Books You May Have Missed/A Reconsideration of Redcliffe N. Salaman's The History and Social Influence of the Potato
Luttwak, Edward N.
THE HISTORY AND SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF THE POTATO Redcliffe N. Salaman; Revised Impression edited by J. G. Hawkes Cambridge University Press (1985)/$17.95 paper Edward N. Luttwak PD araphrasing...
...Here then we have a splendid corrective example for those lesser men of science who abandon themselves to the frivolous study of inconsequential atomic particles and trivial viruses...
...A fter 516 pages of potato-focused text, the reader will not be surprised that Chapter 29 on that other British island, St...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1989 I nexplicably, not everyone of Sala- ' man's acquaintance appreciated the urgency of his labors...
...M ore digressions, each one of chapter length, were provoked by Salaman's urge for completeness in his review of the potato's history in the British Isles, a notoriously ill-defined gathering of geographies...
...Even without the benefit of Salaman's science, the East India Company—whose higher wisdom was about to be proved by its ability to enrich Englishmen by having Indians grow opium for sale to Chinamen—knew that there could be no THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1989 STHE RADICAL CAPITALIST' A Journal of Philosophical Essays "Shucks, Jesse, I didn't mean that kind and gentle . . . From the December 1988 issue of The Radical Capitalist For sample copy write: The Radical Capitalist do The Promethean Theatre Company 701 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10036 refreshment for servants, let alone people, without the priceless gift of nature's storehouse, the wonderful vegetable and so on...
...His discovery that the potato was frequently represented in the pre-Columbian ceramics of the Moche, Chimu, and Nazca cultures of Peru naturally provokes a long iconographic digression amplified by some thirty plates of photographs, mostly showing the hideously distorted and cruelly mutilated anthropomorphic figurines that collectors with much money and little taste nowadays find so attractive...
...After that, the reader cannot be surprised by Salaman's detailed revelation of the Tristan da Cunhans' excellent health: "In 1926 no caries were observed in the teeth of any of the island youth below the age of 20...
...Unsurprisingly, the molly-hawk shortage had its evil effect: "Drunkenness . . . was rife in all classes" once a military garrison arrived to guard the irascible Corsican...
...Indeed the author retells Irish misfortunes and misdeeds through eight long chapters of potato-history (including Chapter 18, "The Potato's Part in the Tragedy of Ireland," a well-argued brief for the defense of the "inoffensive vegetable"—of course—not of the beastly Irish who were its gluttonous parasites before Phytophthora infestans, or Late Blight, had its turn...
...a prone figure in which the feet have been amputated above the ankle...
...As a man of sound instincts (in the preface he bemoans the fate of the Jane Austen characters whose "careers invariably terminated with their capture and mental sterilization at the altar"—the fate he avoided by his dedication to potatology) Redcliffe S. would never have spoilt the amenity of his mansion in the beauteous village of Barley, North Herts., by displaying such barbarous pottery...
...Here too the potato is much-distilled, here too we suffer under worthless chaplains, and of course there are no molly-hawks...
...Suffice it to say that only deviants lacking in any normal human being's all-consuming interest in every aspect of tuberousness will fail to derive pleasure from Salaman's exciting tale...
...As Salaman notes approvingly, no sooner was Captain Dutton sent out than another vessel was dispatched to supply him with potatoes (and yams and slaves) purchased on the Guinea coast...
...As the introducer to the Revised Impression tells us with evident unease (he himself being of impeccably narrow scholarship as a professor of plant biology), Redcliffe Salaman deemed it necessary to plough through anthropology, archeology, and botany as well as the agricultural, economic, and social history of many centuries in many countries to confront his majestic subject, that "priceless gift from the recesses of nature's storehouse," Solanum tuberosum, the wonderful tuber that fries so well, the potato...
...Helena, is not detained by the banality of its Napoleonic association...
...but there the analogy ceases...
...Salaman's seemly urge for completeness, however, is manifest in his inclusion of further islands, British only in the cut of their postage stamps but otherwise most un-British...
...Helena's sorrow is a most sinister portent for ourselves: present conditions in the United States are exactly analogous...
...His only interest, of course, was in the incidental depictions Edward N. Luttwak, the author of Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (Harvard University Press), reveals here for the first time his deep-seated potato-logical inclinations...
...Actually, the author ranges wider still...
...Thus Chapter 28, "The Potato in Tristan da Cunha," wherein the failed 1791 settlement of a Captain Patten in that volcanic islet of the south Atlantic is stoutly denounced (the scoundrel only grew cabbage, turnip, and lettuce) and the 1816 colonization is much celebrated, for those later and wiser settlers not only "planted potatoes" but better still, largely fed on them, along with "the eggs of the molly-hawk," of course, and that trusty resource of any well-stocked larder, "fat, young molly-hawks...
...Old Redcliffe was willing to suffer the sight of the most brutish artifacts for a mere glimpse of his beloved tubers...
