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Globalisation is creating a global culinary space where culinary traditions of different countries interact and compete. The author sets out to explore characteristic features of the culinary space of nine Baltic States as part of the global culinary space. The author uses empirical data on the number of restaurants serving different national cuisines in the main cities of the region. The Baltic culinary space incorporates the world's leading cuisines (Italian, Japanese, Chinese, etc.) as well as the local cuisines of the BSR countries. The world's leading cuisines prove to be more influential in the region than the local ones. Some countries of the Baltic Sea region (Russia, Poland, Sweden, Latvia, and Denmark) have culinary sovereignty, since their residents prefer national cuisines. In some other countries of the region (Finland, Estonia, and Lithuania), the public favours the world's leading cuisines — Italian, Japanese and American — over the local ones. The noncapital Baltic cities of Poland and Germany, as well as St. Petersburg, display a greater sense of culinary patriotism than Warsaw, Berlin, and Moscow respectively. This article attempts to explore the features of the Baltic culinary space. The author considers the environmental and socio-historical factors, key determinants of the countries' cuisines.
Key words: global culinary space, culinary powers, culinary sovereignty, culinary nationalism, culinary cosmopolitism, Baltic region, Russia, Germany
Global culinary space and ranking of culinary powers
Globalization covers all spheres of life, including such a specific area as cooking. Cooking means preparing food for direct consumption by a human and, at the same time, it is a specific branch
Baltic Region. 2017. Vol. 9. № 2. P. 88—103.
COUNTRIES
OF THE BALTIC REGION IN THE GLOBAL CULINARY SPACE
A. B. Rakhmanov1
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1 Lomonosov Moscow State University 1 Leninskie Gory, Moscow, 119991 Russia.
Submitted on February 27, 2017 doi: 10.5922/2079-8555-2017-2-7 © Rakhmanov A. B., 2017
of production. Cooking involves, firstly, using culinary utensils (cooking pots, frying pans, cauldrons, knives, meat grinders, etc.), and, secondly, raw materials (agricultural, fishery and hunting products, as well as products of food manufacturing industry — meat, flour, fish, dairy products, vegetables, salt, spices, semi-finished products, etc., processed to various extents). Thirdly, there is an individual, an employee with his\her anatomical and physiological organization, as a bearer of culinary knowledge and skills, a subject of culinary competence and activity. Fourthly, the culinary trade has its goal. The interaction of these four components, once it has become standardised, can be called a cooking technology, and the latter will result in a culinary recipe in its reference to the production of a particular type of product (a certain dish).
In the era of globalization, there is an interaction of culinary achievements and traditions of different nations, resulting in the rise of global culinary art. The latter relies on the emerging global division of labour in culinary production: the production of any dish involves relevant tools, technologies, raw materials and workers from around the globe. Besides, the rise of the global culinary is promoted by mass migrations. For example, the immigration of Italians, Chinese, Japanese and Mexicans resulted in the import of their culinary traditions to the United States. Each ethnic cuisine continues to evolve given the unity of contradiction between the reproduction of the old and the introduction of the new. On the one hand, old (traditional) dishes are reproduced, while on the other hand, new dishes appear, firstly, due to technological development and skills of staff, and secondly, due to ideas borrowed from other cuisines. In the era of globalization, countries that originated ethnic cuisines are considered territories of production of the most perfect dishes. Maintaining high standards of production and taste, these countries no longer monopolise their ethnic culinary product, which is successfully produced outside its country of origin. For instance, the number of pizzas or sushi produced and eaten outside Italy and Japan respectively probably exceeds those produced and eaten in their home countries.
One way to promote culinary art is to use the advantages of globalisation. Global culinary space is a space in which ethnic cuisines from all over the world coexist, compete, interact, and influence each other in each locality. From our point of view, the global culinary space is characterised by such inherent attributes as compression, deterritorialization and reflexiveness of processes that were marked out by R. Robertson [28] and M. Waters [31] as distinctive features of the emerging global community. Globalization results in the competition of the states not only in the fields of economy, military and political might, or culture, but also in culinary. We can consider a certain country as a cooking power provided it has its own original and varied ethnic cuisine. Having explored the popularity and influence of different ethnic cuisines in the global culinary space, we can distinguish between culinary powers of different ranks.
