I'm a big fan of
Salaman, Redcliffe N. 1985. The History and Social Influence of the Potato
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), which I have not read in 40 years.
I do not recall the potato having that much influence in either the
Netherlands or in
England, but the potato did have an incredible influence in shaping
world history.
Salamon attributes various wars to the potato. He says that the
potato made an
enormous difference in Chinese history.
--
Michael Perelman
Among these Eurocentric historians farming practices loom larger than
any other supposedly objective criterion underpinning the rise of the
West. The West is the world of the plucky, inventive yeoman farmer,
while the despotic East employed unproductive farming techniques.
Benefiting from his early training and fieldwork in agronomy, Blaut
presents an alternative interpretation. For example, while Michael
Mann considers soil fertility in Europe to be the key to its rise,
Blaut points out that until the arrival of the potato from South
America, a vast swath of land across Europe remained unproductive
because of excess rainfall, conditions beneficial only to potato
growth. Meanwhile, crop rotation--supposedly unique to the West--was
found in the rest of the world.
full: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/origins/blaut.htm
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