New England Food History

Historical period

Indigenous three-sisters agriculture, coastal harvesting and maple for millennia; European fishing on the Grand Banks from the early 1500s, before settlement; the epidemics of 1616-19 that killed a large share of the coastal Indigenous population immediately before English arrival; Plymouth 1620 and Massachusetts Bay 1630; ⚠ THE TRIANGULAR TRADE — New England rum distilled from West Indian molasses, shipped to West Africa, with enslaved people carried to the Caribbean — which made Newport and Boston rich and is why molasses is in the baked beans and the brown bread; King Philip’s War and the dispossession that followed; the cod and whaling economies; the ice trade, which shipped New England pond ice to the tropics; the textile mills and the immigration that filled them; the 1919 Boston molasses flood; the collapse of the groundfishery; and the farm-to-table revival from the 1970s.

What is recorded

New England distilleries converted West Indian molasses into rum that was shipped to West Africa within the triangular trade, with enslaved people transported to the Caribbean. The wealth of Newport and Boston derived substantially from this trade, and the prominence of molasses in New England baked beans and brown bread is a documented consequence. The Boston molasses flood occurred in 1919. documented

European fishing on the Grand Banks and the Gulf of Maine, preceding settlement. documented

Epidemics kill a large proportion of the coastal Indigenous population of New England immediately before English settlement. documented

The triangular trade: New England rum distilled from West Indian molasses, shipped to West Africa, with enslaved people carried to the Caribbean. documented

The Boston molasses flood, a direct consequence of the city’s molasses trade. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to