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preservation practices, gastronomy and trade. When I return to this case study I will argue

that the same conditions, afforded by the sustainability assemblage that has seen the

emergence of an eco-label tinned tuna, contribute to the decline of the mattanza and

associated post-harvest practices.

A Tin Revolution

Unpacking the tin of tuna further, we look now to the emergence of canning as a

technological response to the age-old problem of decay. Preservation techniques, such as

fermenting, smoking, pickling and drying, had sufficed and enabled long distance voyage,

seafood consumption in inland regions, and even the expansion of empires. But it was war,

and the pressing question of how to feed thousands of men and prevent health conditions

such as scurvy while away from a nation’s food source, which provided the harsh conditions

for the invention of canning. In France the Napoleonic wars of the early 1800s had seen the

cutting off of supplies of cane sugar to the mainland (Shephard 2006, p. 231). Eager to find

alternatives to preserving with sugar and to decrease foreign imports, la Société d’Agriculture

offered a reward for the ‘composition of a work on the art of preserving, by the best possible

means, every kind of alimentary substance’ (cited in Shephard 2006, p. 231). The

government offered a prize of 12,000 francs to anyone who could preserve the food

provisions for soldiers and sailors (Toussaint-Samat 2006, p. 737).

Historians refer to two main figures in the invention of tinned food – Nicholas Appel

and Peter Durand (see Shephard 2006; Toussaint-Samat 2006). But as the Edinburgh Review

noted in 1814, the basic process – the application of heat to food in a hermetically sealed

container – was ‘neither novel in principle, nor scarcely in any point of practice’ (in Goody

2013, p. 75). French cook and confectioner Nicholas Appert had been tinkering with this

method using glass bottles for some years. His motivation differed from that of the nation. As

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