AHC: More New World Crops In Europe

there's a couple of good historical mystery questions... just why did anyone bother to take potatoes and maize over to the old world to compete with existing crops? Someone with a merchant bent decide to bring in some 'exotics'? Potatoes I can kinda understand, it had a real niche as a garden crop that you could grow that no one would plunder/really bother with. But maize... sure, it's way more productive per acre than wheat, but did anyone really realize that back then?

I don't know if anyone did, but if they did, it wouldn't be grown in any appreciable amount and would be a mere curiosity until farmers at large adopted it. The opposition against potatoes is pretty famous, and it was still being actively resisted into the 19th century in places like Russia.

For maize, everyone already had wheat anyway, so why bother?

It probably wasn't but it's the only reason I know of (well, it also needs to be washed to remove something that coats the seeds but as far as processing goes that's not exactly hard). They actually went so far as to try to stop the natives from growing it.

Perhaps the reason that maize was treated differently was that it had enough appeal for them to overlook the religious connotations and/or a more pragmatic group of Europeans than the ones who had it in for quinoa were involved.

Not too far away from the Andes in Paraguay you had the Jesuits overlooking and adopting yerba mate cultivation on their lands despite the fact that yerba mate was for most all of the native groups in the area associated with religious practices.
 
I don't know if anyone did, but if they did, it wouldn't be grown in any appreciable amount and would be a mere curiosity until farmers at large adopted it. The opposition against potatoes is pretty famous, and it was still being actively resisted into the 19th century in places like Russia.

For maize, everyone already had wheat anyway, so why bother?
As I mentioned before, the crop that maize displaced in Europe wasn't wheat, it was millet, which grows in places too dry for wheat but isn't all that great in terms of yield, versatility (all you can really do with it is make porridge since any attempts at anything bread-like just crumbles) or, depending on who you ask, taste. At the time maize was probably seen as a better millet.

Not too far away from the Andes in Paraguay you had the Jesuits overlooking and adopting yerba mate cultivation on their lands despite the fact that yerba mate was for most all of the native groups in the area associated with religious practices.
Interesting. Maybe quinoa just had the misfortune to fall afoul of a particularly pig-headed group of Spaniards. As I said before, apparently they even tried to stop the natives cultivating it.
 
Which new foods were considered mere "fodder for peasants?"
Which new foods were considered luxury delicacies?
Which new foods produced the highest returns for land-owners?
 
I don't know if anyone did, but if they did, it wouldn't be grown in any appreciable amount and would be a mere curiosity until farmers at large adopted it. The opposition against potatoes is pretty famous, and it was still being actively resisted into the 19th century in places like Russia.
'resisted' by whom? AFAIK, potatoes spread widely by 'word of mouth', peasant to peasant, mainly as a highly productive garden crop that was hard to plunder. Hard to imagine that peasants anywhere would be resisting it...
 
'resisted' by whom? AFAIK, potatoes spread widely by 'word of mouth', peasant to peasant, mainly as a highly productive garden crop that was hard to plunder. Hard to imagine that peasants anywhere would be resisting it...

The peasants themselves. Like in Russia, for instance, it was called "the devil's apple" and linked to all sorts of bad things by superstitious peasants. If I recall, the Tsar had to tell the church to start promoting it to make people plant it. And this was as late as the mid-1800s.
 

aenigma

Banned
that is funny considering patato seems to be pretty useful in siberia climate and some even use it in their ravioli now from what i could tell or whatever it was, (looked like ravioli with some kind of mashed patato's to me) i met 2 russians who made it like that a old lady in kazachstan and a girl in ukraine so it seems to be widespread

as for quinoa they always sayd that the reason it got rejected by the spanish was that the natives considered it the "grain of the gods" or most important one for/of the gods
perhaps the spanjards took offense to that and tryd to stop it from growing exactly because it was more significant and important in the native religion at the time then mais was ?
 

Driftless

Donor
With maize, farmers can also use more of the plant as well. the stalks and leaves, especially if chopped up serve as great fodder. Fermented sileage made from those same stalks and leaves makes great wintertime fodder. If you have a disasterous wind or hailstorm and your maize crop is beat to hell, chop and ensilate whatevers left. The corn cobs have use as well.
 
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there's a couple of good historical mystery questions... just why did anyone bother to take potatoes and maize over to the old world to compete with existing crops? Someone with a merchant bent decide to bring in some 'exotics'? Potatoes I can kinda understand, it had a real niche as a garden crop that you could grow that no one would plunder/really bother with. But maize... sure, it's way more productive per acre than wheat, but did anyone really realize that back then?

