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Potatoes and History | The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Potatoes and History
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The potato, originally cultivated in the Andes, transformed European agriculture and society by providing a resilient and nutrient-dense food source, ultimately playing a crucial role in population growth, industrialization, and averting widespread famine, despite initial resistance and the devastating impact of potato blight.
Of all the goods that cross the ocean in
the Columbian Exchange, perhaps none has
become more ubiquitous than the humble
potato. It's become the centerpiece of
hundreds of dishes. It's parts of all
sorts of cuisines. But that didn't
really happen overnight. Originally
cultivated by the Incas, potatoes were
brought back to the old world by some of
the earliest European explorers, but
people in Europe didn't initially find
them to be, well, particularly edible.
It was circumstances and a few diehard
potato fans that made the potato popular
across the continent. It is history that
deserves to be remembered. Potatoes seem
to have been domesticated between 7 and
10,000 years ago by the indigenous
peoples of the Andes. Modern Peruvians
still raise hundreds of varieties of
potato in those same fields. The Inca
created countless dishes with potatoes,
including a very light freeze-dried
version that could be carried by the
Incan armies and lasted 10 years,
providing a supply against famine.
Potatoes didn't leave the New World
until Francisco Pizarro led his
concistadors to conquer the Incan Empire
in 1532.
It took some time to reach Europe with
some of the earliest examples reaching
Antwerp from the Canary Islands in 1567.
By 1600, the potato had reached most of
Western Europe. as food. The potato was
not immediately popular. While the
Spanish and other Europeans likely used
potatoes as food on their voyages from
South America, potatoes were more often
fed to livestock or eaten only as a last
resort. The first scientific description
of the potato came in 1596 from a Swiss
naturalist who gave it the name Solanum tuborosum.
tuborosum.
The potato was unpopular for a lot of
reasons. It is a night shade which
Europeans knew to be poisonous and in
fact the flowers and growths of potatoes
contain the toxic chemical compound
solanine. Another issue was that some
such as the Russian Orthodox Church
thought the potato suspect because it
isn't mentioned in the Bible. It was
sometimes called the devil's apple and
some said it was used by witches to make
flying ointment. Most important to
understand perhaps is the perspective of
the European peasantry. Accustomed to
grains and bread, potatoes were an
unfamiliar, misshapen, and dirty
vegetable. People didn't know what to do
with them. But after biting into a raw
one, they were pretty sure it wasn't
food. In the first years after its
introduction, potatoes were in a few
places like England and Spain,
considered a delicacy and an aphrodesiac.
aphrodesiac.
Shakespeare mentions potatoes in this
context in several plays. And English
doctor William Salmon said potatoes
nourish the whole body, restore its
consumptions, and provoke lust. The
director of the Royal Botanical Garden
said potatoes were purchased when scarce
at no inconsiderable cost for those that
believed in their powers. Eventually,
the aristocracy of Europe began to
realize that potatoes had some hidden
benefits. One of the early supporters of
the potato was Frederick the Great of
Prussia. When Frederick ascended the
Prussian throne in 1740, Frederick
sought to consolidate his kingdom's
holdings and strengthened his position
on the continent. Shortly after taking
the throne, he became involved in the
War of Austrian secession, which lasted
until 1748.
Endemic warfare in Europe put frequent
strain on food supplies. Large armies
needed to requisition more and more
food, causing widespread devastation and
starvation. Famines caused by the 30
Years War from 1618 to 1648 were some of
the worst in European history with
population declines as high as 50% in
some regions. The introduction of the
potato began to change that. The first
people to figure out the virtues of the
potato were peasants who found that
armies would ignore them completely when
they came to requisition food. Peasants
likely first ate the potato out of
desperation, but the food proved to have
much greater caloric density than wheat
and better nutrition. Frederick noted
that despite military requisitioning,
the peasants were staying fed. And even
if an army did target potatoes, they
were harder to destroy or take than
stores of wheat. In 1744, he added
potatoes to his army stores and ordered
seed potatoes, tubers that would grow
when planted, to be distributed across
Prussia. Frederick's patronage didn't
convince his people at first. When the
town of Colberg received their first
cartload, they were disgusted and told
the king, "These things have no taste.
