Feeding Globalization

Between 1600 and 1800, more than 700 ships from England, France and the Netherlands called at Madagascar, drawn by the chance to restock with fresh provisions. Those vessels crossed the Atlantic and Indian Oceans on voyages that could last months, yet how their crews were fed has received little close study until now.

Hooper argues that the island's food supply was a key support for European commerce. Without it, merchants would have struggled to carry silver east to Asia and spices west to Europe. Settlements in Mozambique, Mauritius and at the Cape also depended on regular shipments from Madagascar to feed their colonists and enslaved workers.

Working from difficult source material that few historians have used, the author traces how Madagascar's role as a provisioner fit into European trading networks within the Indian Ocean and beyond it. Selling food reshaped trade routes and colonial ambitions, and it also encouraged political centralization and the slave trade on the island. Malagasy people were essential to sustaining global commerce, and the consequences reached deeply into their communities.

The book revises how Indian Ocean and global history are understood by showing that historians should consider food's part in making other exchanges possible.