I'm not sure how corn spread to Europe.

With potatoes, no-one is sure. It entered Europe two ways - through Ireland (it seems to have been brought over by Irish fishermen who went back and forth between the new world fishing grounds) and through Spain (where Basque fishermen seem to have done exactly the same thing as the Irish). Both new arrivals weren't noticed by anyone who wrote history for at least a hundred years. The first I've heard of the potato in Europe is when French and German writers noticed the potato growing along the "spanish road" - it seems that the potatoes had spread from the Basque country into the Spanish dependencies between France and Germany. At that point, the potato started to be championed by governments and reformers, due to the difficulty invading armies had of plundering it.

Maize is insanely productive in the right conditions, ad pretty nutritious too (esp. if nixtamalized). The flip side is that it is insanely effective at taking and methabolizing nutrients, thus depleting the soil (hence the Pre-Columbian technique of planting beans with it, the largely semi-itinerant agriculture in many native societies of America outside the Andes, etc.)

I've never gotten why nixtamalization never spread more (well, I know the reason - it was because nixtamalization was associated with poverty - but reality has been known to weed out dumb fashions before). It seems to be a huge PoD too. With it, you revolutionize nutrition for Europeans and creoles in the new world and the nutrition of Souther Europeans once it spreads to Europe...

They are experimentally growing quinoa in Alaska and it seems to be a solid enough success. Now imagine if they had been trying quinoa in northern climates for centuries. That right there is potential. Quinoa fields across Siberia basically.

Some of the other non-potato Andean crops might also work in those lands too.

Quinoa doesn't have a particularly high yield - it's a bit below wheat in most climates. This may explain why it wasn't taken up. There may also have been an association with poverty.

It does have a really great nutrient profile though. Dry quinoa is almost identical (nutritionally) to dried milk.

fasquardon
 
there's a couple of good historical mystery questions... just why did anyone bother to take potatoes and maize over to the old world to compete with existing crops? Someone with a merchant bent decide to bring in some 'exotics'? Potatoes I can kinda understand, it had a real niche as a garden crop that you could grow that no one would plunder/really bother with. But maize... sure, it's way more productive per acre than wheat, but did anyone really realize that back then?

People cared a lot, since crop yields were a survival factor. However, most initial imports of New World plants were by botanists and amateurs. Horticulture was a major status pursuit in Mediterranean Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Once brought over, it did not take long for these plants to become established in economically free and innovative agricultural societies - which usually did not mean Europe. Europeans were slow to adopt New World crops compared to the Ottomans, Chinese and Indians (and probably West Africans, too, though I've not seen hard data on those timelines).
 
that is funny considering patato seems to be pretty useful in siberia climate and some even use it in their ravioli now from what i could tell or whatever it was, (looked like ravioli with some kind of mashed patato's to me) i met 2 russians who made it like that a old lady in kazachstan and a girl in ukraine so it seems to be widespread
Unrelated to the discussion, but I think you're talking about varenyky/pierogi.
 
With potatoes, no-one is sure. It entered Europe two ways - through Ireland (it seems to have been brought over by Irish fishermen who went back and forth between the new world fishing grounds) and through Spain (where Basque fishermen seem to have done exactly the same thing as the Irish). Both new arrivals weren't noticed by anyone who wrote history for at least a hundred years. The first I've heard of the potato in Europe is when French and German writers noticed the potato growing along the "spanish road" - it seems that the potatoes had spread from the Basque country into the Spanish dependencies between France and Germany. At that point, the potato started to be championed by governments and reformers, due to the difficulty invading armies had of plundering it.
the way I read it, I'd thought that potatoes went to Spain first (brought over by people returning from S. America), and from there to Ireland, Italy, and France... how would Irish or Basque people get potatoes from the new world, since they grew clear down in Peru?
 
the way I read it, I'd thought that potatoes went to Spain first (brought over by people returning from S. America), and from there to Ireland, Italy, and France... how would Irish or Basque people get potatoes from the new world, since they grew clear down in Peru?

They'd get potatoes from the Northeast seaboard and Brazil. Potatoes aren't actually from Peru. They'd spread quite a bit even by 1492.

fasquardon
 
They'd get potatoes from the Northeast seaboard and Brazil. Potatoes aren't actually from Peru. They'd spread quite a bit even by 1492.

fasquardon
Well, yes they are, originally.
http://www.pnas.org/content/102/41/14694.full said:
In contrast to all prior hypotheses, our data support a monophyletic origin of the landrace cultivars from the northern component of this complex in Peru, rather than from multiple independent origins from various northern and southern members.
 
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