Political Gastronomy: Food and Authority in the English Atlantic World

"The table constitutes a kind of tie between the bargainer and the bargained—with, and makes the diners more willing to receive certain impressions, to submit to certain influences: from this is born political gastronomy. Meals have become a means of governing, and the fate of whole peoples is decided at a banquet."—Jean Anthèlme Brillat—Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy

The first Thanksgiving at Plymouth in 1621 was a powerfully symbolic event an...