The recent food history of Sydney, Shanghai and Singapore traces a complex narrative of empire, trade networks and migration patterns. This book discusses aspects of each cityâs cuisine in the twentieth century, examining the oft interwoven threads of colonial legacy and globalization, as set in restaurants, cafes and street food, markets and supermarkets, and cookbooks and other archival material.
The three cities were chosen primarily to quench an interest in imperial urban networks and the evolving foodways of these centres, assisted by the availability of resources. All three cities have been ranked in the top 20 global cities in recent years (Kearney 2017, https://âwww.âatkearney.âcom/âglobal-cities, accessed 31 May 2018). Culinary offering, under cultural experience, is one measure of a global cityâs attributes. Collectively, the three cities present a miscellany of traditional and contemporary foodways in societies and communities, both local and global. As I embarked on this project with specific themes and topics in mind, it grew organically and valiant attempts have been made to rein in some of the fascinating but imponderable aspects. In this, I have been guided by the work of food scholars Ken Albala, Jean Duruz, Jeffrey Pilcher, Krishnendu Ray and Nicole Tarulevicz, among others.
It seems de rigueur to begin a piece of food history by explaining or defending it as a new field of study or by justifying oneâs existence as a food historian. It was only in the 1980s that historians began delving into the histories of material life and of mass culture, consumerism and consumption. Prior to this, food history was studied against the backdrop of labour relations and agrarian or industrialization movements. Food and foodways, previously seen as merely quotidian and related to womenâs work, are now part of a growing field in academic enquiry spanning such diverse fields and disciplines as sociology, nutrition, agriculture, communications, public health and social and cultural histories. Most university presses now feature food series lists, and reviews on food history in academic journals are commonplace.
Over the past two decades, a critical mass of academics has assembled around food supply, patterns of eating and other aspects of food culture. Regular international conferences, academic journals, monograph series and the emergence of food studies as a scholarly field in the United States and Europe are testament to its significance (Albala 2014: xv). Food history looks at attitudes towards class, gender, race and other cultural values. It is a broad academic disciplineâsome insist on calling it a field rather than disciplineâengaging in a variety of methodologies and theoretical positions. Primary sources include cookbooks, household manuals, menus, personal records and the like. It employs both qualitative and quantitative approaches and borrows conceptual models freely from other disciplines (Scholliers et al. 2012: Conclusion).
Much scholarship exists on the history of globalization. In the imperial context, the flow of goods was not just between colony and metropole. With the global flow of migrants came goods and ideas. Trajectories were made in different directions, forming long-lasting links and networks. Historian Tony Ballantyne argues against a âmetrocentricâ understanding of imperial history and prefers the notion of âwebs of empireâ, or âa complex system of overlapping and interwoven institutions, organizations, ideologies, and discoursesâ (Ballantyne 2003: 104, 113). In a similar vein is Thomas Metcalfâs argument that the ties of empire not only took a trajectory to London but spread outwards to Africa, the Middle East, the islands of the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia (Metcalf 2007).
Indeed, food consumption was another means in which the British, through her Indian colonial connections, helped spread ideas on colonial cuisine. Curry is a particularly good example of the proliferation of culinary knowledge through empire and its links. As the British established their colonies and settlements, they brought their colonial hybrid dishes with them. Curries and other dishes underwent further modification, with ingredients added or discarded and different cooking methods being employed. Curry, more than any other dish, illustrates the way in which ideas, goods and services travelled the nodal networks of empire, undergoing changes at each point (Leong-Salobir 2011: 39â59). By the end of the 1900s, curry was well and truly entrenched as a universally recognizable dish, its links with empire quite forgotten. Every colonial cookbook published in the twentieth century in the three cities featured several curry recipes.
Cultural and trade connections in culinary forms have existed for centuries. Food historian Jeffrey M. Pilcher points out that examining earlier forms of cultural contact and innovation âcan help evaluate claims about present-day globalizationâ. He adds that âprevious experiences with imperial conquest or global migration can inform both public policy and personal initiativeâ (Pilcher 2017: 7).
The cities examined in this book share a history of colonial encounter (Sydney as convict colony, Singapore as Crown colony and Shanghai as port treaty) and cultural exchange. This book investigates the extent to which each city inherited and retained culinary legacies from the Britishâsuch as curries, kedgeree, chicken chop and condimentsâas other Asian colonies did. However, this hybrid cuisine only formed a small part of the numerous cuisines that existed in Shanghai and Singapore in the long twentieth century. The colonial and semi-colonial communities were small and segregated from the rest of the local inhabitants. The diet of the settler community in Sydney was different; the abundance of meat and a predominantly British population meant the colonial hybrid dishes that developed in India were consumed less frequently. There was also a quandary faced by the settler community to be reconciled: whether to view itself as the Australian nation, or to be forever beholden to Britain and her culinary offerings (including the British colonial cuisine from India).
Both Singapore and Shanghai suffered the ignoble reputation of being sleepy fishing villages until the arrival of the British, who were credited with immediately transforming them into flourishing metropolises. In fact, Shanghai was a prominent maritime centre in the eighteenth century and had become one of Chinaâs major ports. Its coastal trade was important for exporting goods to Southeast Asia via its junk boats. Singapore was already a major regional centre in the maritime trade between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea by the fourteenth century.
More importantly, the three cities were nodes in the imperial network that segued into global cities. The exchange of goods and services that circulated among the three cities and the migration of people from across the globe to work and to trade in the urban centres ...