Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vfjqv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T09:37:20.025Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cultivating famine: data, experimentation and food security, 1795–1848

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2020

JOHN LIDWELL-DURNIN
JOHN LIDWELL-DURNIN*
Affiliation:
Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 2JD, UK. Email: john.lidwell-durnin@history.ox.ac.uk.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Collecting seeds and specimens was an integral aspect of botany and natural history in the eighteenth century. Historians have until recently paid less attention to the importance of collecting, trading and compiling knowledge of their cultivation, but knowing how to grow and maintain plants free from disease was crucial to agricultural and botanical projects. This is particularly true in the case of food security. At the close of the eighteenth century, European diets (particularly among the poor) began shifting from wheat- to potato-dependence. In Britain and Ireland during these decades, extensive crop damage was caused by diseases like ‘curl’ and ‘dry rot’ – leading many agriculturists and journal editors to begin collecting data on potato cultivation in order to answer practical questions about the causes of disease and methods that might mitigate or even eliminate their appearance. Citizens not only produced the bulk of these data, but also used agricultural print culture and participation in surveys to shape and direct the interpretation of these data. This article explores this forgotten scientific ambition to harness agricultural citizen science in order to bring stability and renewed vitality to the potato plant and its cultivation. I argue that while many agriculturists did recognize that reliance upon the potato brought with it unique threats to the food supplies of Britain and Ireland, their views on this threat were wholly determined by the belief that the diseases attacking potato plants in Europe had largely been produced or encouraged by erroneous cultivation methods.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , June 2020 , pp. 159 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I am grateful to two anonymous referees and to Amanda Rees for their guidance and comments on this paper. I was very lucky to have helpful feedback on an earlier version of this paper from Rebecca Earle and Karen Sayer – many thanks for your comments and encouragement. Finally, I owe particular thanks to Bruno Strasser for his friendship, support and generosity. The research for this paper was funded in part by a Fell Fund award, grant number 0006638.

References

1 For Niven's belief in electrical disturbances see Niven, Ninian, The Potato Epidemic and Its Probable Consequences: A Letter to His Grace the Duke of Leinster, Dublin, 1846, p. 19Google Scholar. The experiment is described in John Wilson (ed.), The Rural Cyclopedia, or a General Dictionary of Agriculture, Edinburgh: A. Fullarton, 1857, p. 915. For descriptions of the method see ‘Culture by electricity’, Chamber's Journal (June 1845) 3(76), p. 379; see also ‘Electro-culture’, The Chemist (1845) 6, pp. 313–314.

2 Mechi, John Joseph, A Series of Letters on Agricultural Improvement: With an Appendix, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1845, p. 89Google Scholar.

3 Niven's ‘experimental garden’ dedicated to potatoes is discussed in Murphy, Mr, ‘Observations of the Stirling Agricultural Exhibition’, Irish Farmer's and Gardener's Magazine (1834) 1, pp. 345–356Google Scholar. Dedicating space in a botanical garden to potato experimentation was not unusual in Ireland during this time. James Drummond, head of the botanic gardens in Cork, had devoted an area to experiments on potato cultivations as early as 1822. See Drummond, James, ‘Account of an experiment made to ascertain the relative produce of the red apple potatoe, when cultivated in single or double drills, or in beds’, Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London (1822) 2(3), pp. 124–126Google Scholar.

