Beyond ‘Exotic Groceries’: Tapioca/Cassava/Manioc, a Hidden Commodity of Empires and Globalisation

Abstract

Studies of empire food commodities have concentrated on the great export commodities sugar, tea, coffee, chocolate, spices and tobacco —the first ‘exotic groceries’.¹ However, there were other ‘hidden’ commodities of empire, staples that were an essential part of imperial trade, and in some cases literally sustained it. This chapter focuses on just such a hidden food commodity, one that moved between Empires over four centuries largely unremarked although it was a part of both transatlantic and transpacific commerce. This food was involved in imperial trade in three ways: as a plant cultivar; as a finished commodity; and as the sustenance that supported the production of Empire goods and was the catalyst for the mass movement of people across continents and oceans. This food is arguably the most important food crop in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world, but it has been largely overlooked in Anglo-American food histories and studies of imperial trade for two reasons. First, it is a food that in many places was more important in the internal market than in the export trade to which it was essential, and therefore never appeared in export figures. The second reason is a direct consequence of imperial history, for the food originated in and was most important to the Portuguese Empire, which in Anglophone studies has been eclipsed by the Spanish Empire and its maize-dominated colonial food regime, in the same way that Luso-Brazilian studies have been overwhelmed by Spanish/Latin American studies under the label ‘Hispanic’.²