Your project focuses on the history of food and connects environmental history with the history of emotions. Can you briefly outline your research interest, and how the British Academy event\u2019s focus on microscopic records features into this?<\/em><\/p>\n Rachel Winchcombe<\/strong>: I\u2019m particularly interested in the ways in which English settler colonists engaged with the new environments of America, especially new foods, and how this engagement impacted various emotional states. Initially, the New World provoked a significant degree of amazement and puzzlement among English observers. In 1584 Arthur Balowe, for example, a sea captain who was in the employ of Sir Walter Ralegh, undertook the first English reconnaissance of the lands that would become known as Virginia. Recounting his initial observations, Barlowe appeared captivated by the new environment in which he found himself. This region of the Americas, so Barlowe told his readers, was home to soil that was the \u201cmost plentifull, sweete, fruitfull and wholsome of all the worlde\u201d and to \u201cthe greatest abundance\u201d of delectable fruits, fowl, and fish.1<\/sup> Early English explorers and settler colonists, like Barlowe, were equally loquacious when confronted with this radically new material environment. North America, although appearing similar to England in some respects, was home to unique flora and fauna and to botanical material that differed dramatically to that found in Europe.<\/p>\n Fig. 1: \u2018Trade and Exchange in Newfoundland\u2019, in Theodore de Bry, Decima Tertia pars Historiae Americanae <\/em>(Frankfurt: Theodore de Bry \/ Matth\u00e4us Merian, 1634). Image credit: Courtesy of The John Carter Brown Library.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n RW<\/strong>: Such encounters with new material environments were in fact often experienced and negotiated on the level of small-scale materials \u2013 or via, one might say, \u201cmicroscopic records\u201d. Analysing English travel narratives that detail environmental encounters with American foodstuffs is one way to recover how early modern protagonists engaged with new material realities in general and small-scale materials in particular. Those English settlers writing about the New World were in many cases able to distinguish between English and New World material realities and use this information to their advantage. Early modern Europeans were keenly aware of how small differences in foodstuffs could have a significant impact on their bodies. Food in the early modern period was understood in terms of its micro-components and elemental qualities. These qualities of heat and cold, moisture and dryness, had the ability to disrupt the body\u2019s four humours (which themselves were comprised of the same material qualities) which in turn could aggravate or alleviate illness. Understanding the material differences of American produce was thus not solely a matter of curiosity, but a matter of securing and maintaining bodily and emotional health. My Leverhulme project will explore the consequences of English engagement with these new material phenomena, investigating social rituals of eating, access to food, and the connections between health, travel, and diet in a colonial context in order to reshape how we think about <\/em>the interconnectedness of environmental change, bodily management, and emotional wellbeing in the early modern world.<\/p>\n SH<\/strong>: Could you give an example for such small-scale food encounters in the English colonies of North America?<\/em><\/p>\n RW<\/strong>: Take something like the strawberry. English settler colonists in North America quickly discovered that this region was home to a strawberry that appeared superior to the tiny, wild variety that was known back in Europe. Multiple writers described the differences between New World strawberries and those back in England, both visually and gustatorily. John Brereton, writing about New England described \u201cstrawberries, red and white, as sweet and much bigger than ours in England.\u201d William Wood also found New England strawberries to be different to English ones, describing them as \u201cvery large,\u201d with some \u201cbeing two inches about.\u201d Similarly, Roger Williams had only positive words for American strawberries. This berry, so he told his readers, \u201cis the wonder of all the Fruits growing naturally in those parts: It is of it selfe Excellent,\u201d adding that \u201cone of the chiefest Doctors of England<\/em> was wont to say, that God could have made, but God never did make a better Berry.\u201d2<\/sup> These descriptions of small-scale material culture, and the enthusiasm and interest that they conjure, reveal, on a larger scale, the interplay between new material environments, emotional states such as excitement, and early modern curiosity for small-scale material enquiries.<\/p>\n Fig. 2: \u201cRed Straw-berries\u201d in John Gerard, The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes (London: Adam Islip, Ioice Norton and Richard Whitakers, 1633). Image Credit: Early English Books Online.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n SH<\/strong>: What exactly was so puzzling about theses strawberries?<\/em><\/p>\n RW<\/strong>: Whilst on the face of it these descriptions may seem like typical English hyperbole aimed at promoting the burgeoning colonies, they in fact do reflect the material differences between the English strawberry and its Virginian counterpart. Herbalists and botanists back in England took an active interest in this new variety of strawberry, emphasising its unique features whilst lamenting their inability to cultivate it successfully. John Parkinson, for example, noted that \u201cthe Virginia strawberry carryeth the greatest leafe of any other,\u201d but because of \u201cthe want of skill, or industry to order it alright (\u2026) scarce can one strawberry be seene ripe among a number of plantes.