4 Niven, op. cit. (1), p. 3.

5 Niven, op. cit. (1), p. 6.

6 Matta, Christina, ‘Spontaneous generation and disease causation: Anton de Bary's experiments with Phytophthora infestans and late blight of potato’, Journal of the History of Biology (2010) 43, pp. 459–491CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Zadoks, J.C., ‘The potato murrain on the European continent and the revolutions of 1848’, Potato Research (2008) 51, pp. 5–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Bourke, Austin, ‘Potato blight in Europe in 1845: the scientific controversy’, in Lucas, J.A., Shattock, R.C., Shaw, D.S. and Cook, L.R. (eds.), Phytophthora: Symposium of the British Mycological Society for Plant Pathology and the Society of Irish Plant Pathologists Held at the Trinity College, Dublin, September 1989, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 12–25Google Scholar. The importance of the Irish famine to science in this period has been argued extensively by Miller; see Miller, Ian, Reforming Food in Post-Famine Ireland: Medicine, Science, and Improvement, 1845–1922, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also O'Neill, T.P., ‘The scientific investigation of the failure of the potato crop in Ireland 1845–6’, Irish Historical Studies (September 1946) 5, pp. 123–138CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Easterby-Smith has shown that plant traders in eighteenth-century Europe carried out crucial work to cultivate plants in new soils – see Easterby-Smith, Sarah, Cultivating Commerce: Cultures of Botany in Britain and France, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 27–28Google Scholar. On the importance of cultivation methods to the plant sciences see, for instance, Curry, Helen Anne, ‘Imperilled crops and endangered flowers’, in Curry, H., Jardine, N., Secord, J. and Spary, E. (eds.), Worlds of Natural History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 460–475CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Curry, ‘Gene banks, seed libraries, and vegetable sanctuaries: the cultivation and conservation of heritage vegetables in Britain, 1970–1985’, Culture, Agriculture, Food, and Environment, forthcoming 2019.

8 Fullilove, Courtney, The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017, p. 84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Müller-Wille, Staffan, ‘Names and numbers: “data” in classical natural history, 1758–1859’, Osiris (2017) 32(1), pp. 109–128, 128CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the importance of experimentation and observation of growth to natural history during this period see Mary Terrall, ‘Experimental natural history’, in Curry et al., op. cit. (7), pp. 170–185.

10 Easterby-Smith, op. cit. (7); see also Leah Knight, ‘Horticultural networking and sociable citation’, in Curry et al., op. cit. (7), pp. 61–78.

11 The cultures of collecting, organizing and diffusing knowledge that developed in this period are constitutive of the ‘big-data’ biology that emerged in the twentieth century. See Strasser, Bruno, Collecting Experiments: Making Big Data Biology, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2019CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Salaman, Redcliffe N., The History and Social Influence of the Potato, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1949Google Scholar; see also Reader, John, Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent, London: Penguin, 2008Google Scholar; Earle, Rebecca, ‘Promoting potatoes in eighteenth-century Europe’, Eighteenth Century Studies (2017) 51(2), pp. 147–162CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Spary, Emma, Feeding France: New Sciences of Food, 1760–1815, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Overton, Mark, Whittle, Jane, Dean, Darron and Hann, Andrew, Production and Consumption in English Households, 1600–1750, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 44Google Scholar.

15 Gentilcore, David, Italy and the Potato: A History, 1550–2000, London: Continuum, 2012, pp. 6, 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Earle, op. cit. (12).

17 Malthus, Thomas Robert, An Essay on the Principle of Population, London: J. Johnson, 1803, p. 193Google Scholar.

18 Burchardt, Jeremy, ‘Land and the laborer: potato grounds and allotments in nineteenth-century southern England’, Agricultural History (2000) 74(3), pp. 667–684, 669, 675–676Google Scholar.

19 See, for example, Strasser, Bruno J., Baudry, Jérôme, Mahr, Dana, Sanchez, Gabriela and Tancoigne, Elise, ‘“Citizen Science”? Rethinking science and public participation’, Science and Technology Studies (2018) 20(10), pp. 1–25Google Scholar.

20 Salaman op. cit. (12); see also Zadoks, op. cit. (6).

21 Salaman, Redcliffe, ‘Some notes on the history of curl’, Tijdschrift Over Plantenziekten (1949) 55(118), pp. 118–128, 118Google Scholar.

22 Salaman op. cit. (12), p. 179.

23 Raley, William, A Treatise on the Management of Potatoes, York: Printed for the Author (1782), p. 40Google Scholar.

24 Salaman, op. cit. (12), p. 120.

25 ‘Transactions of the Society instituted at London, for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce’, Monthly Review (May–August 1791) 5, p. 188; ‘On the causes and prevention of the curl in potatoes, from papers by Mr. William Hollins’, Belfast Monthly Magazine (September 1810) 5, pp. 218–220.