...In the same chapter there is incidentally recounted another example of the East India Company's superior economic talent—oh, if only we could have such guidance in our own National Economic Commission—which explains why Captain Dutton was provided with yams and slaves as well as the sovereign tuber...
...Helena's ephemeral habitations, with points given and withheld according to the tuberosity of their cultivations), Salaman leads us into a fascinating investigation of one of history's greatest unresolved mysteries...
...The curs, Salaman avers with undisguised horror, actually corrupted the innocent potato by distilling it into a potent brew, "the chief cause of the frequent mutinies of the garrison troops . . . [along with] the almost unbroken succession of worthless chaplains under which the island suffered . . ." Obviously, St...
...The swelling on the shoulder may be meant to represent tubers...
...It seems that in 1659 the East India Company sent out a Captain Dutton as governor to administer the island so that it might serve "for refreshing of their servants and people on their return homeward...
...Redcliffe N. Salaman accordingly gives a most persuasive explanation for his potatological passion...
...Indeed, there have not been wanting those who have regarded these activities with a shake of the head and an indulgent smile, indicating that nothing, short of mental instability, could excuse a lifelong attachment to the study of [the potato...
...No doubt the British troops at St...
...Quite...
...Helena were mostly ungrateful Irishmen as British troops tended to be almost everywhere, drink-sodden papists uncaring of the high privilege of serving on an island barren and devoid of idle fripperies perhaps, but enjoying the supreme good fortune of an all-tuberous diet...
...It would be grossly unfair to the expectant reader to reveal the answer so triumphantly uncovered in what follows...
...That procedure reflected no lack of pressing themes, but rather the opposite difficulty...
...1=1...
...No budget deficits and no trade deficits, therefore, in that well-ordered economy, spoilt only by the tragic lack of Tristanese (or is it Cunhanian...
...The yam supplied the food on which the slaves were maintained, and it was they who were employed in raising the potatoes whose sale to the visiting ships supplied [the island's income...
...What is urgently needed now is an equally comprehensive study of the history and social influence of the molly-hawk, especially fat, young molly-hawks...
...In the one case the potato has been a major factor in the degradation and misery of the people, in the other it is merely a rather overworked article of diet, the cultivation of which, so far from inducing anti-social repercussions, has done much to encourage the energy and self-respect of the individual whilst tending to conserve a uniform structure in the social organism...
...Redcliffe N. Salaman has pointed the way...
...Born in 1873, degreed at Cambridge by 1895, and retired by sudden illness in 1903, Salaman found himself two years later (with his health completely restored): "Thirty-two years of age, happily married, free from financial cares, and devoted to hunting . . . unconsciously graduating for the part of a Jane Austen character . ." As noted, it was precisely the lack of hunting in the summer months that set him off on the epoch-making study that was to be completed and published a mere forty-four years later in 1949...
...the end of the nose and the upper lip have been excised...
...The professor-introducer himself finds them "wonderful'!--but that is an opinion that R. Salaman most certainly did not share...
...Revised Impression edited by J. G. Hawkes Cambridge University Press (1985)/$17.95 paper Edward N. Luttwak PD araphrasing Sterne, one might say that this book was written in the best of all possible ways: after some forty years of leisurely research undertaken for truly compelling reasons ("in the winter months I was sufficiently occupied with hunting, [butj in the summer, having no liking for golf, tennis, or cricket, I was at a loose end . . ."), the author finally wrote his opening paragraph one sunny day, and then trusted in the infinite mercy of almighty God to supply him with the rest of the 619 pages of text...
...Having digressed to the potato-fed happiness of that remotest south Atlantic rock, Salaman must regress to Ireland, ever-ready as any good and altruistic Englishman to chastise the benighted Irish for their own good: In so far as their dependence on the potato and the large quantities they consume is concerned, the people of Tristan da Cunha closely resemble the Irish of the mid-nineteenth century...
...That makes all the difference, along with fat, young molly-hawks, of course...
...46 BOOKS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED of the potato in those horrid ceramics, which he otherwise vehemently deplores in the captions (e.g., "Fig...
...Many statistics of feeble cariation in older age groups follow, but this reviewer's devotion to his readers is tempered by respect for the author's book-selling interest, and obviously it is precisely such gems as the Tristan da Cunha dental statistics for 1926 that are most likely to excite eager purchasers...
...Pot, Moche period...
...Instead, after the usual preliminaries (a settler-by-settler reconstruction of St...
...fat, young molly-hawks...
...Now we come to the thrilling investigation, for which Salaman is our Maigret, Poirot, and Sherlock Holmes: the potato that came from the Guinea coast, "was it the sweet-potato, Ipomoea batatas, or our potato, Solanum tuberosum...
...For an Edwardian gentleman—he finished his medical studies at Cambridge in 1895 —Ireland's inclusion under the British flag was quite natural, and as a devotee of tubers he could hardly have ignored that most tuberous of islands...
Vol. 22 • March 1989 • No. 3
