Centuries of colonial trade and ecological adaptation forged global coastal cuisines—now climate change threatens their shared survival
Original framing: “The world according to fish soup” — Financial Times
The voices of small-scale fishers, particularly women in the Global South, are systematically excluded from narratives about coastal cuisines. For example, in Senegal, women process 80% of fish but own less than 2% of fishing licenses, while in Peru, Indigenous *cholas* (market women) preserve ancient fish-drying techniques despite facing land grabs. The Financial Times’ focus on 'sailors' erases these marginalized actors, whose labor and knowledge are the backbone of these cuisines. Their exclusion reflects broader patterns of erasing gendered and racialized labor in food systems.
The Financial Times’ framing of coastal cuisines as a product of 'centuries of hungry sailors' obscures a far more complex and violent history: one of colonial extraction, Indigenous resistance, and ecological collapse.
These cuisines emerged from the forced migrations of the slave trade, the suppression of Indigenous fishing rights, and the adaptive resilience of marginalized communities—patterns that modern industrial fishing and climate change now threaten to erase. The solution lies not in romanticizing 'shared hunger' but in centering Indigenous stewardship, gender-just aquaculture, and corporate accountability for the ecological theft that underpins today’s seafood industry. By restoring these dimensions—from the trickster cunning of resistance to the scientific urgency of marine collapse—we reveal coastal cuisines not as static traditions but as living systems of justice and survival, demanding reparative action.