26 Quoted in Gordon, Charles, ‘Report on the failure of the potato crop’, Transactions of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland’ (1837) 11, pp. 477–495, 478Google Scholar.

27 Wilde, William, ‘On the introduction and period of the general use of the potato in Ireland’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (1856) 6, pp. 356–372Google Scholar; see also Archer, John E., Social Unrest and Popular Protest in England, 1780–1840, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 29–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 James, Frank, ‘“Agricultural Chymistry is at present in its infancy”: the Board of Agriculture, the Royal Institution and Humphry Davy’, Ambix (2015) 62(4), pp. 363–385CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; see also Mitchison, Rosalind, ‘The Old Board of Agriculture (1793–1822)’, English Historical Review (1959) 74, pp. 41–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 List of the Members of the Board of Agriculture, London: McMillan, 1803.

30 Michinton, Walter, ‘Agricultural returns and the government during the Napoleonic Wars’, Agricultural History Review (1953) 1, pp. 29–43Google Scholar.

31 James, Patricia, Population Malthus: His Life and Times, London: Routledge, 2006 (first published 1979), pp. 56–58Google Scholar.

32 Report of the Committee of the Board of Agriculture, London: W. Bulmer and Sons, 1795, p. vii.

33 Report of the Committee of the Board of Agriculture, op. cit. (32), p. vii.

34 Papers of the Home Office: Domestic Correspondence, George III, 1782–1820, held at the National Archives, Kew, HO 42/36/113 (hereafter HO 42).

35 HO 42/36/76.

36 HO 42/36/124.

37 HO 42/36/126.

38 HO 42/37/41.

39 HO 42/36/76.

40 HO 42/36/88.

41 HO 42/36/122, original emphasis.

42 Archer, op. cit. (27), p. 20.

43 HO 42/36/156.

44 Overton, Mark, Agricultural Revolution in England, 1500–1850, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 187CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Burchardt, Jeremy, The Allotment Movement in England, 1793–1873, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2002, p. 10Google Scholar.

46 Archer, op. cit. (27), p. 10.

47 HO 42/36/11–12.

48 HO 42/36/36.

49 HO 42/36/131; HO 42/36/138; HO 42/36/142; HO 42/36/142; HO 42/37/172. On the rising costs of bread driving people to go into their potatoes earlier than usual see HO 42/36/158.

50 Report of the Committee of the Board of Agriculture, op. cit. (32), p. 37.

51 Banks, Joseph, ‘An attempt to ascertain the time when the potatoe (Solanum tuberosum) was first introduced into the United Kingdom (read in 1805)’, Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London (1818) 1, pp. 8–12Google Scholar; Sabine, Joseph, ‘On the native country of the wild potato, with an account of its culture in the garden of the Horticultural Society; and observations on the importance of obtaining improved varieties of the cultivated plant’, Journal of Science and the Arts (1823) 15, pp. 259–267Google Scholar.

52 Report of the Committee of the Board of Agriculture, op. cit. (32), p. 38.

53 Report of the Committee of the Board of Agriculture, op. cit. (32), p. 39.

54 Papers of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, SR RASE, 1793–1960, held at the University of Reading, SR RASE B/I/16 February 1797 (hereafter SR RASE B).

