Spices are Just One Side of the Story: Unravelling Colonial Cuisine in Indonesia
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
09:00 – 10:45 (GMT+7)
Paper Abstract: The Dutch East India Company founded a maritime empire in the Indian Ocean because of food, intent, as it was, on monopolising the supply of plant parts into Europe, called ‘spices’ by early modern Europeans, but few others along the Indian Ocean littorals. Surprisingly few studies have examined the colonial food cultures that emerged in Company settlements in the Indian Ocean. By examining a novel cuisine that took shape in European colonial homes in the Dutch Company headquarters in Batavia, this paper contributes to our understanding of shared consumption cultures across the early modern Indian Ocean. Shaped by ‘mestiza’ women partners of European men and enslavedmale cooks from India and Indonesia, this cuisineilluminates how these actors negotiated the production of colonial knowledge in domestic kitchens. This unequal exchange of knowledge resulted in new sets of culinary combinations, ingredients, technologies, and material culture. The paper shows how these ‘subaltern’ actors participated in global processes of exchange, rendering colonial kitchens porous spaces shaped by the mobility of people, food commodities, material culture and culinary knowledge.
.png)