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How Spanish and Portuguese Colonization Shaped Corn Cultivation and Consumption

Madison Albano

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When Spaniards first came into contact with the Americas at the end of the fifteenth century, they encountered various new species of plants that they were able to incorporate into their own diets. Corn, or maize, was one of these. In a letter that Columbus sent to Spain in 1492, we wrote of “a sort of grain they call maize which was well tasted, bak’d, and dry’d, and made into flour.”[1] As a vegetable with grain-like properties that varied in color, shape, and texture, corn was previously unknown to regions of Europe, Africa, and Asia. For various Indigenous people throughout the Americas, maize had been an important crop for centuries, and corn varied genetically throughout different regions: some corn had a flourier texture while “flint” maize was stiffer. Since corn is a crop that can grow particularly fast over vast amounts of land, Spanish and Portuguese colonizers throughout the Atlantic world used it to change agricultural landscapes. Likewise, such colonizers relied on the relatively nutritious crop in order to cheaply sustain their own populations as well as populations of enslaved people. Throughout regions of central and north America and West Africa, Spanish and Portuguese colonizers spread the cultivation of corn and consequently changed the consumption habits of people indigenous to such areas. 

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Image of flint corn. Wikipedia.

When Spanish colonizers settled in the Americas, they initially intended to sustain themselves with European food. Although Spaniards oftentimes imported familiar foods such as grains and wines from Europe, the constant shipment of food was unsustainable. Yet when the colonizers tried to grow European wheat in the New World in the early sixteenth century, they encountered difficulties.[2] Therefore, early Spanish settlers relied on crops endemic to the Americas – one of the most noteworthy crops was corn. Spanish settlers in Florida and Central America would oftentimes raid Indigenous communities and steal their corn in order to sustain themselves.[3] Through their increasing reliance on corn, Spaniards effectively altered the diets of Indigenous populations by limiting their access to corn.

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Drawing of corn by Italian artist Pietro Andrea Mattioli, titled I Discorsi (1573)

Before the Spanish conquest, many Central American Indigenous people relied on corn for sustenance. For example, the Tarascans of present-day Michoacán enjoyed an almost entirely vegetarian diet and 80% of their caloric intake was based on corn.[4] Yet the arrival of Spaniards complicated this relationship: although the Spaniards too relied on corn, they wanted to continue their Old World diets, and therefore imported livestock to the region. This livestock – particularly the pigs – reproduced rapidly and overwhelmed the region. Such animals trampled and ate maize crops, destroying the food that comprised the Tarascans’ diet for centuries.[5] In place of corn, the Indigenous population became increasingly reliant on the Spaniard’s livestock meat.

 

While Spaniards transformed the diet of Tarascans and other Indigenous groups by supplanting their access to corn with other Old-World foods, Spaniards altered the diets of Indigenous coastal Georgians and Floridians by introducing corn to their diets in the seventeenth century. As the Spanish built their empire, they spread food from previously conquered lands to newly conquered territories. Before the arrival of the Spanish, various Indigenous groups throughout Florida used hunter and gather techniques to acquire food, and therefore ate food endemic to their nearby regions. Isotopic evidence suggests that many Indigenous people who lived along the Atlantic coast relied on fish and seafood, whereas inland populations ate deer and wild plants.[6] After Spanish settlers entered the region, however, anthropological evidence suggests that Indigenous populations began to eat corn in large quantities. Though the diets of various Indigenous groups in the Florida and Georgia area were initially heterogeneous and varied by region, the advent of Spanish colonization rendered their diets far more homogenous and corn dependent.

 

Throughout the Americas, corn played an important role in the Spaniards ability to transform the land that they colonized. By depleting the amount of corn in some Central American regions and introducing it to other North American populations, Spaniards homogenized the diets of their empire; as an accessible and easy-to-grow crop, corn was essential to this homogenization.

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Besides spreading through the Americas, corn also made its way east to Europe and Africa. In Africa it

became a crop of sizeable importance. In 1540, a Portuguese traveler recorded that farmers in Cape Verde cultivated large quantities of corn.[7] However, the traveler did not record how such corn travelled from the Americas to Africa. Historians argue that there existed two likely routes of trade: in the sixteenth century, Portuguese sailors brought maize seeds with them to their colonies along the Gold Coast, or, Spaniards shipped corn seeds back to their crown and such seeds later passed through established Mediterranean and Saharan trade routes before reaching West Africa. The latter route relied on Flint maize - a type of corn distinguished by red kernels with hard exteriors - that was prevalent in the Caribbean. The seeds would have been traded from Spain throughout the Mediterranean, then the Nile River Valley, until they finally crossed the Saharan dessert where the seeds were ultimately distributed amongst the coastal regions of West Africa.

