Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent

The Propitious Esculent: The Potato in World History is a book by John Reader outlining the role of the potato in world history. It was also published under the.
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By , it was 8. This explosive growth could not continue, of course. I shall now introduce the arch villain in this story: Today it can be found almost everywhere, and wet weather is its call to action. Blight spores can ride the winds to new locations. Nothing gives it greater pleasure than discovering a big field of moist mature potato plants.

All hail the uber-tuber

In , spores from the US took a steam ship cruise to Ireland, where everyone was eagerly expecting a bumper crop of lumpers. To their horror, entire fields turned black overnight. Blight raced across Europe, destroying two million square kilometers in four months.

It struck again in and Ireland was hit hardest, and their wretched British overlords could not be bothered to provide much assistance. A million Irish died, and a million emigrated. I shall now introduce the hapless victim in this story: Solanum tuberosum, the family of domesticated taters. In the process of being transformed from wild toxic tubers to an incredibly productive super food, domestic spuds lost most of their sex drive via male sterility.

Few produce any fruits or seeds. True seeds are rugged survivalists, because they are genetically diverse. But domesticated potatoes are helpless sitting ducks, because they are genetically identical clones. If one is susceptible to blight, they all are.

Scientists have two control options. The cheapest solution is to breed new varieties that are blight resistant, but this is a time-consuming process, and there are only a limited number of gene tricks that work. The success of any new variety can only be temporary, because the blight fungus is constantly mutating. The scientists will have to start all over again. The other solution is more expensive and toxic: In wet seasons, a field might be sprayed 12 times or 30 times in super-moist New Guinea.

Like plant breeding, the effectiveness of fungicides is temporary, because the fungus will inevitably develop resistance to them. When one poison stops working, you switch to another, use more, or try combos. There can be no permanent solution to blight. Scientists will run out of clever tricks long before Mother Nature quits producing countless new fungus mutants every minute. Rising energy costs will continue to drive up the price of fungicides, making them unaffordable for a growing number of poor farmers. Blight has never been a problem in this region — until recently.

Climate change has been making the weather warmer and wetter in the homeland of spuds. Some crops of native potatoes have been heavily damaged.


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The venerable historian William H. Millions of surplus country folks were forced to move to cities, work in factories, earn peanuts, and live on taters. Thus, spuds played a significant role in the mass emigration of Europeans, the growth of colonial empires, and the rise of Russia and Germany as industrial powers. I have a feeling that it would have been wiser to leave the spuds as we found them — wild, free, and happy. This book has many, many more spud tales to tell. Throw some French fries in the microwave and find a comfy chair.


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  5. Propitious Esculent, The Potato in World History by John Reader;

    6. Did you know that my favorite food is the potato? For as long as I can remember. I grew up eating potatoes mashed and covered in butter almost every night for my entire childhood. If I see mashed potatoes on a menu, I cannot ever say no. Poutine is one of Canada's greatest inventions: Dill and heavy cream with potatoes; stuffed in perogies; eaten with breakfast. This is the most versatile esculent that has ever existed. And so John Did you know that my favorite food is the potato?

    Now, let's clarify something. When I was reading this, I kept telling anyone who would listen, "I am reading a book about the history OF the potato. We do not follow the potato through birth, its tribulations into contemporary times. Rather, we follow how the potato has aided and shaped mankind into what it is today.

    Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent

    There is another review that gives the book a low rating for this reason, claiming they did not want to read about the potato -- because that's all the book ended up being-- well, what did you expect? Reader has traced the potato from its origins in the Andes and how it was used and valued by the indigenous and colonialists there, to its affects on European lower classes, into its popularity of a staple food. He tells us what the potato is , scientifically; and yet, with all of its value and benefit, how it remains one of the most delicate, precariously balanced pieces of vegetation that the Mother Earth and evolution has ever cultivated into existence.

    I love this book for how it highlights the "adventures" of something that is so overlooked by us today because it is so widely available. How many people look at their food and wonder where it comes from? Could guess that so simple-a-thing could have affected us all in such unnoticed, yet important ways.

