food history Archives - Not Even Past

NEP Author Spotlight – Atar David

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The success of Not Even Past is made possible by a hugely talented group of faculty and graduate student writers. Not Even Past Author Spotlights are designed to celebrate our most prolific authors by bringing together all of their published content across the site together on a single page. The focus is especially on work published by UT graduate students. In this article, we highlight the many contributions made to the magazine by Atar David, our outgoing Associate Editor and Communications Director for academic year 2023-2024. Atar David Author Spotlight underscores the tremendous value of his indefatigable work on the magazine.

Atar David is a Ph.D. candidate in the History department at UT Austin, interested in the social, economic, and environmental history of the modern middle east, with special attention to agricultural policies, commodities, knowledge production, and food provision policies. His dissertation research focuses on the circulation of agricultural commodities and agronomic knowledge between the Middle East and the American Southwest from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Together with Raymond Hyser, Atar founded the “Material History Workshop” – a bi-monthly graduate workshop centered around material culture.

The 1878 Total Eclipse and Texas Curiosities

This article explores the 1878 total solar eclipse and its significant impact on Texas. Atar David delves into the historical context of the event, highlighting how it captivated both scientists and the public. The article also discusses the curiosity and excitement it generated, along with the scientific advancements it spurred in the region.

Picturing My Family: A World War II Odyssey

In this personal and poignant piece, Atar David reflects on his family’s experiences during World War II through the lens of photographs and stories passed down through generations. The article weaves together historical events with personal narratives, providing a unique perspective on the war’s impact on individual lives and families.

Banner for 'Fear and Lust in the Desert or How Lies, Deceptions, and Trickery Made California a Date Palm Monopoly', one of Atar David Author Spotlight pieces

Fear and Lust in the Desert: Or How Lies, Deception, and Trickery Made California a Date Palm Monopoly

This article by Atar David uncovers the intriguing history behind California’s date palm industry, focusing on the deception and manipulation that allowed the state to establish a monopoly. David explores how the desert landscape and the allure of exotic fruits led to a complex web of lies and trickery, ultimately shaping California’s agricultural identity.

Banner for 'Review of The Butterfly Effect: Insects and the Making of the Modern World by Edward D. Melillo (2020)', one of Atar David Author Spotlight pieces

Review of The Butterfly Effect: Insects and the Making of the Modern World (2020)

Atar David reviews Edward D. Melillo’s book The Butterfly Effect, which examines the profound impact insects have had on shaping human history and the modern world. David highlights key themes from the book, including the role of insects in global trade, agriculture, and even cultural symbolism, offering readers a detailed analysis of this unique intersection between entomology and history.

Cotton, Coal, and Capitalism: Review of Aaron Jakes’ Egypt’s Occupation and On Barak’s Powering Empire

In this dual book review, Atar David discusses Aaron Jakes’ Egypt’s Occupation and On Barak’s Powering Empire, both of which explore the economic and environmental history of Egypt under British rule. Atar David examines how these works contribute to our understanding of the relationship between imperialism, capitalism, and environmental change in the Middle East.

Banner for 'Material History Workshop, one of Atar David Author Spotlight pieces

UT’s Material History Workshop

This piece offers another take on the University of Texas’s Material History Workshop, focusing on different aspects of the event. Atar David and Raymond Hyser reflect on the interdisciplinary nature of the workshop and how it brings together historians, archaeologists, and scholars from various fields to study the material remnants of the past and their implications for contemporary historical narratives.

Banner for 'A Roundtable on Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930'2 by Bonald Worster (1797)', one of Atar David Author Spotlight pieces

IHS Climate in Context: Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s by Donald Worster (1979)

Atar David revisits Donald Worster’s seminal work, Dust Bowl, which examines the environmental and social catastrophe that struck the Southern Plains in the 1930s. The author discusses the book’s relevance to current climate issues and highlights how Worster’s analysis of human-environment interaction offers valuable lessons for understanding and addressing modern environmental challenges.

