When I first arrived in the Dominican Republic, I was intrigued by two things that I thought were strange for a tropical island nation: the most popular fish eaten was "bacalao" (Bah-cah-LAH-oh) or dried codfish from the Northeast Atlantic and that most Dominicans don't know how to swim. I still don't know why Dominicans don't know how to swim, but after doing some internet research, I discovered why Dominicans savor the taste of codfish over fresh fish caught along their coasts. Thanks to Google Books, I was able to read the excerpt of a book called the Caribbean, the Codfish Story. When Europeans colonized the New World, they discovered that the waters off the coast of Newfoundland were teeming with cod. This fish supplanted the codfish industries in Europe because it was more plentiful and accessible and provided the base of the triangle trade between Europe, the Caribbean, and the Northeast colonies. High quality cod was exported to Europe, and salt cod was exported to the Caribbean, where it was the preferred food for slaves because it was high in protein, did not spoil, and did not take up a lot of space. The Caribbean traded sugar cane and other agricultural products for cod and slaves in Europe.
On my list of books to read is Mark Kurlansky's Cod: Biography of a Fish that Changed the World.
No comments:
Post a Comment