Dear Colleagues,
I am an interloper on your list. My partner Norman Bennett who writes on the Port wine trade is your member.
I have an odd query for you. I am a urban labor historian who works on Lourenço Marques Mozambique (today Maputo).
In the late colonial era Mozambique was one of the leading producers of cashew nuts, and I'm writing a history of the women workers in the nation's largest factory.
Here is the dilemma:
For some reason, American demand for cashew nuts spiked in the 1930s driving up the price for the nut when depression prices for most agricultural products were in the basement. The sharp increase in the price / demand from America was the lift off for the industry in Mozambique and India.
The only theory I have found to account for WHY demand spiked (thus driving up the price) was Paulo Soares' suggestion that the end of prohibition in the U.S. saw a spike in interest in bar snacks. Since salted nuts are a favorite bar snack, perhaps it was the return of bar culture that drove up the price of cashews.
Does anyone know anything about this? Any suggestions for readings?
Thanks so much,
Jeanne Penvenne
Jeanne Marie Penvenne
Associate Professor of History
Tufts University
Sabbatical 2007-2008