Old Foods, New Spaces and BodiesIn-Between: (Re-)encountering Food and Drink at the Pietist Mission in Tranquebar, 1706-30

European colonization of the “New World” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries entailed not only contact with new edible and potable substances, but also a re-encounter with familiar “European” food and drink. This article examines these (re-)encounters in the Pietist mission in Tranquebar on the Coromandel Coast, India, in the early eighteenth century by drawing on the writings of missionaries published in the Hallesche Berichte. It demonstrates that in the everyday context of this Pietist mission, food and drink were fundamental to comprehending “the other” as well as the “self” and that missionaries demonstrated curiosity about the food and drink culture of the Indigenous population. It argues that during this early phase of mission, this (re-)encounter did not lead to clear-cut ideas about physiological difference or perpetuate ideas about physical transformation, but instead produced “bodies in-between”, that is, bodies that could move deftly and safely between culinary regimens.