Category Archives: food

by Joel | 29 August 2024 · 8:52 am

A Polynesian in England, 1775

From The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, by Hampton Sides (Knopf Doubleday, 2024), Kindle pp. 38-39:

PEOPLE WHO ENCOUNTERED Mai grew to love his playful and curious manner of speech. He freely invented his own words and expressions. A bull was a “man-cow.” Snow was “white rain.” At a country estate where he stayed, he referred to the butler as “king of the bottles.” He called ice “stone water.”

One morning he was stung by a wasp. When asked what had bitten him and caused his hand to swell, he replied that it was a “soldier bird.” Later, a member of the local gentry pinched him a bit of snuff to snort. “No thank you,” he replied. “The nose not hungry.”

His hosts were pleased to learn that he was an excellent cook. Banks asked Mai to roast an assortment of fowl in a traditional Polynesian style. Mai constructed an umu, an earth oven. He dug a hole, built a fire there, then partially filled it with stones. He laid the birds in the pit, wrapping them in butter-smeared paper, for want of his usual plantain leaves. He covered it all with dirt and let the mess of fowl smolder for hours. The result was scrumptious. “Nothing could be better dressed, or more savory,” gushed a critic. “The smoldering pebble-stones and embers…had given a certain flavor to the fowls, a soupçon of smokiness, which made them taste as if a ham accompanied them.”

And so it could be said that barbecue—or at least a South Seas strain of it—had arrived in Great Britain.

At the estates he visited, Mai liked to practice his marksmanship and became a devoted hunter, especially during grouse season. Much to the chagrin of the local groundskeepers, the trigger-happy Mai “popped at all the feathered creation which came in his way”—not only grouse but chickens, geese, even ducks haplessly playing in a pond. “His slaughter of domestic birds,” the observer lamented, “was by no means inconsiderable.”

Guns lay at the heart of why Mai had volunteered to travel to England in the first place. He knew he had to master firearms, to collect them, to understand their inner workings and the ammunition that made them lethal. “He had a sense of mission,” wrote historian Michael Alexander in his book Omai: Noble Savage, and he knew that “these people he had come amongst held the key to his intrinsic purpose, the avenging of his father.”

Other times, Mai would set aside his fowling piece and revert to the hunting techniques he’d learned as a boy. A friend later recalled how Mai crouched in a stubble field and crept up on his prey. “His eye sparkled,” the friend reminisced, when “on a sudden, he darted forward like a cat, and sprang upon a covey of partridges, one of which he caught and took home alive, in great triumph.”

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Filed under Britain, education, food, language, migration, Polynesia

by Joel | 26 August 2024 · 6:41 am

Capt. Cook & the Earl of Sandwich

From The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, by Hampton Sides (Knopf Doubleday, 2024), Kindle pp. 33-34:

IN EARLY FEBRUARY of 1776, Cook received an invitation to have dinner at the London home of one of the most powerful men in England: John Montagu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich and First Lord of the Admiralty. It must have been clear by the nature and timing of the invitation that something very important was to be discussed. Cook promptly accepted and a date was set.

Lord Sandwich was a shrewd, cynical, and sometimes ruthless politician, adroit in the power games of London. He and his fellow lords presided over an institution that was the largest organization in Britain and indeed in all of Europe. But Sandwich was much more than a Machiavellian bureaucrat; he was an intellectual of sorts, interested in the science of the day, and an advocate for exploration—probably the staunchest advocate, in fact, behind Cook’s second voyage of discovery.

Sandwich was lanky and tall, with such an odd, shambling, lopsided gait that people liked to say he could walk down both sides of the street at the same time. When at the Admiralty, he was known to be a workaholic. He was, one critic said, a man of “limitless ambition to which he has sacrificed everything,” and he kept such fiendish hours that he would often forsake his meals, opting instead to place a piece of beef between slices of toasted bread, which is how he came to be known as the “inventor” of the sandwich. He was a competitive card player and gambler, and the handy snack he had devised is said to have sustained him through many a long night at the gaming table. Lord Sandwich was a man in a hurry, in other words, and so perhaps it’s fitting that he should be known for a food architecture that can be gobbled quickly—for, through his relentless advocacy of exploration and global cross-pollination, he had accelerated many a timeline.

