Having Keynes for Dinner
Keynes on food and globalization:
The first golden age of globalization that John Maynard Keynes looked back on and mourned in 1919 flourished particularly through the food economy. It also powered America towards global supremacy. Chicago grew rich on cows, California on oranges, Alaska on fish. As Keynes wrote, it seemed that a man could "adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world, and share, without exertion or even trouble, in their prospective fruits and advantages". This was never more true than when applied to beef; "the spirit of capitalism made flesh", according to the journalist and author Upton Sinclair. In 1889, William Vestey, an Englishman, discovered the export of frozen partridge, during a sightseeing tour of Argentina. By 1921, Vestey's meatpacking business was one of the wealthiest enterprises in England, with 2,300 butcher shops, a shipping line and packing enterprises in every continent.
That passage is from a review of a new book from Harvard University Press called Fresh: A Perishable History by Susanne Freidberg, takes a good hard look at what refrigeration did to/for the world.
Via A&L Daily.