55 HO 42/52/4.

56 HO 42/52/5.

57 Overton, op. cit. (44), p. 189.

58 HO 42/55/293; HO 42/55/289; Ho 42/55/297.

59 HO 42/55/299.

60 HO 42/52/331.

61 HO 42/52/328.

62 HO 42/55/278.

63 HO 42/52/56.

64 HO 42/55/287.

65 HO 42/55/280.

66 HO 42/55/250.

67 HO 42/55/251.

68 Agricultural Survey of Mid Lothian, Edinburgh: Robinson, Row, Sewell, Cadell and Davies, 1795, pp. 107–108.

69 SR RASE B/II/16 December 1800.

70 Archer, op. cit. (27), p. 30.

71 SR RASE B/II 30 January 1801.

72 SR RASE B/II 30 January 1801.

73 A Treatise on the Culture of Potatoes by a Practical Farmer, Launceston: W. Bray, 1801, p. 13.

74 Knight, Thomas Andrew, ‘On the prevention of the disease called the curl in the potatoe’, in Knight, From the Physiological and Horticultural Papers by the Late Thomas Andrew Knight, London: Longman, Orme, Brown, 1847, pp. 197–199, 197Google Scholar.

75 Thomas Knight to Joseph Banks (letter undated, written between 1795 and 1806), Thomas Knight correspondence, held at the Museum of Natural History, London, MSS/KNI/53.

76 Lidwell-Durnin, John, ‘Inevitable decay: debates over climate, food security, and plant heredity in nineteenth-century Britain’, Journal of the History of Biology (2018) 52(271)Google Scholar, at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-018-9550-y.

77 Thomas Andrew Knight, ‘On the culture of the potatoe’ (1833), in Knight, From the Physiological and Horticultural Papers, op. cit. (74), pp. 334–336, 334.

78 Murphy, ‘On raising potatoes from seed’, Irish Farmer's and Gardener's Magazine (July 1834) 1(9), pp. 429–432.

79 Gordon, op. cit. (26), p. 501, original emphasis.

80 Thomas Andrew Knight, ‘On potatoes’, in Knight, From the Physiological and Horticultural Papers, op. cit. (74), pp. 182–186, 183.

81 Burchardt, op. cit. (45), p. 11.

82 Burchardt, op. cit. (45), p. 22.

83 Easterby-Smith, op. cit. (7), p. 72.

84 ‘Separate accounts’, Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London (1822) 2(2), p. 407.

85 Knight, Thomas Andrew, ‘On raising new and early varieties of the potatoe (Solanus tuberosum)’, Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London (1818) 1, pp. 57–59, 57Google Scholar.

86 Cobbett, William, Rural Rides, vol. 2, London: William Cobbett (1830), p. 474Google Scholar.

87 On Knight's response to the frost and crop failures of 1821 see Thomas Andrew Knight, ‘An account of an improved method of raising early potatoes in the open ground’, in Knight, From the Physiological and Horticultural Papers, op. cit. (74), pp. 256–258, 256.

88 ‘Report on remarkable esculent vegetables cultivated in the garden of the society: potatoes’, Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London (1826) 2(4), pp. 569–573, 569.

89 This may also have been due to the fact that Knight, like Adam Smith, Alexander Humboldt and Thomas Jefferson, believed the potato to be a native of Virginia. See Knight, ‘On the prevention of the disease called the curl in the potatoe’, op. cit. (74).

90 Lindley, John, ‘The result of some experiments on the growth of potatoes, tried in the garden of the society in the year 1831’, Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London (1835) 2(1), pp. 153–161Google Scholar.

91 See Loudon, John's editorial reply in ‘On certain frauds imposed by correspondents upon the readers of transactions of horticultural societies’, Gardener's Magazine (1832) 8, p. 291Google Scholar.

92 See Dewis, Sarah, The Loudons and the Gardening Press: A Victorian Cultural Industry, London: Ashgate, 2014, p. 33Google Scholar.

93 Hickman, Clare, ‘“The want of a proper Gardiner”: late Georgian Scottish botanic gardeners as intermediaries of medical and scientific knowledge’, BJHS (2019) 52(4), pp. 543–567CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

94 Loudon, John, ‘Mr Knight on the culture of the potato’, Gardener's Magazine (1829) 5, p. 30Google Scholar.

95 ‘Notices’, Gardener's Magazine (1826) 1, p. 342.

