Food, multiplicity and imperialism: Patterns of domination and subversion in the modern international system
| Author | Alejandro Colás |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00108367221099802 |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367221099802
Cooperation and Conflict
2022, Vol. 57(3) 384 –401
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00108367221099802
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Food, multiplicity and
imperialism: Patterns of
domination and subversion
in the modern international
system
Alejandro Colás
Abstract
This article mobilises the notion of global food regime to explore ways in which modern
International Relations are reproduced through distinctive patterns of alimentary domination
and subversion. It considers three ideal-typical international encounters – the Spanish conquest
of the Americas, British rule in South Asia and the US occupation of Japan – to offer a stylised
historical-sociological comparison of how food becomes a powerful site of interaction between
conflicting dynamics of social differentiation and incorporation, segregation and admixture, and
domination and subversion. The Spanish, British and Americans deployed different strategies of
alimentary domination in these contexts, which can in large measure be explained with reference
to their prevailing mode of production. But they also unleashed equally potent forces of culinary
adaptation, transculturation and innovation which, in bringing together a multiplicity of foodways,
subverted both the rigid structures of imperial rule and notions of a pristine pre-colonial or
national cultural traditions.
Keywords
colonialism, cultural appropriation, empires, global food system
Of all the universal ‘social facts’, the human need for food and drink is perhaps the
most elementary. Few would dispute today that our forms of collective subsistence
have, throughout time, been central to the nature and evolution of human societies.
Like other fundamental socio-cultural phenomena, the arguments concerning such uni-
versals tend to be over the differences, both between and within societies, in the way
and extent that food and drink are produced, processed, prepared, consumed and dis-
posed of. In this context, the notion of societal multiplicity offers a fertile heuristic
Corresponding author:
Alejandro Colás, Birkbeck College, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, UK.
Email: a.colas@bbk.ac.uk
1099802CAC0010.1177/00108367221099802Cooperation and ConflictColás
research-article2022
Article
Colás 385
when exploring both how foodways are constituted through ‘the international’ and
how the former is also created through different food cultures. If as Justin Rosenberg
(2016) suggests, co-existence, difference, interaction, combination and dialectics are
the key consequences of societal multiplicity, then culinary cultures of the world, and
the political ecologies that foster them, are at the core of International Relations (IR).
But we must add a key ingredient to this mix, namely, hierarchy. For there is no soci-
etal multiplicity without aspirations to political domination, and so the story of how
food contributes to the fragmentation of humanity into multiple political communities
is inevitably also that of modern imperialism.
Red meat, tea and wheat-flour are three products consumed today by billions across
the world on a daily basis. They are also emblematic of food regimes associated with
three different types of modern empire: the Iberoamerican tributary domains of the long
sixteenth century; British mercantilist rule in south Asia during the nineteenth century;
and the recent Pax Americana.1 The rest of this article takes these foodstuffs and their
diverse historical trajectories as a point of departure to outline some general patterns in
the imperial mobilisation of food and drink as instruments of colonial expansion. It
shows how culinary cultures are not only important markers of social differentiation and
integration across and within societies, but also powerful carriers of political and socio-
economic hierarchies which, through complex (dialectical) processes of accommodation
and resistance (or, if one wishes, combined and uneven development), have created or
reinforced the societal multiplicity that characterises the international.
Here, it is important to underline that the term ‘multiplicity’ implies more than a
simple co-existence and interaction – it involves instead the conflictual transformation
and transculturation of diverse societies (Ortíz, 1995 [1940]). This, in turn, requires
close attention to the multiple, generally synchronic layers of social interaction that
define any given society or political community at a specific time. Long-standing insti-
tutions, dynamic social forces, cultural or ideological norms and values all creatively
interact within and across social formations to produce enduring international orders or
regimes. Thus, when considering below the place of food and drink in the reproduction
of societal multiplicity, the whole food chain has to be factored into the analysis: food-
stuffs like meat, tea and wheat appear as ingestible commodities to consumers only after
land, labour and technology have been harnessed into their production, processing, dis-
tribution, preparation, delivery and disposal. Property regimes, water and land manage-
ment, labour recruitment, transport systems, trade networks, marketing campaigns and
all their associated legal-administrative infrastructure are critical to the reproduction of
societal multiplicity. The next section introduces the category of the ‘global food
regime’ as an analytical tool in fathoming these complex interactions. Three subsequent
sections consider the contrasting strategies of alimentary domination adopted by suc-
cessive imperial powers since the sixteenth century. A picture emerges from these big
structures, large process and huge comparisons (with apologies to Charles Tilly) where
societal multiplicity is the product of contradictory and often violent confrontations and
adaptations between and within peoples and polities, and where food and empire are
closely intertwined. In this sense, the universal human need of nourishment and subsist-
ence itself becomes an ontological premise for the multiplicity problematic in IR: we IR
what we eat.
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