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  • A Workman Is Worthy of His Meat: Food and Colonialism in the Gabon Estuary
  • Laurent Fourchard
Jeremy Rich. A Workman Is Worthy of His Meat: Food and Colonialism in the Gabon Estuary. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. France Overseas: Studies in Empire and Decolonization series. xx + 220 pp. Map. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $45.00. Cloth.

As Jeremy Rich states in his introduction, he is not interested in “food preparation nor eating as a means of exploring cultural logics or constructions of gender” (xvii), but rather in the evolution of changing food consumption and supply patterns in colonial Libreville. The reason seems obvious: “the fact that food is so rarely mentioned in urban histories of Africa means [End Page 159] that scholars have missed out on a central concern of townspeople as consumers, farmers, traders, employers and fishermen” (21). Obviously if city markets and food trade networks have been for decades a central concern in precolonial history, anthropology, or geography, feeding the colonial cities is an issue not yet adequately addressed by historians. Jeremy Rich’s book is thus welcome in providing a detailed case study of interdependent food relationships among Libreville, its immediate surroundings (the estuary), and the French empire. The period 1840–1960 is well covered by a large range of official and missionary sources from Gabon, France, and the United States, complemented by a few interviews collected in Libreville.

Throughout the seven chapters of the book there is a strong emphasis on food shortage and the constant difficulties faced by colonial officials in supplying foodstuffs for Libreville. The neglect of the Gabon hinterland by colonial administrators came long before the oil boom in the country. Colonial administration never (or very poorly) supported farmers and preferred to rely on imported French food. Chapter 4 on famine in the Gabon Estuary between 1914 and 1930 is particularly illuminating on this point. Food shortages resulted from a combination of climatic changes, consequences of the First World War, heavy impositions by the government on local labor, and the arrival in the 1920s of timber companies along with their own significant food demands. Rich suggests that probably a quarter of the population disappeared. Interestingly, townspeople reacted vigorously to such a desperate situation by boycotting shops as a means of lowering prices or by petitioning—often successfully—French deputies in order to demand the replacement of unpopular local administrators. Supplying food to Libreville was so central a business that it led to the emergence of a new generation of intermediaries (such as the first president of independent Gabon, Léon Mba).

Changing food consumption is another central issue of the book. In the mid-nineteenth century only a tiny elite had access to imported food and could adopt new European eating styles (30), while at the end of the twentieth century the ingredients of ordinary Libreville meals had a strong French flavor (1). However, the process by which changes in food consumption spread from a small minority to the majority of the population remains unclear. If the struggle of the elite to gain access to imported food is well explained, food consumption in the everyday lives of most residents is not addressed directly. For nonelites, was it cheaper to eat in town or in other areas of the estuary? What was the place of food in the emergence of a new urban sociability? Did wine become part of eating styles in Gabon, as in France? These issues are not raised, and one is forced to ask: how is it possible to study the evolution of food consumption while excluding “eating as a means of exploring cultural logics or construction of gender?” This limitation, however, does not affect the strength of the book’s focus on the centrality of food in understanding colonial power relationships. Jeremy [End Page 160] Rich’s book is an invitation to explore this fascinating issue more broadly and deeply in colonial and urban studies on Africa.

Laurent Fourchard
Centre d’Etude d’Afrique Noire
Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Bordeaux
Cedex, France
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