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.
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.
Despite a nod early on toward a quasi-anthropological treatment of Christian fish symbolism, the doctrine of the atonement, and the theology underpinning the practice of “mortification of the flesh,” Fagan’s last sentence sets the reader up to expect a book quite different from the one he has written. And there are substantive problems with such a thesis in any case. Was it really Catholicism which drove the high demand for fish? To be sure, Catholicism did encourage consumption of a considerable amount of seafood. But key questions are left unanswered.
First, how much were Catholic dietary strictures in fact enforced? Catholicism requires many rituals and practices, but of course the late medieval peasantry and nobility were hardly compliant in every respect. The book offers little evidence on how widely dietary rules were obeyed. We are given some examples of the dietary rules being broken or stretched, which raises doubts about enforceability. Priests were sanctioned for eating meat, and various exemptions allowed both chicken and beaver (supposedly related to fish) for Catholic ritual purposes. A 1607 proclamation by King James—he of the King James Version—noted that much meat was eaten during the previous Lent. The reader becomes only more suspicious when encountering a string of conjectures—for instance: “The rapid expansion of the French presence [in Newfoundland] may have been a consequence of the Council of Trent, which tightened church discipline in the face of a rising tide of Protestantism.” No further evidence follows on the point.
Second, did the dietary strictures, even if enforced, matter much? In 13th-century England, nearly half the days of the year required abstinence from meat. That sounds terribly burdensome, but for purely economic reasons, many individuals were not eating much meat in any event. Meat was expensive, and of course modern refrigeration was nonexistent. Preserving and storing meat involved further costs; ice houses had not yet achieved their later efficiencies. Bread, vegetables, soups, and gooey concoctions were the staple of many a diet. Water was the most effective means of transportation, so fish was easier to move than meat. Animal husbandry techniques were rudimentary. So if people were told not to eat meat, was it religion that stopped them? Or were dietary proclamations a kind of cheap talk, enabling many people to ease their consciences at little real burden? Again, we do not get a sense of the matter from the book.
The religious part of the story also does not in every way fit the data. Fagan notes that (per capita) fish consumption in the West reached a peak in the 14th century. Yet the drive to explore the sea, sail afar, develop maritime trading posts, build ports and the like, has continued through the present day. It is difficult to believe that fish consumption, which peaked so early and then declined, could be so central to a trend so long-lived. Surely standard military and commercial motivations drive the real story.
The progression of history also casts doubt on the importance of Catholicism for the fish trade. Most of England and much of the Netherlands ceased to be Catholic during the Reformation. Yet these nations continued to exercise their seafaring prowess. They built more ships, explored the world, and improved their fishing efficiency. Again, it hardly seems plausible to lay so much weight on the influence of Catholicism.
Finally, the link between the Newfoundland fisheries and Columbus can be questioned. Perhaps Fagan did not write the book-jacket copy, but it remains part of the work. It starts: “What gave Christopher Columbus the confidence in 1492 to set out across the Atlantic Ocean? What persuaded the king and queen of Spain to commission the voyage? It would be convenient to believe that Columbus and his men were uniquely courageous. A more reasonable explanation, however, is that Columbus was heir to a body of knowledge about seas and ships acquired at great cost over many centuries.” Interesting questions, but they are barely addressed in the book itself. Columbus is discussed, but Isabella and Ferdinand do not appear in the book’s index.
In a pleasing departure from convention, recipes are offered throughout the book, many of them medieval. (In the acknowledgments, Fagan credits an “old friend and passionate food expert” for testing the medieval recipes.) Moderns will be struck by the sweetness of the offerings. Lenten fish pie is spiced with raisins, dried prunes, dried figs, dried dates, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and eight ounces of white sugar. At this time European food was closer to Arabic food; the French had not yet innovated by taking the sweeter spices out of the main courses and segregating them into the desserts.
Taken as a wide-ranging account of the medieval fish trade, offering fresh angles on familiar historical settings, Fagan’s book is excellent. The problems lie in the claims and the packaging, not the actual substance.
Tyler Cowen is Professor of Economics at George Mason University and Director of the Mercatus Center. His most recent book is Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding (Princeton Univ. Press). He blogs at www.marginalrevolution.com.
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