To find relief from the general toil of his job, Lord Sandwich had cultivated a deep affection for the voyages of exploration that the Admiralty periodically supported. He was perhaps the country’s greatest admirer of James Cook, and everything that had emanated from Cook’s two expeditions to date. Sandwich had been a catalyst, a patron, a sponsor. As far as he was concerned, Cook could do no wrong.

Politically, Sandwich was the gray eminence behind the proposed expedition to North America’s “backside.” In advocating for the voyage, he had confronted considerable resistance within government circles. Mounting tensions in the American colonies had caused the Royal Navy to shift its already strained resources. In a time of imminent war, yet another expedition to the far side of the world seemed a luxury England could not afford. Yet the ever crafty Sandwich had managed to circumvent the naysayers to win official approval.

This was the voyage in which Cook “discovered” the Hawaiian Islands and named them after his sponsor.

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Filed under Britain, food, migration, military, North America, Pacific, science

by Joel | 11 August 2024 · 3:41 pm

Sugarcane on the Atlantic Islands

From The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples, ed. by Stephan Palmié and Francisco A. Scarano (U. Chicago Press, 2013), Kindle pp. 77-80:

From the mid-15th century, the Portuguese took slaves to work on Madeira: Moroccans and Berbers, black Africans, and Canary Islanders. The number of slaves who could be profitably employed was limited because the Madeiran sugar establishments were still relatively small in comparison to the later Caribbean and Brazilian plantations. Because of population growth in Portugal itself in the 16th century, many free Portuguese laborers migrated to Madeira, further lessening the demand for slaves. There were even proposals to export some of the slaves already there. In the 15th century, Madeira was a precursor of the future American colonial areas, but by the early 16th century its development had transformed it into a replica of metropolitan Portugal.

The Portuguese established sugar production on other Atlantic islands, but none rivaled the early profits of Madeira. In the Azores sugar production met with little success because of the unfavorable climate; there grain and dyestuffs were always more important, and slaves were few in number. Portuguese agriculture in the arid Cape Verde Islands concentrated on cereals and fruits and was complemented by cattle raising. São Tomê, which became a crucial entrepôt for the transatlantic slave trade, experienced a sugar boom in the 16th century and can also be seen as a prototype of the sugar islands of the Caribbean.

With sugar production and trade prospering, shiploads of sugar were delivered to the large European markets: Lisbon, Seville, Antwerp, and cities of the Mediterranean. Although most of the plantations and mills were in the hands of Portuguese, the bulk of the export trade was controlled by foreigners, many of them Italians resident in Portugal. Columbus traded in Madeiran sugar early in his career and lived on the neighboring island of Porto Santo for a time in the 1470s. The European demand for sugar was strong, and the lower costs of Madeiran sugar caused heavy competition for the longer-established Mediterranean producers.

The Portuguese were not the only Europeans who were developing the Atlantic islands during this time. In the early 15th century, Castile began sponsoring conquests in the Canaries, and by the end of the century it had secured control of all the islands. Unlike the other Atlantic islands, the Canaries had a native population who were likely akin to the Berbers. Foreshadowing events in the Americas, the Spaniards subdued the islanders and enslaved those who resisted. Of these, a number were exported to Europe or Madeira, while others were employed on Canarian sugar plantations.

The island population was relatively small to begin with, and its numbers fell due to epidemic disease after the European incursion. Members of indigenous groups whose leaders had signed treaties could not be enslaved legally, unlike members of the non-treaty groups, and those who were enslaved frequently attained manumission. In the early years of the 16th century, the Canarian slave trade to Europe ceased as the islanders increasingly assimilated European culture and intermarried with the colonists. Since native workers never filled the labor needs of the Canaries, the islands witnessed an influx of other workers, including a number of free Castilian and Portuguese settlers. Wealthier settlers brought their own slaves with them from the peninsula. Portuguese slave traders brought in blacks from West Africa, and Castilian mariners raided the coast for North Africans, Berbers, and other slaves. Following the first Spanish contact with the Americas, a few American Indians were sold in the Canaries, but the Spanish crown soon outlawed the slave trade in Indians.

These sugar establishments on Madeira and in the Canary Islands turned out to have some important features of the Caribbean plantations that would emerge in the 16th century, including elements both agricultural (growing the cane) and industrial (refining the sugar), the use of slave labor, and the export of a product to be sold in the growing markets of Europe. The significant difference between the sugar establishments on the Atlantic islands and the later plantations of the Caribbean was size; the former had smaller plots of land and fewer laborers. Those Atlantic islands provided a link between Mediterranean sugar production and the plantation system that was to dominate New World slavery and society into the 19th century.