We have done an analysis of the global culinary space which was aimed at finding out the degree of influence of ethnic cuisines of different countries of the world [5]. For this purpose, we assessed the influence of various eth-
nic cuisines based on the number of restaurants of these cuisines in major cities of several countries. These are the capitals as often as not; sometimes major cities are the largest and most influential cities that are economic and cultural centres of their countries (New York, Istanbul, etc.). We should make a reservation here: it stands to reason that assessing the influence of ethnic cuisines merely by the number of restaurants, i. e. public catering facilities, is a simplification, because people also eat at home, at work, and in the street. Yet, this simplification is fully justified, since there is a certain correspondence between restaurant food, on the one hand, and food at home, at work and in the street. Restaurant food often serves as a standard (with appropriate modifications) for homemade and street food, while homemade or street food is a common version of restaurant food. In this sense, there is a correlation between restaurant menus and homemade food. Secondly, we do not have any empirical methods to study peculiar properties of homemade and street food. Besides, the identification of culinary and gastronomic preferences of the most important cities of the country with those of the country as a whole is a certain simplification as well. However, in this case, the simplification we use is quite acceptable, as the eating preferences of the most important cities are quite close to those of the respective countries.
We used the observational evidence of the world's largest travel website — the American TripAdvisor. com (Russian version — TripAdvisor. ru) [7] to obtain information on the number of restaurants of different ethnic cuisines. The site contains information about approximately 5 million hotels, restaurants and points of interest of almost all countries of the world. Here one can find observational evidence relating to restaurants in almost all cities in the world.
We analyzed statistics of various ethnic cuisines of 50 world's most international cities in accordance with the most reputable Kearney rating. The rating was developed by the American consultancy firm A.T. Kearney. 23 most popular (influential) ethnic cuisines were identified. They include (in descending order of influence): Italian, Japanese, Chinese, French, American, Indian, Spanish, Thai, Mexican, Korean, Vietnamese, Greek, Turkish, British, German, Lebanese, Argentine, Russian, Brazilian, Irish, Moroccan, Indonesian, Malaysian cuisines. According to the degree of influence of ethnic cuisines across the globe, we have singled out culinary superpowers (Italy, Japan, China), major culinary powers (USA and France), medium culinary powers (India, Spain, Thailand, Mexico, Korea), small culinary powers (Vietnam, Greece, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Germany, Lebanon, Argentina) and ultra-small culinary powers (Russia, Brazil, Ireland, Morocco, Indonesia, Malaysia and other countries). Many other countries of the world can be included in the group of ultra-small culinary powers in addition to the abovementioned. Our longitudinal investigation of the global culinary space shows the stability of the identified ranking of culinary powers. However, it may still change over time depending on the fluctuations of the popularity of various ethnic cuisines. For example, in the future, given the extension of China's influence and the upsurge of interest in everything Chinese around the world, this country can become the top culinary superpower of the world,
taking over the leadership from Italy and Japan and shifting them down to the second and third positions respectively. However, this is unlikely to happen soon. In my opinion, one should not expect deep changes in the existing ranking of culinary powers in the coming years.
Culinary space of the Baltic Sea Region. The article aims to investigate the culinary space of the Baltic Sea region as an integral part of the global culinary space. The world's leading and local ethnic cuisines are intertwined and compete in the Baltic Sea region. To study the culinary space of the Baltic Sea region we will employ a method which involves assessing the influence of ethnic cuisines based on the data from TripAdvisor. ru — the number of restaurants of various ethnic cuisines in the major cities of the Baltics.
The Baltic Sea region countries include Russia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Denmark and Sweden. We will assess the popularity of various ethnic cuisines in these countries evaluating the situation in the most important cities of the region: Moscow, Helsinki, Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, Warsaw, Berlin, Copenhagen and Stockholm. Furthermore, we will investigate the popularity of various ethnic cuisines in the major non-capital cities of the Baltics (with a population of over 200,000) located in the coastal area — St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Gdansk, Szczecin, Rostock, Lübeck and Kiel — for a more accurate analysis of the culinary situation in the Baltic Sea region.
All the cities mentioned above have a different standing in the Kearney rating. the most reputable ranking, developed by the American consultancy firm A.T. Kearney. According to this rating (2016), which singled out 125 of the world's most global cities, Berlin held the highest rank of globality: it ranked 16th among all the capitals and major cities of the Baltic Rim countries. Moscow was awarded the 18th position, Stockholm — 32nd, Copenhagen — 42nd, Warsaw — 55th, and St. Petersburg — 68th position. Other cities of the Baltic Sea region were not included in the list of the 125 most international cities. The more global the city is, the greater its role is in the globalised world, the more it is involved in global communications of various kinds, and the higher is its standing in the global culinary space, the higher is the number of cuisines present in this city.
