Things I Wonder About

How much responsiblity does the potato get for the course of Western economic growth?

As Bob would say: I'm serious. I recently finished reading, several years late, Michael Pollan's book, The Botany of Desire. In his chapter on the potato, Pollan provides some historical background. It was only in the late sixteenth century that the tuber came to Europe from South America. Ireland was the first country to adopt the potato (out of climatic necessity) and most people are probably familiar with Ireland's alternately bounteous and tragic relationship with the potato.

But it was the potato's spread to northern Europe that seems to have truly changed the social and economic history of the Western world:

"In time, all three nations [Prussia, France, and Russia] would grow powerful on potatoes, which put an end to malnutrition and periodic famine in northern Europe and allowed the land to support a much larger population than it ever could have planted in grain. Since fewer hands were needed to farm it, the potato also allowed the countryside to feed northern Europe's growing and industrializing cities. Europe's center of politicla gravity had always been anchored firmly in the hot, sunny south, where wheat grew reliably; without the potato, the balance of European power might never have titled north."

A substantial part of economic history has been devoted to seeking the explanation for the West's "takeoff," and historians such as Robert Gallman and Stanley Engerman have identified nutritional advances as playing a crucial role in economic growth. Has anyone ever written about the role of the potato in Europe's economic acceleration? There is this book from which Pollan drew, and also this one, but have any economic historians explored the potato's role in economic growth?

The importance of nutrition probably makes sense to a lot of people; what is ceaselessly fascinating to me is the criticality of these types of often invisible changes. The potato was vilified in Europe at the time of its introduction (this is part of the reason the Irish led in adoption--they were perceived to be barbarous people deserving of a barbarous food that grew underground), and I doubt anyone at the time foresaw its far-reaching implications. It makes me wonder about the small and perhaps invisible changes taking root around us now that will have similar results. (Of course, the information atmosphere today is much different: are there any more invisible changes?)

Speaking of Pollan's book, this passage about hybridization struck me as an appropriate description of the process of innovation:

"For nature as much as people, the garden has always been a place to experiment, to try out new hybrids and mutations. Species that never cross in the wild will freely hybridize on land cleared by people. That's because a novel hybrid has a hard time finding a purchase in the tight weave of an established meadow or forest ecosystem; every possible niche is apt to be already filled. But a garden--or a roadside or a dump heap--is by comparison an 'open' habitat in which a new hybrid has a much better shot, and if it happens to catch our fancy, to gratify a human desire, it stands to make its way in the world. One theory of the origins of agriculture holds that domesticated plants first emerged on dump heaps, where the discarded seeds of the wild plants that people gathered and ate . . took root, flourished, and eventually hybridized. In time people gave the best of these hybrids a place in the garden, and there, together, the people and the plants embarked on a series of experiments in coevolution that would change them both forever."

It seems possible that highly developed ecosystems--whether in nature, an organization, or national economies--eventually become so tightly adapted or hypertrophic that they could lose or close off those open spaces on the margins where innovation or hybridization so often flourishes.

Comments

[Devin Cheevers]

Great to have you on board Dane & interesting post.

I'd have to agree with your analogy.

Does it come down to ensuring as level a playing field (pardon the pun) as possible? Or is it space to grow (insulated) before competing with incumbents.

Plants compete for resources, sun, soil and nutrients.

Industry for the most part consumer dollars, euro, yen etc..

While plants can't reach out to nip potential competitors in the bud, business can.

I'll leave the debate about the right mix of gatekeepers (market forces vs govt) to this margin, space, referee role for another day.

[Charles Johnson]

On the potato, I'm reminded of that which was written by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel. You can explore the importance of crops and domesticated animals on its website here. http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/variables/index.html

As a recovering vegetarian, I must say that we often underplay the importance of meat in the formation of civilization. I wonder sometimes if part of the reason our brains are so complex and so much of our civilization is near waterways and that fish is good for the brain are all merely coincidences. Might this all have evolved together?

[Sergey Kurdakov]

William H. Mcneill was probably first wrote on the subject ( he had his graduate work on subject back in 60s )

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2267/is_1_66/ai_54668867

but still I think that most important changing force was advent of printing see

Elizabeth L. Eisenstein
The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe

I seen few papers which assessed influence of printing on economic growth

but no papers on potato thougth .