\u201d3<\/sup> Botanists, however, did not give up on the sweeter, larger strawberry from Virginia. Robert Morison, for example, appears to have used the seeds of Virginia strawberries to create a hybrid that became known as the \u201cscarlet\u201d strawberry due to its unusual colour. The scarlet remained a popular variety in England until the successful hybridisation of the Virginia strawberry with an even larger variety from Chile in Brittany in the eighteenth century. This cross of New World strawberries, known for their size and sweetness, are the forerunners of our modern-day garden strawberry.4<\/sup><\/p>\n As well as being prized for their delectability, strawberries in the early modern period, by virtue of their specific elemental qualities, were believed to have a number of health benefits. The herbalist John Gerard categorised the temperature of strawberries, including the variety from Virginia, as being cold and moist, making them ideal for the alleviation of \u2018heat of the stomack, and inflammation of the liver,\u2019 and for \u2018reviving the spirits, and making the heart merry\u2019.5<\/sup> The early modern interest in small-scale food materiality, then, can be viewed as a response to early modern understandings of the body. The micro-components of particular foods could penetrate porous and unstable early modern bodies which in turn could provoke or mitigate certain health conditions. Similar tales of settler colonists and botanists recognising, and then exploiting, botanical differences between the Old and New World for health reasons can be found in early modern travel narratives and herbals, from the cultivation of new strains of sweeter tobacco in Virginia, to the successful integration of entirely new species of plants into English diets such as the Virginia potato.\u00a0<\/p>\n SH<\/strong>: Such stories of small-scale material encounters in the English colonies in seventeenth-century Northern America have often been exclusively anchored in the study of texts. How does your project set a new agenda of a combined analysis of textual and material records? What can microscopic records reveal, for example, about colonial food encounters?<\/em><\/p>\n RW<\/strong>: The early modern material record of small-scale materials can provide exciting insights into the experimental nature of early settler diets and their reliance on Indigenous botanical knowledge. Archaeobotanical assemblages from the early years of the Jamestown colony, for example, are dominated by Indigenous cultigens and wild American produce.6<\/sup> Alongside the wild berries that English explorers lauded in their writings, English diets in the New World comprised many important Indigenous crops. For example, samples from an excavated well, which was likely filled in 1611, contain botanical traces of the \u2018Three Sisters\u2019: maize, beans, and squash.7<\/sup> Textual evidence from the early decades of English colonisation indicates that settlers were aware of Indigenous approaches to this kind of mixed-cropping and its ability to encourage growth and replenish soils. William Barret, for example, writing about his observations of corn cultivation in Virginia, noted how for every five corn seeds that were sown \u201ctwo beanes\u201d were planted alongside. The beans, as Barret explained, \u201crunne upon the stalkes of the wheat [maize], as our garden pease upon stickes, which multiplie to a wonderous increase.\u201d8<\/sup> A similar observation was made my Thomas Harriot who too noted that when planting corn Indigenous farmers would \u201cset as many Beanes and Peaze in divers places also among the seedes of Mac\u00f3cqwer<\/em> [pumpkin], Melden<\/em> [wild spinach], and Planta Solis<\/em> [sunflower].\u201d9<\/sup> English colonists, then, paid close attention to Indigenous agricultural practice, particularly how seeds were sown, which in turn impacted their diets.<\/p>\n Fig. 3: \u2018The Town of Secota with Cultivated Maize Fields\u2019, in Thomas Harriot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (Frankfurt: Theodore de Bry, 1590). Image credit: Courtesy of The John Carter Brown Library.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n RW<\/strong>: Combining the study of archival and textual records with the study of early modern microscopic records and the small-scale material record of Indigenous-English encounters in the early Americas, sheds new light on the early English experience of radically different environments and foodstuffs. The lack of Old World cultigens in archaeobotanical samples suggests that English settlers were far more reliant on Indigenous foods than some historians, and indeed the writings of many colonists themselves, have previously suggested. This leaves intriguing questions to be asked about whether early settlers were either unwilling, or unable, to reshape the materiality of American environments., questions that I will explore in my chapter on small-scale food encounters in colonial North America which will be published in the volume on early modern microscopic records. Thinking about colonial encounters with small-scale materials, in this case botanical substances, then, allows us to question our current assumptions about English engagement with American environments, and indeed the American environment\u2019s engagement with English colonists. It allows us to consider how early modern knowledge of micro-materials was put to work in order to make new material realities understandable, and in some cases profitable, how microscopic food remnants from this period can provide new insights into settler diets, Anglo-Indigenous botanical exchange, and American agricultural change, and how microscopic records themselves have shaped colonial history.