For the study of the culinary space of the Baltic Rim countries, we took 20 most influential ethnic cuisines in the global culinary space: Italian, Japanese, Chinese, French, American, Indian, Spanish, Thai, Mexican, Korean, Vietnamese, Greek, Turkish, British, Lebanese, Argentine, Russian, Brazilian and Irish cuisines. We supplemented the list of these 20 ethnic cuisines with a list of ethnic cuisines of those Baltic countries that were not included in the above list — Polish, Swedish, Danish, and Latvian cuisines. TripAdvi-sor. ru does not single out restaurants of Finnish, Lithuanian, Estonian cuisines, therefore they were not included in our research. Thus, we got a list of 24 ethnic cuisines. Relying on the data from TripAdvisor. ru, we calculated the number of restaurants representing 24 ethnic cuisines in each of the 9 capitals of the Baltic Rim countries (see Appendix 1) and the total number of restaurants in them representing all these cuisines (Table 1).
Table 1
Cumulative number of specialty restaurants representing 24 ethnic cuisines in 9 capitals of the Baltic Region countries as of January 24, 2017
Ethnic cuisines The number of restaurants of this cuisine
in 9 capitals of the Baltic Rim countries, pcs.
Italian 3014
Russian 1850
Japanese 1600
American 1088
German 977
Chinese 642
French 702
Swedish 489
Thai 471
Danish 465
Polish 439
Indian 426
Spanish 395
Vietnamese 382
Mexican 306
Turkish 263
Greek 211
Latvian 144
Korean 134
Lebanese 126
British 104
Irish 60
Argentinean 56
Brazilian 23
Estimated by the author based on: [7].
As we can see the world's leading cuisines (Italian, Japanese, American, Chinese, French) dominate the culinary space of the Baltics, and the most influential cuisines of the countries of this region (Russian, German, Swedish) are slightly weaker. Italian cuisine is the most popular cuisine in the Baltic Rim countries and over the world. Italy proves its status of the world's top-ranking culinary superpower in the Baltic Sea region. Unlike the global culinary space as a whole, American cuisine turns out to be more popular than Chinese and French cuisines in the Baltics. Chinese cuisine which enjoys widespread popularity in the world, holds a relatively moderate position in the Baltic Rim countries. This also holds true for Russia. We should emphasize the fact that these prominent positions of local ethnic cuisines in the Baltics were achieved only due to the influence of these cuisines in their own countries. Local cuisines of the Baltic Rim countries are popular in their home countries in the first place.
Let us analyze positions of ethnic cuisines in each of the 9 Baltic Rim countries in more detail, and identify the top five most popular cuisines in each of these countries (Table 2). We identify positions of various cuisines according to the share of ethnic restaurants in the total number of restaurants representing 24 ethnic cuisines.
Table 2
Five most popular cuisines in 9 Baltic Rim countries as of January 24, 2017
Countries Top Share,- 2nd Share,- 3rd Share,- 4th Share,- 5th Share,-
position % position % position % position % position %
Russia Russian 30,94 Italian 22,39 Japa- 17,72 Ameri- 9,33 French 3,69
(Moscow) nese can
Germany German 24,05 Italian 23,74 Vietna- 7,04 French 4,74 Ameri- 4,71
(Berlin) mese can
Poland Polish 35,83 Italian 21,19 Japa- 8,77 Ameri- 5,53 French 4,17
(Warsaw) nese can
Finland Italian 19,82 Japa- 12,53 Chinese 11,39 Ameri- 9,79 Thai 7,52
(Helsinki) nese can
Latvia (Riga) Latvian 36,76 Italian 18,65 American 7,57 Japanese 6,49 French 5,95
Estonia Italian 19,57 Japa- 12,81 French 10,32 Ameri- 9,96 Russian 9,61
(Tallinn) nese can
Lithuania Italian 22,86 Ameri- 14,29 French 13,06 Japa- 10,2 Chinese 9,39
(Vilnius) can nese
Denmark (Co- Danish 35,45 Italian 16,41 Ameri- 8,05 French 7,82 Japa- 6,32
penhagen) can nese
Sweden Swedish 34,17 Italian 13,32 Japa- 7,59 Ameri- 6,45 Chinese 5,87
(Stockholm) nese can
Estimated by the author based on: [7].
