Colonial Codscapes Between Puerto Rico, New England, and Atlantic Canada

• In Event: Edible Imperialisms: Food, Capitalism, and Late-Stage American Empire?

Abstract

On 19 November 1898, a mere three weeks before Spain and the United States signed the Treaty of Paris that relabeled the island of Puerto Rico an American territory, passing its sovereignty from one imperial power to another, the New York Times reported on the “Puerto Rican Demand for Codfish.” A text so short it is more of an announcement than an article, it summarizes an account from the San Juan Consul to the State Department that describes codfish as “the principle food article imported into the island.” After identifying Nova Scotia as its primary dealer, a province of Canada that turns its codfish into molasses through trade, it ends with: “The Consul says there is no reason why New England dealers should not supply the Puerto Rican market in the future.” But why does an island in the Caribbean famous for its fishing import salt cod—so stiff, so dry that it needs to be soaked and rinsed and rehydrated—from icy northern waters?

Reflecting on cod’s historical and contemporary colonial entanglements, I propose to present a paper as part of the two sessions organized by the Critical Food Studies Caucus at the 2025 ASA Annual Meeting that contributes to a larger discussion about how food connects to empire, the politics of resource extraction, and the creation of consumer markets together with its role in social justice and sovereignty. Intimately in dialogue with the conference theme of “Late-stage American Empire?” Colonial Codscapes Between Puerto Rico, New England, and Atlantic Canada will root itself in and champion perspectives from so-called peripheries. Furthering my study of global codscapes as part of my “Off the Menu: Appetites, Culture, and Environment” research group at the University of Augsburg in Germany, my paper will build off of the late food historian Cruz Miguel Ortíz Cuadra’s cod chapter in Eating Puerto Rico: A History of Food, Culture, and Identity in tandem with the recent scholarship of Manuel Valdés Pizzini, an anthropologist, that considers how salt cod connects Puerto Rico and Newfoundland and their capital cities of St. John’s and San Juan— “located at two extremes of the Atlantic Ocean.” In short, my paper will blend American studies, environmental history, and critical food studies to consider how fish, preservation, and trade intersect with the politics of empire, at large, and, specifically, the role of salt cod in the constitution of the American empire.

Author

• L. Sasha Gora