Banner for 'A Roundtable on The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution by Carolyn Merchant (1980)', one of Atar David Author Spotlight pieces

Roundtable: The Death of Nature by Carolyn Merchant (1980)

In this roundtable discussion, Atar David, Khristián Méndez Aguirre and Rafael David Nieto-Bello engage with Carolyn Merchant’s influential book The Death of Nature, which explores the historical roots of environmental degradation through the lens of gender and science. David, Méndez Aguirre, and Nieto-Bello discuss the book’s impact on environmental history and feminist theory, as well as its continued relevance in contemporary debates about sustainability and ecological justice.

The Lived Nile: Environment, Disease, and Material Colonial Economy in Egypt by Jennifer L. Derr (2019)

Atar David reviews Jennifer L. Derr’s The Lived Nile, a book that investigates the complex relationship between the Nile River, disease, and colonial economic policies in Egypt. David examines how Derr’s work sheds light on the environmental and health challenges faced by Egyptians during the colonial period and how these issues were intertwined with broader economic and political forces.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Review of Caviar: The Strange History and Uncertain Future of the World’s Most Coveted Delicacy (2002), by Inga Saffron.

Inga Saffron’s Caviar presents a well-rounded history with deep insight into the lives of various parties involved in caviar production, trade, and regulation. The book beautifully details the volatile caviar industry, painting a picture of a world where the sturgeon no longer jumps freely in the waters of the Volga River—or anywhere, for that matter.

Caviar, or the eggs of a mature female sturgeon, has impacted history in unexpected ways, shaping a new cultural and natural landscape while also leading to a tragedy of the commons in global waters. According to Saffron, the democratization of access to luxury goods has transformed the food of the tsars into a highly desired middle-class delicacy, all the while creating intense strains on sturgeon populations.

Image - Sturgeon on a beach, Rijksmuseum, RP-P-1888-A-12546 — *Sturgeon on a beach, Rijksmuseum, RP-P-1888-A-12546*

Caviar explores three distinct processes: (1) the rise of caviar to the forefront of the public mind, (2) the rush to capitalize on this newfound popularity, and (3) the post-Soviet destabilization of the caviar market. Saffron writes that sturgeon eggs were long approached with caution, considered a backward dish enjoyed in the five nations surrounding the Caspian, and discarded for the pigs anywhere else. Caviar was widely appreciated in the Russian Empire for religious reasons, and travelers who indulged in it at its freshest attempted to bring delicacy to the Italians, Greeks, and Ottomans. The perishability of caviar made it challenging to trade in until the invention of refrigeration and steam-powered ships rocketed it into a position of global prestige. Saffron writes that by 1820, “Caviar’s ephemeral nature and exorbitant price gave the food a status that appealed to the burgeoning bourgeoisie of Europe” (p. 77). With most Russian-produced caviar being shipped abroad, the price of caviar within Russia rose far beyond a working man’s budget.

Saffron then discusses the global race among nations to become caviar’s top producer. German, French, and American waters were quickly divided among competing companies eager to cash in on the growing market. Overfishing led to the near extinction of the American and European sturgeons as the next generation of fish was devoured on bread and blinis. The Soviet Union managed to maintain some control over sturgeon fishing by nationalizing caviar production, but even that wouldn’t last. Electric dam production and overfishing threatened to end the Russian caviar empire. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, poachers and newly established private institutions flooded global markets with cheap caviar (p. 164). Since the 1990s, the global caviar market has been a battleground between conservationists and poachers, and a limited number of legitimate businesses are still allowed to fish in the waters and tributaries of the Caspian.

Shed for Preparing Caviar on the Columbia River, 1899.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Saffron provides a highly persuasive argument, prompting a meaningful conversation about the place of caviar in the global commodity market. If one were to measure the impact of caviar on the global market in terms of consistent demand, reliable supply, and reliable transportation infrastructure, the caviar trade would seem to be in decline. Saffron reports that there are simply not enough wild sturgeon to “support the appetite of the whole world” (p. 264). Only around 1,800 mature sturgeon persist in the waters of the Volga River as of the writing of Saffron’s book.

