From Distant Shores: Trade, Connection, and Cultural Resilience in the French Atlantic

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Sal, Bacalhau e Açúcar : Trade, Mobility, Circular Navigation and Foodways in the Atlantic World", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

3610km separates the two administrative poles of the French-Atlantic, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon in the North and Martinique in the South. Despite the distance and conflict that plagued the open ocean and those who braved it, a cultural connectedness was borne through the networks that transected the known world. Caribbean sugar was a key component that flowed through the French network, but equally as important was North-Atlantic cod fish. Cod served not only as an economic product but a pivotal cultural component that connects people and places across these great distances. Through the reconstruction of trade routes that interact and intersect in the two poles of the Atlantic during the conflicted colonial period, it is possible to see them encompassed in a greater Cod network. A network that reiterates the importance of the cod fishery, the people who laboured for it, and the lasting cultural impact of the cuisine emerging from it.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Sal, Bacalhau e Açúcar : Trade, Mobility, Circular Navigation and Foodways in the Atlantic World

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow