Symbolic Food and Culture Through Trade

In a world where food is of utmost symbolic and cultural importance and eating is equatable to identity, its movement is crucial to study. Spanning back to the earliest of times, specific goods move between cities changing the makeup of a place. As traders in Genoa and Venice profited and expanded despite their small size, they changed the makeup of Italian food and impacted what was eaten and how identity is defined. This creates an evolved definition of what “Italian” and “authentic” can be. Wright details the “great cities” of Genoa and Venice (253) and the ways in which trading with the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires influenced each, impacting cuisine and culture. As Venice expanded its role into one as a shrew, key trading area, the wealthy demonstrated their abundance through food, again signifying its symbolism.

Bits of culture were exchanged through trade and over conquest, power exchanges, and rule. Early laws in 1475 forbade excess in Venetian banquets and limited quantities of food, à la “ciborum lautica,” while famines were commonplace in the peasant’s countryside. With the 1453 Conquest of Constantinople, Venice experienced food issues because of their previous wheat deals. While Italian producers make a lot of the food consumed in the country, much is adopted and traded from other places and brought in for consumption. As Venice is considered a “strange” city, as a Republic and complete with canals rather than agricultural land, trade was crucial to survival; threats of shortages led to expansion of trade with new areas. 

Gender roles are similarly tied to the establishment of identity and culture. Much as the Harem’s importance to the Sultan could be political, Venetian Courtesans were the most educated and also considered influencers. Pedani details the role of women in all male environments: “In this period [male] foreign ambassadors acted… but they clearly understood that, if authority belonged to men, a large share of power belonged to women” (11). Imperial harem and kiras had the ear of the Sultan and impacted trade between Venice and the Ottoman Empire. This brought Venetian items into the Harem and exchanged cultural ideas between the two. While women are often erased and invisibilized in history, their stories are strong influencers of a society constructed over time. Esther Handali, Franceschina Zorzi Michiel, Fatma hatun, and Esperanza Malchi are not well-known names of the Ottoman Empire, but were integral to the development of the identity presented today. In 1591, Beatrice Michiel came from Venice to Istanbul as a spy in the harem, demonstrating the fluidity of people and culture between Italy and the Ottomans.

Much as Joanne the Mad married and therefore expanded her empire’s power and reach, so did the ladies of the Harem work in the Ottoman Empire to construct identity and culture. The state and the market are inherently linked in the study of Mediterranean cities and cultural patterns. As states make decisions, marriages, trade patterns, colonial pursuits, they determine food and culture. When we eat in Genoa and Venice today, we are eating pieces of historic decisions made by rulers and traders centuries ago, influenced by other territories and empires. When Joanne the Mad married Philippe I, she joined the Holy Roman Empire with Spain; when Philip II ruled as King of Spain in 1556, he was tied to England, Ireland, Naples, Sicily, Milan, Spain, and Portugal, able to impact the culture and formation of identity for all at that point in time and place, still relevant today.

While we call Constantinople a melting pot and can see it as such with renegades and people from other cultures welcome, I see a similar welcoming vibe in Florence like I felt in today's Istanbul. Here, there are tourists everywhere, yes, but also a sense of shared community with everyone you speak to. In Istanbul, hospitality was everything. In restaurants and on the street, people would always rush to help us out or lend a hand. I saw an old man trail after a mother and daughter couple wordlessly holding an umbrella over their heads as rain poured down, because the mom didn't have an umbrella to keep her kid dry in the rain. That is the why society acts, allowing people to come in and accepting them at least a little. That is not always the case, but it was definitely felt in specific moments.