Demand has grown substantially since the initial caviar explosion during the Industrial Revolution, leading to an imbalance exacerbated by heightened production restrictions. Today, the three species most associated with Caspian caviar production (beluga, Russian sturgeon, and stellate) have been classified under Appendix II endangerment and placed under international watch. With catch limits placed on the largest caviar producers, international importers like Gino International and Caviar & Caviar resorted to buying smuggled caviar to feed high demand. This illegally acquired caviar is often harvested before it is ripe, eliminating the interchangeability expected of a commodity. Transportation is also unreliable in the post-Soviet caviar market. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) reports stopping hundreds of pounds of caviar per suitcase brought through international airports by smugglers in the 1990s. The future of legally produced caviar is left in the hands of experimental projects like the costly sturgeon breeding of Stolt Sea Farms.

Cover of Caviar: The Strange History and Uncertain Future of the World’s Most Coveted Delicacy (2022), by Inga Saffron

Inga Saffron’s Caviar provides a charming yet chilling historical account of the challenges of sustaining a luxury commodity in a world where natural resources are under increasing pressure. Saffron focuses on modern culture as a driving force for the luxury goods market. Caviar was “appropriated as a delicacy by the wealthy” (p. 264). Intrigue fueled by the enigmatic Russian empire introduced caviar to the world as a food of “legend and tradition” (p. 164). This strange obsession has left the sturgeon in a compromised and uncertain position, deserving of Saffron’s title. The book is a rich historical account featuring several colorful interviews that read almost more like a work of investigative journalism than an academic publication. I greatly enjoyed Saffron’s writing and would recommend Caviar to readers looking for a captivating history of a well-loved delicacy or looking to engage in conversation surrounding the sustainability of the modern luxury market.

Emma Fisk is a sophomore in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, currently pursuing her B.A. in Government. She hopes to attend law school with a focus on intellectual property law.

Review of From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age(2023) by Xaq Frohlich

Go to the supermarket, check out the food information detailing the nutritional facts, buy it, and take it home. These everyday actions define our connection with food and shape who we are as consumers. Through social media, we are constantly confronted with information that associates food with health, wellness, and organic products as an endless line connecting what we eat now and the consequences in our future. Yet these decisions are not just about individual actions. Rather, food, technology, marketing, and nutritional facts — and the networks that bind them — have their own history of institutional and social construction through the twentieth century.

It is this context that Xaq Frohlich, a historian of science, technology, and food, takes as a starting point for his book. As a result, From Label to Table presents the history of institutionalism around nutritional facts, the social construction of consumers, the changes around the perception of food and its marketing, and the search to make food scientific and objective in the United States during the twentieth century.

The book’s six chapters present the history behind the construction of nutrition facts, following the different stages of the Food and Drug Administration‘s (FDA’s) decision-making. Frohlich identifies three stages in the relationship between consumers and food: the era of adulteration (1880s to 1920s), the age of food standards (1930s to 1960s), and the era of information (1970s to the present). Each era witnessed distinct politics and marketing techniques (production, distribution, and consumption) as well as legal and scientific expertise that created a conception of the consumer and worked with consumer tactics. One of the book’s main contributions is that this periodization embraces a more extensive macro-historical process in the United States in the twentieth century, from food scarcity to overconsumption.

Coca-Cola ad Elks Magazine, 1924 — Coca-Cola ad Elks Magazine , 1924.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

During the first decades of the twentieth century, urbanization and industrialization modified how people in the United States produced, consumed, and packaged food. Likewise, the development of global corporate entities, such as Coca-Cola, set the course towards a visual component through packaging and consumers’ feelings. Similarly, some companies produce food with vitamin-infused components. This process was modified through World War II, when food production accelerated via technology, specifically through long-term storage and heating infrastructures, such as refrigerators and microwaves. For the author, this global component encompasses decision-making around new food regulations in the United States.

Frohlich proposes two developments that changed the relationship between consumers and food in the decades following World War II. The first was the role of women as principal consumers. For the FDA and food production companies, women represented the new ideal food consumer, and they looked for new ways to persuade them to purchase their products. At the same time, food and science focused on medical debates such as using artificial sweeteners and their links to diabetes, cholesterol, and heart disease, increasing consumer information through what Frohlich calls nutritionism. At the same time, the expansion of supermarkets was a “self-service revolution,” increasing consumers’ independence in choosing food (p. 58-9). Both changes, Frohlich argues, pushed the state away from food regulations and contributed to increasing individual consumer choices and the role of private companies through nutritional labels.

Commercial for food packed in glass containers featuring a woman, produced by the Office of War Information.
Source: Library of Congress.

