Towards a history of food in Wales

The history of Welsh food as such has not yet been written, as I started outlining in my last piece. I am now working on a new book (on which more another time) and in any case am not an academic historian; but I hope that the work of writing such a history is taken up by someone, not least because I think that much of relevance to the future of food will emerge from it if done with a suitably wide-angle lens.

This lens would avoid the pitfalls both of essentialism (‘Welsh food’) and of flattening Welsh experience to merely a regional subset of ‘British’ experience in food. It would instead place the full sweep of food history in this corner of Europe within a comparative perspective and draw on as diverse a range of sources as possible. So what would that lens encompass? Let me present eleven considerations that in my view are essential for any history of food in Wales:

• Such a food history would need in the first place to take the history of food in England into account, in all its regional diversity (à la Thirsk), across social classes and across time. The literature here is copious, both in terms of original sources and in terms of modern scholarship. But without a firm grasp of the trends, dynamics and key questions, no history of food in Wales can be written. In terms of the history itself, there are two overarching reasons for this; firstly, that food influences have tended to come into Wales via England (whether we’re talking about 17^th century gentry fashion, 18^th century drovers or 19^th century railways) and secondly, that only a detailed understanding of patterns in England can show us where different patterns prevailed in Wales – which allows us to get at the really interesting historical question of why. And incidentally, this is part of the reason why Welsh Food Stories is structured as it is – particular historic patterns in Wales of grain growing, cheese-making, shellfish and seaweed consumption etc. seem noteworthy to me, hence their inclusion in the book.
• Beyond this – and for similar reasons – a work of food history focused on Wales needs to take into account European food history, and in particular that of neighbouring parts of north-western Europe. Areas with similar cultural history, climates and landforms – prime among them Ireland and Brittany – and areas with related patterns of land use, such as the Alps or northern Germany, bring out the texture in Welsh food history, and provide instructive areas of divergence. This matters particularly when it comes to the role of political economy or heavy industry in shaping food, as witnessed by the parallels and disjunctures between Wales and Brittany.
• Just as importantly, interrogating the role played by colonialism in shaping Welsh food experiences, both directly and indirectly, is essential. Empire arguably brought Wales a significant measure of stability, certainly fueled heavy industry and allowed cheap imports of everything from tea and sugar to flour and apples into the country long before the 20^th century had dawned. The Welsh ‘amser te’ that was exported to the 1860s Patagonian colony was thus a product of Empire just as much as it was a product of Welsh ‘peasant’ culture – and this is true not only of the tea and sugar but also of the flour and raisins in the bara brith. Or again: Empire made London; and London provided a booming employment market for Ceredigion dairywomen and -men, as it had a century earlier for Welsh women gardeners. There is much to be unpicked here.
• Fourthly, such a food history needs to acknowledge and try to prize apart food as subsistence, food as commodity and everything in between. A nobleman’s Gwynedd table in the 13^th century no less than that of a gentleman’s Pembrokeshire table in the early 20^th is to a great extent the product of a household economy which only partly operates within a cash economy. But if there are aspects of wealthy households’ foodways that can be termed ‘subsistence’ then there are also aspects of peasant households’ food economies that link into commodified regional, national and international markets – from butter and eggs sold at a Carmarthenshire market town to store cattle on a smallholding in Ardudwy sold on to drovers. This approach in particular gives us the necessary space to evaluate the place of vegetables, fruits and foraged foods within the diet (as parts of the diet regarded historically in northern Europe as of marginal importance and holding both notably high and notably low cultural prestige) – neglected on the whole by pre-modern commentators, but not therefore absent by any means.
• Fifthly, regional differences within Wales need investigating. Here we stumble into farming practices across landscapes and through time, which themselves are a subject of research and debate. But useful conclusions can be drawn on the basis of the available knowledge and eyewitness accounts in our possession from the 12^th century through to the 20^th. How similar was peasant and noble fare in Anglesey and Glamorgan to each other in the 13^th century? Had the two regions diverged in this by the late 18th century? Why? Soil and climate, settlement pattern, Norman influence, the growth of different types of industry, of shipping and of roads and railways all have a part to play here.

Those are five of the key considerations for the kind of nuanced food history of Wales that needs writing. I will outline six more next week…

PS If you have read ‘Welsh Food Stories’ and enjoyed it, you’ll be doing me and my lovely publishers (brand-new Calon who exist to take Welsh stories to a global stage) a massive favour by leaving a review. Diolch!