Madeira and the Canaries formed the staging area from which sugar cultivation and refining would reach Hispaniola, the island where sugarcane was first planted in the Caribbean. Columbus, knowledgeable in the Portuguese sugar trade, had ships of his second transatlantic voyage stop in Madeira for additional supplies. These included refined sugar as a medicinal store and cuttings of sugarcane, which were later planted at Columbus’s ill-fated settlement of La Isabela on the north shore of Hispaniola. The first canes grew but failed to establish permanent sugar production. Only in the first decade and-a-half of the 16th century did successful sugar plantings and newly introduced sugar mills on Hispaniola establish the foundations for the fateful beginning of the colonial plantation complex in the Americas.

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Filed under Africa, economics, food, labor, migration, Portugal, religion, slavery, Spain

by Joel | 10 August 2024 · 6:03 am

Role of Sugarcane in the Islamic World

From The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples, ed. by Stephan Palmié and Francisco A. Scarano (U. Chicago Press, 2013), Kindle pp. 69-71:

Sugar and slavery, key components that helped shape the colonial Caribbean, were present in the medieval Mediterranean world in both Muslim and Christian areas. Elements that contributed to the development of the plantation complex in the early modern Caribbean and elsewhere in the Americas had long Mediterranean histories: the use of slaves, slave trade, sugar cultivation and refining, merchant capitalism, and marketing networks.

The Muslims first introduced sugarcane growing and refining to the Mediterranean after they found the crop under cultivation and production in Khuzistan in Mesopotamia, just north of the Persian Gulf. When the Muslims conquered the region in the seventh and eighth centuries, they established a labor force imported from East Africa to work in the cane fields, thus foreshadowing the links between sugar production and black slavery. Still, in the Islamic world and the Christian Mediterranean, free labor predominated in sugar production.

From Khuzistan, sugar refining spread to Baghdad, which lasted as a refining center until the end of the Middle Ages. Egypt was the next step along sugar’s westward march; the first sugar plantations were established there in the early eighth century. From Egypt, the Muslims spread sugarcane to Yemen and to the lands around the Mediterranean: Syria, Sicily, southern Morocco, and southern Spain. In ancient and early medieval times, the Mediterranean had not known sugar; sweetening came from honey and fruit juices. Honey remained a luxury because its supply was limited and could never be expanded much. Sugarcane was entirely different, its growth limited only by the availability of suitable land and labor.

By the 10th century, sugar production was thriving in several places in the Islamic world, and cane sugar traded widely in the Muslim markets and afield to the Byzantine Empire and the Christian West. Because of the special requirements of successful sugarcane production, it was mainly large landholders who could afford the necessary investment. The intensive nature of the industry has been a feature of cane sugar production ever since.

Egyptian sugar processes became famous throughout the world. The Egyptians probably invented the manufacture of cube or misri (Egyptian) sugar. They had long used two minerals, natron (sodium carbonate) and alum (aluminum potassium sulfate), for the refining of honey, and around the 11th century they began to refine cane sugar with the same minerals.

The first written evidence of sugarcane in Spain appears in the 10th century, even though Muslims conquered most of the Iberian peninsula early in the eighth century and, from the time of the emir ’Abd al-Raḥmān I in the mid-eighth, were introducing and acclimating new crops in palace gardens in southern Spain. The Calendar of Córdoba first mentions sugarcane around the year 961, but this source may reflect conditions in Egypt more accurately than in Spain, or may be referring to all territory under Cordoban control rather than Córdoba itself. Certainly in Muslim times, sugar was grown in a wide stretch of southern Iberian territory, from the wetlands of the lower Guadalquivir south of Seville to warm coastal valleys along the Mediterranean coast from Málaga to Almería and occasionally as far north as Castellón.

…

During Islamic times, sugar was a luxury product, used extensively in pharmacology and medicine and as a significant component of cuisine. Muslim physicians, following Galen’s approach, used it to balance the four humors. Honey and sugar, usually dissolved in water, were used to treat disorders of the respiratory, urinary, and digestive systems. A 15th-century Egyptian allegorical tale showed the personification of sugar leaving the ranks of the army of medicine and joining the army of the foods, reflecting the increasing availability of cane sugar. Sweets, including candy and sweet baked goods and other confections, were popular throughout the Muslim world. Equally important was the common use of sugar, along with fruits and other sweeteners, in meat dishes and vegetable recipes throughout medieval Christian as well as Islamic lands. In modern times the cuisine of Europe has tended to shed such recipes and to confine sweetened foods to the dessert course, whereas in North Africa main courses of meats and vegetables sweetened with sugar and fruits have remained popular.

Egyptian sugar production prospered in the 13th and 14th centuries, with sugar exported to the commercial centers of Italy, France, and Spain. Yet at the same time, the sugar industry in the Near East began to fall victim to the same forces that were causing an overall decline in the economy of the Islamic world, including deforestation and the Christian advance in maritime power and trade. Sugar factories began to close around the middle of the 14th century, and that process accelerated in the 15th. Cairo had 66 sugar mills in 1325; by the first years of the next century, nearly half had been abandoned.

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by Joel | 27 July 2024 · 3:47 pm

Khmer Rouge Cadres

From Prisoners of Class: A Historical Memoir of the Khmer Rouge Revolution, by Chan Samoeun, tr. by Matthew Madden (Mekong River Press, 2023), Kindle pp. 511-512, 514-515:

My unit is a brigade with unusual structure and characteristics among all the brigades of the men’s regional mobile units. This brigade is commanded by Comrade Ron, a young man, along with Mea Pov and Mea Chout, who are middle-aged men. These three cadres are base people from Paoy Char subdistrict. This brigade is divided into two regiments: the young men’s regiment and the general-population regiment. (Other brigades do not have these sub-units.)

Mea Pov is the former head of Phnom Srok district’s special unit, which was the strongest unit during the Trapeang Thmor Reservoir offensive. This was a unit of middle-aged men and women with robust health, distilled from the mobile units of all the subdistricts in Phnom Srok district. In late 1977, the regional Organization permitted the special unit to break ranks and return to live with their families in the cooperatives. Unwilling to relinquish his position or his influence, Mea Pov would not allow the middle-aged men from Paoy Char subdistrict to return to their villages, but instead combined them with the young men’s mobile unit of Paoy Char subdistrict to create the Fourth Brigade, a.k.a. Bong Ron’s and Mea Pov’s Brigade.

In his leadership of the special unit, Mea Pov was very mean and strict, which made that unit the most productive unit in terms of both labor and of killing people. The unit members feared Mea Pov, not daring to look him in the face or displease him. If anyone dared to say that the rice was sour or too raw, they would certainly end up stinking themselves, as a vulture played the flute [a metaphor for death].

These days, Mea Pov is not as mean or strict as he once was, but he is still feared by the members of his unit. Mea Pov uses his old influence to create a manner of living that I would call exploitative, oppressive, and a betrayal of the people. Life for the valueless class (the evacuees) [the “new people”] both in the cooperatives as well as the mobile units, must remain under the dominion of the base people, who are the class of Life Masters. These base people, especially those who were born to be cadres, exploit us and oppress us until we scarcely have room to move, like slaves and masters.

After the revolutionary cadres from the Southwestern and Western Zones came to take control and lead the work here in the Northwestern Zone, they largely reined in and put an end to the excessive killings. This was a wake-up call for those cadres who survived, and they made some changes to their behavior. When that happened, life for us was like a dead leaf being exposed to morning dew, and things got a little bit better. In most cooperatives and mobile units there was now a cadre from the Southwestern or the Western Zone serving as either a counselor or a direct leader. Unfortunately, my brigade remained an unaffected unit, without any of those cadres in positions of leadership. So the things that had happened before began to happen again, and worse than before, like a sickness that was treated with the wrong medicine.

…

The general-population regiment contains 125 men, who eat separately from the young men’s unit. In this general-population unit there are ten Big Brothers. Not only do they support themselves, but their families, wives, and children back at the cooperative must also grow fat. A portion of the rations of food, uncooked rice, fish, meat, salt, prahok [fermented fish paste], and kerosene find their way to the cooperative through these men. They divide up the spoils and take turns visiting their families: one Big Brother comes, and another goes.

Because of this, the rations for the rest of us are short, much different from the rations given to members of other brigades. On days when we eat our midday meal in a rice paddy near the young women transplanting rice, or other young men units, we nudge each other and watch their rice rations, which are more abundant than ours. Even the food is different: smoked fish, dried fish, duck eggs, and oil are given only to the Big Brothers and consumed only by the Big Brothers, while the rest of us only sip boiled prahok or cloud soup to which is added some sour flavoring and some slightly wormy prahok.

