[Sca-cooks] How did slaves influence medieval cookery?

[Suey]

  All reports of Columbus are overshadowed by what the writer wants to 
convey. Kate has brought out that gold and conversion to Christianity 
were the reasons for the voyage in her book, In my book they are salt 
first and spices second. Secondary results are food items and 
concubines, slaves - whatever you want to call them who knew how to 
teach the conqueror or foreigner how to use them.
Slavery has its progression from before Roman times until now. Although 
Columbus took some slaves to Isabella and Ferdinand as booty I do not 
see this as setting up the business which was based in Las Palmas in the 
Canaries at a much later date. The only contact I know about with 
Columbus in the Canaries was his lover in Gomera Island, which had 
nothing to do with slave trade.  Until the 19th Century we do not have 
protests as big as the American Civil War on slavery. - Meantime, who 
was in the kitchen? How did slaves influence cookery? - and in our case 
medieval cookery?
Suey

  8. Re: OT: With all due respect  from Daniel Phelps
> Lest you think me exceptionally Eurocentric when you read what I have to say
> some of my ancestors were native American.  In my personal opinion making
> Columbus the whipping boy for the European colonial exploitation of North
> and South America and for that matter Africa south of the Sahara is a bit
> much.  Columbus died thinking that he had found China or at least the far
> east.  Be that as it may the Norse had been to North America and the only
> thing that kept them from ultimately exploiting their discoveries over time
> was that the "little ice age" did for them in Greenland and shut that route
> down.   There is circumstantial evidence that the Chinese found the west
> coast but lost it going from one emperor to another.  The Basques had
> already been to Red Bay and had set up shore side operations there before
> Columbus. Cod fishing was already going on on the Grand Banks which is just
> a short distance from the North America mainland.
>
> Ok consider what would have happened if Columbus had not received the
> sponsorship of the Spanish Crown.  The Portuguese would have found Brazil
> while going off course sailing around Africa.  Fishing off the Grand Banks
> would have resulted in discovery and exploitation.  The Basque discoveries
> would have become common knowledge.  It was only a matter of time before
> Europe recognized that the new world was out there ready to be exploited.
> It was going to happen and the differences in technology and culture was
> certain to make it have unfortunate consequences for the native peoples of
> the New World .
>
> What did for the peoples of the New World?  In the main, european diseases
> far more than colonial explotation.  The european sailors that first visited
> were the human equivalent of wharf rats.  They had been exposed to virtually
> every nasty disease circulating and survived, albeit often as the vectors of
> infection to populations who had never seen such diseases.  We are talking
> about various and sundry social diseases, measles, typhus, typhoid,
> diphtheria, small pox, and cholera to name a few.  When those diseases hit
> the new world in waves of infection the result was not pretty.  Mortality
> has been estimated to have been as high as 90% in single outbreaks of some
> of these diseases.  When the northern Eurpoeans began to colonize the
> eastern seaboard of North America they often found deserted villages and
> fields.  Why was that?   Disease.  Even if the Europeans had come to the new
> world purely as benevolent missionaries the old order in the Americas was
> doomed.
>
>
>