization brought about by the slave trade" (60). Corn had the "fungible/liquid" qualities Scott argues needed for taxation/mobilization of corvee labor: cheap, easy to transport, stored with minimal spoilage, wheat and rice more expensive, tubers and plantains not easy to transport or silo (71).
Despite forced migration and high mortality derived from the slave trade and from war and other calamities associated with it, African population grew esp in second half of 1800s, largely due to corn and cassava calories (82)
Corn could be grown in a vast range of conditions. While sweet potatoes, cassava, and other tubers might provide more calories per acre, they required storage and processing, whereas corn alone could be eaten green as well as dried. Corn had the lowest labor input requirements of any grain except perhaps sorghum, which was important when a part of the pasant workforce, almost always young men, had to migrate or contract out locally for a salary in order to obtain or supplement monetary income. It also implied lower losses in the event of disaster (93). Corn is easy to transport and store, and while the price may not always be great, it can always be sold (95)
Relates the complex history of understandings of pellagra and the understanding that it has to do with niacin and protein processing. The process of cooking corn with lime before grinding in the New World prevented pellagra but did not transfer to the old world. "It started with a nutritional deficiency, itself a complex phenomenon, which in turn was uncovered due to the most acute deficiency: the lack of niacin in the diet" (145)
Outlines the extent to which corn was intimately tied with cotton production. Surface area of corn planted was greater than that of cotton, and the value of the crop was 2/3 that of cotton (161).
"In many ways, the Old South disappeared along with pellagra. Perhaps it could be said that when economic development in the South came to a standstill, so did pellagra. When the majority of southern society was no longer brutally subjugated in the interests of furthering capital accumulation in the modern, industrialized sectors of the economy of the south, then pellagra disappeared. Pellagra was a disease born of development, a product of a type of progress that was imposed, unjust, and unequal." (173)
April 22, 2013
Raises some significant issues about food power, as well as the how corn became such a dominant crop. I was not as big a fan of the style of the book, written as a somewhat polemical cautionary tale that implies motive in many instances, rather than examining motives.
January 13, 2024
After you read this book, you will never see the world the same way again. You will realize what foolish myths abide in our intergenerational memories and recognize what responsibility for life, what eco-conscious, should mean. This book takes the terms "eco social" and "sustainability" beyond their current band-standing hallucinations based on single-issue symptoms of a much deeper, much larger, much more deadly infection that we suffer as and with this earth. With great power comes great responsability - once you don the maize halo that materializes from this book, prepare to spend the rest of your life fighting the crimes against humanity that have lurked so long, unnoticed in the shadows. Do not waste any more time. Read this book now.
December 10, 2012
Mostly read. Hard to finish.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews