Master of Millions: King Corn in American Culture.

Abstract

Using research drawn from more than two dozen archives and repositories around the nation, and drawing upon sources as varied as scrapbooks, memoirs, trade cards, federal documents, private correspondence, newspaper articles, recipe books, menus, photographs, the minutes from private associations, and census records, _Master of Millions: King Corn in American Culture_ explores the cultural, economic, political, and ecologic processes through which corn became “King.” At a larger level, the project builds upon important work in U.S. cultural, agricultural, business, and environmental history and speaks to current concerns about the place of corn in the nation’s foodways.

During the antebellum era, Americans began to imagine corn, their natural resources, and their society in new ways. As the forces of western expansion and industrialization transformed corn into an increasingly utilitarian and economically valuable medium, Americans’ quests to reshape the plant’s nature, its modes of cultivation, and the manners of its consumption responded and contributed to key developments in U.S. political, economic, and cultural histories: the growth of federal power and corporations, revolutions in food systems and environments, and evolving ideas about social relations. By the time that Corn Belt farmers adopted high-yielding hybrid corn seeds and used them to transform the nature of American agricultural production, corn had long been King.