The Impact of New World Food Crops on the Diet and Economy of China and India, 1600-1900
Author(s)
Mazumdar, Sucheta
Abstract
This essay begins with the history of the introduction of American food crops to parts of Asia, then explores the ways in which these crops transformed the diets of China and India. The perils of attempting to write a comparative history of the world’s two largest agrarian economies are many, but the divergent trajectories of the history of consumption, adoptions, and uses in these two countries allow us to ask more fundamental questions: To what extent does the local context determine the significance of the global stimulus? Why was the peasant economy of China more open to the rapid adoption of American crops than its Indian counterpart?
