High on the Hog, subtitled "A Culinary Journey from Africa to America" is a broadbrush history of slavery and race relations focused through the prism of food, food crops, food preparation, cuisines, etc. It's well-written, although I'd quibble with a couple items where I think an urbanite showed lack of agricultural background. One was a reference to a slave being given 17 "stalks" of corn to subsist on. Possible, but more likely "ears". Another was a reference to an early writer (circa 1600?) who claimed that native Americans could raise 200 English bushels of wheat per acre. The cite may be accurate, but it shows credulity by the writer.
A couple factoids: It has the surprising claim that the death rate for sailors on ships engaged in the slave trade was higher than the rate for the Africans held captive. Although the author, Jessica Harris, is a professor, it's not footnoted within the book.
I could explain it: if the analysis includes the whole trip for the sailors, time spent off the coast of Africa waiting to fill the slave ships was notoriously unhealthy. And, there was a definite economic incentive to keep captives healthy enough to survive the Middle Passage. So the factoid might be right, but I'm still uncomfortable
Another factoid: France's Code Noir in 1685 prescribed the diet to be provided to French slaves. The U.S. federal government never had such a provision and apparently no states did either. That's a reflection of the difference in government between France and the U.S.: our governments are weaker and less prescriptive; French governments, whether monarcharies or democracies, are more centralized and prescriptive.
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