How the Potato Changed The World Quiz

Answer: A stem

Known, in botanical terms, as a tuber, the potato is a massively swollen piece of plant stem. The biological reason for this swelling is two-fold. The first reason is to provide a reservoir of starchy food to sustain the plant which evolved in areas that have long dry seasons.

The second reason is to provide the plant with an alternative means of reproduction. If the above ground part of the potato plant fails to flower and seed, then the tuber will automatically produce new plants, asexually, which are clones of the original plant.

This process is easily noticed in a bag of shop-bought potatoes that is left to its own devices for a few weeks.

Answer: South America

Whilst studies suggest that the ancestors of the modern potato originated in Mexico and Guatemala, the cultivation of the crop began after the plant had migrated to the Andes of Bolivia and Peru sometime after the formation of the Panamanian isthmus approximately 3.5 million years ago.

The first cultivations appear to have occurred around 6000BC in the area around Lake Titicaca. Solanum tuberosum tuberosum, the potato species that is grown for food around the world, was one of seven species cultivated around this time that survive to this day. The other six species lack the adaptability of solanum tuberosum tuberosum, particularly in regard to altitude, and are grown solely in the Andes.

Answer: Sweet Potato

Whilst the potato and the sweet potato share some similarities, they are not related. Both grow underground, produce tubers (the sweet potato is a root tuber not a stem tuber) and propagate vegetatively (ie they are cultivated from part of the plant rather than from the seeds) but the main similarity is in the name.

The sweet potato was discovered by Columbus in the West Indies and was named the "batata". The original Andean name for the potato was "papa" and the two soon became confused linguistically. The Spanish words for the two tubers are "patata" and "batata" whilst for a time the sweet potato was documented in English as a "botato".

Other members of the family Solanaceae include the petunia, chili peppers and aubergine.

Answer: Shared more or less equally between the skin and the flesh

It is possible to subsist on a diet purely consisting of potatoes and cow's milk. Such a diet will provide sufficient nutrition and vitamins, with studies demonstrating that a healthy adult will neither gain nor lose significant weight as a consequence.

Whilst the flesh is mainly water (79%), an unpeeled potato will provide vitamin C, B complex and essential amino acids as well as carbohydrates, a small amount of protein, potassium, iron and plenty of other minerals. The potato is also a low-sodium and fat-free food.

A peeled potato will give you a similar balance of goodness except that you would lose the fibre from the skin and, if peeled before cooking, the layer of protein just beneath the skin.

Wild potatoes are toxic to humans as they contain glycoalkaloids. The domesticated varieties of potato retain this toxicity in their leaves and fruits.

Answer: Monte Verde

The discovery of hunting tools and animal bones at Clovis, New Mexico in the 1930s had been a crucial find for American archaeology and anthropology. It seemed to date the earliest American cultures at approximately 11,200 BC which fitted well with what was known about the condition of the land bridge between Asia and the Americas at that time. It became the accepted wisdom that this was the earliest settlement in the Americas as all discoveries that suggested an earlier arrival on the continent failed to stand up to critical examination.

That was until a young student called Thomas Dillehay made his discovery at Monte Verde. Because of the canonical view of Clovis, Dillehay doubted his findings and took over a decade to verify the results of his finds. When he finally published in 1986 it was initially ridiculed but he was vindicated when, in 1997, a team of sceptical experts visited the site. They confirmed Dillehay's findings that the site was unquestionably 14,500 years old.

The results brought many questions to the surface; When did man first arrive in the Americas? How did he get there? Where did the first arrival take place? The assumption had always been that the land bridge from Asia to America was the only way and that could only be done in a time when the ice levels were high enough. But when they were high enough then passage south from Alaska was impossible so how did they get so far south so early? It also questioned the idea of "Man the Hunter" as the humans of that period were thought to be. The potatoes found at Monte Verde suggested that man had existed in a settled environment where he grew food, rather than living the nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life.

Answer: A naturally "freeze-dried" potato

During the dry season, the Bolivian Andes would have long hot days and freezing nights. The locals took advantage of this by leaving potatoes out at night (and covering them by day) for several days before peeling them and squeezing out all the moisture.

This "freeze-drying" allowed for longer storage of potatoes and therefore made them available to give to workers. Fully sustained by this crop, the workers were able to mine the silver that supported the Spanish empire.

Answer: No-one knows for certain

Raleigh's supposed role in bringing potatoes to England is almost certainly apocryphal. Potatoes most likely were brought to England from Spain, via France, sometime in the 1570s or 1580s. Raleigh might be able to take the credit for introducing the crop to Ireland when he planted it on his estate near Cork in 1589. Local legend, though, has it that the crop came to the country with the foundering of the Spanish Armada, sent to threaten England in 1588, off the west coast of Ireland.

Drake was credited with the introduction of the potato to England when he returned from his circumnavigation of the Earth in 1580, and the town of Offenburg in Germany even went as far as erecting a statue honouring him for introducing the potato to Europe. However, it is unlikely he was the first to bring the potato to England as his route around the world meant a two-year gap between leaving South America and returning to England.

The research of Redcliffe Salaman in the late 19th century unearthed an order sheet from the Hospital de la Sangre in Sevilla showing an order for potatoes in 1573. From this order sheet, it was deduced that potatoes were being grown in Spain from about 1570 and were likely to have been introduced the previous year. How they came across the Atlantic and who brought them remains unknown.

Answer: Warfare

William H McNeill's fascinating essay "How the Potato Changed the World's History" (from which this quiz's title is shamelessly adapted), demonstrates that the Thirty Years' War (1618-48) was the last great European war before the uptake of the potato and also the last to have a significant detrimental effect on the rural population of the continent.

How this happened is best explained in the context of the conflict between Spain and The Netherlands in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

When Spain was at war with the Dutch, the Dutch naval superiority meant that the Spanish had to march their troops across land to engage the opposition. The Spanish based their troops in the Po Valley in Northern Italy and marched them north from there along what became known as "The Spanish Road". As a means of sustaining the troops as they marched, the armies would raid local villages along the route for all their grain. To prevent starvation, the villagers turned to the potato, as this could remain buried underground, undetected by the marauding armies, until it was needed for food. By the time the Spanish became aware of the potato crops, the foodstuff had established itself as a valuable crop.

Answer: Leprosy

Other medical conditions whose causes were proscribed to the potato included scrofula, syphilis and sterility. It was also believed to degrade the soil in which it was planted.

It was in the French town of Besançon where the banning edict quoted in the question was issued. The full edict read, "In view of the fact that the potato is a pernicious substance whose use can cause leprosy, it is hereby forbidden, under pain of fine, to cultivate it."

Answer: Antoine Augustine Parmentier

Parmentier supposedly learned of the potato's qualities as a prisoner during the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) when he was forced to survive on a diet of potatoes and little else. Convinced that it could solve food shortage problems in his home country, making the potato an acceptable crop in France then became Parmentier life's work.

The means by which he got the French people to start planting potatoes was ingenious. He petitioned the King of France to grant him some land on the outskirts of Paris and in this land he planted his potato crops. He then employed guards to keep watch over the land.

After a short time, Parmentier began to relieve the guards of their duties at night. The citizens of Paris, believing that the presence of the guards was an indication that the crop they were protecting was of great value, snuck onto the land whilst they were off duty and stole some of the crop to plant on their own land.

Thus began the growing of the potato as a food crop in France.

Answer: As the cause of the Irish Potato Famine

Irish proverb: "Only two things in this world are too serious to be jested on, potatoes and matrimony."

Phytophthora infestans is the scientific name for late blight which spread throughout Europe in the 1840s causing crops to fail across the continent. When the blight hit Ireland, the results were devastating. Blight was first recorded in Ireland in September of 1845 and by the end of that year, up to 50 per cent of the potato harvest had been lost.

Ireland had gone through a population boom in the late 18th and early 19th century almost entirely due to the ability of the potato to sustain large numbers of people through the cultivation of a relatively small parcel of land (approximately ten people per acre). With the failure of the potato crops there was an immediate food crisis that ultimately caused over a million deaths and a further million to flee beyond Ireland's shores. By 1850, Ireland's population had been reduced by nearly 25 per cent from its pre-famine level.

North America was already a popular destination for Irish émigrés prior to 1845 but the Great Famine accelerated the numbers arriving on its shores. Between 1840 and 1860, one third of all arrivals in the US were Irish. However, it is not just North America where this demographic shift took place; census information suggests that nearly 10% of the UK population has Irish ancestry.

Answer: The Corn Laws

The Corn Laws were a series of trade tariffs that guaranteed the price of domestically grown corn (a generic term covering wheat, maize, oats and barley). Imports of any type of corn had a tariff imposed upon them that meant that the domestic product would always be cheaper. The popularity of the laws split fairly clearly along class lines. The landowners were in favour as it maximised the income from the crops planted on their lands, whilst the working man hated it as it forced him to pay a luxury price for an essential item.