When we are given clothing rations from time to time, we receive either a shirt with no trousers or trousers with no shirt. They write down our names to remember to complete the outfit next time. As for the Big Brothers, each of them gets one or two complete outfits, and they select the nicest ones. There is no mistaking them: if you see someone with a black shirt, black pants, and a silk krama around his neck, it must be one of the Big Brothers. The economy team belongs to the Big Brothers and supplies the Big Brothers. The rest of us have a saying: “If it’s small, it’s for the people. If it’s heavy, it’s for the cooks. And if it’s as big as your thigh [considered the largest part of the body], it’s for the Big Brothers.”

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by Joel | 25 July 2024 · 1:58 pm

Hunger and Theft Under Khmer Rouge

From Prisoners of Class: A Historical Memoir of the Khmer Rouge Revolution, by Chan Samoeun, tr. by Matthew Madden (Mekong River Press, 2023), Kindle pp. 378-381:

The Organization at the farm gives orders to stop the roasting of rice grains. Everyone who is permanently stationed at the farm is authorized to confiscate any pot, dish, pan, or other equipment used for roasting paddy rice. It is quieter than before, but some people continue to do it. They roast the rice in pots, kettles, or cans covered with a lid so that the popping can’t be heard from very far away.

Whenever they see anyone stationed at the farm coming near, they panic, sometimes picking up the pot or kettle they are using to roast and running away, sometimes abandoning it and saving themselves. I don’t make any effort to suppress this activity, for I know hunger the same as they do. Sometimes I sneak some paddy rice from stalks whose grains are still young and tender and chew on them. Sometimes I sneak grains of rice that have just sprouted on the rice stalks and chew them; sometimes I chew grains of ripe paddy rice raw; and sometimes I chew grains of milled rice or kernels of ripe corn I come across at the economy kitchen.

But some people take no pity on others, especially the young men who keep the oxen for trampling the rice at the threshing yard (the farm personnel help trample the rice that the mobile young women bring in). They act macho, walking around confiscating other people’s equipment to show off. They steal, they roast, but there is no one to catch them, for they are the catchers.

Now there is nobody who does not steal. Everybody steals according to their own abilities and opportunities. Some steal a little, others steal a lot; some steal secretly, while others steal openly.

The cadres steal a lot, and openly. They steal from the mobile units to bring back to the cooperatives. Nobody dares to see them stealing, and they don’t bother to hide it. They steal it openly, and the economy team prepares it for them.

As for myself, I steal secretly, and I steal “legally” (though of course there’s no such a thing as legal stealing) without anybody knowing that I am stealing. I appear to be very proper, when in fact I am a secret thief, stealing from the pigs. Some of the finer rice dust is eaten by the pigs, and some is eaten by me. Sometimes I roast it, and sometimes I eat it raw. As for the courser bits, before I pour the rice dust into the manger, I mix it with water in a bucket, then take my hand and stir its so that the broken rice ends and chaff ends settle to the bottom of the bucket, then pour out only the rice dust and water mixture into the manger. The rice ends are for me; I wash these many times with water to remove the chaff ends and cook them in the small pot left to me by the late Bong Yong. So long as there are any course rice ends in the rice dust, I get some rice ends to eat every meal. The pigs don’t know that I’m stealing from them, as they are animals; they are ignorant; they are stupid. They only thank me and love me for bringing them rice to eat every meal and for hauling water for them to bathe in. But if they did know, they wouldn’t dare object, for I am their cadre. I have the right to beat them, to deprive them of food, to cut off their rations.

Some days I sneak a chicken egg and the hen doesn’t dare squawk at me, as I am her master. But if there are other chickens with her, even if I am standing right there, she will chase them all over, pecking and attacking them mercilessly. Perhaps this is a case of “being angry at the cow and smiting the plow.”

Oh, how nice to be a cadre! Even if only the cadre of the chickens, ducks, and pigs—still it is a great way to live.

In summary, apart from the chickens, ducks, and pigs, everybody is a thief. So why is it necessary to catch people stealing, if you are also a thief? Some people want to catch others to hide their own deeds, to improve their own ability to steal.

But it is hunger that has taught people to fight for survival. The higher-ups give orders to confiscate equipment used to roast rice grains, and a number of dishes, pots, and kettles are taken away by them. But the stomachs remain hungry as before, unchanged.

