48 pages • 1 hour read
Tom StandageAn Edible History of Humanity
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “Food, Energy, and Industrialization”
Part 4, Chapter 7 Summary: “New World, New Foods”
A painting of King Charles II of England from 1675 shows the king standing in front of his head gardener, presenting the monarch with a pineapple. The fruit was a symbol of power and wealth. Only the king had access to pineapples, and the success of their transport was a testament to his trading prowess. Charles employed botanists to bring prestige and knowledge to his reign. The English, French, and Dutch were in a race to make as many advancements in botany as possible. They developed elaborate gardens, hoping to cultivate all the world’s plants in a single space. These botanists had two priorities: contributing to a growing field of research and ensuring their work assisted the monarchy.
One of the factors that made this new wave of research possible was the “Columbian Exchange,” named after Christopher Columbus, who connected the Americas to the rest of the world through his mistaken belief that he had found a new passage to Asia: “Crops had always migrated from one place to another, but never with such speed, on such a scale, or over such large distances” (111). Food crops began to move across the globe, including sugar, rice, potatoes, and maize. Some new crops proved to be hardy additions to new climates, such as the sweet potato in Japan. When typhoons destroyed rice and cassava crops, sweet potatoes persisted.
Some crops—such as maize—were recognizable enough to new consumers to take hold. Maize, for example, resembled other grains and was prolific, so Europeans were more open to utilizing it. Standage examines two crops transported via the Columbian Exchange for which people had no point of reference, and these foods had major ramifications. The first is sugar—a labor-intensive product with a history of slavery. Standage traces the connection between sugarcane and slavery back to the ancient Greeks. In 1503, the first sugar mill opened in the Americas, and European countries began trafficking enslaved peoples to the Americas for labor. As production of sugar increased, the prices fell, and it became a commonplace ingredient in every household. The addictive quality of sugar meant that the demand for the product would remain steady.
The second crop, potatoes, originated in South America. The Incas cultivated hundreds of varieties of potatoes. When Europeans first encountered them, they were dubious. Those that were brought back to Europe were unpopular, despite their quick maturity and nutritional benefits. Potatoes did not resemble anything in the European diet, and their position in the nightshade family caused some religious leaders to denounce them as belonging to the occult. It was famines that caused people to become more dependent on potatoes, leading to their modern prevalence in European diets.
The more food that was produced, the greater the population became, making famines starker and more impactful. Populations swelled. The 18th-century English economist Thomas Malthus predicted that the more food people produced, the greater the population would become, until finally the population would overtake available resources. The Columbian Exchange had transported more than just goods and foods. It brought disease for both people and plants. Agriculture also meant people were spending more time with domesticated animals, which led to the development of new diseases such as typhus and measles.
Part 4, Chapter 8 Summary: “The Steam Engine and the Potato”
Near the beginning of the 19th century, Thomas Malthus warned that, when population growth exceeds agricultural production, the result would be either famine or war, yielding poverty and depopulation. Malthus could not have predicted the Industrial Revolution or the shift from goods from the land to manufactured goods. However, according to Standage, Malthus was right to be worried. Populations have not yet surpassed production; Malthus’s prediction did not come true for most European countries. Nonetheless, Standage argues, the Malthusian trap is helpful for understanding how agriculture continues to create problems that can only be fixed by new ones.
Britain was the first country to completely alter its trading profile. The country shifted away from producing its own food and instead began to import everything it needed. Sugar and wheat were brought in from other countries, while Britain exported manufactured goods, including textiles and coal.
The shift from wood to coal fueled Britain’s rise as the first industrialized nation. Land was desirable for agricultural use, making timber a less desirable commodity. Burning coal soon became the main source of fuel for the British. By 1800, Britain consumed more than 10 million tons of coal per year. Coal was also used in other ways, such as fueling industrialization endeavors and powering the world’s first steam engine. This engine was used to pump water from mines to provide access to more coal. Textile production increased so much that it destroyed the Indian textile market.
Britain’s reliance on imported food took a bad turn during the potato famine. A fungus called Phytophthora infestans wreaked havoc on the potato fields of Ireland, a country on which Britain was reliant for wheat. One million people in Ireland died from starvation or disease because of potato blight. This devastation embroiled British lawmakers in a difficult decision about tariffs. Landowners did not want to increase access to imports, but the famine pushed the decision. The removal of tariffs on imports made it possible for maize to come in from America.
Industrialization was a revolution of energy. Standage explains that the industrialization is controversial because it created many new problems, including its environmental impact:
In this sense the industrialized countries have not escaped Malthus’s trap after all, but have merely exchanged one crisis, in which the limiting factor was agricultural land, for another, in which the limiting factor is the atmosphere’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide (139).
The same agricultural impact can be seen today in biofuels. An enthusiasm for biofuels like ethanol led to an increase in the cost for corn. Because corn is also used to feed domesticated livestock, the higher price for feed led, in turn, to a higher price for meat and milk. Standage explains that many proponents of biofuels emphasize that biofuels are renewable and have the potential to be carbon neutral. However, the carbon emissions used for the growing of crops like corn are comparable to the extraction of fossil fuels.
Part 4 Analysis
In Part 4, Standage’s macrohistorical approach reaches a point of critical escalation. He pulls from multiple fields and regions of the world to examine the relationship between humans and food in a comprehensive way. In these two chapters, he covers a vast array of complex issues and moments in history, including the rise of study of botany in 17th-century Europe and the mutuality of agriculture and increased population. Standage’s fast paced and dense presentation of this point in history mirrors the escalation brought on by the Industrial Revolution and global trade. Throughout these chapters, as throughout The Edible History of Humanity in full, the author continues to assert that humans and plants have an interconnected and dynamic relationship in which each influences the other.
The Coevolution of Humans and Plants means that as one element changes, so does the other, and in these chapters, Standage tackles the Columbian Exchange and the Industrial Revolution as two events associated with a surge in this process. Plants from South America, like maize and potatoes, spread across the world, becoming mainstays in diets in European and Asian countries. Industrialization increased the need for a cheap and abundant source of fuel, leading to a mining boom and the development of the steam-powered engine. Europeans clamored for sugarcane as sugar became increasingly prevalent in their diet. They used it to flavor tea and to make desserts. Because sugarcane is difficult to produce and requires a huge labor force, sugarcane producers turned to slavery to meet the demand. Laws changed, and diseases destroyed crops and families. The world was reinventing itself at every turn, and agriculture was the source of it all.
Standage rejects the traditional interpretation of these events as evidence of the maturation of humanity or a movement toward a more equitable and innovative future. Instead, he argues that these changes reveal Agriculture as a Destructive Force. The use of coal—and, later, biofuels—contributed to climate change, and the Columbian Exchange transported ideas about fuel and mining across the world. Neither potatoes nor the fungus that brought on the potato famine were a part of the Irish diet prior to the Columbian Exchange. But the coevolution of plants and humans had changed European diets forever, and industrialization caused Britain to change its system of trade. In the context of agriculture’s destructive capacity, greed and the relationship between Agriculture and Power emerge as major factors. Prioritizing trade and power, which depended on their own control over food supplies, the British government chose against life-saving choices that could have alleviated some of the impact of the potato famine. The lack of compassion contributed to one million people in Ireland dying as a result. Each historical event that Standage covers can be viewed through multiple lenses. Many may interpret these events as advances in human ingenuity, but Standage maintains that the costs far outweigh the benefits.
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