Cod_ A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World - Mark Kurlansky [25]
New England, the southernmost grounds of the Atlantic cod, had an inshore winter fishing season and an offshore summer season. It also had good farmland. While Newfoundland remained a frontier with summer fishing rooms, Massachusetts had residents who needed coopers, blacksmiths, bakers, and shipbuilders—trades—men with families that built communities. It also became an agricultural society, settlers moving ever farther toward western Massachusetts looking for fertile land to produce goods for the prosperous coastal market. As the most flourishing American community north of Virginia, New England was perfectly positioned for trade. In cod it had a product that Europe and European colonies wanted, and because of cod it had a population with spending power that was hungry for European products. This was what built Boston.
The economies of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, rather than growing in tandem with the economy of New England, were being drained off by it. Lacking population and internal markets, they were fishing outposts serviced by Boston. The Newfoundland catch between April and September was more than the fishing ships could hold. Trade ships, called sack ships because they carried vin sec, dry white French wine, came from England and took the cod to Spain, from where they returned to England with wine and other southern European products. They brought trade to England but nothing to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. As Boston grew from its three-pointed trade, sack ships started trading between Newfoundland and Boston. The Newfoundland cod catch would be sold in Boston in exchange for Massachusetts agricultural products such as corn and cattle, which would be brought back to Newfoundland. Right up to the 1992 moratorium, many of the local Newfoundland fishermen sold their cod to Boston. So as New England grew, the northern fishing colonies remained an outer frontier with a small and stagnant population. When life in these colonies proved too hard, many moved to the prosperous sister colonies in New England.
Meanwhile, New Englanders were becoming a commercial people, independent and prosperous and resentful of monopolies. While the West Indies sugar planters were thriving on protected markets, New Englanders were growing rich on free-trade capitalism. Theirs was a cult of the individual, with commerce becoming almost the New England religion. Even the fishermen were independent entrepreneurs, working not on salary but, as they still do in most of the world, for a share of the catch. Adam Smith, the eighteenth-century economist, singled out the New England fishery for praise in his seminal work on capitalism, The Wealth of Nations. To Smith, the fishery was an exciting example of how an economy could flourish if individuals were given an unrestricted commercial environment.
The British Crown had never intended to grant such freedom, and now it had a colony that no longer needed it—a dangerous precedent in the midst of the empire.
THE CHOWDER AND DANIEL WEBSTER
Daniel Webster once delivered a lengthy speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate about the virtues of chowder and was considered an authority on the subject.
PARTY CHOWDER
Take a cod of ten pounds, well cleaned, leaving on the skin. Cut into pieces one and a half pounds thick, preserving the head whole. Take one and a half pounds of clear, fat salt pork, cut in thin slices. Do the same with twelve potatoes. Take the largest pot you have. Try out the pork first, then take out the pieces of pork, leaving in the drippings. Add to that three parts of water, a layer of fish, so as to cover the bottom of the pot; next a layer of potatoes, then two tablespoons of salt, I teaspoon of pepper, then the pork, another