Not even dogs will eat them." What use
are they to us? Frederick threatened
that any peasants that refused would
have their noses cut off, but the next
year sent a guard who had seen the
benefits of potatoes to encourage their
planting in Colberg. In 1756, he went
even further with the potato edict,
which ordered everyone in Prussia to
plant potatoes wherever they could find
room for them. This caused an important
shift in agriculture as prior to to the
potato fields would be left to restore
the soil. Now they were filled with potatoes.
potatoes.
Potatoes began to massively change
European food production and supply.
Cheap, hardy, and less likely to spoil.
Potatoes offered a cushion against
famine and effectively doubled or more
the European food supply. Frederick
actively advertised potatoes and his
effort paid off handsomely. When the
Seven Years War began in 1756, Prussia
was faced with wave after wave of
invasion, but the kingdom proved
remarkably resilient. Prussian fortunes
were a near thing. It was a godsend when
the Russian queen died and Russia
switched sides to ally with Prussia.
Potatoes kept the situation at home
manageable long enough for the kingdom's
fortunes to shift. Frederick supported
potatoes so enthusiastically that he was
called the potato king and people still
leave potatoes at his grave.
Prussia's potatoes caught the attention
of other European powers and Austria,
Russia and France all pushed for their
peasants to grow potatoes after the war.
The war also produced one of the most
important promoters of the potato,
Antoine Augustine Permanentier.
Permanentier was a pharmacist in the
French army and was captured several
times and was imprisoned for years by
the Prussians where he was fed nothing
but potatoes. When he returned to France
after the war, he was amazed that his
health had not suffered. It convinced
him that potatoes would make a good food
source. The French had actually banned
the planting of potatoes in 1748 out of
the suspicion that it caused illness.
Parentier began doing pioneering work in
nutritional chemistry trying to
understand what in food was nourishing
to humans. In 1772, he won a contest
seeking to find the best food capable of
reducing the calamities of famine, the
potato. Permanentier also convinced the
Paris Faculty of Medicine to declare the
potato edible. He also published a paper
explaining how to make potato bread that
was similar to wheat bread. He hosted a
feast made up of only potato dishes
which Benjamin Franklin attended in 1767.
1767.
In 1785, he finally received royal
backing for his efforts, possibly after
presenting King Louis V 16th and his
wife Marie Antuinette with a bouquet of
potato flowers. Marie wore one in her
hair while Louisie started a fashion of
wearing them in the button hole.
Potatoes started to become popular at
the court, though that wasn't
necessarily good in the leadup to the
French Revolution. It helped too that
potato saved a bad grain harvest in 1785
from becoming a disastrous famine. His
most audacious attempt to popularize the
potato came after 1787 when the king
allowed Parmenier to plant 40 acres of
potatoes near Paris. At harvest, Parier
posted guards to chase away onlookers
during the day but withdrew them at
night. The peasants, assuming that only
something valuable would be guarded,
stole from the fields. This story or a
very similar version of it has been told
across Europe and attributed to various
kings or leaders especially to Frederick
the Great of Prussia. Though no
contemporary record seem to prove that
Frederick did it before Parintier. The
potato's popularity exploded and the
king told Parintier that France will
thank you someday for having found bread
for the poor. Though Louie was destined
to lose his head only a few years later,
Parentier became a hero. Potatoes were
declared to be the food of the
revolution and royal ornamental gardens
were torn up to be replanted with potatoes.
potatoes.
Permentier's influence spread not only
to France but across the continent and
apparently across the pond. Thomas
Jefferson had Permanent's work in his
library and became a supporter of the
potato in America serving it at meals in
the White House during his presidency.
Jefferson, a famous francoile, is also
credited with being the first to serve
fried potatoes that he had seen in
France. the now ubiquitous French fries.
It's hard to overestimate the importance
of the potato to history. Europe was
plagued with famines with at least 50
major nationwide famines hitting France
between 1500 and 1800. Most nations in
Europe managed to grow just enough food
to satisfy their needs. So looting
armies, bad harvest, and crop failures
left countries without anything to eat.
