An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage

According to Michael Lee Lanning’s The American Revolution 100: The People, Battles, and Events of the American Revolution, the American soldiers usually received most of their rations, at least in the early days of the war.

The Americans had the advantages of being on familiar territory andencamp of the frequent support of local farmers as they traveled. … The British failure to provide adequate food supplies to its troops was not the only cause of its defeat, and of America’s subsequent independence. In practice, however, supplying an army of tens of thousands of men operating some three thousand miles away posed enormous difficulties. Britain was the greatest military and naval power of its day, presiding over a vast empire. As Tom Standage writes in An Edible History of Humanity, “In theory, the British should easily have been able to put down the rebellion among their American colonists.

Maybe that’s because the foods that sustained the American patriots-mostly preserved meats and flavorless flour cakes-wouldn’t exactly make for great backyard BBQ fare.Īs unappetizing as those foods may seem, though, the fact that the rebels had anything to eat at all was one of the key advantages that helped them defeat the British. But Independence Day, the commemoration of the birth of the United States, has no equivalent dish. A lot of holidays have traditional foods that are symbolically, if not literally, related to the point of the celebration: eggs and spring vegetables for Easter evoke the idea of rebirth Thanksgiving tables groaning with fall foods recall the harvest feast that spared the newly arrived Pilgrims from starvation.

An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage