Vanilla

“Vanilla is a tour de force. Eric Jennings shows how a fragile and fragrant bean once known only to the Aztecs became one of the world’s most familiar of flavors.”—Alice L. Conklin, The Ohio State University“Across centuries and oceans, Eric Jennings recounts the incomparable history of how vanilla bloomed from a rare luxury good once in perfumes and aphrodisiacs to a ubiquitous global commodity now often produced synthetically. Along the way, he weaves a gripping story of piracy, larceny, and competing botanists, and of empire, capitalism, and culture.”—J. P. Daughton, author of In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo-Océan Railroad and the Tragedy of French Colonialism“Eric Jennings is right: ‘Vanilla is no ordinary bean.’ In this beautifully crafted and brilliantly researched history, Jennings tells the story of how this coveted pod left its home in Mexico to conquer the world, thanks to increasing global demand, imperial connections, and one remarkable enslaved teenager on Réunion Island named Edmond. Vanilla is a tour de force.”—Christopher Goscha, Université du Québec à Montréal“Eric Jennings, our leading historian of the French empire, has derived from the vanilla bean a commodity history unlike any other. Since an enslaved teenager named Edmond Albius invented an individual method of pollination by needle or toothpick to join the male and female parts of a flower, vanilla has wafted across the globe. As he uncovers vanilla’s odyssey, Jennings blends economic, cultural, social, colonial, and literary history in a captivating story that honors Albius’s gift.”—Alice Kaplan, Yale University, author of Seeing Baya: Portrait of an Algerian Artist in Paris“The stunning Vanilla sits amidst deep and spectacular digging into ecology, history, power shifts in the old and new worlds. With his distinctive command of the polyvalent archive, Eric Jennings turns our head towards an unexpected, rich history. That of Bean Being. What an impressive achievement!”—Ruby Lal, Emory Professor of South Asian History and author of Vagabond Princess

Eric T. Jennings is chair of the History Department and a fellow at Victoria College at the University of Toronto. He is the author of seven previous books, all of which have been translated into French, and one into Vietnamese, and he has held a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Toronto, Canada.