Really that would be intresting to take several changing forces ( growth of population due to better nutrition and better health ), gold from america which added to trade with middle east and india ( and china ), printing and make better picture on how important these forces were.

[Sergey Kurdakov]

also we should not forget the borrowing of ideas from india and china.
They might not be essential , but being introduced they gave the sence of novelty and that there are quite a few new ways to perform things and these new things bring good ( the same potato was new and was good for feeding ).

[Sergey Kurdakov]

BTW William McNeill also presented few other reasons

division of europe which kept rivalry between elites ( this same idea is developed in
Capitalists in Spite of Themselves
Elite Conflict and Economic Transitions in Early Modern Europe by
Richard Lachmann )

the evolution of weaponry and urgent need to present countermeasures.

so when all 'forces' are considered togethter the picture of 'rise of europe' emerges

[John Courtin]

Both Fish and Chips Have Fed Growth of Northern European Economies

Hurray for the potato, a tuber to be reckoned with … for the potato not only helped the Irish economy to grow but also the incorrect spelling of that noun once contributed to the toppling of a U.S. Presidential-Vice Presidential bid and (not to be too starchy about it) led to concomitant shifts in U.S. economic policies as a result by the ultimate victor! Potato-driven change!

How fascinating it is to examine the tweaking of forces, due both to natural changes and those caused by humans, which have resulted in measurable shifts in the movement of civilizations up and down the latitudes, and east and west across the longitudes. Surely, the potato had a signal role in the major up-shift of population that Dane describes and in the development of a more robust northern European economy due to the availability of such a reliable food staple.

A similar assist should also be credited to the development of dried cod, which caused an earlier, smaller, but still measurable population up-shift in that region … a simple but vital technology developed by the Vikings a thousand years earlier. Simply put, both fish and chips have had their impacts on northern European economic growth.

In more recent times, the phenomenal growth of population in many very hot and humid places on the globe is attributable in large measure to refinements in air conditioning technology. Prior to "the big-bang moment" with this breakthrough technology, the more temperate zones around the world … in both hemispheres as late as the early 20th century … had an absolute lock on where most of the powerful cities of the world were located, cities typically surrounded by thriving industrial bases. Think of New York City a century ago supported by the industrial might of upstate New York … a region which can be regarded metaphorically as America’s first Silicon Valley … (not to mention that it remains the home of salt potatoes).

In 1900, the upstate New York region was the undisputed industrial engine of New York State, then rightfully called “the Empire State.” Ironically, it was in this very region where the sowing of the seeds of its later decline occurred … through the much-heralded demonstration in 1904 by architect and industrial innovator, Frank Lloyd Wright, that air-condition technology could be used successfully to cool a sizeable commercial building. Wright incorporated air-conditioning into his iconic, 600,000 sq.ft. Larkin Administration Building in Buffalo (designed in 1902-04) to please his entrepreneur-client, Darwin D. Martin, who was pushing Wright to innovate and to experiment. That was “the big-bang moment” for air-conditioning technology — the world’s first entirely air-conditioned building — and it worked. With that bold experiment in Buffalo, Wright showed that building windows could remain closed year-round, which allowed ever after for significant changes in the design of building interiors and in building heights.

Thereafter, New York State soon witnessed the growth and development of powerhouse Carrier Air Conditioning Corp., in the Syracuse area … founded by entrepreneur, Dr. Willis Carrier, who first developed an early air conditioning technology in 1902, and then scaled the manufacturing of this technology through his eponymous company.

Without the perfection of air conditioning technology, it is inconceivable today that, for example, the City of Phoenix could be preparing to be a city of eight million inhabitants in a few years, as it is doing … or that Dubai and Abu Dhabi could have designed and built so many phenomenal tower projects over the past few decades in a region that only a half century ago was thought of as a perfect climate for the cultivation of dates.

The drying in the sun of a piece of cod … the planting of the first potato in Ireland … the building of an unusual building in Buffalo … each seemingly a small, inconsequential act, but when they are scaled, they become technologies that change the course of where advanced civilization flourishes.

Congratulations, Dane, on your selection as the budding (my final themed comment)Thoughtology Blogger.

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I wonder sometimes if part of the reason our brains are so complex and so much of our civilization is near waterways and that fish is good for the brain are all merely coincidences. Might this all have evolved together?

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