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    Now, when I look at the potato, I not only love it for its texture, its taste, nor its versatility, I quietly thank the potato for having saved my Ukrainian family and for making me and keeping me very healthy. I never knew the potato was so interesting nor how it helped fuel the industrial revolution. This was an interesting read about the famous potato, now so much a part of our lives, it wasn't always so.

    I knew much of this history already, but Reader goes into a depth I haven't seen.

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    Like other works, such as Salt, Cod, Spice, etc, the authors use the subject at hand as a medium by which history can be traced and explored. It's always an interesting avenue to explore, and in our case tracing the potato from its roots ha to the modern age.

    This tuber is incredibly important, and is respo This was an interesting read about the famous potato, now so much a part of our lives, it wasn't always so.

    This tuber is incredibly important, and is responsible for feeding millions that would have otherwise starved or not been born to begin with. We all have to thank God for the potato, which for many was just what they needed, when they needed it. Mar 20, Elizabeth F rated it it was amazing. So far, a tour-de-force of history of politics, social history, botany I'm not through yet!! This is one of the best "popular" syntheses of history, botany, sociology that I have read. Mr Reader takes the lowly potato, which most of us do not give two seconds' thought to, from its origins in western South America, early domestication by indigenous peoples and export by Spanish explorers too nice a word for how they treated, i.

    I highly recommend this book. This was an interesting book with lots of information on the biology and history of the potato, but it lacked a central argument beyond, "the potato is important and lots of people eat it. Nov 08, Karen E. Some interesting anecdotes, but I felt the author didn't really make much of a case for why the potato has had such an impact on the world.

    Made me hungry for potatos though.

    Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent by John Reader

    You might not think a book about the potato would be that interesting, but this was a really good read. The many stops on Atlantic islands gave the plant time to adjust to different environments and day lengths. Reader devotes many pages to the process of determining who had the potato first and where they were growing it and for what scale of consumption. This seems like a Western concern rooted in basic competition. However, tracing this particular time line illustrates commodity chains, economic development, culture change including scientific theory and method , and biological change.

    In Europe, the potato was not immediately well received. The potato also is at the center of demographic and cultural change and this is most clear in the case of Ireland. The Propitious Esculent proposes that the fate of Ireland was not solely the fault of a fungus but the result of a chain of governmental decisions that were set into motion because of the properties of the potato. In the final portion of the book, Reader outlines the worldwide spread of the potato and how people around the globe have set out to study the potato to protect its genetic health.

    The potato spread successfully in part due to the lessons learned after Irish Potato Famine in which biologists and farmers created methods to prevent fungus induced blight. The second point, protecting genetic health, is especially important since such a large part of the global population is dependent on the potato for a stable diet.

    Since there has been such a long period of human intervention in the development of the potato, it has genetic properties that have become rare as well as weaknesses in the genetic code that lead to defects in different parts of the plant. Pooling global knowledge and resources, biologists, ecologists, and anthropologists at the International Potato Center are securing the varieties of the potato. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

    Its arrival in Europe is easier to date, but still guesswork. The vegetable that Columbus encountered in was the sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas, a different thing altogether. The conquistador Francisco Pizarro probably first saw the potato in Walter Raleigh could hardly have introduced it to England from Virginia, because the tuber did not then grow in Virginia. It may have arrived in Europe as a medicinal, or an ornamental plant: Fletcher and Shakespeare hint at aphrodisiac properties; John Gerard's Great Herball of mentions its flowers.

    The first convincing reference to the potato as food, however, occurs in the records of the Hospital de la Sangre in Seville: Since the purchase was made in December, the crop could only have been grown in Spain. Since it would take at least three years to multiply imported seed tubers into a crop, potatoes, perhaps imported via the Canary Islands, must have been grown in Spain since Wider introduction could hardly have been smooth: Gerard makes reference to a Burgundian belief that potatoes caused leprosy. By , the potato was a field crop in Holland: The same area of land under potatoes could yield four times the calories delivered by grain.

    Even better, the potato could be left in the ground, which meant that foraging armies were less likely to take everything that farmers had grown. Parmentier, a prisoner of the Prussians during the seven years' war, lived entirely on potatoes for three years, and introduced them to the Parisian court in The king told him "France will thank you some day for having found bread for the poor. Populations grew because the potato could buffer them against famine: