So fed up with reading about narrow-minded churchmen and ignorant peasants when simply trying to compile some nice and easily accessible sources about the Columbian exchange to my students.

So fed up with reading about narrow-minded churchmen and ignorant peasants when simply trying to compile some nice and easily accessible sources about the Columbian exchange to my students. The myths about Europeans fearing the humble potato as the "devil's fruit" and much more are everywhere.

Historian Rebecca Earle makes the case that peasants in 16th-17th century Europe were actually early adopters of potato cultivation, and the myths about prejudiced resistance were created later (phase two, 18th century Enlightenment) when elites started paying attention to what ordinary people were consuming. Before that, ordinary peasants quietly grew potatoes as a welcome, tax-free supplement in their diet.

"Potatoes thus allowed peasants and labourers to evade some of the less welcome aspects of state control. It is they who are responsible for the potato’s entry into the European diet." (Earle, Feeding the People, 16).

Earle's interesting evidence includes tithe disputes in 18th century Britain. They reveal that peasants and commoners had been - or at least claimed to have been - growing potatoes for their own consumption for generations, and never had they been expected to pay tithe for the crop before. This was their right since time immemorial. Similar cases have been found in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain.

"Working people in various parts of Europe turned to potatoes long before eighteenth-century philosophers and kings thought to encourage them." (Earle, Feeding the People, 29). So why the tithe disputes in the 1700s? Because by then, potatoes had become a valuable commercial crop.

The myth of anti-potato ignorance is not so much an issue in Finnish history textbooks. It's a fact that potatoes were introduced to Finland relatively late, and we have a long-established traditional narrative of "Enlightenment clergy" promoting the tubers from their pulpits. But since global (or, de facto, European history) is often taught strictly separated from national history, I worry that the myths will be perpetuated anyway - only as evidence of the dimness of those "other" Europeans.

https://rebeccaearle.co.uk/research/potatoes/