November 20, 2024 • 50 mins
In the second part of this reverse episode, author Wren Awry finishes teaching Margaret the complex and wonderful history of one of the best vegetables in the world.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to the History of Potatoes, Part two
with ren A Rye. I'm your host Margaret Kiljoy, who
always talks in this voice or it's just the voice
I have because I have a cold. This is cool
people who did cool stuff. I'm your host Margaret Kiljoy,
but I'm not the host today because Ren's the host today. Hi, Ren,
how are you doing good?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I really appreciated that, like intense serious Margaret voice. Yeah,
it's definitely like a mix up from your usually you know,
your usual friendly demeanor.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah. Yeah, potatoes are serious business.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
They are serious business.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Much like serious business. Is Rory our audio engineer who
Hi Rory Hi Rory, an unwoman who wrote our theme music.
And Sophie, who is our producer, who is not here today,
so we can do whatever we want and that I
mean we can try and do our job without Sophie around.
(01:00):
But where we last left off? Wait, I got so
distracted at the end of last episode. I'm talking about
other stuff. Where did we last leave off? Where's our cliffhanger?
Speaker 1 (01:10):
We actually left off talking about Ireland. So our cliffhanger
was that there was this Scottish guy McCullough who claimed
that the Irish had been prevented from rising up because
they were, you know, so tied to their little plots
of land and their potatoes. They didn't even know that
(01:30):
their lives.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Were hard, right, and we're going to learn he's wrong. Yeah, yeah,
hell yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
And I should say that there is a lot of
information about potatoes in Ireland, in fact, an overwhelming amount
of information.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
What uh huh so much?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I uh yeah, it was both wonderful and sort of
deeply I guess I'm just going to repeat the word
overwhelming here, overwhelming to dig through. So I do want
to say I don't actually know enough to make a
sweeping generalization about whether or not these sort of self
sufficient life ways of Irish presidents negatively impacted their ability
(02:10):
to organize with one another. I like can't say overall.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I'm guessing that's wrong. I'm guessing that's some usual like
Marx shit totally.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
So I don't know enough to make a whole sleeping
generalization about you know, self sufficiency and how it impacted
organizing in rural Ireland. But there was a ton of
resistance to British colonization. The Irish rose up again and
again over eight hundred plus years, and in fact they
sometimes even rose up in directly potato related ways.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Oh hell yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
So most notably among these were food riots. So food
riots were common in Ireland, as they also were in
other parts of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
They were typically in response to sudden price surges and
other concerns about food and security, and they took different
They took the form of blockades to prevent food from
being exported, as well as your classic plundering and looting,
(03:07):
and less common but still notable were price riots, which
is when protesters would exppropriate a store of food and
then sell it for what they saw as a fair price.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
That is so interesting you mentioned that last time.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
It is.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah, that's such a like robinhood, but like it's like
kind of almost like a liberally robinhood, but not like
in a bad way, just to like, I don't know,
it's interesting to me.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, it's funny, isn't it. I would like to learn
more about, like some of the dynamics behind why people
were choosing this Instead of choosing just to like give
away the potatoes.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
They probably saw it as like this is well, this
is what the world should be is that things should
be fairly priced as compared to like, whereas I'm like, well,
everything should be free. That's the fair price for everything,
you know. Yeah, but you know, I don't know they
were willing to throw down for it, So I'm not
going to nitpick, you know, totally.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah, And it does seem like they were selling it
at what was affordable for the peasantry. So it did.
It did people's lives easier. And many of these riots
targeted grain, oats, and meal, but they also very often
targeted potatoes, which, as we discussed previously, were becoming an
increasingly important food stuff at this time. And historian James Kelly,
(04:14):
who drew on newspaper reports and registers of correspondents to
write a book about food rights in Ireland during this time,
offer some examples of potato riots that took place between
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It would be
an entire project in and of itself to go into
all of these riots. There were so many.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Okay, good because I might do an episode later sometime.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah, So I'm going to keep it pretty basic and
just mention a few. Okay, So while carts full of
potatoes were intercepted, and mills and stores of potatoes were plundered.
In coastal areas, writers often block shipments of potatoes from
leaving the ports. So here's a snippet from a newspaper
article about one such incident in the town of Clonakilty
in May seventeen eighty three. A few days ago. The
(04:58):
inhabitants of Klonakilty have had intelligence that several sloops then
in that harbor were freighted with potatoes at a time
when a most dreadful jarth of that useful necessity prevailed,
assembled in large bodies, and in the first transports of
their resentment, tore away the rigging, demolished the mast yards,
et cetera, and cast their anchors overboard. They afterwards unloaded
(05:19):
several vessels and obliged such masters as informed them of
their destination for Quark Market, solemnly to swear that they
would dispose of their cargo there and nowhere else.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Oh, so they would be like, oh, we're not going
to mess up your ship because you're going to Ireland,
like you're staying in Ireland.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
In this case. Yes, that wasn't actually always the case.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Oh but that's interesting. That's kind of like you get
this again, like these like rioters who are like, well,
it's about an ethic and not just like I went wild,
you know, yes.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah, totally, And like there's this idea that food riots
are spontaneous uprisings and they're often caused by crises, but
also they're often the result of like a lot of
careful thinking and planning about access to food. Yeah, and
since city dwellers had to purchase most of the provisions,
they couldn't grow them. Food riots in Dublin often took
(06:09):
the form of riotous mobs that plundered and redistributed food.
There were also demonstrations, including one in seventeen ninety six
in which protesters gathered at the Dublin Quays near the
potato boats to voice their anger at the price of potatoes.
They chanted bread or potatoes, we are starving.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
That goes hard.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah. In his book, Kelly talks about food scarcity leading
to an intense localism and othering of people from elsewhere,
even of other Irish people. So in Skibboreine, a town
and County Cork, in eighteen twelve, potato cargo from a
sloop bound for Dublin was expropriated and then sold locally
at a cheaper rate. Several decades later, residents of Sligo
(06:47):
Town barred people from a neighboring county from buying potatoes
at their market, and the eighteen forty two Claire massacre,
rooted in a similar impulse, left five people, including three
protesters dead. Interestingly, while food protesters were certainly met with
violence and arrest, as was the case in Claire, Kelly
mentions that the authorities were inconsistent in their responses, that
(07:09):
they were sort of softer on food riots and other
forms of revolts and protest. Only a fraction of participants
in food riots were prosecuted, and Kelly argues that this
is because food was seen as a necessity, so participants
had a moral right to riot in the eyes of
the ruling class.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
That that makes some sense.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
I remember reading a while ago about I don't want
to say what country it was, because I'm not sure
if it was true or not. I never looked it up.
I was reading about a country that it wasn't illegal
to try to break out of prison. They would catch you,
they would stop you, and they put you back in prison.
And if you hurt people in the process, that was
a separate crime. But the actual physical act of trying
to leave prison was seen as like a human like
(07:53):
not right, but like natural instinct that is like, well, well, yeah,
I locked you in a cage, you tried to get out.
I could get mad at you about that, you know,
and I feel like that.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
The idea that like, well, whatever, you were starving, and
I'm still going to stop you from stealing this.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, I'm still not going to go out and distribute
food to you. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, yeah, I see why you're mad, and I'm not
going to change anything, is what they're saying. Yeah, just
still somehow still more human than like the US system totally.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah. Yeah, slightly more human for sure. And it wasn't
every single case, but that was sort of like in general,
And from about eighteen fifteen until eighteen forty five there
was an uptick in social protest and rebellion in Ireland
in general, and it included in some of those years
a dramatic increase in food riots. They were particularly widespread
in the counties of North Munster, including Claire and Limerick.
(08:43):
In an article that looks at these two counties, Andres
Erickson reports on food related unrest and protests that occurred
in the eighteen thirties and forties, many of which had
to do with potatoes. So beginning in the eighteen twenties,
the price of potatoes rose steeply, which Ericson argues related
to greater consumption in Ireland rather than because they were
being exported. I think there's a little bit like a
(09:04):
lot of these things have like tensions between different historians
about what some of the causes were right. The population boom,
coupled with the unjust distribution of land, probably caused a
rising demand for potatoes that couldn't be met. In the
late eighteen thirties and early eighteen forties, potato harvest made
the situation even more acute. In those years, June and
(09:25):
July were referred to as the hungry weeks because it
was common for the World War to run out of
potatoes by that time and depend on purchased spuds and
other purchased food. In an effort to make sure potato
prices remained affordable for the poor, groups of men organized
attacks on wealthy farmers and posted threatening notices demanding ceilings
(09:45):
on potato prices. And so those actions would typically get
carried out between March and early June, before or right
as the hungry weeks began and the cost of potatoes
started to rise. And this really points to the fact
what we were talking about before. These weren't taneous uprisings,
but well planned operations that were based on knowledge of
the potato harvest and the market. Yeah. And they were often,
(10:08):
although not always, carried out by secret societies and militant
rebels who were referred to as the White Boys, the
Rock Heights, the Terry Alts, or the Men of Lady Claire.
And I know you talked about the White Boys, which
have a very weird name and complicated history on your
show before right the Molly Maguire episode.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, there's a bunch of different Ireland got stuff done
through secret societies while England got stuff done through unions.
Is like kind of a rough It's an unfair dichotomy
to draw, but like Ireland was all about the like
you get together in the pub with your friends, you
decide to go cross dress and fuck some stuff up totally. Yeah,
(10:47):
And I hadn't heard about it specifically as relates to
the food riots. I only read about it as relates
to like killing landlords and stuff, but it makes sense
that the same groups would also go and do food riots.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Make sure that potato prices weren't getting too high.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, it's like kind of like an Yeah, it's funny
because it's like sort of an organized crime, you know.
But it's also I don't know, Yeah, it's interesting, and
it's not like I'm not even like saying like, and
that's the correct organizing method, you know, but I don't
have a this is a different one.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
You know, totally. Yeah, Yeah, and it's really interesting and
I'd like it. I read about it in this one
article and that's enough. Like all of these things are
just things I want to know so much more about.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
But well, and even the like one of the things
that I can't remember enough, and so I'm like afraid
I'll be wrong. So if you're listening, don't take this
as necessarily the truth. But you're saying about how the
like land distribution was getting worse. I'm under the impression
that traditionally Irish land would be divided amongst all of
the kids, and then the Protestant method was like, no,
(11:49):
you have to only give it to one kid, So
you start having these like disenfranchised people, and you have
this like rise in landless people, and that's like where
some of the uh where a lot of the diaspora
comes from. But I don't know the timing of that.
And then part of me is like, wait, what if
I haven't inverted right, because I know that there's the
oh lord, I just don't have my notes in front
(12:09):
of me. There's like the system by which traditionally Irish
people would like elect their ruler after one ruler died, right,
and you know, the way that things would get divvied
up is just like different than the western capitalist system.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
It's not totally.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Inherently better, but it was certainly worked better in Ireland.
And when it got disrupted, then you started having all
these landless people and stuff. That's my Yeah, don't take
my details on that, but the overall thrust of it
I feel confident about.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
And I do know by the time that we're talking
about I don't know the exact reasons, but there were
a ton of landless labors in Ireland. So there definitely
was like a vast landlessness that was happening, Like people
that didn't even have like a tiny little plot of
land to grow potatoes. Yeah, so I wanted to share
one instance of this sort of secret society Potato organized
(13:00):
crime patrol. In eighteen thirty seven, twenty men in County
Limerick broke into the homes of seven farmers, smashing their
doors and windows, and ordered those farmers to sell potatoes
at an affordable price and rent out their land to
cottiers on the Konaker system. And so that's that system
where laborers could rent a plot of land for the
season to grow potatoes, and for some of them that
(13:21):
was the only way to survive. Two years later, in
nearby County Claire, a farmer was dragged outside and forced
to swear an oath that he would have the price
of his potatoes, and he actually was forced to refund
money to the people he had already overcharged. And these
roping bands also sent letters to the homes of targeted
farmers and posted notices in public places, and one notice
(13:45):
posted in the town of Fakeal and County Clare read,
all persons are hereby required to take due notice that
any person or persons having the assurance to charge over
three pence for white potatoes three and a half pence
per cups his coffe will be his doom if he
goes beyond the rule of the terry alts. As for strangers,
they are welcome here so long as they won't go
(14:06):
beyond the rules of the country. If they do, their
cars will be cut. And then it signed corffin boys
with the PS. Any person that takes this down will
be sorry.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Hell yeah. It just don't make fucking threatening letters like
they used to. Totally yeah. Also, I love the like
shout out that being like, look, hey, this isn't a
this isn't a nationalist thing. If you're not from here,
it's fine. You just still can't sell potatoes for a lot.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Respect the rules of the country. Yeah, totally yeah. And
this all becomes far more acute with the onset of
the Great Hunger. So the Great Hunger, which is also
referred to as the Irish Potato Famine, was caused by
a potato blight that originated in North America and spread
across Europe starting the summer of eighteen forty five, and
thousands of people actually died in other countries, including the Netherlands,
(14:53):
Prussia and Belgium, but no place was quite as effected
as Ireland. And this is partially because of how hea
the Irish poor depended on the potato. Between forty and
sixty percent of the population subsisted almost entirely on the
potato by the eighteen forties, and the lumper, the primary
variety of potato grown in Ireland around the time of
the famine, was chosen to be grown so widely because
(15:16):
it produced huge crops, but it wasn't very blight resistant.
The famine was also really bad in Ireland because of
Britain's response to the situation. By eighteen forty six, the
Irish were in a desperate situation, but the English ruling
class stock cries for help is classic Irish exaggeration.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Charles Treveillyon, the Assistant Secretary to the Treasury who oversaw
the British response to the famine, viewed it as a
wage to reduce the surplus Irish population. The Irish who
survived would, he hoped, join the ranks of the proletariat
instead of eking out subsistence on the conager system and
lazy beds. They would become wage laborers who primarily ate
(15:58):
purchase grain and then, even like half hearted English attempts
to ameliorate the famine, didn't work. The English refused to
send grain because it might mess with the free market.
I tried to figure out exactly, like map out exactly
what they're thinking was around this, and I couldn't. People
have written about it, and I couldn't quite figure it out.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
I know, I had always read that they were subsisting
off potatoes because they were more or less economically forced
to export all of their other crops, and so yeah,
that was why when the crop that they actually ate
for themselves at home, when that one failed, and England
didn't let them like throw up some trade protectionism or whatever,
(16:40):
you know, totally yeah, and didn't limit exports.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
But it also seemed like the English could have sent
additional food and decided not to, And that had to
do with some like thinking around free market capitalism.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah. And they sent like weird corn that you couldn't
really eaten. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, they sent the hard flint corn that the Irish
didn't have the rightquipment to mill.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
And another English suggestion was to strain rutting potatoes and
bake them, so the rotten part was baked off, which
sounds disgusting.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, these the potatoes. I grew some rotten I grew
blite potatoes this year, as we're saying, and yeah, they're
one of the nastiest things in this world I've ever seen,
like little I don't even like a little whatever I
might even describe as too gross.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Well, there were like gross little bugs on them, right,
were the bugs good? Well?
