Feasts of Change: Food and History in the Cook Islands, 1825-1975

Abstract

This thesis explores the central and transformative role of food in the history of the Cook Islands between 1825 and 1975. Food had long been fundamental in the Cook Islands in matters of economy, community, and status, and quickly became a crucial component of cultural contact with Westerners. Decisions about food were often at the heart of aspects of Western civilisation that Cook Islanders accepted, rejected, or modified. Food also played a defining role in Cook Islanders' transition to independence and their reclaiming of traditional identity in a new, globalised world, even as imported foods began to take a toll on Islanders' well-being. 'Feasts of Change' examines the story of food in Cook Islands history, which revolved around religion, gender, land use, and trade. For generations food functioned as social contract and currency for Cook Islanders, in addition to shaping their spiritual ideology. Understanding these priorities and beliefs is one way to interpret how Cook Islanders responded to novel food items and new agricultural methods, and why they were unwilling to abandon their high-status island foods or the traditions that went with those foods, even as they embraced many of the trappings of modernisation. Central to my arguments is that, as cash cropping and the amount of imported foodstuffs increased, Cook Islanders incorporated these new production practices and foodstuffs into pre-existing customs in innovative ways. Often at odds with the necessity, and ingenuity, of adaption is the intersecting struggle to delineate healthy diets and 'proper' land use patterns in the Cooks. An examination of food in Cook Islands history allows for new interpretations of Pacific history, which has largely overlooked food as a cultural medium and agent of change. 'Feasts of Change' demonstrates how food history is key to understanding the lived experiences of colonialism in the Pacific. Further, by tracking changes in agriculture, dietary advice, and feasting, the thesis uncovers powerful threads of cultural continuity even as colonialism brought sobering changes to human and environmental health. 'Feasts of Change' offers an intensive and local study of cultural change in a Pacific community as well as a new insights into the wider practices of missionary work, colonisation, and globalisation.