Table 2 shows our vision of the competition of various ethnic cuisines in the culinary space of the Baltics. Italian cuisine has 3 first and 6 second positions, Japanese cuisine has 2 second positions, 3 third positions, 2 fourth positions and 1 fifth position, American cuisine has 1 second position, 2 third positions, 5 fourth positions and 1 fifth position, French cuisine has 2 third positions, 2 fourth positions and 3 fifth positions. Russian cuisine has only 1 first position and 1 fifth position, German cuisine has only 1 first position. Italian, Japanese and American cuisines outnumber other culinary systems in terms of leading positions gained in the Baltic Rim countries. Russian and German cuisines are popular in their home countries; Russian cuisine is also popular in Estonia, the country having a large Russian-speaking community. Russian and German cuisines, apart from the cuisines native to the Baltic Rim countries, have little to no influence in these countries. Thus, they cannot compete with the world's leading cuisines — Italian, Japanese, American, French, etc. The positions of cuisines of these nations in Finland, Estonia and Lithuania are so weak that they are inferior to foreign cuisines, as evidenced by the fact that restaurants representing these cuisines were not even singled out by TripAdvisor. ru as a separate category.
The structure of culinary preferences of each country has its own peculiarities. For example, Vietnamese cuisine breaks forth into the third position in Germany, leaving French and American cuisines behind, though it is quite exotic for Europe. Thai cuisine, which is no less exotic, rises to the fifth position in Helsinki. It would be logical to assume that the prominent positions of Vietnamese cuisine in Berlin root back to the cooperation of the GDR and Vietnam in the era of socialism.
We investigated the influence of the ethnic cuisines of the Baltic Rim countries both within the region as a whole and outside their mother countries (Table 3).
Table 3
Ethnic cuisines of the Baltic countries in the culinary space of the Baltic Sea Region as of January 24, 2017
Ethnic cuisines The number of restaurants in 9 cities The number of restaurants in the capitals of 8 countries, except for the country which is a home country for a particular cuisine The share of specialty restaurants in the capitals of 8 countries, except for the country which is a home country for a particular cuisine, %
Russian 1850 90 4,86
German 977 140 14,33
Swedish 489 12 2,45
Danish 465 7 1,51
Polish 439 18 4,1
Latvian 144 8 5,56
Estimated by the author on: [7].
As we can see, only German cuisine has certain region-wide significance among all the ethnic cuisines of the Baltic Rim countries, since it has a certain moderate influence outside Germany. Russian, Swedish, Danish, Polish and Latvian cuisines, not to mention Finnish, Estonian and Lithuanian cuisines, have little to no influence outside their countries. This fact is perfectly consistent with the fact that Germany is a small culinary power in the global culinary space, and Russia, Poland and other Baltic countries are ultra-small culinary powers.
States cooperate and compete in the era of globalization, relying not only on their economic, political and military might but also on what the American political analyst Joseph Nye called soft power, referring to culture, style of life, language, etc. Soft power should be considered as a paraphrase of the concept of legitimate order of Max Weber and the concept of hegemony of Antonio Gramsci, projected on the emerging global society. Culinary power should be considered an important component of soft power. Culinary power significantly increases the soft power of Italy, Japan, China, the United States, France and a number of other countries. In contrast, neither Russia
nor Germany, let alone other Baltic Rim countries, has any significant culinary soft power. Unfortunately, the example of the Baltics demonstrates a low popularity of Russian cuisine, no matter how wonderful it is in terms of its gastronomic qualities. Consequently, Russian cuisine does not contribute to an increase in the soft power of Russia.
Culinary sovereignty of the Baltic region countries
Culinary sovereignty is an essential characteristic of the positioning of any country in the global culinary space. Culinary sovereignty is a degree of commitment of the country's population to the dishes of its ethnic cuisine. This value can be determined in a rather precise and specific way; it is the ratio of national cuisine restaurants to the total number of ethnic restaurants in major cities of a country. We identified four groups of countries with varying degrees of culinary sovereignty: 1) countries having full culinary sovereignty, 2) countries having limited culinary sovereignty, 3) culinary 'semi-colonies' and 4) culinary 'colonies' [5].
A country has full culinary sovereignty provided its ethnic cuisine is dominant in its culinary space, being superior in terms of popularity to all other cuisines combined. It means that more than 50% of restaurants in major cities of the country are restaurants of the country's national cuisine. Residents of this country should be 'radical' culinary patriots (nationalists). Based on our findings, Turkey, China, Italy, Greece, South Korea, Spain, Japan, Hungary, and France are complete culinary sovereignties.
