"Pleasure and Desire" is a unique micro-historical research work by Dr. Erica J. Peters, with a new perspective: studying human society through the way they eat.
Dr. Erica J. Peters is co-founder and director of the Culinary Historians of Northern California. She received her BA from Harvard University and her PhD in history from the University of Chicago. She has written on various aspects of Vietnamese history and cuisine and has presented at numerous conferences across the United States and abroad. 
Book of Pleasure and Desire. Photo: QM.
A unique way to learn about the past
In the book Appetite and Desire , Erica J. Peters chose a unique way of studying the past: studying human society through the way they eat. This is an important trend of world history: studying not only "big" histories such as politics, economics, war... but also expanding the field of research to "small" fields such as fashion, cuisine, entertainment... In the introduction to the book, Erica J. Peters wrote: "Food not only tells who people are but also tells what they want to become. Research on food should not only consider how identity is formed through food but also how individuals have used food to promote their own interests and aspirations." Although it is a "small" perspective, it does not mean trivial but rather finding another "entrance", another approach, a vivid look at the past. And through this perspective, the author looks at the life of a community closer to historical truth, discovering the hidden dynamics and processes of history. According to Erica J. Peters, to write the book, she collected and processed a huge amount of documents about Vietnam including history (public and private history), non-fiction records of the Middle Ages, Chinese and Nom literature of the Middle Ages, folklore documents, archives of the colonial government and newspapers as well as literature of the French colonial period, in many different languages. That amount of documents/historical materials alone is a great contribution of the book. It systematizes a huge list of documents for those who want to learn about Vietnam and can be referenced in many other studies. Dr. Erica J. Peters. Source: ericajpeters.
Dr. Erica J. Peters. Source: ericajpeters
Values go beyond food
Enjoyment and Desire deals with the diversity of culinary styles in the colonial countryside, the introduction and fusion of Asian-European, Vietnamese-Chinese-French cuisine, and the way people reacted to the changes in food and drink (fish sauce, wine, rice, dairy, French food, etc.) that they faced in their daily lives under colonial rule. Unlike the subtitle of the book, Enjoyment and Desire does not stop at the 19th century with the Tay Son brothers' uprising and then the victory of the Nguyen Dynasty, the birth of a unified kingdom with the largest territory in history up to that time. The author's research extends until the 20th century, to the period before the August Revolution, when the colonial regime was established and the Vietnamese people had to face both colonialism and Western culture. In the book, the author picks out the “points,” the central phenomena that marked the changes in the way Vietnamese people ate during the 19th and early 20th centuries: First, the famine that fueled the Tay Son Revolution. Then, King Gia Long, who ascended the throne, used the rice fields to strengthen the foundations of his dynasty’s power. Under King Minh Mang, with his vision of agricultural harmony with cuisine across Vietnam, the king hoped to unify the country, quell rebellions, and repel would-be European colonizers. But he was unable to realize that vision. Poverty and popular resistance thwarted the dynasty’s ambitions. Next, the book looks at the changing aspirations of cuisine in the French colonial countryside. As they arrived, the French gradually took over the Nguyen empire, taking the south in the 1860s and the northern cities in the 1880s. In the countryside, however, small-scale struggles lasted for decades, demonstrating that the Europeans could not bring order or solve the problem of hunger. To survive, villagers came up with their own solutions, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in conflict. Next, the book discusses how the French changed the taste of two of the most popular products throughout Vietnam, fish sauce and rice wine. The French colonial state needed to increase its finances to protect the French national budget. New taxes seemed promising, especially on two village necessities: rice wine and salt. The unprecedented restrictions on the production and distribution of rice wine and salt quickly affected the daily lives of almost everyone living in Vietnam at the time. Beginning in 1902, the French state ordered villagers to buy wine from approved French-owned companies that produced a cheaper, “pure” alternative to the village’s rice wine. Unfortunately, the company’s rice wine tasted terrible. Villagers across the country rejected it, ranging from creative appeals to the state on the grounds of consumer preferences to seemingly archaic forms of violence such as attacking armed Doan officials with bamboo sticks. Poor villagers and gentry joined together to confront French repression and rhetoric with a variety of flexible, forceful strategies. The book also covers how the Chinese introduced elements of their own culture into Vietnamese cuisine; the widespread resistance among the French to eating “native” foods in general, with the exception of tropical fruits. Finally, the book presents the new urban Vietnamese class’s ability to absorb French culture through cuisine. By choosing the key and valuable "themes", Khoai Khau and Khau Aspiration has achieved value beyond the story of eating and drinking. It is the journey of a nation to unification in the late Middle Ages, how they resisted the invasion of the French and the colonial regime, how they accepted foreign cultural elements. In short, Khoai Khau and Khau Aspiration is a meticulous and quality research work on Vietnam, bringing a lot of new knowledge about the history and cultural history of Vietnam. The work is seriously translated with the modern Vietnamization process but still retains its appeal and is very accessible. ------------ The book Khoai Khau and Khau Aspiration won the 7th National Book Award in 2024.znews.vn
Source: https://znews.vn/goc-nhin-moi-ve-xa-hoi-con-nguoi-viet-nam-the-ky-19-qua-an-uong-post1514529.html
Comment (0)