From citrus grove to supermarket shelf, sweetness at a price

The orange, redolent of sunshine and vitality, was long an object of desire in the western world. But its history includes labour struggles and boycotts as well as the colourful myths depicted on wrappers.

In the late 19th century, as citrus fruit became a common consumer product, oranges and lemons started being sold in white or pastel-coloured tissue paper. These wrappers not only protected the fruit in transit, they also indicated the brand, along with its origin, grade and public health certification.

These bright, somewhat crumpled, images, which were printed on the wrappers with rubber stamps, made their way around the world. They sometimes referenced popular culture and were usually the work of anonymous artists. There were exceptions, though: the figurative artist Jean Le Gac designed the ‘Le peintre’ (the painter) brand for an importer friend, and a Sicilian printer even commissioned a series of ‘artists’ oranges’.

In time, the use of fungicides and refrigerated transportation made these wrappers redundant. They were also criticised for being non-environmentally friendly or simply too expensive. And supermarkets, which sell nine out of ten oranges, prefer generic produce in any case; today they come stickered or bundled in ugly nets.

Though orange wrappers are now largely a thing of the past, they live on as collector’s items. The International Museum of Modest Arts in Sète (MIAM) holds one of France’s largest collections, with tens of thousands of wrappers, most donated by the artist Pascal Casson or acquired from local markets.

Colonisation and boycotts

The Jaffa orange’s oval shape made it easy to wrap and its thick skin protected it while at sea. The Palestinians developed the Jaffa (or shamouti) in the 18th century and by the end of the following century, there were some 400 orange groves in the port city.

‘Jaffa makes quite an impression from afar,’ a French diplomat remarked in 1917 as he advanced north through Palestine with General Edmund Allenby’s troops in pursuit of the retreating Ottomans. ‘One enters through orange groves whose fragrance is a pleasant (…)

Full article: 2 330 words.

Allan Popelard & Grégory Rzepski

Allan Popelard is a teacher; Grégory Rzepski is a member of Le Monde diplomatique’s editorial team.

(1) Quoted in Catherine Nicault, ‘L’“Orange de Jaffa” avant la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale: Un fruit “palestinien” chargé de sens’ (The ‘Jaffa orange’ before the second world war: a highly meaningful ‘Palestinian’ fruit), Archives juives, vol 47, no 1, Paris, 2014.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork, a film by Eyal Sivan, 2009.

(5) David Harvey, ‘The Art of Rent: Globalization, Monopoly, and the Commodification of Culture’, in Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, Verso, London, 2012.

(6) Timothy Brook, Vermeer’s Hat: the Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World, Bloomsbury, New York, 2008.

(7) Delphine Mercier and Marco Supervielle, ‘L’histoire de l’orange fraîche ou celle des réseaux “ethniques” dans la région Cuenca de la Plata’ (The history of the fresh orange, or of ‘ethnic’ networks in the Cuenca de la Plata region), Géographie, économie, société, vol 9, no 3, Arcueil, 2007.

(9) Barbara Hufnagel et al, ‘Allons-nous vivre dans un monde sans agrumes?’ (Will we live in a world without citrus?), 12 August 2024, www.cirad.fr/.

(10) Gilles Reckinger, Oranges amères: Un nouveau visage de l’esclavage en Europe (Bitter Oranges: the new face of slavery in Europe), Raisons d’Agir, Paris, 2023.

(11) See Cécile Raimbeau, ‘Women of Souss’, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, April 2009.