We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Feeding the Community: London's Immigrants and Their Food, 1650–1800.
- Authors
Taverner, Charlie
- Abstract
Early modern London was a diverse metropolis, but we know little about the social lives of its migrant communities, especially how they fed themselves. Influenced by recent anthropology and sociology of food, migration, and ethnicity, this article examines specific communal food practices of two minority communities in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Sephardic Jews and French Protestant refugees. Rather than studying how unusual foods marked these migrants as different, it explores how mundane food matters shaped social relations within these communities. The first section analyzes the system of shechita, the ritual slaughter of meat by Jews, by drawing on records of community leadership, account books, and printed texts on the subject. The second section examines two institutions established to feed the Huguenot poor, a soup kitchen in Spitalfields and the hospital known as "La Providence," both of which left extensive records of administration. Though different, the case studies show how migrant groups, through specific food practices, constructed and experienced community within the capital. The article adds to our knowledge of migrant lives in the city and highlights the richness of institutional records from within these communities. It also suggests how food history can connect minority stories to British history more broadly.
- Subjects
IMMIGRANTS; FOOD habits; HISTORY of London, England; SHEHITAH; HUGUENOTS; ETHNIC foods; SEPHARDIM; URBAN life
- Publication
Journal of Social History, 2022, Vol 56, Issue 2, p326
- ISSN
0022-4529
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/jsh/shac025