How great is this hunger? Very great! So great that a sated person could never understand or even imagine it!

Even without dishes or pots, people sit around the fire, take out the paddy rice grains they have hidden in their pockets, and place them on the ashes of the fire with small coals hiding beneath. The roasting grains pop and fly onto the dirt, and they pick them up one by one, place them on the palms of their hands, and clean them off by blowing on them puff puff and then plop them into their mouths. Is this not the behavior of a hungry person? And is this not stealing? Why not come and confiscate the coals as well?

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by Joel | 21 July 2024 · 5:26 am

Khmer Rouge Division of Labor

From Prisoners of Class: A Historical Memoir of the Khmer Rouge Revolution, by Chan Samoeun, tr. by Matthew Madden (Mekong River Press, 2023), Kindle pp. 330-332:

We may have finished our tasks at one worksite, but the work of the Revolution has no end, and there is no time for rest. To rest from revolutionary labor is to rest from eating; that is, to die. So long as we still live, there is revolutionary labor for us to perform at all times. The people in the cooperative villages are no different from those of us in the mobile units. When one assignment ends, another assignment begins: plowing; transplanting; harvesting; threshing; clearing land to make fields; planting tubers, taro, sugar cane, corn, and beans; building paddy dikes; digging canals; sowing; transplanting…

The old men who cannot walk far, lacking in strength, plant tobacco and vegetables; raise chickens, ducks, and pigs; watch fields; weave kanhchraeng, kanhcheu, chang’er, l’ey, and bangky baskets; and repair and make oxcarts, plows, and harrows. The old women watch small children, raise silkworms, weed and care for mulberry orchards, weave silk, card silk, spin silk, weave kramas [a traditional cottage industry in the area], etc. Everywhere is like everywhere else: there is no end to activities, and nobody ever complains that there is not enough work or that they have nothing to do.

…

1976 was a period of harsh oppression in terms of revolutionary work and discipline. The Revolutionary Army was busily engaged in activity at the worksites. The chhlop [informer] units would collect intelligence at nighttime to get a feel for the mentality, stance, and viewpoint of the young men and young women toward the Revolution. Many young men and women from the mobile units were taken away to be clubbed to death at night, near the base of the causeway, just for reminiscing about songs from the old society, being perceived as resistant to revolutionary labor, not respecting the Organization’s appointments, etc.

It was also in 1976 that my next younger brother Samat was taken from the hospital and killed. Friends who used to work with him think, some of them, that my brother was killed because of viewpoints incompatible with the cadres in charge, while others think that my brother was killed for taking something that belonged to somebody else. Which of these opinions is true? It’s all very unclear, all speculation. The truth, the plain reality, is that my brother was arrested, his arms tied behind him, and marched away to be killed. These circumstances, dying by being taken away and clubbed to death, is the legacy of all Life Slaves. Nobody laughs at anyone, and nobody sneers at anyone. Each person thinks only of working to redeem his own life.

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by Joel | 20 July 2024 · 2:10 pm

Water Outranks the Khmer Rouge

From Prisoners of Class: A Historical Memoir of the Khmer Rouge Revolution, by Chan Samoeun, tr. by Matthew Madden (Mekong River Press, 2023), Kindle pp. 308-310:

The sun is very hot, and water vapor rises from under the layer of dead leaves up into the sky, so that you can see the hazy waves. The sky is cloudy, and the air is still, and we each feel like suffocating. Now and then, someone gets dizzy and passes out, so everybody is pulling hair and pinching skin [to revive each other].

We wait expectantly for the people we secretly sent out looking for water, who don’t return until at least noon, and for the water truck whose shadow is nowhere to be seen. Oh, holy angels above, why such bad karma? If they want to kill us, why don’t they just kill us quickly? Why leave us to suffer such drawn-out agony? If they spare us in order to work, why don’t they provide adequate rice and water? As for food, when they starved us to the point of measuring and distributing dry rice with a spoon, we still worked hard, following the directions and the rules of the Revolution without daring to do anything that could be called a reaction against the Organization’s leadership.

Now we see clearly what is the thing which can make us forget about work and the Organization’s disciplinary line; what can make us forget death from failing to obey the Organization’s orders. We don’t want to die, but we are all dying, dying from despair of living.