Speaker 2 (17:30):
And like I pulled, there was bugs in my stupid
and the bugs were nasty. Anyway, it was all bad
and I starved to death. That's what happened.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Wait, no, as you're eating your your takeout.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah huh, yeah that someone delivered to me. Yeah no, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
And as you were talking about, Ireland was actually producing
enough grain to feed the entire population, but most of it,
alongside barley, oats and other crops, were exported to England
while the Irish people start. So in eighteen forty six
and eighteen forty seven you have this wave of riots
that are related to securing food and famine relief, and
there was also an increase in this tradition of plundering
(18:11):
of provisions of just taking food that was needed. Of course,
these food riots weren't centered on the potato because the
potatoes were rotting in the fields, right, so they were
focused on meal and grain and later on influencing how
soup kitchens were run. In April eighteen forty six, in
the southern part of County Tipperary and adjacent areas of
County Waterford and Cork Town, dwellers and the rural poor
(18:33):
rated cart convoys, cargo boats, meal stores, mills and bakeries
for food. Food riots and next proporations spread across the
country in eighteen forty six and forty seven, and there
was a real emphasis on the western half of the island,
which is where famine hit the hardest. County Cork alone
saw one hundred and forty one food riots in eighteen
forty seven, while Galway, Tipperary and Limerick all had over
(18:56):
one hundred. There were also marches, including one in County
May in which ten thousand to forty thousand, which is
a huge range of numbers, but that's what I got.
Starving peasants walked to the town of Castle Bar to
protest that there is not a stone of sound potatoes
among the whole of us.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
What they should have done is that they should have
marched to these deals services that advertise and asked to
purchase here's ads and we're back.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
So from March to May eighteen forty seven, protesters fought
against the closure of the public works and the indignity
of soup kitchens.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
What is that? What is the public works?
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Like, that's a great question. The public works is like
people getting hired to maintain roads and stuff.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Oh yeah, it made me think of.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Like works progress administration stuff during the Great Depression. Yeah yeah,
just like you know, digging ditches and building roads, doing
like work for the state that would get folks who
are otherwise unemployed paid. Cool, but they did it. Seems
like sometime in eighteen forty seven most of the public
works were closed. They were also protesting against the indignity
(20:14):
of soup kitchens, but then sort of shifted to being like,
let's make these soup kitchens better, demanding bigger and better
rations as well as uncooked meals that they could prepare
in the privacy of their own homes. There was a
very strong stigma against things like having to beg for
food or show up and ask for aid, at least
within the parts of Ireland that were really hard hit
(20:36):
by the famine, and so people really wanted to be
able to take food and cook it in their own homes.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
That makes sense, Yeah, I mean, there shouldn't be that stigma,
but it doesn't surprise me that there is.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah, totally. And so by the end of eighteen forty seven,
these protests had largely waned. Ericson attributes this to an
increased in hunger, disease, and fatigue.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
But also after the conic or system lapses, the public
works close, there's no longer jobs, wages, or even potato
growing land to fight for. So even the famine evictions
of eighteen forty eight met with little resistance, which followed
on the footsteps of other mass evictions that had happened
over the previous decade. More than one hundred thousand families
(21:18):
lost their homes because they couldn't pay rent, or because
their landlords wanted to use the land for grazing and
other large scale agricultural activities. I know. Yeah, that's how
at least some of my ancestors ended up turning into
settlers in this country. So yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
While a lot of genuine solidarity poured in from around
the world, the results of the famine were devastating. In
the end, over one million Irish people died from hunger
and disease, and one point twenty five million emigrated.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Which is like a together, that's like a quarter of
their population.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yes, yeah, it's a huge number. And many of these emigrees,
of course came to the United States, where they became
the settlers and colonizers, and according to Earle, the Italian
economist Francesco Nitty believed that a shift from potatoes to
meet likewise explained why the Irish workers, who in their
homeland were idle, week and whimsical, were transformed into energetic
(22:16):
and productive workers on emigration to the United States, which
leads into my terrible, terrible joke, which is does eating
meat turn people into cops? Oh?
