Research in Economic History by Christopher Hanes Susan Wolcott

Author:Christopher Hanes,Susan Wolcott
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784417826
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Published: 2015-04-20T04:00:00+00:00

Floud et al. derived these estimates from Salaman’s classic account of the history and social influence of the potato from its Andean origins. Although he argued that ‘the potato reached [Britain] at the end of sixteenth century’, he also suggested that there was little evidence of cultivation before 1770 (Salaman, 1949, p. 537). He derived his figures for 1775 and 1795 from contemporary accounts of the consumption of potatoes in northern England at the end of the eighteenth century, and estimated the amount of land under cultivation in 1814 and 1838 from contemporary Scottish figures. He then used Caird’s (1852) account of the total amount of land used for the cultivation of potatoes, turnips and mangolds to estimate a separate figure for potatoes in 1851. He also used the Board of Trade’s official returns to estimate the extent of potato cultivation in 1866 and 1871, and in 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911 and 1914. However, unlike Overton and Campbell, he included both English and Welsh figures, and he added a further 70,000 acres for allotments, gardens and small ‘potato-patches’ (Salaman, 1949, pp. 611–613).

This account raises two main issues. In the first place, as we have already seen, Salaman (1949, p. 537) argued that potato cultivation rose rapidly ‘from a very small, though quite uncertain, initial acreage in 1770’. However, he also argued that it ‘reached this country at the end of the sixteenth century’ and made ‘rapid progress in Lancashire and the north’ (Salaman, 1949, pp. 434, 451). When Floud et al. (2011, p. 157) used these data, they allowed their figures for potato consumption to rise consistently from 1600 to 1775. If Salaman was right to suggest that potatoes were grown on a very small number of acres before 1770, this assumption may have led them to overestimate the number of calories derived from potatoes in both 1700 and 1750.

The second question concerns the compatibility of Salaman’s figures with those of later authors. The most direct point of comparison is with Turner’s suggestion that between 0.157 and 0.173 million acres were devoted to the cultivation of potatoes in 1801 (Turner, 1981, pp. 296–297). By contrast, Salaman argued that only 0.1 million acres were devoted to potatoes in 1795 and that the figure of 0.16 million was not reached until 1814 (Salaman, 1949, p. 613). If we were to recalculate Floud et al.’s figures for 1800 using Turner’s proposed acreage, the number of calories supplied in this year would rise by between 77 and 102 ([157,138 × 153.98]/104,734 = 231.02; [174,423 × 153.98]/104,734 = 256.44).

Although Turner’s figures for this period are clearly derived from a much more complete source of quantitative information than Salaman’s, there are two potential problems. As we have already seen, Salaman (1949, p. 613) was explicit in stating that his figures were based on the amount of land devoted to the cultivation of potatoes for human consumption, but others have been less so. According to Holderness (1989, p. 144), a large proportion of the potatoes which were

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