How did scholars like Smith and his contemporaries compare nutritional value? For the first time in history, the potato ventured beyond the Americas. . It was a small round object sent around the planet, and it changed the course of human history. Potatoes Around the World . The early history of the potato in Europe | SpringerLink Potatoes contain nearly every important vitamin and nutrient, except vitamins A and D, making their life-supporting properties unrivalled by any other single crop. Columbian exchange. But underground potatoes are well hidden, and you can dig them up one by one, as needed. Prussias King Frederick the Great ordered his government to distribute instructions on how to plant potatoes, hoping peasants would have food if enemy armies invaded during the War of the Austrian Succession in 1740. Along the way, he extolled guano as an excellent source of it. Potatoes reached Mexico by 3000-2000 B.C., probably passing through Lower Central America or the Caribbean Islands. His right hand rested on the hilt of his sword. Potatoes were not recorded in the literature until . This appalling figure is an underestimate, he wrote, because it omits the hundreds and hundreds of local famines. France was not exceptional; England had 17 national and big regional famines between 1523 and 1623. Biologists believe that buffalo bur was confined to Mexico until Spaniards, agents of the Columbian Exchange, carried horses and cows to the Americas. Weeks later, it was destroying potatoes in the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and England. Get the latest History stories in your inbox? Every year, many farmers left fallow as much as half of their grain land, to rest the soil and fight weeds (which were plowed under in summer). Around 10,000 years ago, in many parts of the world, agriculture began, perhaps following a period of global warming, glacial melting and sea level rise, itself followed by ten centuries of dry, even arid conditions. [26] People feared that it was poisonous like other plants the potato was often grown with in herb gardens, and distrusted a plant, nicknamed "the devil's apples", that grew underground. Alas, soil bacteria constantly digest these substances, so they are always in lesser supply than farmers would like. If you have a field of wheat, its really visible. If arsenic killed potato beetles, why not try it on other pests? Ireland in particular, because of the extreme dependence of the poor, especially western Ireland, on this single staple crop, was devastated by the blight's arrival in 1845.[45][46][37]. Such a homogenous food block made the potato susceptible to diseases, as its genetic diversity had been washed away from domestication. Seize the guano islands! The history of potato plants dates back thousands of years to the Andean part of South America. (Corn, another American crop, played a similar but smaller role in southern Europe.) Guano, the dried remains of birds semisolid urine, makes excellent fertilizera mechanism for giving plants nitrogen, which they need to make chlorophyll, the green molecule that absorbs the suns energy for photosynthesis. Potato - Wikipedia He explained that potatoes were domesticated high in the Andes, near Lake Titicaca, nearly 1,000km south-east of Lima. Unlike any previous European crop, potatoes are grown not from seed but from little chunks of tuberthe misnamed seed potatoes. Continental farmers regarded this alien food with fascinated suspicion; some believed it an aphrodisiac, others a cause of fever or leprosy. In the early decades of the 20th Century, scientists began combining genes from mainstream potatoes, hoping to keep their domesticated traits, with wild potatoes, hoping to get their resistance to diseases. Destroying the statue was a crime against art, not history: Drake almost certainly did not introduce the potato to Europe. The silly part is that the story of the potato began millennia before the concept of nation-states existed, said Charles Crissman, a researcher at the International Potato Center, in a New York Times story published in 2008. Thus, she argues, the fascination with potatoes does not come from the emergence of a new crop, but from novel European ideas of the relationship between food and the state. The total value of the potato crop was $3.88 billion (NASS 2020). Our taste for beer may go back 13,000 years. It spread to England soon after it reached Ireland (being widely cultivated in Lancashire and around London, on top of imports from Ireland), also becoming a staple by the 18th century. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine The crop slowly spread across Europe, such that, for example, by 1845 it occupied one-third of Irish arable land. The average price of potatoes increased by $0.02 to $9.17 per cwt. Before 1910, the crops were stored in barns or root cellars, but, by the 1920s, potato cellars or barns came into use. The first obvious symptomspurple-black or purple-brown spots on the leavesare visible in about five days. Potato production expanded worldwide during the 19th century, but it was expansion in China and India during . Diseases common in the Old World quickly devastated the indigenous populations in the New. It arrived in Europe sometime before the end of the 16th century by two different ports of entry: the first in Spain around 1570, and the second via the British Isles between 1588 and 1593. William L. Langer, "American Foods and Europe's Population Growth 17501850", Journal of Social History, 8#2 (1975), pp. Irish saying 5th Century B.C. [17][18], Sailors returning from the Andes to Spain with silver presumably brought maize and potatoes for their own food on the trip. The emerald pigment in the paint was Paris green, made largely from arsenic and copper. [29], In France, at the end of the 16th century, the potato had been introduced to the Franche-Comt, the Vosges of Lorraine and Alsace. The Portuguese introduced potatoes, which they called 'Batata', to India in the early