The repeal of the laws came as a consequence of food shortages in Ireland and was driven by two of the most forceful personalities of 19th century UK politics. Sir Robert Peel, the UK Prime Minister, understood that the famine in Ireland was severe and was likely to be lasting. To ameliorate the effects of the failed potato crops, the supply of corn needed to be vastly increased. But with UK prices artificially high due to the tariffs, the cost was beyond the means of those in need. A temporary suspension of the Corn laws for the Irish was essential but the iniquity of low cost corn for Ireland whilst the rest of the UK paid an inflated price was potentially politically disastrous. So the need for a nationwide repeal of the law became apparent.

The Duke of Wellington was the other key player. Though he supported the Corn Laws in principle, he understood that a defeat on its repeal would place Peel's government in jeopardy. Despite the majority of the ruling Conservative party voting against the repeal in the House of Commons, the vote was carried by the opposition who all voted for the proposal. This meant that the bill was sent to the House of Lords for ratification. The Duke of Wellington brought the peers, who might naturally have voted in their own interests, into line to support the government bill and it passed into law. The repeal paved the way for the era of free trade, an era which enabled the development of the UK into an industrial powerhouse and world-dominating empire builder.

Peel claimed that the repeal was prompted by "principle" and not the Irish potato famine, but some of Peel's most forceful and influential speeches to Parliament specifically invoked the problems across the Irish Sea in an attempt to sway stubborn Conservatives; "Are you to hesitate in preventing famine which may come, because it possibly may not come? ...Is it not better to err on the side of precaution than to neglect it utterly?"

Answer: Luther Burbank

The story of the Russet-Burbank potato begins with the efforts of an amateur horticulturalist, the Reverend Chauncy Goodrich. Goodrich selected the seeds from a good performing plant sent to him from South America. From these seeds he developed the Garnet Chile potato which proved successful. The potato was further developed by another breeder into the Early Rose variety and it was this plant that Burbank came across in his mother's garden.

Noticing an unusual plant amongst his mother's crop, Burbank took some of its seeds and planted them. Of the 23 plants that the seeds produced, one had significant larger tubers than the remainder. Burbank propagated these tubers the following season and all those planted performed well.

Knowing his new Burbank potato was special, Burbank sold the rights to the seeds to a merchant seed company and spent the proceeds on travelling to California to build an experimental farm there. A variety of the Burbank potato with a russet-coloured skin was developed and this variety is used for the production of french fries throughout North America.

Answer: Eldorado

Investors were drawn to potato production by the vast profits that could be made from planting successful new cultivars. The boom centred on Archibald Findlay, who began developing new varieties in the 1870s, although there were suspicions that his "new" potatoes were anything but, being "borrowed" from old stock.

His "Up-to-Date" variety was a huge success in the 1890s and on the back of this he announced a new, improved variety called "Northern Star" to wide interest. Stocks of this new potato were limited so Findlay was able to command staggering and exorbitant prices for it. Records from the time show that tubers were sold for up to £6 for 12 pounds, which was approximately ten per cent of the average salary of the time. Despite the huge expense, such a purchase could produce a quantity of high quality of potatoes worth up to 100 times that amount.

Unsurprisingly, profits of this nature meant that investors were eager to see whatever else Findlay could come up with, and Findlay did not intend to disappoint them. In 1903 he announced that he had produced Eldorado, a potato that offered better flavour, better yields and greater disease resistance. Investors queued up to take it off his hands. Knowing how to maximise his profit, Findlay kept stocks at minimal levels so that prices rocketed at one stage to a remarkable £100 per pound of potatoes.

Unfortunately in 1904 when the bounteous crops were expected, they failed to materialise. Eldorado was not a newly developed potato at all but a re-marketing of a pre-existing potato, Evergood, that had failed years previously. The crops that it produced were not merely disappointing but utterly worthless. The boom that had surrounded potatoes for the previous two years collapsed completely and has never recurred.

Answer: Freedom Fries

The French were very out of favour amongst the political classes in the United States thanks to their refusal to support US plans for the invasion of Iraq in the United Nations.

The renaming of the fries in Congress was prompted by two Republicans congressmen, Robert Ney of Ohio and Walter Jones Jr of North Carolina. The change of name lasted until 2006, by which time Jones had admitted his belief that the invasion of Iraq was unjustified.

The French response to the renaming was to politely point out that french fries were probably from Belgium anyway.