The Great Elector's Table: The Politics of Food in Seventeenth-Century Brandenburg-Prussia

Enriching our understanding of how food can serve as a tool and barometer of political power, this original and readable exploration of food during the reign of an ambitious Hohenzollern prince shines light on a transformative era in northern European history.

Molly Taylor-Poleskey, a librarian at the Harvard Map Collection, focuses on the reign of Prince-Elector Friedrich Wilhelm, who inherited territories devastated by the Thirty Years War and, over the course of more than forty years expanded them significantly and transformed them into an economic and cultural dynamo.

Her perspectives on the meaning of different foods for members of the realm, as well as how they were obtained, who prepared them, and to whom they were served provide an abundance of details we might overlook from a twenty-first-century perspective. 

Rice, for instance, was regarded by Friedrich Wilhelm’s purchasing agents as a spice because it was an expensive import. An uninterrupted supply of army provisions, on the other hand, made it possible to project military power more reliably, sometimes to the disadvantage of less well prepared neighboring states.

We like that the book is extensively noted and appreciate its detailed bibliography.

Paperback, Maps and black-and-white illustrations