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In the 19th century and much of the 20th, fish usually was cheaper than beef. Today, ocean-caught fish can be many times more expensive, largely because many of our supplies are nearing exhaustion. Brian Fagan's Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting and the Discovery of the New World ties together history, economics, gastronomy, theology, archaeology, and climate science to tell a multidisciplinary tale of how fish became so easy to catch and to eat.
Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting and the Discovery of the New World
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Most of the book covers late medieval times, but it reaches as far as the late 17th century. Time and again we learn that fisheries had a great economic importance. "A half century after it became widely known," Fagan writes, "the Newfoundland fishery was an enormous European industry, equal to the entire Spanish trade with the Americas," a surprising comparison that neatly brings home the revisionist ambitions of Fagan's enterprise.
In the same vein, to suggest the importance of fish in everyday medieval life, Fagan contrasts the castle and the monastery, the two major venues for eating in groups in medieval Europe. One practiced austerity, the other excess, but both needed fish. By the end of the 14th century, 700 to 800 people were employed simply in feeding the French court. The coronation of Pope Clement VI at Avignon required 7,428 chickens and a small army to cook them. It is no wonder that fish farming became popular, carp farming in particular. Fish farming also was a natural spin-off from water mills, a new power technology that drove much of medieval economic growth. By backing up pools of calm water, mills made it easier to farm fish.
Fish farming started in the 11th century and spread across Europe rapidly. By the mid-14th century, carp farming in particular was big business; by the 15th century there were 25,000 carp ponds in Bohemia alone. The downfall of carp farming came when herring and cod became easier to catch and preserve; most Europeans preferred the taste of fish from the sea.
Fagan's account of the herring trade is equally revealing, showing how better boats and better salting techniques made it easier to feed Western Europe. A town such as Great Yarmouth is hardly prominent today, but in medieval times it was renowned as a source of herring. Barrel brining—a key element to the preservation and thus the success of herring—came from the Baltic lands. Larger armies increased the demand for storable yet ready to eat fish. Regular herring fairs were held in the major cities of the Hanseatic League. New "cog" boats could carry many more herring than previous modes of transport.
When it comes to cataloguing and explaining such developments, Fish on Friday shines. The story of cod has been well traversed by Mark Kurlansky, but Fagan nonetheless adds new material. He surveys the Norse cod and stockfish communities of the 12th century and shows how much they depended upon their connections to the sea. To this day many Norwegians will snack on raw stockfish.
The problem with this book is its framing. Fish on Friday pretends to be much more than a (selective) history of the late medieval fish trade. Fagan writes:
Between 1620 and 1650, the mercantile nations of Europe turned the Atlantic basin into a single huge trading area, where salted fish, slaves, and sugar flowed along distant trade routes with increasing predictability. England played a leading role in this commerce, part of a polygon of trade connections that linked Newfoundland, New England and other American ports, the West Indies, the Wine Islands, and Europe in an intricate lattice. The seed of this crystalline structure was the most ancient tale of all, in the fish required by devout Catholics to fulfill their religious obligations.
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