This process increased exponentially between the 1970s and the 1990s. In the 1970s, the FDA sought to include food labels that would aid individual consumer research, which, united with the role of private food companies, moved the food and medical debates more and more into the private sector. In an increasingly neoliberal context, nutritional information mashed together science and numbers. For Frohlich, the connection between health and nutrition can also be traced to the first Earth Day in 1969. Here, the emergence of ecologism in the United States increased the connection between individual decisions about food and climate change. This awareness of food production is fundamental to understanding, for example, the introduction of the biotech industry in producing genetically modified foods in the 1990s and our present debates about organic products.

Another contribution of the book is the conception of nutrition facts as an everyday technology. On the one hand, Frohlich shows how nutrition facts are a technological infrastructure. During the twentieth century, the development of nutrition labels and facts created a specific language of nutrition, where food was related to science and, as a marketing technique, to health. Of central importance in this historical process is how this language was incorporated into everyday American life. Here, the author’s theoretical approach is practical not only for food studies but can also be incorporated into the history of everyday technology in a broad spectrum, considering the relationships of consumers –emotional, informational, and risk ties— with technology and vice versa.

Happy Home Brand Tomatoes can label, 1920.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

On the other hand, for Frohlich, introducing a new language into the private sphere represents a singular vision from the United States regarding confidence in science and objectivity and an inclination to regulate food markets from public and private politics. As he mentions, this regulation culture can be viewed as a form of governability, connecting science, technology, and state formation. Moreover, the search for food regulation through nutritional facts also had a background form of state deregulation. These methodological and theoretical proposals can also help to study the formation of a liberal state and the limits of individual choices related to technologies outside the United States. For example, taking the case of the European Union and some Latin American countries, such as Chile and Mexico, which have also initiated their national food regulation policies, Frohlich’s definition of regulatory culture can be expanded in the future by focusing on other cases with a global perspective.

Whereas the book centers around “Americans’ relationship to food” (p. 20), and the evolution of nutritional facts during the twentieth century, it covers other themes, including the role of experts and expertise, consumerism, marketing techniques, and public and private spheres, all linking to the complex relationship between food and science through informative elements. Today, following Frohlich’s proposals, the study of this relationship opens doors toward a wider historiography of technology and food studies. But it also connects to the current public debates about the negatives associated with the production and consumption of genetically modified food, the consumers’ search for organic food production, and the medical –and pseudo-medical– information to which we are exposed daily about how to eat “correctly.”

Yohad Zacarías is a doctoral student in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. As a Fulbright doctoral fellow, her interests focus on electrification’s urban, environmental, and technological impact in Chile and Latin America between the 19th and 20th centuries. As a pre-doctoral project, she is researching the history of design and everyday technology in Chile during the 1970s and 1990s through advertising campaigns to reduce electricity consumption.

Review of Hungry for Revolution: The Politics of Food and the Making of Modern Chile (2021)

More than fifty years ago, Chile began a democratic path toward socialism with the election of Salvador Allende. President Allende promised that the country’s revolution would taste of “empanadas and red wine.” These quintessentially Chilean staples represented his pledge to ensure social welfare. In Hungry for Revolution: The Politics of Food and the Making of Modern Chile, historian Joshua Frens-String explores this relationship between revolutionary politics, food security, and nutrition science in twentieth-century Chile. He concludes that the Allende years signified the culmination of decades-long popular struggles to position food security as a basic right of democratic citizenship.

Over seven chronological chapters, Frens-String weaves together political, social, and economic history to reveal how Chile’s food system reflected larger inequalities within society. The book’s first two chapters chronicle the rise of workers’ organizations in the urban capital of Santiago and the mining camps of northern Chile. Despite distinct economic contexts, both regions grappled with high prices and food shortages. Frens-String uses profiles of individual labor organizers to drive the narrative. He shows that these actors identified hunger as clear evidence of working-class exploitation and demanded popular access to dietary staples. Through decades of campaigns against the rising cost of living, Chilean workers made it clear that food security was central to a functional national economy.

