Oceans of Wine: Madeira and the Emergence of American Trade and Taste (review)

Hancock’s Oceans of Wine may neglect an angle from which the early modern history of Madeira wine can be studied, but readers will be challenged to locate it. In the tradition of commodities studies, launched by the exemplary Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, 1985) by Sidney Mintz, Oceans of Wine considers a single product from inception to consumption. Along the way, Hancock engages a wide variety of literatures and methods, creating an interdisciplinary study of grand proportions.

Hancock opens his account of Madeira from 1640 to 1815 with the tale of his discovery of a literal mound of record books in a dilapidated storehouse on the island of Madeira. He presents eleven chapters (in addition to the introduction, coda, and conclusion) that explore the wine from many vantage points. The first substantive chapter sets up the history of Madeira as a place and as a product. Part I, entitled “Making Wine,” grants two chapters to the process of growing the grapes and processing the wine itself. Part II, “Shipping and Trading Wine,” covers moving and marketing the wine, from the firms that handled the trade in Madeira, through worldwide networks for shipping and selling the wine, to local retailers. Hancock displays his attention to detail by following the supply chain all the way down to small-scale and local vendors of Madeira in the North American backcountry. This section about the business of wine forms the heart of the book, occupying five chapters and close to half the main text. The third part, “Consuming Wine,” analyzes the habits and rituals of wine consumption. Finally, the coda and conclusion places the study into broad contexts, in terms particularly of revolutions in trade and consumption. This study exemplifies the interdisciplinary potential of Atlantic history.

By following wine everywhere it went (even into the sickroom, where it was prescribed for many ailments), Hancock illuminates wine’s many histories, from grape to sideboard. Along the way, he employs the research strategies of many different disciplines, from botany through marketing to archeology and sociology. He writes knowledgeably about viniculture, changes in shipping practices, shifting consumption patterns, and the efforts to use wine to project gentility. The book is nothing short of breathtaking in its scope, erudition, and the extent of the archival research. If Hancock privileges a theoretical framework, it is the concept of networks; in his view, people created connections and then, through their individual calculations and actions, gradually constructed an early modern Atlantic world knit together by trade and other exchanges.

The book’s sole flaw relates to its sheer scope and breadth; it may daunt the less dedicated reader. Hancock himself wryly refers to its ample extent in the conclusion, observing that a shorter book might have explored the context for Madeira’s place in the Atlantic world (which he describes as the prevailing fashion) but would have thereby omitted the significance of individual contributions to the creation of that world. The book’s heft probably precludes it from replacing Mintz’s comparatively brief Sweetness and Power, but its elegant and engaging presentation (replete with numerous illustrations) makes it otherwise just as approachable. It will become essential reading for those interested in numerous aspects of the early modern Atlantic world, among them histories of business, agriculture, and consumption.