A country has limited culinary sovereignty if its ethnic cuisine is relatively dominant in its culinary space over the cuisines of all other countries, but at the same time cuisines of all other countries combined are superior to this ethnic cuisine in terms of popularity. In this case, ethnic restaurants make up less than 50% and more than 30% of the total number of restaurants in major cities of the country. For example, Austria, Indonesia, Thailand, Lebanon, and Poland have limited culinary sovereignty, and residents of these countries can be defined as moderate culinary nationalists.
The country should be considered a culinary semi-colony if its ethnic cuisine is more popular than the cuisine of any other country, but its dominance is insignificant. In this case, the number of ethnic restaurants representing the cuisine of this country is less than 30 % but more than the number of restaurants representing any foreign cuisine. According to our data, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Australia are culinary semi-colonies. Residents of culinary semi-colonies can be defined as moderate culinary cosmopolites.
A country can be considered a culinary colony, i. e. a country which does not have even a small degree of culinary sovereignty if its ethnic cuisine in its own culinary space is inferior in popularity to the cuisine of another country or even several countries. Canada is a vivid example of a culinary colony, as in Italian, Japanese and Chinese cuisines are much more popular than Ca-
nadian cuisine. Residents of culinary colonies should be defined as radical culinary cosmopolites. Since we have introduced the concept of culinary colonies and semi-colonies, we should also consider culinary metropolises. A culinary metropolis is a country whose ethnic cuisine is dominant in the territory of another country. For example, Italy and India are examples of culinary metropolises for the United Kingdom.
Let us calculate the degree of culinary sovereignty of 9 Baltic Rim countries based on the data obtained above relating to the number of ethnic restaurants representing various cuisines in the capitals of these countries (Table 4). The countries are ranked according to the degree of culinary sovereignty in descending order.
Table 4
Culinary sovereignty of the Baltic Sea region countries as of January 24, 2017
Country The total number of specialty restaurants representing 24 ethnic cuisines The number of specialty restaurants representing the cuisine of a country The share of specialty restaurants representing the cuisine of a country, %
Latvia (Riga) 370 136 36.76
Poland (Warsaw) 1,175 421 35.83
Denmark (Copenhagen) 1,292 458 35.45
Sweden (Stockholm) 1,396 477 34.17
Russia (Moscow) 5,689 1,760 30.94
Germany (Berlin) 3,480 837 24.05
Finland (Helsinki) 439 0 0
Estonia (Tallinn) 281 0 0
Lithuania (Vilnius) 245 0 0
Estimated by the author based on: [7].
As we can see, Latvia, Poland, Denmark and Sweden have the greatest culinary sovereignty among all the Baltic Rim countries. Russia has a slightly lower position compared to these countries according to this criterion. These five countries are countries having limited culinary sovereignty, and, according to our classification, their residents are moderate culinary nationalists. Germany, despite a definite influence of its cuisine outside the country, is a culinary semi-colony, and Italy is a culinary metropolis. The Germans are moderate culinary cosmopolites. Finland, Lithuania and Estonia turn out to be pronounced culinary colonies, whose ethnic cuisines are losing popularity. Hence their residents can be regarded as radical culinary cosmopolites. Italy and Japan are culinary metropolises for Finland and Estonia, while Italy and the United States is a culinary metropolis for Lithuania.
It is worthy of note that the non-metropolitan Baltic cities of Germany and Poland differ from the capitals of their respective countries; they have a greater focus on their ethnic cuisines and, accordingly, greater culinary nationalism (Appendix 2). In Rostock, 46.15 % of the total number of ethnic restaurants representing 24 ethnic cuisines are German, in Lübeck — 38.32, in Kiel — 32.22 %. Culinary nationalism in Rostok is almost twice as strong as that of Berlin. In Gdansk, the share of Polish specialty restaurants among the specialty restaurants representing 24 ethnic cuisines is 51.65%, and in Szczecin — 40%. These two cities are Poland's greatest culinary nationalists. In Gdansk, the commitment of residents to Polish cuisine is not only stronger than that in Warsaw but also has a degree of radical culinary nationalism.
The ratio of culinary preferences of the capitals and other cities in Germany, Russia and Poland is different. According to our data, large German cities (Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, etc.) are similar to Berlin in their culinary preferences. Berlin is a typical example of the culinary space of Germany.
This tendency also holds true for Russia: Moscow's culinary preferences correspond to the culinary preferences of Russian million-strong cities and cities with a population of 0.5 to 1 million people [6]. Thus, the capital serves as an indicator in this case. St. Petersburg is an exception to the rule: when compared to Moscow and all-Russia, the commitment to Russian cuisine is much stronger here. In St. Petersburg, the share of Russian cuisine restaurants in the total number of restaurants representing 24 ethnic cuisines is 45.46%, in Kaliningrad — 28.77%. Thus, culinary nationalism is much more noticeable in Saint Petersburg than in Moscow. Kaliningraders show a conservative culinary cosmopolitanism: the share of Russian cuisine restaurants in Kaliningrad is approximately 30%, but their number is noticeably smaller than the number of Italian and Japanese restaurants. In Kaliningrad, the degree of commitment to the Russian cuisine is close to those of Moscow and all-Russia indicators. It is only slightly lower. It is worthy of note that the natives of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad show a similar structure of culinary preference: Russian, Italian, Japanese and American cuisines (in decreasing order) are the most popular cuisines in all the three cities.
The situation is different in Poland: there is a tangible contradiction between the culinary preference of Warsaw and that of other cities. Residents of Gdansk, Szczecin, Krakow, Lodz and other large and medium-size Polish cities, are more pronounced culinary nationalists than those living in Warsaw. Thus, Culinary habits of Warsaw are not an indicator of the culinary space of Poland.
Back to the explanation of the peculiarities of the culinary space of the Baltic region. How can the identified peculiarities of the culinary space of the Baltic Sea region be explained? Why are ethnic cuisines from other regions of the world more popular in the Baltic Sea region than local ones? Why are some Baltic cuisines in this region more popular than others? Be-
fore answering these questions, we will outline a number of theoretical considerations concerning the fundamentals of the existing ranking of ethnic cuisines in the global culinary space.
All cuisines use a combination of ingredients creating certain flavour effects; the human body perceives these signals and translates them into the need for these ingredients since they are vital for its normal functioning under certain geographic and socioeconomic conditions. Following the analysis of the ranking of culinary powers, we can argue that there are four prerequisites for an ethnic cuisine to reach higher positions in the global culinary space. Firstly, the territory of the country should be rather big (more than 100 thousand sq. km.). Secondly, the population of the country should be large enough (at least 10 million people at the beginning of the 21st century). Thirdly, the country's geographic and climatic conditions should be varied and favourable: a warm, mild, and fairly damp climate, fertile soils, abundance of plants and animals, and access to a warm sea. The access to warm seas does not only create a warm climate; it also means an abundance of fish and seafood. Maritime transport and communication facilitate an exchange of culinary traditions and achievements. Fourthly, the existence of societies with a high level of estate-class societies and class societies with a sufficiently high level of social disparity for a long period (for many centuries or even 1—3 millennia) in the country's territory. All aforementioned prerequisites have determined the genesis of the great cuisines of Italy, Japan, China and France, as well as highly influential cuisines of India, Turkey, Thailand, Korea, and Vietnam.
Countries with a rather harsh climate, relatively poor flora and fauna, or countries not having access to a warm sea usually fail to establish cuisines that could hold prominent positions in the global culinary space. The United Kingdom, Germany, Russia and Poland are typical examples of such countries.
However, fertile climate and natural resources alone are not enough for the formation of great culinary traditions, for the creation of a diverse, sophisticated, refined and rich ethnic cuisine. Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, as well as the nations of Central and South Africa could not create ethnic cuisines that would hold any prominent positions in the global culinary space despite their highly rich natural resources. A varied and refined cuisine cannot emerge if it does not rely on a sufficiently advanced production process that determines the long existence of estate-class society in a given territory, presuming impressive traditions of using significant amount of surplus product in kind and in cash to create high-quality and diverse upmarket commodities, including food amenities for the privileged strata — monarchs with their courts, feudal aristocracy, and at a later time — for the bourgeoisie. Since antiquity or since the first millennium of the Common Era, there existed societies with privileges resident in a class and estate in countries that are deemed to be culinary superpowers and great culinary powers (except for the United States). The advanced class and estate inequality has conditioned the culinary inequality in these societies — a sophis-
ticated cuisine for the higher orders, and a primitive cuisine for the lower orders. Distinguished ethnic cuisines that have gained great influence in the global culinary space originate mainly on the basis of the cuisine of privileged classes and estates. In subsequent eras, with the growth of the productive forces and the total wealth of society, the diets and food of the privileged strata have gradually become affordable to a wider population. Consequently, what we call ethnic cuisines originated mainly on the basis of the diet of privileged classes and estates.
