How the Americas transformed Tudor England

How did a tiny insect from Central America transform Renaissance art and fashion? In today's episode of the History Extra podcast, Dr. Lauren Working explains how, in the era of Shakespeare, ideas and materials flowed from the Americas to England, transforming English culture in unexpected ways. Her new book, A Golden World, examines everything from dazzling red dyes and precious gems to tobacco and indigenous knowledge to shed light on this story. She was speaking to Eleanor Evans. Before we get into the broader scope of it, we're gonna drop right in with a really vivid example that you give your readers. Can we start off with the colour red? Where does this come from in your story? Yes, chili red. Let's talk bugs. I love that this is the opening question because

It's a very cool parallel to Queen Elizabeth, to use a very contemporary term, I guess, but she's kind of Queen Bee, right? And actually political writers often refer to the nation as a beehive in the Tudor era. But Cot Chaneal takes us to another female insect, far from England, in the hot climates of Central America. And this bug is actually really central to Renaissance aesthetics. So one of the chapters in my book, I explore the brilliance to life by the artist Nathaniel Bacon. He's an amateur artist. And he paints this still life in the early 1620s. And this is the first known example of a still life by an English artist. He's a relative of Sir Francis Bacon. If anyone's kind of more familiar with the politician and the natural philosopher, you can kind of see why maybe he's interested in the natural world and kind of science. He's painting. Fruits and vegetables. So at first glance, this painting looks like a very European composition. It's clearly inspired by Dutch still life paintings that are growing in popularity in the Netherlands. And so we have this composition of a cookmaid. She's surrounded by

fresh fruits and vegetables that she's ostensibly brought in from the garden. But what's interesting about it is that we get this vibrant red in it that is not A dye that's made from domestic plants or resources. It is actually a dye that comes from Central America and can only be produced. By taking a bug that grows on the prickly pear cactus in kind of places such as Mexico. And it's both the the dye and the bug that's called cochineal. So this cochineal bug had to be farmed and collected, ground into a powder by indigenous farmers. In central America. And only the female bug can produce those high levels of carmonic acid that's needed to create this vibrant red dye. If

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