The Taste of Conquest Read Online Free PDF Page B

tiles, for example, came about when they tried to imitate the Ming porcelain brought back with the pepper, and in Amsterdam, Indian fabric embroidered in the Mogul style was all the rage in its day.
    We have been taught that history moves on great wheels, on world wars, on Napoleonic egos, on the revolutions of the masses, on vast economic upheavals and technological change. Yet small things, seemingly trivial details of everyday existence, can lead to convulsions in the world order. In trying to find a modern commodity that has the same transformative role played by spices in the expansion of Europe, historians have tried to make the analogy with today’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil. But that comparison is deeply flawed, for petroleum is absolutely critical to the day-to-day functioning of virtually every aspect of modern existence. Great oceans of petroleum are sent around the world every day. By contrast, in the early fifteen hundreds, almost all of Europe’s pepper arrived in a yearly armada of a half dozen Portuguese ships. It’s easy enough to understand why nations would go to war to safeguard oil, the lifeblood of their economy, but to risk life and limb for a food additive of virtually no nutritional content that only a tiny fraction of the population could even afford? Spices have about as much utility as an Hermès scarf. Yet it is precisely this inessentiality that makes them a useful lens for examining the human relationship to food. Once people no longer fear starvation, they choose to eat for a whole variety of reasons, and these were not so different at the court of the Medici than they are at the food courts of Beverly Hills. Food is much more than a fuel; it is packed with meaning and symbolism. That ground-up tree bark in your morning oatmeal once had the scent of heaven, the grated tropical nut kernel topping your eggnog set in motion a world trading network, and those shriveled little berries in your pepper grinder gave the cue for Europe’s entry onto the world stage and its eventual conquest of the world. The origins of globalization can be traced directly to the spice trade.
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    It is often assumed that people’s taste preferences are conservative, and while this may be true for a particular individual, the cuisines of societies are regularly transformed within a generation or two. The fondness that many adult Americans exhibit for that sugary mélange of Crisco and cocoa powder called Oreos was most surely not shared by their parents. Italians as a whole were not obsessive pasta eaters until after the Second World War. Today, the eating styles of entire nations are in flux. And they are converging. It could be argued that the world—at least, that part of it that doesn’t fear starvation—is eating more alike than it has since the Middle Ages. Of course, food is only a small part of this phenomenon. There is a kind of modern-day, international gothic, not only in art and architecture (as the term is typically used by art historians) but also in food, music, fashion, and language. English is the new Latin. Hip-hop emanates from clubs in Nairobi and Mumbai. McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and their imitators dot the globe.
    Of all the world’s great cities, it is perhaps London that has undergone the most dramatic culinary transformation over the last generation. Good food is surprisingly easy to find here, much of it imported from halfway across the world.
    As I set out one evening to explore London’s cosmopolitan vibe, it appeared I had not entirely left St. Albans’s ghostly knight behind. How else to explain that I stumbled onto the hundred yards or so of pavement named Mandeville Lane? Up the block, the lane changes its name to Marylebone High Street. With its parade of French pastry shops, nail salons, Starbucks, and other multinational chain stores, it is typical of contemporary English main streets. Here, the upscale pubs are filled with a tanned crowd sporting