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In This Issue, The American Historical Review, Volume 115, Issue 3, June 2010, Pages xiii–xvi, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.115.3.xiii
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Extract
The June issue includes two articles on food in early modern colonial contexts, a piece on official efforts to create a “national language” in Meiji Japan, an analysis of an all but forgotten U.S. congressional act that freed the wives and children of slaves who enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War, and an AHR Exchange on an article we published in 2008 titled “The ‘Myth’ of the ‘Weak’ American State.” There are also five featured reviews, followed by our normal extensive book review section. “In Back Issues” calls attention to articles and features in the AHR from one hundred, seventy-five, and fifty years ago.
Articles
In “‘A continuall and dayly Table for Gentlemen of fashion’: Humanism, Food, and Authority at Jamestown, 1607–1609,” Michael A. LaCombe uses the multiple meanings of food—as symbol, rhetorical device, and basic human need—to shed new light on the familiar figures and events of early Jamestown. He notes that the colony's grave supply problems raised political questions as well as logistical concerns for its leaders, and thus challenged those leaders to justify their choices of policy and conduct. But the governing figures at Jamestown employed different languages of politics and authority in asserting their leadership. Some, such as George Percy, evoked paternalist images of a leader; others, including Captain John Smith, based their self-presentations on rhetoric and imagery rooted in humanism. The historiography of the early period of Jamestown often focuses on breakdown, failure, and dysfunction, but legitimate differences such as these lay at the root of many early disagreements. Further complicating their efforts was the necessity to pursue negotiations with Powhatan, the paramount chief of the Chesapeake region's native population. English leaders and Powhatan understood that food conveyed similar meanings, though they often differed on what they were, and Powhatan knew full well that English dependency on his people's food stores could not be reconciled with English claims to preeminence in the Chesapeake. In these ways, food offered early modern English and their Algonkian hosts rich opportunities for cross-cultural negotiation and a complex contest for dominance.
