Page 92 - Mocarelli, Luca, and Aleksander Panjek. Eds. 2020. Maize to the People! Cultivation, Consumption and Trade in the North-Eastern Mediterranean (Sixteenth-Nineteenth Century). Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 92
maize to the people!
manor, located in the same part of Styria, southwest of Graz (Brunner 1994,
11). These, more recent findings, confirm earlier writings about maize being
demonstrably present there since the first half of the seventeenth century,
the main area of its distribution being, from the very beginning, the pres-
ent-day south-western Austrian Styria (Pferschy 1976, 27), that is the area
closest to Slovenia, although I found no explicit mention of maize in the
present-day Slovenian Styria in this period. What seems particularly re-
markable is that in this part of Styria maize is found among peasants ear-
ly (and repeatedly so).
On the other hand, we may notice that none of the above-cited docu-
mented mentions originated from the central Slovenian region, the Duchy
of Carniola, nor from today’s territory of Slovenia. All of them are locat-
ed on the outskirts of the (then and/or present) Slovenian ethnic area. In
fact, in the poorhouse of Ljubljana, the capital town of Carniola, there was
no maize on the menu in 1638 (nor in 1718; Makarovič 1986 58-59). For a
wider picture, even Makarovič, who wrote a thematic article about food
in Slovenia in the seventeenth century, mentions maize only once, name-
ly in the second half of that century, although he based his work on numer-
ous sources and mentioned several different types of grain. Whether such
a ‘state of the art’ derives from the researchers’ paying less attention to this
subject, from a lack of preserved archival documents, or from the factual
absence of maize is not completely clear. In any case, if maize was already
present in the first half of the seventeenth century, it seems that it has to be
sought in the south-western (Littoral) and north-eastern (Styria) regions
and not in central Slovenia (Carniola).
The second half of the seventeenth century:
diffusion pattern on a local basis, seemingly more in the east
For the next timespan we will again proceed from the west to the east, but
in this case, we will not overlook Carniola, since we may find mentions
there, too. Another difference compared to the previous period is that I was
not able to find any explicit and documented information about maize in
the western Slovenian areas for the second half of the seventeenth century,
except for the indirect and rather vague ones already mentioned in the pre-
vious paragraph, indicating that it started to spread after the mid-century.
An additional piece of information is that while grain import through the
Adriatic port towns of Trieste and Rijeka was increasing in the bad harvest
years of the seventeenth century, maize is not mentioned among such im-
90
manor, located in the same part of Styria, southwest of Graz (Brunner 1994,
11). These, more recent findings, confirm earlier writings about maize being
demonstrably present there since the first half of the seventeenth century,
the main area of its distribution being, from the very beginning, the pres-
ent-day south-western Austrian Styria (Pferschy 1976, 27), that is the area
closest to Slovenia, although I found no explicit mention of maize in the
present-day Slovenian Styria in this period. What seems particularly re-
markable is that in this part of Styria maize is found among peasants ear-
ly (and repeatedly so).
On the other hand, we may notice that none of the above-cited docu-
mented mentions originated from the central Slovenian region, the Duchy
of Carniola, nor from today’s territory of Slovenia. All of them are locat-
ed on the outskirts of the (then and/or present) Slovenian ethnic area. In
fact, in the poorhouse of Ljubljana, the capital town of Carniola, there was
no maize on the menu in 1638 (nor in 1718; Makarovič 1986 58-59). For a
wider picture, even Makarovič, who wrote a thematic article about food
in Slovenia in the seventeenth century, mentions maize only once, name-
ly in the second half of that century, although he based his work on numer-
ous sources and mentioned several different types of grain. Whether such
a ‘state of the art’ derives from the researchers’ paying less attention to this
subject, from a lack of preserved archival documents, or from the factual
absence of maize is not completely clear. In any case, if maize was already
present in the first half of the seventeenth century, it seems that it has to be
sought in the south-western (Littoral) and north-eastern (Styria) regions
and not in central Slovenia (Carniola).
The second half of the seventeenth century:
diffusion pattern on a local basis, seemingly more in the east
For the next timespan we will again proceed from the west to the east, but
in this case, we will not overlook Carniola, since we may find mentions
there, too. Another difference compared to the previous period is that I was
not able to find any explicit and documented information about maize in
the western Slovenian areas for the second half of the seventeenth century,
except for the indirect and rather vague ones already mentioned in the pre-
vious paragraph, indicating that it started to spread after the mid-century.
An additional piece of information is that while grain import through the
Adriatic port towns of Trieste and Rijeka was increasing in the bad harvest
years of the seventeenth century, maize is not mentioned among such im-
90