If we endure working even another hour, we will pass out and fall over dead, one by one. If we stop working and rest, we can live for another three or four hours waiting for the water truck. If the water truck shows up within this time, we will live! But if they take us away to kill us while waiting for help, what of that? No, nobody can take us away to be killed now, as the unit leaders and soldiers are all as thirsty as we are; and even if they weren’t thirsty, the twenty or thirty of them don’t have the ability to kill the tens of thousands of us in the space of just two or three hours.

Right now, the unity of our unit is equal to when we were raising the dams at Trapeang Thmor. We are all united in sitting down and lying down and watching the road for the water truck. Ever since we started to live in this revolutionary society, many people have been taken away to be killed because of hunger, from daring to steal paddy rice, milled rice, corn, or tubers; but nobody has dared to put up any resistance. Now people do dare: they dare to go on strike and refuse to work, a strike without any preparation and no leader.

No, this strike actually does have clear leadership. The leader, who is as strong as life itself, is Thirst. Water has blocked the wheel of history from rolling forward for an hour now. Water is powerful! More powerful than human life! More powerful than the Revolution!

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by Joel | 12 July 2024 · 9:02 am

Khmer Rouge Great Leap Forward

From Prisoners of Class: A Historical Memoir of the Khmer Rouge Revolution, by Chan Samoeun, tr. by Matthew Madden (Mekong River Press, 2023), Kindle pp. 263-266, 269:

But then we reach the Great Leap Forward offensive, and the mode of working changes. When the work first began, only Ta Val’s brigade and the district young men’s and young women’s units kept working twenty-four hours per day. They would take shifts both day and night, one unit up and another down. But starting in early April, all of the units begin to work both day and night, and there are no more individual allotments.

…

In one day and night there are three shifts. In my unit, the men and women take turns working at night. Because of this, the working hours are not the same. The men start work at six o’clock in the morning and continue until eleven or noon, then take a lunch break. In the afternoon we work from twelve or one o’clock and take a dinner break at six o’clock. At night we work from ten o’clock until three in the morning. We have two chances to sleep at night, from seven to nine thirty, and again from three thirty to five thirty in the morning. In total, in one day and one night, the men work for sixteen hours and sleep for four and a half hours.

The women begin work at four o’clock in the morning and work until eleven o’clock or noon. In the afternoon they work from noon or one o’clock until six o’clock. At night they work from seven to ten o’clock. The women sleep only once per night, from ten thirty at night until three thirty in the morning. In total, in one day and one night the women work for sixteen hours and sleep for five hours.

…

When the sky is bright and clear, the economy team (cooks) carry rice and water to us at the edge of the pit. During the transplanting season, we were so hungry for rice. We wanted to eat rice so badly! The word rice would make our mouths water like dogs that have seen a piece of meat. But now, the word rice has a different meaning, a bitter flavor. If they weren’t afraid that we wouldn’t have the strength to dig and haul dirt, we wouldn’t have rice to eat. Now they give us abundant rice. Leftover rice is thrown out because the economy team doesn’t even have time to dry it.

But it isn’t rice for which we hunger now, it is sleep. We can’t get enough sleep. But nothing is up to us to decide. We have neither time nor rights to think about anything. The Revolutionary Organization is the one who does the thinking, who resolves everything. We have only our strength to do the labor, and that is sufficient for them; they are content with that.

We drop our hoes, baskets, and yoke poles in one spot, and then we each untie our own bags and take out our bowls and spoons, dish up our rice, and sit around the soup pot and try to swallow, try to chew, but without heart, and without daring to prolong the moment. We can barely finish eating the rice before we must rush to pick up our hoes and baskets and get back to work right away.

The Organization tells us, “People can rest, but the hoes, bangky baskets, and yokes must never rest!” Dear God! Each person has one hoe, one yoke pole, and one set of bangky baskets. If a person rests, how is the equipment supposed to keep moving? This kind of language makes us all shrink in fear, not daring to rest or take time to eat.

…

It’s not only the unit cadres who watch over us personally and supervise our work activities; clandestine chhlops from the region work among our units as well. Their presence intimidates us, and we work hard without daring to converse with one another. They come to assess our mentality toward the work and toward the leadership of the Party. Every thoughtless utterance which they perceive to be an objection to the Revolution is a danger to our lives. They can take you away without even telling you what you have done wrong. They take you away secretly. Only the people in your unit will know that you have been taken away to be killed; other units will have no idea.

