Abstract
Dried cod has played a similar role to sugar in the international chain of commerce. It became a major traded commodity between British North America (Newfoundland, Nova Scotia Gaspe) in the nineteenth century. Cheap cod fed the slaves who grew and produced the sugar (and coffee and cotton) which in turn energised the workers of the Industrial Revolution who worked the machines which made the commodities of empire. The machines in factories and their output provided the material basis of Empire. Sugar and cod were important in the cultures of Britain, Newfoundland, the West Indies, West Africa and Brazil. Demand (tastes) and (low) price dictated that salted cod would become a main staple in the West Indies and Brazil even though ample supplies of fresh fish existed locally.
Department
Economics
Publication Date
6-1-2015
Journal Title
Commodity Histories
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Herold, Marc W., “Nineteenth-Century Bahia’s Passion for British Salted-Cod: From the Seas of Newfoundland to the Portuguese Shops of Salvador’s Cidade Baixa, 1922-1914” (London: Commodity of Empire Working Paper No. 23, Ferguson Centre, University College London, June 2015), 32 pp. ISSN: 1756-0098 at http://www.commodityhistories.org/resources/working-papers/nineteenth-century-bahias-passion-british-salted-cod-seas-newfoundland (this is an extended version of a paper published earlier in Portuguese)
Rights
Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share-Alike 2.0 England and Wales https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/legalcode
Comments
This is a working paper published in Commodity Histories in 2015, available online: http://www.commodityhistories.org/resources/working-papers/nineteenth-century-bahias-passion-british-salted-cod-seas-newfoundland