SIEFKES, C. (2022). Edible People: The Historical Consumption of Slaves and Foreigners and the Cannibalistic Trade in Human Flesh. New York: Berghahn Books. 332 pp., ISBN 978-1-80073-613-9

Keywords: Cannibalism, Slavery, History, Morality, Death

Christian Siefkes’ book Edible People: The Historical Consumption of Slaves and Foreigners and the Cannibalistic Trade in Human Flesh confronts the Western cultural taboo of cannibalism head on, exploring historical accounts of the practice and its interconnections with other notoriously violent institutions such as slavery and xenophobia. This work uncovers a deep, untold history of cannibalism by asking questions that have been avoided in most academic literature, confronting the “what,” “why,” and most chillingly “how” of cannibalistic practices around the world. It identifies cannibalism as having a much deeper sociocultural meaning than simply “eating the flesh of one’s own species,” accounting for factors such as international commercialism, gender, politics, and internal and external power structures (p.6). Major points of analysis focus on understanding how human flesh can begin to be socially conceptualized as “edible,” and subsequently valuable as an item commerce, among certain culture groups. After giving ethnographic examples, Siefkes confronts the philosophical concepts surrounding cannibalism, searching for an explanation for the huge cultural deviation in moral positions ranging from total acceptance to inherent disgust and disapproval.

The volume contains an introduction, 15 central chapters, and a conclusion. The Introduction lays out a base understanding of our contemporary perspectives on cannibalism, focusing on the almost total Western rejection and erasure of the practice. This is referred to as “cannibalism denial” (p.2). The false narrative of a historically “universal taboo” is consistently disproven throughout the rest of the book. However, this taboo is still an important basis in the author’s analysis concerning Western involvement and participation in cannibalism. This portion also addresses the possible limitations of validity in reported sources, ultimately concluding that sources with multiple reports are truly describing actual practices and can be believed.

Chapter 1 works to develop a taxonomy of the circumstances and motives reported to drive cannibalism, giving readers a necessary vocabulary to understand the deep analysis of the varied practices discussed in later chapters. This includes definitions of a large range of cannibal acts, for example highlighting the differences between violent acts of cannibalism and what the author refers to as corpse-eating, were the victim is not murdered but instead already dead upon consumption.

Chapters 2-10 center around the numerous historical and ethnographic reports of slave eating, where slave-owners choose to kill and consume enslaved individuals. People are reduced to commodities through the practice of slavery, and in certain cultures where cannibalism is also socially accepted this has resulted in the practice of utilizing slaves as a food source. Places where this practice has been recorded include New Zealand, the Bismarck Archipelago near New Guinea, Sumatra, and the Congo. The Congo has produced a remarkably high number of reports, which are covered in Chapters 6-8.

Western influence on slave-eating is a major focus of this portion of the book. This includes outside commercial and social pressures influencing acts of cannibalism, performed both unintentionally and, in some cases, deliberately. For example, in the 19