15 Arthur W. Gilbert, The Potato, 1917

Chapter II

THE early history of the potato is a matter of some doubt among historians, but all are agreed that it came originally from the high lands of Peru and Chile, where it is still found growing wild.

The Spaniards first discovered the potato in the neighborhood of Quito, Ecuador, where it was cultivated by the natives. According to Pedro Cieca de Léon, who seems to have made first written mention of the potato in his “Spanish Chronicles of Peru” (1550), the inhabitants subsisted largely on maize and what they called “papas” and “quinua.’ The former is the Indian name for potato and the latter “is a plant about the height of a man and has leaves like the blite of Mauritania, and a small seed either red or white in color, from which is prepared a drink, and a food comparable to our rice.”

Potatoes were used by the aborigines in place of bread, and were also dried in the sun to preserve them. They were usually cooked, but often made into flour. There was evidence of long-continued practice of cultivation, however crude. The potato, however, was and still is wild in the mountainous regions of Chile and Peru.

The potato was probably carried to Spain by explorers in the sixteenth century. There is no definite record of this first importation, but Rose believes that it was as early as 1533 or 1535, at the time of the conquest of Peru by the Spaniards. Hieronymus Cardan, a monk, is supposed to have been the first to introduce it from Peru into Spain, and from thence it passed quickly into Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and France. The first figures and detailed description of it in its new home in continental Europe are those of Clusius in 1601 in his Rariorum Plantarum Historia, although Bauhin in his Phytopinax, printed in Basel in 1596, described it and gave it the Latin name or characterization, Solanum tuberosum esculentum.

The date and method of introduction of the potato into North America are not definitely known, but it was probably introduced by Spanish voyagers and at sometime before 1585, for it is clearly recorded that its first introduction was made into England by colonists from Virginia in 1586 under the patronage of Sir Walter Raleigh.

“It seems to me most likely,” says De Candolle, “that some inhabitants of Virginia—perhaps English colonists—received tubers from Spanish or other travelers, traders or adventurers, during the ninety years which had elapsed since the discovery of America. Evidently, dating from the conquest of Peru and Chile, in 1535 to 1585, many vessels could have carried tubers of the potato as provisions, and Sir Walter Raleigh, making war on the Spaniards as a privateer, may have pillaged some vessel which contained them. This is the less improbable, since the Spaniards had introduced the plant into Europe before 1585.”

From 1585 or 1586, potato tubers were brought from what is now North Carolina to Ireland on the return of the colonists sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh, and were first cultivated on Sir Walter’s estate near Cork. This was some years later than their introduction into continental Europe….

The cultivation of the potato in England made little progress for many years. It is said that in the time of James the First, they were so rare as to cost two shillings a pound, and are mentioned in 1619 among the articles provided for the royal household. In 1633, when. their valuable properties had become more generally known, they were deemed worthy of notice by the Royal Society, which took measures to encourage their cultivation and for introduction, into Ireland, especially as a safeguard against famine, but their cultivation has become general only within the last one hundred years.

In 1769, the grain crops of France were a failure, threatening a national famine. Parmentier, a Parisian chemist, recommended the use of potatoes as food to take the place of the grain crops. He had been a member of the medical staff of the French army in 1758, during the war in Hanover, and had been taken prisoner. During his five years in prison his principal food consisted of potatoes, which were then grown almost exclusively as food for animals. The dire need of food in France inspired him to write a book called a Treatise on Certain Vegetables that in Times of Necessity can be substituted for Ordinary Food. This book was received with ridicule even though it received a certain amount of support from the Paris Agricultural Society. By persistent efforts, Parmentier was granted a small patch of land on which to experiment with his potatoes. The king ordered the plot to be guarded by a cordon of troops which excited the curiosity of the people. On August 24th, the king’s féte-day, he presented the king with a basket of tubers and a bouquet of the blossoms. These were worn by the king and queen, who also ate the cooked tubers. They were found to be very palatable and soon became one of the foods of the French people.

During the seventeenth century, the potato gradually became, from a botanical curiosity cultivated only by collectors of new plants, one of the staple garden and field crops. Its cultivation as a field crop became somewhat common in Germany soon after 1772, when the grain crops failed and potatoes were used as a substitute. The quality was very poor, however, and even though they were enormously productive, their use was restricted largely as food for domestic animals and they were used as human food only when necessary as a substitute. By the latter half of the eighteenth century, it was extensively cultivated and recognized as one of the regular crops throughout the temperate regions of Europe and America, so that Henry Phillips (1822), who published a detailed account of the potato and its culture, was able to cite a single grower who planted 300 acres annually…