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n 1<\/sup> Arthur Barlowe, \u2018The First Voyage Made to the Coasts of America, with Two Barks\u2019, in Richard Hakluyt (ed.), The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation <\/em>(London: George Bishop, Ralph Newberie, and Robert Barker, 1598\u20131600), 3:248\u201350.<\/p>\n 2<\/sup> John Brereton. A Briefe and True Relation of the Discoverie of the North Part of Virginia <\/em>(London: George Bishop, 1602), 5; William Wood, New Englands Prospect <\/em>(London: Thomas Cotes, 1634), 13; Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of America <\/em>(London: Gregory Dexter, 1643), 98.<\/p>\n 3<\/sup> John Parkinson, A Garden of all Sorts of Pleasant Flowers <\/em>(London: Humfrey Lownes and Robert Young, 1629), 528.<\/p>\n 4<\/sup> Steven Wilhelm, \u2018The Garden Strawberry: A Study of Its Origin\u2019, American Scientist <\/em>62.3 (1974), 266\u201367.<\/p>\n 5<\/sup> Gerard, Generall Historie of Plantes<\/em>, 998\u201399.<\/p>\n 6<\/sup> Steven Archer, \u2018Jamestown 1611 Well: Archaeobotanical Analysis Report Prepared for Historic Jamestowne\u2019, unpublished report (2006); Justine, McKnight, \u2018Archeobotanical Analysis of Archived Soil from the James Fort Period Well (STR 177)\u2019, unpublished report (2011).<\/p>\n 7<\/sup> Ibid.<\/p>\n 8<\/sup> William Barret, A True Declaration of the Estate of the Colonie in Virginia <\/em>(London: Eliot’s Court Press and William Stansby, 1610), 27\u20138.<\/p>\n 9<\/sup> Thomas Harriot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia <\/em>(Frankfurt: Theodore de Bry, 1590), 15.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Further Reading<\/em><\/p>\n Earle, Rebecca: The Body of the Conquistador: Food, Race and the Colonial Experience in Spanish America, 1492<\/em>\u20131700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.<\/em><\/p>\n Eden, Trudy: The Early American Table: Food and Society in the New World. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008.<\/em><\/p>\n Gentilcore, David: Food and Health in Early Modern Europe: Diet, Medicine and Society, 1450<\/em>\u20131800. London: Bloomsbury, 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n Norton, Marcy: Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2008.<\/em><\/p>\n Purnis, Jan: \u201cThe Stomach and Early Modern Emotion.\u201d University of Toronto Quarterly 79, no. 2 (2010): 800<\/em>\u2013818.<\/em><\/p>\n Reeds, Karen: \u201cDon\u2019t Eat, Don\u2019t Touch: Roanoke Colonists, Natural Knowledge, and Dangerous Plants of North America,\u201d in: European Visions: American Voices, edited by Kim Sloan, 51<\/em>\u201357. London: British Museum Press, 2009.<\/em><\/p>\n Rublack, Ulinka: \u201cFluxes: The Early Modern Body and the Emotions,\u201d History Workshop Journal 53 (2002): 1<\/em>\u201316.<\/em><\/p>\n Shapin, Steven: \u201cWhy was <\/em>\u2018<\/em>Custom a Second Nature\u2019 in Early Modern Medicine?,\u201d Bulletin of the History of Medicine 93, no. 1 (2019): 1<\/em>\u201326.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Rachel Winchcombe<\/strong><\/a>, The University of Manchester.<\/p>\n Stefan Han\u00df<\/strong><\/a>, The University of Manchester.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_post_nav _builder_version=”3.0.106″ in_same_term=”off” show_prev=”on” show_next=”on” prev_text=”Previous” next_text=”Next” locked=”on” parent_locked=”off” \/][et_pb_comments _builder_version=”3.0.106″ show_avatar=”on” show_reply=”on” show_count=”on” background_layout=”light” header_font_size_tablet=”51″ header_line_height_tablet=”2″ custom_button=”on” button_icon_placement=”right” button_text_color=”#ffffff” button_use_icon=”off” 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Her monograph Encountering Early America discusses the broader sixteenth-century English colonial discourse about \u2018the New World\u2019 and will be published with Manchester University Press in early 2021. She also published an article on the narrative strategies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2523,"featured_media":1784,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/microscopic-records\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/microscopic-records\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/microscopic-records\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/microscopic-records\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2523"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/microscopic-records\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1782"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/microscopic-records\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1798,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/microscopic-records\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782\/revisions\/1798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/microscopic-records\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/microscopic-records\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/microscopic-records\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/microscopic-records\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"De](\"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/microscopic-records\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/210\/2020\/08\/Fig.-1-1024x887.jpg\")
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