Recent scholarship on Central and Eastern Europe has approached the region from the imperial perspective; in particular, by exploring entanglements between territories situated on the borderlands of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. In addition, studies of culinary culture have become more prevalent in both global and imperial histories. Alex Drace-Francis’s volume blends these approaches by considering transimperial encounters manifest in mămăligă, a maize-based porridge commonly identified with Romanian national cuisine, from the seventeenth to early twentieth centuries.
The book’s first six chapters are organized along chronological lines. Here, Drace-Francis explores maize’s imperial significance by discussing agricultural policies and tax laws implemented by occupying Ottoman, Russian, and Habsburg officials during their respective periods of rule. From the eighteenth century through the end of World War I, the Romanian principalities of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania were each governed by these powers for varying lengths of time, and though Wallachia and Moldavia experienced a period of independence as a united realm from 1877 to 1918, Transylvania remained under Habsburg dominion until 1918. Drace-Francis shows how maize affected relations between local peasants and their imperial overlords, noting that while Ottoman and Habsburg administrators exercised a levy on other crops, maize was rarely taxed. As a result, residents could sometimes evade imperial taxes by growing maize. In addition, although landowners grew other grains such as millet and wheat, maize was easier to grow and store than other grains and more reliably yielded plentiful harvests. These factors facilitated maize’s rise to becoming a dominant element of the Romanian food supply.
Drace-Francis also proposes alternative interpretations of some key historical events, foregrounding maize’s role in social unrest and military conflicts. The Wallachian Revolt of 1821 is traditionally portrayed as a power struggle between a Greek strongman and Romanian revolutionary in the context of a larger revolt against Ottoman rule. In contrast, Drace-Francis argues that concerns regarding widespread maize shortages, and subsequent stockpiling, pillaging, and illicit sale of the grain, were more salient factors in fueling the conflict on the local level. Similarly, he argues that maize shortages were a central driver behind the peasant uprisings of 1888, and that unpopular taxes on maize, rather than broader administrative or structural issues within the government, were the primary impetus behind the Peasant Revolt of 1907. These interpretations underpin the author’s contention that maize-politics shaped economic, social, and political aspects of Romanian life at both the individual and societal levels.
The book gestures toward broader international entanglements in Drace-Francis’s discussion of Romanian involvement in global trade during the mid-nineteenth century. In 1829, Wallachia and Moldavia became Russian protectorates following the Russo-Turkish War. Under the new regime, residents of the two principalities no longer owed tribute to Ottoman administrators and local tradesmen were allowed to sell maize on the international market via ports along the Danube. Although Ottoman officials were initially the primary buyers for Moldo-Wallachian grain, merchants from other countries, particularly Great Britain, began importing the maize after widespread crop failures in Western Europe during the 1840s. Expanding commerce increased international awareness of Romanian maize as a desirable commodity, earning Romania the reputation of having the “finest [maize] in the world” (92). Maize production and its presence on the world market allowed Wallachia and Moldavia to establish trade relations with other countries and increased the significance of the principalities in European commercial affairs. Drace-Francis even argues that one of Great Britain’s primary concerns during the Crimean War was maintaining access to Carpathian maize.
The final two chapters shift from discussing maize as a food to analyzing mămăligă as a cultural good. Drace-Francis notes that mămăligă rarely appears in Romanian-language publications from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with most references to the dish coming from foreign travelers. As a result, he argues, “scholars, doctors, geographers and military men” from elsewhere in Europe “were assiduously canonizing [Romania’s] national cuisine” (120). In a similar vein, it was French organizers, rather than Romanian exhibitors, that advertised mămăligă as a Romanian national dish at the 1889 and 1937 World’s Fairs in Paris. Although the author offers limited commentary on this point, further discussion regarding foreigners’ roles in codifying national cuisines would yield useful insights regarding the nature and formation of national cultures. What can we make of the lack of references to a purported national dish in Romanian-language sources? By extension, what insights do the dish’s imperial and global connections offer regarding the processes of national identification? At a minimum, perhaps they suggest that so-called “national” foods are more often given that designation to characterize their perceived cultural meaning, rather than as a reference to their geographical origin.
Drace-Francis’s analysis draws attention to the global ties frequently found behind local foodways, even for dishes considered to be “traditional” in a given region. (Other examples of this phenomenon include paprika in Hungary and the potato in Ireland.) Along the way, he weaves together material from an array of sources, including agricultural records, diplomatic correspondence, artwork, commercial advertisements, memoirs, plays, and poetry. The author provides a wealth of information, but further analysis regarding mămăligă’s transimperial nature would make the argument more persuasive. For example, beyond the Romanian lands’ location at the crossroads of three large empires, what made the cultivation and consumption of maize particularly imperial? More explicit connections between the accounts of regional agricultural and political dynamics and the author’s claims regarding mămăligă’s imperial nature would anchor those claims more firmly. What kinds of imperial ways of living or thinking did it transmit? In addition, linking the history of mămăligă with other scholarship on the cultural and culinary aspects of empire would add further weight and dimension to an already engaging story.
Drace-Francis offers a detailed, multifaceted tale of maize’s Carpathian wanderings criss-crossing the terrain between peasants, landowners, imperial administrators, merchants, and foreign travelers. By exploring the Romanian lands, he introduces a new realm of food history that provides a wealth of insights regarding the interplay of national, imperial, and global dynamics that shaped southeastern Europe. Mămăligă is a welcome addition to the smorgasbord of transimperial cuisine.