The United States represents a particularly interesting case, as their culinary traditions have been established relatively recently — in the second half of the XIX and XX centuries. In my opinion, the fact that the United States succeeded in becoming a great culinary power is associated with the fact that this country has been the most developed, mighty and wealthy capitalist country in the world since the turn of the XIX—XX centuries. American society is a typical capitalist society, with its capitalist attitude to everything, including food and nutrition. This fact gave rise to the rise of American cuisine and American fast food industry which became the embodiment of the capitalistic spirit in culinary art, some kind of culinary Protestantism if we recall the Protestant ethic concept of Max Weber. In American culinary art, cooking and eating processes are consistent with the imperatives of fast and effective satiation, uniformity, commonality, rationality (calculability), controllability, i.e. what the American sociologist George Ritzer called "McDo-naldization." American culinary art is congenial to American architecture — the same grandeur, utilitarianism and functionality can be seen in it. Since the contemporary world is mainly travelling the path of capitalistic development, it is quite natural that American cuisine is popular on all continents.
In view of the foregoing, we'll try to outline the definition of special aspects of the culinary space of 9 Baltic Rim countries. All that has been said above explains why the local ethnic cuisines in the culinary space of the Baltics are notably inferior to the leading world cuisines — Italian, Japanese, Chinese, French, American, etc. Some of the Baltic Rim countries have a small territory (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark), many Baltic Rim countries have a small population (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark, Finland), and this, by all means, was a serious obstacle to the development of their ethnic cuisines. All Baltic Rim countries are characterized by a rather harsh climate, access to the cold sea (or several seas in the case of Russia and Germany), a relatively monotonous nature which clearly lacks abundance. The cuisines of the Baltic Rim countries were based on relatively modest and monotonous natural blessings that could not compete with the abundance and diversity of nature of Italy, Japan, China, France, the USA, India, Vietnam, Thailand, and a number of other countries. This fact alone condemned the cuisines of all 9 Baltic countries to failure in competition with the cuisines of countries with a more fertile climate. It is little wonder that the most successful cuisine of this region in terms of the global influence, namely German cuisine, according to our investigation, is ranked only 14th among other cuisines of the world.
We saw that German, Russian, Polish and Swedish cuisines are more influential in the culinary space of the Baltic Sea region— at least in their home respective countries — than Finnish, Estonian and Lithuanian cuisines. The last three cuisines have such a weak influence even in their home countries that TripAdvisor. ru does not single them out as a separate category. The experts of the site distinguished the Latvian cuisine, but its popularity outside Latvia is insignificant, though it is somewhat higher than the popularity of the Danish cuisine. Danish cuisine is notedly more influential in Denmark than Latvian cuisine in Latvia (458 Danish specialty restaurants in Copenhagen against 136 Latvian specialty restaurants in Riga, with a similar number of residents in both capitals).
Remarkably low positions of Finnish, Lithuanian and Estonian cuisines, even in their home countries, can be explained by the first three prerequisites mentioned above, and also to certain aspects of the social and historical development of these countries. We identified it as the fourth prerequisite for the formation of ethnic cuisines. In the Eastern Baltics estate owners and other social classes emerged relatively late — no sooner than in the second millennium AD. What is even more important is that for most of their history Finns, Estonians, and Latvians lived in the states established by other peoples. They did not have or did not really have their own royal courts and nobility — the environment that gives rise to haute cuisine. Finland was part of Sweden for a long time, while the privileged class in Finland was composed of Swedish nobles, and after subsequent annexation to the Russian empire in 1809 was supplemented by Russian aristocrats. The privileged classes in the territories of future Estonia and Latvia were mainly composed of Germans, and subsequently, they were also supplemented by the Russian nobility and the bourgeoisie. Swedish, German and Russian aristocrats looked toward their ethnic cuisines, as well as cuisines of Western Europe. This is largely responsible for the fact that Finnish, Estonian and Latvian cuisines were the cuisines of peasants and fishermen, i. e. rather unsophisticated, monotonous and modest in terms of nutrient content and gustatory sensations. This social and culinary basis could not give rise to sophisticated, rich and refined cuisines such as Italian, French or Chinese.
Lithuanians and Lithuanian cuisine represent a special case. Lithuania had its own state and its own nobility in the past, but since 1569 the Grand Duchy of Lithuania existed in a union with Poland, having established the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In this state, the Lithuanian nobility turned out to be the younger associate of the more numerous and wealthy Polish nobility. Hence there was polonisation in general, and culinary polo-nisation in particular. Polonised Lithuanian nobility preferred Polish and Western European cuisine. This also led to the fact that Lithuanian cuisine developed as a mostly rustic cuisine.
