Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and Discovery of the New World [Hardcover]

Brian Fagan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 20, 2006

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. Fish on Friday tells a new story of the discovery of America. In Brian Fagan's view, that discovery is the product of the long sweep of history: the spread of Christianity and the radical cultural changes it brought to Europe, the interaction of economic necessity with a changing climate, and generations of unknown fishermen who explored the North Atlantic in the centuries before Columbus. The Church's tradition of not eating meats on holy days created a vast market for fish that could not be fully satisfied by fish farms, better boats, or new preservation techniques. Then, when climate change in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries diminished fish stocks off Norway and Iceland, fishermen were forced to range ever farther to the west-eventually discovering incredibly rich shoals within sight of the Nova Scotia coast. In Ireland in 1490, Columbus could well have heard about this unknown land. The rest is history.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. It was fish, not spices, that led to the discovery of North America," speculates anthropologist Fagan. From 1495 to 1525, he tells us, the monks at Westminster Abbey consumed almost 11,000 kilograms of fish per year. The sheer enormity of this piscine cuisine offers a snapshot of the exalted place fish held in the life of religious communities. Fagan (The Little Ice Age) regales readers with a fast-paced, edge-of the-seat tale of Christianity's role in the development of fishing and fisheries as commercial ventures. By the fourth century, fish had become the center of Christian fast days and holy feasts. Early forms of aquaculture were developed to meet the demand, but eventually, as Fagan points out, Europe's rapidly growing Catholic population and its demand for fish on Fridays and fast days led, as early as the Middle Ages, to a North Atlantic fishing industry providing herring and cod and developing salting and smoking to preserve the fish for the transatlantic trip. But the onset of the Little Ice Age forced fishermen further south, and eventually they followed cod down to their winter waters off the coast of Maine. Fagan's rich prose creates a lively social history that will captivate readers of Mark Kurlansky and Jared Diamond. B&w illus.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–This is a thought-provoking, well-researched explanation for early European exploration. According to Fagan, the knowledge and technological innovations that made ocean voyages possible were gained over hundreds of years by ordinary people in pursuit of fish. The appetite for the food was enormous in Europe during the Middle Ages. Rare fish graced the tables of nobles as a delicacy. Stockfish replaced meat during holy days and supplemented the meager diet of peasants. Preserved fish fed soldiers when they were far from home. Political situations, monopolies, and climate changes forced fishermen farther from shore. Better designs for boats followed, as well as new methods of drying and salting the catch. The longer shelf life for fish allowed for even greater distances to be covered. The author's lively style and use of fascinating details make this an entertaining book that would also be useful for students doing research on specific aspects of medieval life. An analysis of the various claims of who reached the New World first is particularly interesting. Fish recipes, from classical Rome to 17th-century New England, are sprinkled throughout the narrative. A reverse chronological time line is provided, as well as 12 maps and 27 black-and-white illustrations that include reproductions of contemporary paintings of towns and shores and woodcuts showing smokehouses, waterwheels, and other inventions. Drawings of fishing boats, fish, and fishing tools are also featured.–Kathy Tewell, Chantilly Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (February 20, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465022847
• ISBN-13: 978-0465022847
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #210,572 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #84 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Cooking by Ingredient > Meat, Poultry & Seafood > Seafood

More About the Author

Brian Fagan was born in England and studied archaeology at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was Keeper of Prehistory at the Livingstone Museum, Zambia, from 1959-1965. During six years in Zambia and one in East Africa, he was deeply involved in fieldwork on multidisciplinary African history and in monuments conservation. He came to the United States in 1966 and was Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, from 1967 to 2004, when he became Emeritus.
Since coming to Santa Barbara, Brian has specialized in communicating archaeology to general audiences through lecturing, writing, and other media. He is regarded as one of the world's leading archaeological and historical writers and is widely respected popular lecturer about the past. His many books include three volumes for the National Geographic Society, including the bestselling Adventure of Archaeology. Other works include The Rape of the Nile, a classic history of archaeologists and tourists along the Nile, and four books on ancient climate change and human societies, Floods, Famines, and Emperors (on El Niños), The Little Ice Age, and The Long Summer, an account of warming and humanity since the Great Ice Age. His most recent climatic work describes the Medieval Warm Period: The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations. His other books include Chaco Canyon: Archaeologists Explore the Lives of an Ancient Society and Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and the Discovery of the New World and Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age gave birth to the First Modern Humans. His recently published Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind extends his climatic research to the most vital of all resources for humanity.
Brian has been sailing since he was eight years old and learnt his cruising in the English Channel and North Sea. He has sailed thousands of miles in European waters, across the Atlantic, and in the Pacific. He is author of the Cruising Guide to Central and Southern California, which has been a widely used set of sailing directions since 1979. An ardent bicyclist, he lives in Santa Barbara with his life Lesley and daughter Ana.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Tale of Fish, Religion, the Sea, and History, June 19, 2006

By 

Bruce Trinque (Amston, CT United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and Discovery of the New World (Hardcover)

"Fish On Friday: Feasting, Fasting and the Discovery of the New World" by Brian Fagan is a complex journey through cultural, political, and even culinary history, examining the role of fish in Western European diet through Medieval times to the seventeenth century, exploring how that fish was supplied to European tables, and investigating how North Atlantic fishing fostered European "discovery" of North America.

