Spacing the can: empire, modernity, and the globalisation of food

The author outlines the multivalent geographies of a particular food-preser vation technology: the tin can. As well as detailing the technological evol ution of the can, he pays particular attention to the integral role that it played in the expansion and maintenance of Europe's empires in the Victori an era. Beginning with the demonstration of the can as part of the United K ingdom, Colonies, and Dominions exhibition at the Great Exhibition of 1851, the author examines its significance in several key events in the British imperial endeavour, including the Beer War and the marketing of the British Empire in the 1920s. The author also demonstrates the involvement of the c an in the construction of new experiences of global space, as it both reduc ed the distance between sites of food production and consumption and perpet uated those distances by fetishising the geographies of the origins of food stuffs. Although it is now one of the most mundane of artifacts in the burg eoning world of material culture, the author argues that the can was respon sible for lengthening the networks of imperialism and globalisation, and th at a retelling of its story can help us reconceptualise the ways in which s uch networks were built and do work.