In chapters three and four, Hungry for Revolution shifts the focus from the streets to the halls of government offices. This section traces how state actors responded to the left’s politicization of food. In particular, Frens-String’s attention to gendered ideas is a significant strength of these chapters. Government officials, social scientists, and medical doctors often blamed mothers for poor nutritional outcomes. Thus, educational outreach targeted poor and working-class women. Public health officials in the 1940s offered cooking classes and consumer handbooks to teach new food preparation methods and to encourage new eating habits. In the countryside, the state urged rural women to participate in agrarian reform by embracing sacrifice and frugality. Government officials pushed women to plant small family gardens, preserve their own vegetables, and switch to composting to conserve scarce fertilizers. The state’s focus on female consumers in its efforts to alter Chile’s nutritional habits reflected gendered beliefs about work and domesticity.

Allende supporters walk toward the government palace to hear his speech on International Workers Day, 1973. Source: Biblioteca Nacional

The concluding chapters of Hungry for Revolution demonstrate that state intervention in food production and distribution fueled both a socialist revolution and a far-right counterrevolution in the 1960s and 1970s. Rural landowners, urban merchants, and female consumers rejected the government’s interference in their decisions to produce or consume certain foods. As food demand outpaced supply, the Allende government encouraged consumers to replace traditional staples, such as red meat, with unconventional substitutes, like merluza fish. The state’s failure to ensure consumer abundance led to anxiety and frustration, which the opposition harnessed to demand an end to state intervention. Rising social unrest would pave the way for the military coup that overthrew Allende in 1973, which in turn led to the dismantling of the Chilean welfare state.

Hungry for Revolution is a fascinating account of national development in twentieth-century Chile. Using food politics as a lens into larger debates about what democratic states can and should provide their citizens, Frens-String traces how Chileans came to see food security as a basic right of citizenship. He illustrates that popular mobilization around consumer issues furthers our understanding of social welfare and economic justice. This book will appeal to historians of modern Chile as well as food historians. However, Hungry for Revolution offers insight to scholars broadly interested in national development, democratization, and social welfare in the Americas.

Gabrielle Esparza is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a historian of Latin America with a focus on twentieth-century Argentine history. Her current research interests include democratization, transitional justice, human rights, and civil-military relations. Gabrielle holds a B.A. in History and Spanish from Illinois College and received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Argentina in 2017. At the University of Texas at Austin, Gabrielle has served as a graduate research assistant at the Texas State Historical Association and contributed to the organization’s Handbook of Texas. She served as co-coordinator of the Symposium on Gender, History, and Sexuality in 2020-2021. Currently, she is the Associate Editor of Not Even Past.

The Public Archive: Texas Czech Culinary Traditions

Kolaches (Credit: Whitney, via Flickr)

Millions of tweets and millions of state documents. Intimate oral histories and international radio addresses. Ancient pottery and yesterday’s memes. Historians have access to this immense store of online material for doing research, but what else can we do with it? In Spring 2018, graduate students in the Public and Digital History Seminar at UT Austin experimented with ways to make interesting archival materials available and useful to the public; to anyone with access to a computer. Over the Summer, Not Even Past will feature each of these individual projects.

Tracy Heim’s digital project, titled “Food Migrations: Texas Czech Culinary Traditions”, explores the experience of migration through the lens of food. Using the online publishing platform Scalar, “Food Migrations” not only offers a taste of Texan-Czech culinary culture through recipe books, photographs, and maps, but also considers the ways immigrant cultures are preserved – and changed – through food.

More on Heim’s project and The Public Archive here.

The Public Archive

Doing History Online and In Public

by Joan Neuberger

Links to their projects can all be found below on this page.

We built these digital, public projects in four main steps.

First, with the help of UT librarians, the students identified collections related to their research that were not yet available to the public. These collections of documents come from the many wonderful archives on our campus: the Harry Ransom Center, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, the Perry-Castañeda Library, the Briscoe Center for American History, and the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection. Then we digitized them.

Second, we each wrote a series of blog-essays to share our archival finds with the public. Each blog is meant to show something historically significant about our documents and to open them up in ways that any curious reader, without any background in the subject, can understand and appreciate.

Third, we wrote lesson plans based on our documents to allow educators at the K-12 and college levels to bring our archives into their classrooms.

Finally, we each built a website to introduce our topics, to share our digitized documents, and to make our blogs and lesson plans openly available.