Russia, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Poland had sovereign courts and aristocracies, and later bourgeois classes; it facilitated the emergence of rather influential (in their territories) Russian, German, Swedish, Danish and
Polish cuisines. Apparently, the weaker positions of the Danish cuisine (see Table 3) are primarily due to the small territory and the population of this country.
Our explanation of the ranking of ethnic cuisines in the culinary space of the Baltics is purely tentative and is an invitation to reflect upon the problem rather than find a final solution. There are many phenomena that need to be explained in this field. For example, the fact that Latvian cuisine turned out to be more influential in Latvia and even beyond its borders compered to Finnish, Estonian and Lithuanian cuisines, is to be studied. Further research is required into peculiar features of the Baltic culinary space, the position of the Baltic Rim countries in the global culinary space as well as factors that have conditioned the evolution of the ethnic cuisines of the countries of the region.
Appendix 1
Number of restaurants of 24 ethnic cuisines in 9 capitals of the Baltic Region countries as of January 24, 2017
Ethnic cuisines Moscow Helsinki Tallinn Riga Vilnius Warsaw Berlin Stockholm Copenhagen
Russian 1760 9 27 18 7 4 24 0 1
Italian 1274 87 55 69 56 249 826 186 212
Japanese 1008 55 36 24 25 103 161 106 82
Chinese 206 50 24 15 23 39 149 82 54
American 531 43 28 28 35 65 164 90 104
French 210 23 29 22 32 49 165 71 101
German 103 4 7 2 4 6 837 10 4
Mexican 98 26 9 10 10 24 86 20 23
Spanish 80 31 9 5 16 36 117 58 43
Thai 59 33 15 7 8 41 163 77 68
Indian 57 20 20 8 7 42 147 76 49
Vietnamese 51 14 4 0 3 23 245 17 25
Korean 47 5 1 3 3 11 42 15 7
Greek 47 7 0 4 2 9 99 31 12
British 44 3 4 5 2 6 15 17 8
Irish 31 1 2 4 0 2 10 6 4
Turkish 29 17 6 8 1 23 140 20 19
Lebanese 26 7 1 0 2 16 40 23 11
Argentinean 11 0 2 1 1 4 29 5 3
Brazilian 7 3 1 0 1 1 7 1 2
Swedish 4 1 0 1 1 1 2 477 2
Danish 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 458
Latvian 2 0 1 136 4 0 1 0 0
Polish 1 0 0 0 2 421 11 4 0
All 5689 439 281 370 245 1175 3480 1396 1292
Estimated by the author based on: [7].
Appendix 2
Number of restaurants of 24 ethnic cuisines in non-capital cities of the Baltic Region countries as of January 24, 2017
Ethnic cuisines Saint Petersburg Kaliningrad Lübeck Kiel Rostock Gdansk Szczecin
Italian 568 57 22 16 14 42 37
Japanese 560 47 1 3 1 11 5
Chinese 187 3 12 12 6 8 4
French 103 4 3 4 1 9 6
American 247 13 4 3 6 20 9
Indian 31 2 2 3 3 3 4
Spanish 36 1 3 2 3 6 3
Thai 35 1 2 4 3 9 1
Mexican 45 3 3 5 2 6 2
Korean 16 0 0 1 0 1 0
Vietnamese 16 1 2 2 0 2 0
Greek 26 1 7 3 3 3 2
Turkish 38 2 2 0 0 6 5
British 21 5 0 0 0 0 0
German 60 10 41 29 36 1 1
Lebanese 2 0 0 0 0 1 0
Argentinean 1 0 1 1 0 1 0
Russian 1684 61 0 0 0 3 1
Brazilian 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Irish 26 1 1 0 0 0 1
Polish 0 0 1 0 0 141 54
Swedish 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Danish 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Latvian 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
All 3704 212 107 90 78 273 135
Estimated by the author based on: [7].
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The author
Dr. Azat B. Rakhmanov, Associate Professor, Department of History and Theory of Sociology, Faculty of Sociology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia.
E-mail: [email protected]
To cite this article:
Rakhmanov, A.B. 2017, Countries of the Baltic Region in the Global Culinary Space, Balt. reg., Vol. 9, no. 2, p. 88—103. doi: 10.5922/2079-8555-2017-2-7.
