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Introduction from Bread: A History of Bread by A. A. Fischer

    Though nowadays an ubiquitous comestible, by historical standards, bread is a modern invention.  First conceived by Adam Smith in his treatise The Theory of Moral Sentiments, bread was theorized by Smith to be an economical replacement for Caviar d'Aubergine which, since the early 1600s, had served as a staple for the American working class.  (Smith, with surprising prescience, also predicted the decline in popularity of two other common foods of the time: apple pie à la mode, which he correctly identified as too sloppy to eat on lunch break; and the durian, of which he perspicaciously observed enjoyment was merely a social pretense.) The work was considered quixotic in academic circles and received little attention at the time.   W. W. Wilson, typically one of Smith's staunchest defenders, wrote on the subject in the January 1760 issue of 'The Ipswich Journal',  


    "Bread? What's this about bread?"


    Smith did not pursue this field of inquiry any further and bread fell from all public consideration for over fifty years. It wasn't until 1818 when the first loaf of bread was baked by George Orwell in his small cottage in Queensday that bread was thrust into the spotlight - to remain there.  The ensuing riots are documented in C.C. Clark's 'The Bread Riots of George Orwell'.  Sufficient to say that following this pyroclastic incident, 'The Theory of Moral Sentiments' rose to public acclaim and has since been rightfully regarded as the seminal work in bread.  You'll find excerpts of Smith's work throughout this text.  


    The riots themselves are of little note - only two casualties can be attributed to the event, and both were peripheral to the actual riots themselves - but the message was unequivocal: bread.  In an instant, bread ceased to be an abstract, academic curiosity.  Most scholars consider Orwell's work to be the beginning of bread praxis.


    The theoretical framework of bread, laid out by Smith, consisted of three sequential phases: bread awareness, bread creation, and bread consumption.  Orwell identified two new elements for crucial bread actualization: bread as Platonic ideal and bread as a sentiment.1  


    Orwell's contributions - and the exposure afforded by the lurid bedlam - caused an explosion of bread.  In less than a month, bread. And, later that year, bread flowed through the ports of the British Empire and into the rest of the world. Known in Britain as bread, in France as bread, in China as bread, in Russia as bread, bread.  Japan, alone, intent on preserving their culinary identity, embargoed bread - but their attempts to stymie the bread tide quickly proved abortive.  Two months later, Japan declared a pandemic.  By the spring of 1819, bread had become a global phenomenon.


    Sweeping social and economic changes followed in the wake of bread, from the culture-defining obsession of the British to appear 'well-bread', to the rise of the Russian rolletariat.  Language, too, trembled in the titanic craters left by the footsteps of bread: many preeminent idioms, like 'the upper crust,' rose during this time.  


    Bread would continue to shape the world in the coming centuries. These chapters document the progression and impact throughout human history of this most influential of foodstuffs.


1 The philosophical and moral underpinnings of bread exceed the scope of this historical review, and as such, notable advances will only be discussed in the context of the greater bread zeitgeist. ↩

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