‘I Hope it Tastes Good’: Gender, Race and Class in Colonial Kitchens in the Dutch Indian Ocean Empire

Abstract

This article examines the intersections between gender, domestic slavery, maritime empires and food in the early modern world, focusing on the Dutch East India Company's empire in the Indian Ocean during the eighteenth century. It traces the stories of three very different women in the Dutch Indian Ocean Empire and shows how food provisioning, preparation and consumption intersected with their gendered, racialised and classed roles in European colonial kitchens. In different ways, these women exerted sovereignty over food in colonial households which highlights their role as active participants in both shaping and contesting the social hierarchies of empire.