ABSTRACT
The feasting experienced by the friar stands in stark contrast to the hunger and famine experienced in Caribbean before, during, and after the seventeenth century. After Columbus, the settling of the Caribbean became a model for globalization, creating distinctive and widening gaps between the haves and the have-nots. European women similarly traveled in the circum-Caribbean in order to engage in bioprospecting, recording the local plants and foods. In 1897, the British Royal West Indies Commission reassessed the needs of the Caribbean colonies. The commission recommended the creation of botanical gardens on each island. If the Caribbean could focus on economically valuable plants, a small, local agricultural sector might be profitably developed. Consuming the Caribbean was not limited to the local acquisition of foods and plants for culinary and medicinal purposes. The distinctiveness of a singular Caribbean regional cuisine was recognized in Linda Wolfe's The Cooking of the Caribbean Islands, a Time-Life book in the series Foods of the World.
