ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author argues that she encouraged critique through her portrayal of uncontrollable variables that disrupt economic theory: that is, the effect of environmental disasters on food security. Harriet Martineau’s career as one of the nineteenth century’s most prolific public intellectuals spanned almost 60 years. As a journalist, political commentator, travel writer, novelist, reviewer and historian, her literary impact was unsurpassed; yet it was her economic series Illustrations of Political Economy that made her a household name and gave her national and international access to politicians and other people of influence from a range of political persuasions. Martineau uses the French setting to speak to British concerns by emphasising Britain’s economic and social investment in France. Britain’s foreign investment is taken further in Cinnamon and Pearls, for where French Wines essentially deals with two imperial nations in trade agreement, Cinnamon and Pearls portrays the effects of imperial dispossession.
