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- It fuelled soldiers at war, and helped peasants to survive periods of conflict. It made land more productive overall, making people less inclined to fight over it. And as the food supply became more reliable, abundant, and nutritious, the population swelled, providing "the wealth and manpower needed to fuel the Industrial Revolution."
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More than that, as the historian William H. McNeill has argued, the potato led to empire: “By feeding rapidly growing populations, [it] permitted a handful of European nations to assert...
- Britain
- The Soviet Union
- Germany
- The Taste of The War
- The Origins of Potato Consumption
- Potatoes in The First World War
- Potatoes and The Present
The British government promoted potatoes as a way of reducing reliance on food imports while alsoimproving the nation’s overall health. Since ‘war demands better physique and health than peace’, officials were convinced of the need to effect fundamental changes in the nation’s eating habits. Eating properly was an individual obligation and a nation...
When the Soviet Union entered the war in 1941 it faced enormous impediments to its efforts to feed itself. Agricultural production was in disarray as a result of Stalin’s programme of collectivisation, which had caused the devastating 1933 Ukrainian famine, in which as many as seven million people died. Wartime mobilisation deprived the countryside...
The National Socialists likewise pushed potatoes. Nazi political philosophy viewed the health of the German state as virtually identical to the health of individual Germans. Citizens had a civic obligation to look after themselves; ‘health as a duty’ became an official party slogan in 1939. Wartime rationing was designed to nurture proper Germans b...
With or without top-down encouragement people around the globe turned to potatoes to keep body and soul together during the Second World War. Soviet peasants, almost entirely reliant on foods they grew themselves, more than doubled their potato consumption. ‘They ate potatoes for breakfast, for lunch and for tea; they ate them all ways—baked, fried...
Potatoes have played an increasingly important role in warfare since they first burst ontothe global scene in the sixteenth century. The tuber originates in the Americas; scientists designate the Andes as its ‘cradle area’. It has long served as an essential food resource for ordinary people there. Potatoes also fuelled military expansion across So...
By the outbreak of the First World War, potatoes were well-established in diets in many parts of the world, so it is not surprising thatgovernments responded to the conflict by encouraging potatoes, just as they would afew decades later. The fragile nutritional health of recruits was believed to undermine military strength. One official from Bradfo...
Today,the fight against Covid-19 is often cast in military terms: politicians talk about defeating the virus and employ a range of militaristic metaphors. But in this crisis, potatoes are as much victim as saviour. In the USprices fell by as much as fifty percent in the first month of lockdown, as the closure of restaurants halteddemand.In Belgium,...
Nov 25, 2020 · The answer is simple. The quality of life and the very existence of the landless labourer and the cottier class, ‘the poorest of the poor’ in 1845 depended entirely on the potato. The Lumper ...
When industrial warfare ravaged across Europe, the potato’s importance in feeding soldiers and civilians alike was such that governments of all colours from Nazi Germany to communist Russia lionised the crop - it was seen as everyone’s patriotic duty to grow as many potatoes as they could.
May 2, 2018 · Research from Nancy Qian, a professor of managerial economics and decision sciences at the Kellogg School, finds that potatoes, and the permanent boost in agricultural productivity they brought about, reduced global armed conflict in the 18th and 19th centuries.
How the Potato Changed World History. Nutrient-rich potatoes played a huge role in ending famine in Europe. That is, until "The Great Hunger," the 1845-1850 famine that ensued in the wake of the devastating arrival of potato blight disease in the mid-19th century.
Europe a few centuries after Spanish conquistadors took over the Inca empire in 1532-33. First of all, potatoes yield abundantly, and adapt readily to diverse climates so long as the weather remains cool and moist enough for the plants to gather sufficient water from the soil to form the starchy tubers. On the other hand, potatoes do not keep
