ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the Caribbean colonies as areas with global significance in which the Spanish and British faced resistance and refusals in the field of food and, conversely, spaces in which the colonized showed their agency in proposing and imposing a different diet upon the colonists. Colonists in the nineteenth-century Caribbean had a certain number of domestic slaves: some of them took care of the children of the family, some did the cleaning, some cooked the colonists’ food and others served it. The chapter evaluates the role of slaves in the development of a Creole cuisine and its consumption by the colonists. Even in a context marked by a strong power asymmetry, slaves played an active role in the expansion of Caribbean Creole cuisine. According to the sources, colonists depended upon their slaves in everything that concerned food, even if the power relations were unbalanced in favor of the colonists. Therefore, this chapter examines intercultural practices connected to the preparation of dishes, investigates kitchens as dual areas of mediation in which slaves were autonomous even if they had to follow directives and, finally, slaves’ role in contributing to the diffusion of a different diet among colonists.
