Assessment 8 out of 10
The book really did view history from another perspective.
Travelling in northern Scandinavia you still see cod drying on racks. Kurlansky thinks the Vikings crossed to Greenland & on to Vinland dependent on dried cod. The Basques, unlike the Vikings. had salt. Cod has very little fat and therefore when salted & dried is rarely spoilt,
He suggests the Basques were fishing cod off Newfoundland & the North American Atlantic Seaboard without saying where they were sourcing it, but must have landed to dry & salt the fish, so Cabot, Cartier et al didn’t “discover” this New World, but were following an established, although un-signposted, route.
The Hanse monopolised herring fishing, which remains the fish of choice in former Hanse ports. They tried to do the same with Icelandic cod in the 15th Century, excluding English vessels which chose to withdraw.
Cod live on the fluctuating frontier between warm & cold currents, so fishing was in winter in New England, spring off Maine & in summer Newfoundland. Thus, in New England farming & fishing could be combined, as it could be in Iceland, but not further north.
Poorer quality fish were taken to the West Indies to feed slaves, the best quality from Gaspé ( because of the care in presrvation) to Iberia & the Mediterranean to suit Catholic religious tastes. Cod were taken from New England to Spain & the West Indies bringing produce back from both. A triangular trade took slaves to the West Indies and molasses to New England where it was distilled into rum, & some taken back to Africa.
Newfoundland never progressed in the same way & imported rum from Jamaica
Making peace at the end of the Seven Years War, the British seized French Canada. This provided the opportunity for Jersey merchants, speaking both French & English, to finance & supply French fisherman, now cut off from France, & trade their cod. Kurlansky fails to mention this, indicating its relative importance may appear greater to someone looking at this stage in cod history from Jersey. France was left Guadeloupe &, off Newfoundland, St Pierre & Miquelon which in due course gave them access to fishing grounds subject to extended territorial limits.
Entrepreneurial & puritan New Englanders launched a merchants’ American Revolution to avoid Navigation Act trade restrictions, anything but a proletarian revolution. They developed sailing schooners for the cod trade which were then adapted to take out British vessels during the War of Independence.
Two men open decked Dory rowboats fished the Grand Banks (the Portuguese singles), frequently lost in the fogs, the result of the mixing sea currents.
Steam powered; steel hulled trawlers depleted North Sea fish & then moved on to shelves fished by Icelandic rowed line fishermen. During the Great War the Royal Navy seized Brinish trawlers, giving respite to fish numbers on the Icelandic shelf. In 1944, with Denmark still occupied, Iceland became fully independent. Iceland prospered with the presence of the US military and enjoyed a cultural revival after centuries of neglect by royal Denmark. There were three successive Cod wars between the UK and Iceland, both members of NATO, as Iceland extended its fishing limits successively to 12, 50 and 200 miles from the coast.
The 200-mile limit became general, with 90% of fishing grounds within 200 miles of at least one nation. It left Spain in particular, with its taste for fish and a large fishing fleet, but very limited fishing grounds of its own. Kurlansky. describes attitudes to Spanish trawlers reflecting British working-class fondness for fried fish and xenophobia. Perhaps Cameron should have read Cod before launching the Brexit referendum.
60% of the fish tracked by the UN’s Food & Agricultural Organisation are classed as fully exploited. There are signs of disturbance to the marine ecology with arctic species filling the void left by the cod. Newfoundlanders are described as almost pathological in their denial that they had killed off the bounty.
The final section describes recipes using cod and regional foods from cod, taramasalata, cod tripe, fish balls and bacalao, which we think of as Portuguese, but in origin is probably Basque.
The book was innovative in establishing a genre for history books based on an object or subject like longitude, nutmeg or tea, so why didn’t I score it higher than 8 out of 10?
I found it discursive, moving on too quickly from one story or theme to the next, when I wanted to know more about a particular matter, mentioned but then left.
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