seventeenth century when they cultivated it along the western coast. [44], A lack of genetic diversity from the low number of varieties left the crop vulnerable to disease. Top chefs like Virgilio Martinez are featuring different varieties of potatoes in their creations (Credit: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy). Still, the earliest certain potato crop in North America was brought to New Hampshire in 1719 from Derry. As late as the 1960s, Irelands population was half what it had been in 1840. Guano set the template for modern agriculture. Eventually one man apparently threw some leftover green paint on his infested plants. "Let the sky rain potatoes, Shakespeare wrote in "The Merry Wives of Windsor. Their portability made them ideal to transport into the growing cities, feeding the swelling population that would be needed for a factory labor force. You will find three available alternatives; typing, drawing, or uploading one. [30], The potato had a large effect on European demographics and society, due to the fact that it yielded about three times the calories per acre of grain while also being more nutritive and growing in a wider variety of soils and climates, significantly improving agricultural production in the early modern era. Over the eons, the separate corners of the earth developed wildly different suites of plants and animals. By some accounts, Marie Antoinette liked the blossoms so much that she put them in her hair. The mountain cultures differed strikingly from one another, but all were nourished by tuber and root crops, the potato most important. The lake is at a high altitude and here started to develop advanced civilisations of South America, based on the potato and corn. Sir Francis Drake, the base proclaimed. In modern times potatoes have grown in popularity due to their versatility and ability to be used for many different dishes of food. But in terms of plants that influenced the course of history -- socially, politically, economically, and ecologically -- few other crops can compare. that the tuber's true agricultural potential was realized. Desperate farmers tried everything they could to rid themselves of the invaders. Your Privacy Rights Half the world around, the potato has reignited long-standing rivalries between Peru and Chile over who can claim the tuber as their own, while top chefs in Lima and the Andes such as Virgilio Martinez who opened Mil in 2019 are turning their gaze again to potatoes and featuring them in their creations. Proof will never be found, but it is widely believed that the guano ships carried P. infestans. It was well established as a crop by the mid-20th century [28] and in present-day Africa they have become a vegetable or co-staple crop. Thus, began the centuries-long captivation among Irish and British peasants with the potato, grounded in rented earth and scarcity. A question of measuring arises, Earle admits. The Origin of the Potato The potato was first cultivated in South America between three and seven thousand years ago, though scientists believe they may have grown wild in the region as long as 13,000 years ago. French physician Antoine Parmentier studied the potato intensely and in Examen chymique des pommes de terres ("Chemical examination of potatoes") (Paris, 1774) showed their enormous nutritional value. In the 1940s and 1950s, improved crops, high-intensity fertilizers and chemical pesticides created the Green Revolution, the explosion of agricultural productivity that transformed farms from Illinois to Indonesiaand set off a political argument about the food supply that grows more intense by the day. By the end of the 18th century, potatoes had become in much of Europe what they were in the Andesa staple. [14] The potato-symbolized art touched on themes such as physical deformities and hallucinations. Following domestication, these early potatoes spread through the cordillera and became a crucial food supply for indigenous communities, including the Inca, particularly as a staple foodstuff called chuo, a freeze-dried potato product that can last years or even decades. [50] Contreras reciprocated local communities by genetically improving varieties aimed for small scale agriculture.[51]. In addition to providing starch, an essential dietary component, potatoes are an abundant source of vitamin C, potassium, and fibre. [31] On the other hand, maize (which also yielded far more calories per acre than wheat) proved more popular than the potato in the hotter climates of Portugal, Spain, Italy, and southern France, first being grown in Spain around 1525 and becoming a common part of the peasant diet by the 17th century. Perus government is working with indigenous communities to protect the potatos genetic heritage (Credit: Jaime Razuri/Getty Images). Era 5 - The First Global Age (1200 to 1750 CE) > The Colombian Exchange | 5.3 2023 Khan Academy READ: Crops that Grew the World Google Classroom Humans have always moved plants around with us. News of the new food spread rapidly. Brought to Europe from the New World by Spanish explorers, the lowly potato gave rise to modern industrial agriculture. In what Crosby called the Columbian Exchange, the worlds long-separate ecosystems abruptly collided and mixed in a biological bedlam that underlies much of the history we learn in school. In two months P. infestans wiped out the equivalent of one-half to three-quarters of a million acres. Prior to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, consumption was as high as 153 to 200kg per year higher than in any Western European country. Add the date to the record using the Date tool. James Cook's crew picked up the vegetables in Polynesia back in 1769, before all this interbreeding took off. One of the ways breeders used to incorporate resistance was looking at wild potatoes, Burbano explained, talking about inedible potato cousins that still survive in the Andes and in the rest of their natural range.
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