Here are the results:

Qahvehkhaneh: Reading Iranian Newspapers: by Andrew Akhlaghi

The coffeehouse, qahvehkhaneh, was an important political and cultural institution in Iran. As men drank coffee, played backgammon, and discussed business, they also listened to impassioned pleas for democracy and reform from newspapers published in the Ottoman Empire, Russian Caucasus, and British India, smuggled into Iran and read aloud. This qahvehkhaneh is meant to spread the issues of one newspaper, Etella’at, to those curious about Iran.

Bureaucracy on the Ground: the Gálvez Visita of 1765: by Brittany Erwin.

This project examines the localized consequences and on-the-ground implications of the royal inspection, or visita general, administered by José de Gálvez in New Spain from 1765-1771.

After the Silence: María Luisa Puga and the 1985 Mexico City Earthquake by Ashley Garcia

María Luisa Puga (1944-2004) was a talented Mexican novelist from the Post-Boom movement whose personal notebooks, manuscripts, correspondence, and related documents are held in the Benson Latin American Collection. On this site you will find digitized selections from Cuaderno 118, which contains both Puga’s coverage of the earthquake that struck Mexico DF (now Mexico City) in 1985 and her reflections on those original pages, written in 2002.

Building a Jewish School in Iran: The Barmaïmon-Hamadan Manuscript by Isabelle Headrick

Where do you go when you want to change the world? For Isaac and Rebecca Bassan in 1900, the destination was Hamadan, Iran, to establish a French-language, Jewish school for the small Jewish community in that city. About fifty years another teacher at the school, Isaac Barmaïmon, wrote an 81-page manuscript that describes the first twenty years of the school’s existence.

Food Migrations: Texas Czech Culinary Traditions by Tracy Heim

Texans with Czech heritage have been able to preserve their culture in America through organizations, cultural events, church groups, and especially through food. Two books of recipes and other documents contextualize the process of migration into life in Texas and create a framework for understanding the Texas Czech culture.

Indian Revolt of 1857 by Anuj Kaushal.

South Asia witnessed an event during 1857 which altered the history of India, Britain, and the British East India Company. The event, known as a mere “mutiny” by the British and as an anti-colonial revolt by Indians, was reported in the English language press around the world.

The Road to Sesame Street by Peter Kunze

The Road to Sesame Street features government documents tracing the development of the Public Broadcast Act of 1967, the landmark legislation that established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS, and NPR. Using materials from the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, this project provides a behind-the-scenes view of the power players, interest groups, and decisions that laid the groundwork for American public media.

Animating Italian Immigration: Sicilian-American Puppetry by Megan McQuaid.

Attending a puppet theatre performance with familiar characters acting out well-known stories gave some Italians living in New York City a regular taste of the homeland they had left behind.

Frederic Allen Williams: Citizen-Artist with a Magic Lantern by Jesse Ritner

Frederic Allen Williams (1898-1955) was a prominent sculptor, lecturer, intellectual, and rodeo rider based in New York City, where he became known for his talks on Native American art, illustrated with magic lantern slides, which he gave in his midtown studio near the then recently built Museum of Modern Art.

Woven Into History: Living Cultural Fabrics by Alina Scott

The nineteenth and twentieth-century Navajo rugs in this collection aims to provide a platform for respectful collaboration and discourse to recenter the discussion of Navajo culture and commodity production around them and to diversify traditional conversations about Navajo textiles and their communities.

Mercenary Monks by Jonathan Seefeldt

These texts are windows into a thriving monastic world whose varied activities included: raising mercenary armies, caring for widows and child brides, providing credit and other banking services, collecting tax revenue from farmers, providing merit and prestige to an emerging merchant class, and asserting a (short-lived) form of political independence.

Guards and Pickets: The Paperwork of Slavery by Gaila Sims.

The documents in this collection provide a glimpse into the paperwork created to control the movement and relationships of the enslaved, as well as the financial documentation used to make money off the institution of slavery.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the following people for sharing their expertise in digital and public history with us: Dale Correa, Liza Talbot, Ian Goodale, Stephanie Malmros, Christina Bleyer, Albert Palacios, Andrea Gustavson, Elizabeth Gushee, Astrid Ruggaldier, Penne Restad, and Stacy Vlasits.