No Useless Mouth

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20-50
A01=Rachel B. Herrmann
african american food history
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agricultural history
American colonies
Author_Rachel B. Herrmann
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black colonists
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJK
Category=HBLL
Category=HBWF
Category=NHK
cherokee alliances
colonial america food diplomacy
colonial american food sovereignty
COP=United States
cross-cultural
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
enslaved people food sovereignty
environmental problems colonies
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
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examples of victual warfare
fighting hunger after the revolutionary war
food diplomacy
food laws in nova scotia
food policies colonies
food security american revolution
food security colonists
food security history
historiographical
history of cherokees
history of creek indians
history of enslaved people
history of food security
history of iroquois indians
hunger in colonial america
Indigenous studies
introduction to food history
iroquois food diplomacy
Language_English
native american food diplomacy
native american food history
native american food sovereignty
native american history
native american relations with colonists
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Political Gastronomy
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
softlaunch
studies of hunger are always studies of power
timothy pickering
victual imperialism
victual warfare

Product details

  • ISBN 9781501716119
  • Weight: 907g
  • Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
  • Publication Date: 15 Nov 2019
  • Publisher: Cornell University Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Paperback
  • Language: English
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"Rachel B. Herrmann's No Useless Mouth is truly a breath of fresh air in the way it aligns food and hunger as the focal point of a new lens to reexamine the American Revolution. Her careful scrutiny, inclusive approach, and broad synthesis―all based on extensive archival research―produced a monograph simultaneously rich, audacious, insightful, lively, and provocative."The Journal of American History

In the era of the American Revolution, the rituals of diplomacy between the British, Patriots, and Native Americans featured gifts of food, ceremonial feasts, and a shared experience of hunger. When diplomacy failed, Native Americans could destroy food stores and cut off supply chains in order to assert authority. Black colonists also stole and destroyed food to ward off hunger and carve out tenuous spaces of freedom. Hunger was a means of power and a weapon of war.

In No Useless Mouth, Rachel B. Herrmann argues that Native Americans and formerly enslaved black colonists ultimately lost the battle against hunger and the larger struggle for power because white British and United States officials curtailed the abilities of men and women to fight hunger on their own terms. By describing three interrelated behaviors—food diplomacy, victual imperialism, and victual warfare—the book shows that, during this tumultuous period, hunger prevention efforts offered strategies to claim power, maintain communities, and keep rival societies at bay.

Herrmann shows how Native Americans, free blacks, and enslaved peoples were "useful mouths"—not mere supplicants for food, without rights or power—who used hunger for cooperation and violence, and took steps to circumvent starvation. Her wide-ranging research on black Loyalists, Iroquois, Cherokee, Creek, and Western Confederacy Indians demonstrates that hunger creation and prevention were tools of diplomacy and warfare available to all people involved in the American Revolution. Placing hunger at the center of these struggles foregrounds the contingency and plurality of power in the British Atlantic during the Revolutionary Era.

Thanks to generous funding from Cardiff University, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

Rachel B. Herrmann is Lecturer in Modern American History at Cardiff University. She is the editor of To Feast on Us as Their Prey.