How many people have already been taken away and killed at this worksite? Nobody knows. My older sister tells me to be cautious. A few people have already died in the special unit just for saying, “Gee, this rice looks a bit spoiled.” They were dragged away immediately and clubbed to death beside the base of the dam.

The economy unit rises to cook the rice in the middle of the night. They cook a pot and dump it into a large basket, then another and another. Because the earlier rice and the later rice are all piled together, sometimes this causes it to take on a sour, spoiled smell. Saying that the rice is spoiled means that you are not pleased with the Party, that you are hindering the work of the Revolution.

The fragility of life fills us all with terror! Each of us works to appease Yama so that he will spare us to live another day.

…

If you are too lazy to work, the Organization says, “To keep you is no gain, to remove you is no loss,” and the Organization will take you away and club you to death. Actually, we Life Slaves don’t dare be lazy, as we are afraid to die. We do whatever they want us to, so long as they don’t kill us.

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Filed under Cambodia, food, labor, military, slavery

by Joel | 28 June 2024 · 5:02 pm

Khmer Villagers vs. Forced Migrants

From Prisoners of Class: A Historical Memoir of the Khmer Rouge Revolution, by Chan Samoeun, tr. by Matthew Madden (Mekong River Press, 2023), Kindle pp. 211-213:

When we first arrive in the village, I give my personal history as a widower separated from his wife, hoping to be able to stay in the village and have the possibility of planting some food to send to my brother, who is required to go to the front lines (in the youth mobile unit). However, quite the contrary, in this village we have no possessions whatsoever. We are only temporary people. Even the place where we sleep is temporary.

The owners of the house stare at us like we are creatures of Hell risen up to dwell beside them. They loathe us. They never invite us up into the house to visit.

On the day of our arrival, it just so happens that there is a large rainstorm, so kingkuok toads come out here and there to catch food. The toads in this area are strangely large, even larger than toads in the river country. We catch the toads for food. The owners of the house find this very odd, and Mother Lam says to us, “Damn, you children eat such awful food! The people who came before you never ate such things as you folks. It’s disgusting! Hey! Bury the skins far away, don’t throw them into my mulberry bushes!”

Indeed, the people of this area are very clean. Never mind the toads—they won’t even eat little frogs caught in the village. They will only eat frogs caught out in the rice fields. But we are filthy people, eating anything. Some even go so far as to eat earthworms. The earthworms in this place are also strangely large, as thick as my pinky and as long as twenty-five to thirty centimeters. They call them traok earthworms.

After leaving the jungle, we thought we had escaped from worry. But after coming to live with the base people, we have emotional issues, trouble sleeping, trouble eating, trouble relieving ourselves. Having just arrived, we do not yet know the proper order of things, and we don’t know where to find a latrine, so we dig holes and defecate among the mulberry bushes. They scold us so loudly it can be heard throughout the village, and then they take us to the cooperative chairman to be “built.” Have we no shame!? The jungle people come into society and can’t do anything right—not even shit.

…

Back when we lived in the jungle with other people of the same “ministerial” [kongsey < Fr. conseil for colonial administrator, therefore urban] class as ourselves, when we all got full or starved together, we never suffered emotional hurt. But coming to live with the “capitalist” [figuratively, the base people, not the new people, but separate from the kongsey] class is emotionally painful. We collect our rice rations at the appointed rate of half a can apiece, while they collect a different amount. We bring bowls to collect the rice, while they bring baskets. They eat rice for every meal, while we eat only phek porridge (porridge mixed with leaves).

When we fall sick with a fever and ask to rest, they say it is “consciousness sickness” [psychosomatic or faked illness due to prerevolutionary mindsets], and they taunt us, saying that it is because we are so lazy that we can’t find anything to eat. The others can get sick as often as they like, and when they do, they are tasked with fishing with nets. We are the only ones they send out on mobile units, while the others cool their heels back at the village. Only a week after arriving at this village, my younger brother Samorn is once again assigned to the district’s young men’s mobile unit at the Kok Rumchek worksite.

One evening, as we are busy transplanting rice seedlings, we are suddenly sent back to the village to prepare for departure on a mobile work detail. We are not led by any of the base people, but are instead driven off like cattle, without a grain of rice or salt for rations. They tell us that clothing, shoes, and rice have already been prepared for us in Phnom Srok. At dusk we enter Phnom Srok and have no idea where to find clothing, shoes, or rice. It’s not until very late at night that we finally get some uncooked rice to make porridge with. In the morning we are sent away again with no directions and no assignment.