By the 14th century, meatless fasting days imposed by the Catholic Church -- not only limited to Fridays and Lent -- accounted for more than half the days of the calendar. While the common people may not have observed all such fasting with the same rigor as various monasteries, such a requirement created an enormous market for preserved fish, even beyond demands stemming from everyday eating and the need for easily transported (and reliably stored) foodstuffs to provision armies and ships' crews. Local freshwater fish supplies quickly proved inadequate and, over the centuries, the supply of fish shifted first to salted herring and, eventually and more satisfactorily, to salted and dried codfish, the latter known as "stockfish", originated by the Norse but later becoming a staple throughout Northern and Western Europe.

The story of these fish supplies and how they fared against over-exploitation and climate change, and of the evolving technologies to catch and preserve the different fishes is complicated, encompassing activities in many lands over several centuries. Not the least fascinating -- and surprisingly obscure -- part of the tale involves the development of various types of seagoing vessels suited to best harvest the fish, especially in the stormy North Atlantic. The quest for fish led men to the waters off Ireland and Iceland and, perhaps, even further west. Fagan concludes that merchants of Bristol, England, in the decade preceding Columbus's 1492 transAtlantic voyage launched expeditions in the North Atlantic to search for the fabled island of Hy Brasil. The documentary history for what these expeditions actually accomplished is at best murky, but it seems reasonable to suppose that they extended at least to the rich fishing grounds on the banks off the eastern coast of North America and perhaps to Newfoundland itself or beyond. If so, information from these voyages almost certainly lay behind John Cabot's 1497 "discovery" of the North American mainland and maybe even Columbus's 1492 voyage (Columbus previously had tried unsuccessfully to gain the backing of Henry VII of England for an attempt to reach the Spice Islands across the Atlantic).

Fagan's writing is informed by his personal experiences in sailing small craft in the very waters discussed in the text, and the text is broadened by the inclusion of various period fish recipes (Fagan strongly cautions against trying one of these recipes at home -- that for "garum", the Roman fish sauce produced by allowing spiced fish to rot to a liquid state).

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A different kettle of fish, October 24, 2006

By 

silversurf (Planet of Paint) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and Discovery of the New World (Hardcover)

The author takes a seemingly simple question, where did the Christian custom of eating fish on specfic days come from, and assembles lots of interesting historical detail to support his answer.

This book is written for a general audience, and would appeal to a range of readers. You could read this book as a sort of mystery story, as it is written in a popular and very readable style. (Actually, one of mysteries the author unravels is why haven't more people asked this question in the first place). If you are fond of history, you may find that a lot of the background information is familar to you, but it is combined in a novel way that will make you see familiar facts in a different light. If history is not your favorite subject, but you are interested in food and cooking,the book gives lots of interesting details about food production and eating habits in a variety of ancient and modern cultures.

I enjoyed reading this book, although at times the author's love of sailing and fishng lore leads to long discussions of what seem to me to be minor points. But that's just a quibble. This book was educational and fun to read, and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in history, religion, or food.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Turning silver into gold, April 12, 2007

By 

Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fish On Friday (Hardcover)

What led Christian Europe into the Western Hemisphere? According to Brian Fagan, it wasn't spices or even empire, but the need to respond to religious dogma. Over the centuries, the Roman Catholic church added fast and saint's days to the Christian calendar. Deprived of meat, which was hardly common fare in any case, the population became increasingly dependent on fish. Freshwater fish stocks were readily depleted, and those caught often failed to accept the curing techniques of the day. Ocean fish became the mainstay of many, and even those seemingly rich waters were erratic producers. In this interesting and informative history, Fagan depicts the fish, the ships that sought them and the business of the fisheries as they expanded across the Atlantic. Only the fishermen remain undefined.

Fagan points out that many elements enter into any rendition of the fishing trade. Rising populations and increasing numbers of "fast days" were but two factors. Another was the hierarchical society emerging from the Middle Ages. The best fish, such as sturgeon and salmon, went to the aristocracy and senior church officers. The monastic orders, although declaring themselves frugal in policy, increasingly divided their population, with fish quality at meals following status. The poor were left with salt herring and coarse fish. Proper preservation was slow in developing, the author notes, and varied with the fish and location. Slow and unreliable transportation limited cartloads of fish no further than 150 kilometres from shore. Another major topic Fagan deals with is the almost minimal change in ship design over the centuries. Not until the Norsemen began to roam the eastern Atlantic did real seaworthy vessels emerge. These were fast, deep-water sailers, but had little carrying capacity. For fishing purposes, they were limited in catch size. Later ships, the buss, the dogger and the caravel, while lumbering hulks compared to the Norse knarr, could bring home a sizeable load.

Shifting fish swarms, due to mostly unknown causes, drew secretive fishers to fresh sites. Fagan notes that while we know much about ships and the market for fish, who found which location remains an enigma. Fishermen keep close counsel on where they have gone to reap the sea's harvest, and much of the chronology of new discoveries of fish stocks isn't available. The Icelandic waters brought many fishers northwest from Europe, introducing them to new locations as competition and various taxes and regulations hampered expansion into the new scene. It is government accounts and pronouncements that offer the best clues to who was fishing where. From Iceland, storms, contrary winds or shifting ice drove many fishermen to Newfoundland and the great cod fisheries. Settlement in North America was slow and hesitant, the author notes, but drying and salting the catch was a spur to establishing communities. According to Fagan, once the Grand Banks fisheries were tapped, there was more gold to be made from the silvery cod than directly from the Indies itself.

It is difficult to know whether to rate this book for its history or as a resource for innovative cooks. Along with graphics of ships, fish and useful maps, Fagan spices the text with mouth-watering recipes. Although one of the first entries warns "We recommend that you don't make this recipe", the remainder are clearly worth close further attention. The entire work, recipes, analysis and speculation alike command attention. Fagan's prose retains your attention and interest throughout. A challenging thesis, ably presented. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]