96 Archer, op. cit. (27), p. 15.

97 Archer, op. cit. (27), p. 17; p. 19.

98 Withers, Charles, Gaelic Scotland: The Transformation of a Culture Region, London: Routledge, 2015, p. 200CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Salaman, op. cit. (12), pp. 374–375.

99 Gráda, Cormac Ó, Ireland before and after the Famine: Explorations in Economic History, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1993, p. 7Google Scholar.

100 Archer, op. cit. (27), p. 21.

101 ‘On the failure of the potato in Scotland’, Irish Farmer's and Gardener's Magazine and Register (1835) 2(1), p. 64.

102 R.W., , ‘Culture of early potatoes in Lancashire’, Gardener's Magazine (1826) 1(2), pp. 405–406Google Scholar.

103 Lowe, Peter, ‘On the curl’, Potato Gardener's Magazine (1832) 8, p. 180Google Scholar.

104 Carroll, E., ‘Observations on prize essays on the failure of the potato crop’, Irish Farmer's and Gardener's Magazine and Register (1835) 2, pp. 248–252, 249Google Scholar.

105 Overton, op. cit. (44), p. 188.

106 Bright, Kevin, The Royal Dublin Society, 1815–1845, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004, p. 48Google Scholar.

107 Bright, op. cit. (106), pp. 14, 40.

108 Hickman, op. cit. (93).

109 Bright, op. cit. (106), p. 22.

110 Hickey, William (Doyle, Martin), ‘Extracts with a view to discover the cause of the recent failures in the potato crop’, Irish Farmer's and Gardener's Magazine and Register (1833) 1(2), p. 176Google Scholar.

111 Hickey, op. cit. (110), p. 175–176.

112 Hickey, B.H., ‘On the potato’, Irish Farmer's and Gardener's Magazine and Register (1835) 2(1), pp. 18–19Google Scholar.

113 Corlett, , ‘On the destruction of plants by insects’, Irish Farmer's and Gardener's Magazine and Register (1833) 1(3), p. 182Google Scholar, original emphasis.

114 E.C., , ‘On the potato’, Irish Farmer's and Gardener's Magazine and Register (1834) 1(4), pp. 298–301Google Scholar.

115 J.C., , ‘On the potato’, Irish Farmer's and Gardener's Magazine and Register (1834) 1(4), pp. 387–389Google Scholar.

116 J.C., op. cit. (115).

117 Gordon, op. cit. (26), p. 477.

118 Gordon, op. cit. (26), p. 501.

119 Gordon, op. cit. (26), p. 509.

120 Mackenzie, G.S., ‘On preserving potatoes, and raising them from seed’, Transactions of the Highland and Agricultural Society, 1836–1837, pp. 349–353Google Scholar.

121 Murphy, Mr, ‘On the cultivation of the potato, and raising it from seed’, Irish Farmer's and Gardener's Magazine and Register (1835) 2(2), pp. 103–108, 103Google Scholar.

122 ‘The potato crop of late years’, Gardener's Chronicle, 24 June 1843, p. 427.

123 ‘The potato crop of late years’, op. cit. (122), p. 427.

124 Curelew, ‘Disease in potatoes’, Gardener's Chronicle, 29 July 1843, p. 524.

125 Lemon, Charles, ‘On a disease in potatoes’, Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England (1843) 4, pp. 432–435Google Scholar.

126 Lemon, op. cit. (125).

127 Quercus, ‘Bobbin joans’, Gardener's Chronicle, 26 August 1843, p. 590.

128 ‘Probus Farmer's Club’, Farmer's Magazine (1843) 2(8), pp. 5–6.

129 ‘The official report on the potato crop’, Gardener's Chronicle (21 February 1846) 8, p. 116, original emphasis.

130 ‘The produce of diseased potatoes will be diseased’, Farmer's Magazine (1846) 2(13), pp. 209–210.

131 ‘In the official report on the potato crop’, Gardener's Chronicle, 21 February 1846, p. 116.

132 ‘Farmer's clubs’, Agricultural Gazette, 17 October 1846, pp. 700–701.