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Map of trade routes of Flint Maize in the 16th century

 

The cultivation of corn in Africa itself was directly linked to the slave trade; in order to clear forests for land in which to build settlements and forts to contain populations of enslaved people and house all the traders involved in the slave trade, colonizers and African laborers planted corn directly after cutting down forests in order to keep the land fertile and stable.[8] As a crop, corn grew differently than the millet and sorghum endemic to the West Coast. Corn can quickly mature, therefore farmers planted it during the pre-harvest season. Before the introduction of corn to West Africa, this pre-harvest period was known as the hungry season, as many people did not have access to a sufficient amount of food during this time period. Therefore, corn was a relatively strong crop that could be grown over vast areas of land in a quick period of time; these properties of corn were exploited by Portuguese colonizers, who used the crop to clear the terrain in order to establish settlements for the trade of enslaved people.

 

Likewise, Portuguese colonizers exploited corn in order to sustain their enslaved populations. By the 1680s, corn had established itself as a staple crop throughout West Africa. John Barbot, a French Royal Africa tradesman, noted the prevalence of corn throughout the Guinea Coast in his journals. He argued that corn was popular amongst European slave traders, who fed their populations of enslaved people with corn as it was a relatively cheap and nutritious meal.[9] Amongst European colonizers, corn facilitated the institution of enslavement by providing tradesmen with cheap provisions. Enslaved populations were regarded as a monolith forced to survive off a limited diet. Before the sixteenth century, corn was completely unknown to regions of West Africa, but by the seventeenth century, Portuguese colonizers and West African laborers had populated the region with a surplus of corn.


Spanish and Portuguese colonizers used the American crop corn to transform and sustain their budding empires. By homogenizing the diets of people they exploited, and likewise reshaping the landscapes they colonized, Spanish and Portuguese settlers used the crop to help consolidate their powers in an increasingly connected Atlantic world.

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Notes

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[1] Jeffreys, M. D. W. “Columbus and the Introduction of Maize into Spain.” Anthropos, vol. 50, no. 1/3, 1955, pp. 427–432. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40451037. Accessed 28 Apr. 2021. p 427.

[2] LaCerva, Daniel A. “Purepécha y Pescado: Food, Status, and Conquest in 16th century Michoacán.” (MA thesis, The University of Toledo). August 2017. p 47.

[3] Earle, Rebecca. “’If you eat their food…’ Diets and Bodies in Early Colonial Spanish America.” The American Historical Review. Volume 115, Issue 3

https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/115/3/688/41267?login=true

[4] LaCerva, Daniel A. “Purepécha y Pescado: Food, Status, and Conquest in 16th century Michoacán,” p 24

[5] Ibid, 49.

[6] Regional variation in the Pattern of maize Adoption and Use in Florida and Georgia.” by Dale L Hutchinson, Clark Spencer Larsen, Margaret J Schoeninger and Lynetter Norr. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2694627?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents, p 398

[7] McCann, James. “Maize and Grace: History, Corn, and Africa's New Landscapes, 1500-1999.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 43, no. 2, 2001, pp. 246–272. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2696654. p 250.

[8] McCann, James. “Maize and Grace," p 254.

[9] Miracle, Marvin P. “The Introduction and Spread of Maize in Africa.” The Journal of African History, vol. 6, no. 1, 1965, pp. 39–55. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/179646. p 43.

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Bibliography

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  • Jeffreys, M. D. W. “Columbus and the Introduction of Maize into Spain.” Anthropos, vol. 50, no. 1/3, 1955, pp. 427–432. .

  • LaCerva, Daniel A. “Purepécha y Pescado: Food, Status, and Conquest in 16th century Michoacán.” (MA thesis, The University of Toledo). August 2017.

  • Earle, Rebecca. “’If you eat their food…’ Diets and Bodies in Early Colonial Spanish America.” The American Historical Review. Volume 115, Issue 3.

  • Hutchinson, Dale L, Clark Spencer Larsen, Margaret J Schoeninger and Lynetter Norr. "Regional variation in the Pattern of maize Adoption and Use in Florida and Georgia.” https://www.jstor.org/stable/2694627?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents, p 398

  • McCann, James. “Maize and Grace: History, Corn, and Africa's New Landscapes, 1500-1999.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 43, no. 2, 2001, pp. 246–272.

  • Miracle, Marvin P. “The Introduction and Spread of Maize in Africa.” The Journal of African History, vol. 6, no. 1, 1965, pp. 39–55.

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