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What was the great Potato War?

By Chelsie Vandaveer

October 12, 2001

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Oh, the scandalous pomme de terre! It causes lust! It causes leprosy! It was the forbidden fruit of Eden! Brought to Europe from the high Andes by the Conquistadores, it was considered food for slaves and the poor. Slowly, the cultivation of the potato spread across Europe. Protestants would not grow it, Catholics planted it on Good Friday, and the poor found that it grew well and they could feed their families.

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In the 1700s, Europe suffered from a series of cool, wet summers. Grain crops were failing, potato crops were not. And potatoes could be left in the ground; they did not need harvesting and storage. This fact was not lost on leaders like Frederick the Great. Potatoes were a hedge against famine both from poor grain harvests and in times of war. Frederick got people to plant potatoes all over Prussia and Germany.

Then the ruler of Bavaria died. He had no heirs and both Austria and Prussia wanted the land. Everyone sent soldiers to the War of the Bavarian Succession. The soldiers ran around cutting each others' supply lines. With no supplies, the soldiers survived by pillaging the countryside and digging up all those potatoes. When all the potatoes had been eaten, everyone went home. Since there were no decisive battles, this non-war got named the Kartoffelkrieg or Potato War.

A French pharmacist, A. A. Parmentier, spent the Kartoffelkrieg as a German prisoner of war eating potatoes. When Parmentier returned to France, the stage had been set for the French Revolution. He thought that getting the populace to eat potatoes was a great idea and would hold off this revolution talk. Marie Antoinette wanted the populace to "eat cake", so perhaps that's where Parmentier got the idea. He set about creating an haute cuisine, a banquet for the nobility where every dish contained those "venerous roots". He even got Marie to wear potato blossoms in her hair. Very scandalous of Marie, but all the noble women starting wearing potato blossoms in their hair. The potato never did replace the grains in France. Maybe Marie should have said, "You want fries with that?"

The Horticultural Net of Urbana Illinois has a beautiful photograph of potato blossoms. To view these "scandalous" flowers, click on the link:

http://www.hort.net/gallery/view/sol/soltu/

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