Potatoes solved all kinds of problems
for Europe. For a time, it essentially
ended famines in Europe, massively
increased food supply, and provided much
better nutrition, which improved health
and birth rates. Potatoes provided an
easy to prepare, nutrient-dense food
supply for the industrial revolution as
factory workers toiled away for up to 16
hours a day. The potato played an
important role in driving population
growth with modern studies showing
strong correlations with increased
population and better health. The
European population grew from 140
million in 1750 to 400 million 150 years
later. A 2009 study found that the
increase in nutritional carrying
capacity didn't just provide food for
factory workers, but actually helped to
drive economic growth and urbanization.
While it's impossible to know just how
much of the change is directly due to
potatoes is certain that it was an
integral part of the industrial
revolution and modernization.
Another product from the Americas served
to help agricultural production even
more. Guano. In 1840, Justice von Leebig
published his pioneering work describing
the importance of nitrogen in plant
growth in the production of chlorophyll.
In it, he also extolled guano as a major
source of nitrogen which revealed guano
as the world's first highintensity
fertilizer. The guano boom was historic
in itself and it again doubled or even
tripled agricultural yields. The one two
of guano and potatoes created the basis
for modern industrial agriculture.
But all this gain came with a risk that
no one predicted. Because potatoes were
grown using tubers, they were
essentially clones of each other,
creating a dangerous monoculture across
the continent. Nowhere was this risk
more exemplified than in Ireland. Unlike
France, England, or Germany, in Ireland,
potatoes took off quickly. It's not
clear who first brought the potato to
Ireland, but certainly they arrived
before 1600. Ireland was well suited for
the potato and also had a very rural
population that was always struggling
with the food supply. Much of the best
land was used for raising cattle and
cash crops for British markets, leaving
marginal land to the peasants.
Government policy had allowed
subdivision of land such that no crop
other than potatoes would suffice to
feed a family. While war and shortage
drove the adoption of potatoes
elsewhere, in Ireland, they already had
no other options.
By 1800, nearly 40% of the Irish ate no
solid food other than potatoes, with the
number being 10 to 30% in countries like
Belgium, the Netherlands, and Prussia.
Policies had forced Ireland into
monoculture, making the population
particularly vulnerable to a crop blight.
blight.
Then came phytoora infest, translating
roughly to vexing plant destroyer. It is
a water mold that causes potato blight.
The European potato crop was
particularly vulnerable because of its
lack of genetic diversity. Pea
infestines seems to have originated in
central Mexico and specifically affects
nightshade plants like the tomato and
potato. It was probably brought to
Europe as part of the huge volume of
trade from South America that was
brought on by the guano rush. It seems
to have first broken out in Flanders in
1845, but the mold spread quickly to
Denmark, Germany, and England. It was
first reported in Ireland September
13th, 1845.
The blight destroyed 25 to 35% of the
crop that year, and the damage only got
worse until it wound down in 1852.
The effects of the blight, compounded by
land policy that allowed, for example,
food to be exported from Ireland, even
during the worst years of the famine and
evictions that left people with no means
to feed their family, killed at least a
million Irish people and caused 2
million more to flee the country. Damage
to crops elsewhere, notably in Scotland,
were deep enough to give the 1840s the
moniker, the hungry 40s. Though nowhere
as badly hit as Ireland, historically,
potatoes have been an integral part of
the development of the modern world.
Studies have repeatedly shown a
correlation between the introduction of
the potato and improved health and
increased population. For the first
time, a definitive solution had been
found to the world's food problem, wrote
historian Christian Bandenbrook in the
1970s. Potatoes along with guano marked
the beginning of industrial agriculture
and the continued improvement of the
world's food production.
Today, the potato is the number one
non-grain food crop produced in the
world. It's an important part of
countless diets around the world, from
snacks to hearty dinners. But blight and
other threats remain issues for modern
growers, forcing producers to
continually find new pesticides to deal
with quickly adapting threats like the
Colorado potato beetle.
Potatoes went from a local staple in the
Peruvian Mountains to an ugly, inedible
root to one of the most important food
stuffs in history. That's quite a
journey for a simple tuber.
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