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Sh I mean, it's one of the sadder things in
history is watching the political shift from the Irish person
in Ireland to the second generation Irish diaspora in the
United States in the nineteenth century, because, I mean a
ton of the Irish nationalists lived in the United States
(22:48):
for a while, but like, yeah, overall, pretty quickly, one
of the most politically annoying groups in history is the
Irish American So.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, totally yeah, And I think, I don't know, it
makes me sad. I feel like I have a personal
relationship to it, and it makes me sad, and that's
all I can really say about it at this moment.
So yeah, So now we're going to leave Ireland and
we're going to jump ahead in time. We're going to
talk about the world wars and the years in between them.
(23:20):
And there were times when potatoes played a role in
both perseverance and revolts. During World War One, Sweden, which
was a neutral country, exported goods, including potatoes and other
food stuff to Germany, and while this made wealthy traders
and farmers even richer, it led first to food rationing
for working people, and then to these rations being cut
(23:40):
and to widespread food shortages. At the end of April
nineteen seventeen, riots and protests spread across Sweden, starting in
the small towns, where women rallied to demand more rations
as well as a fair price for potatoes and milk.
In both rural and urban places, these protests often included
the plundering of provisions. For example, women would force their
way into a grocery store and if they found food hoarded,
(24:03):
they would demand the grocer sell it at the posted prices.
Conscriptive soldiers joined the protests, which really alarmed the authorities,
but their officers did disarm them before they hit the street,
so they weren't quite as that's funny. Their potential for
rebellion wasn't quite as strong as it could have been.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
But it's like the officers didn't stop them from going.
They was like, all right, you can go, but you
gotta leave your rifle at home.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
That seems to be, yeah, what the case was.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Which makes some sense honestly, like, yeah, there's many situations
where having a gun around makes everything worse, and riots
are among those situations.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Totally. Yeah, I feel like in a lot of cases
that is absolutely true. And there were these workers committees
that often included a Narcho, synaclists and socialists that formed
in about forty Swedish cities and towns. In the city
of Ostervik, the Workers Committee released a manifesto that called for,
in addition to an eight Tom day, the release of
(25:01):
all those arrested during hunger protests, and of course food,
the distribution of land to grow potatoes. And although it
was eventually quell due to infighting, repression and a decline
and leftist organizing, all the things that we see time
and time again over two hundred and fifty thousand people
participated in Sweden's Potato Revolution.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
And I think one of the things that it's interesting
about that is again, like I know we kind of
mentioned it earlier, but you know this idea that the
right wing worries about like lawless looting, right, and that
happens sometimes and people, you know, and there's times when
crowds like lose their mind and hurt people and all
of this. But it's like you're bringing up time after
time where they're like, look, we just want the food
(25:45):
to be sold at not price gouged prices. You know.
It's not like, oh, we want everything for free, although
I mean again I have no problem with everyone getting
everything for free, but like, it's not about entitlement. It's
just literally about hey, you can't just keep jacking up
the prices while we're all starving.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Totally, it's about survival.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yeah. That same year, in early July, there were also
potato rides in Amsterdam, and I had trouble finding too
much information about them in English, but this is what
he did find. When hungry women and children tried to
ride a potato ship, they were assured a new shipment
of potatoes for sale was coming in soon, but the
potatoes in that shipment were priced too high, and on
(26:28):
July second, crowd started plundering shops and warehouses. On July four,
three hundred women armed with bayonets, revolvers, and stones tried
to expropriate a stored potatoes that were being guarded by troops,
and on July five, a clash with the army resulted
in nine people kills and one hundred and fourteen injured.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
I feel like since we currently live in a country
where the price of basic goods not only went up
a lot in the past few years, but ye, if
Trump gets its way his way, then they are going
to go up way more real soon, totally with tariffs,
you know, I feel like this is relatable content.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Oh for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yeah, keep the food prices reasonable or otherwise people will
find bayonets.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Yes, although it might be hard to like literally find
a bayonet in this day and age, but you know equivalence.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Well, I mean, you know there's bayonets up through the
world Wars and yeah, totally, my dad has a bayonet,
you know, So if.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Anyone needs to expropriate potatoes, Margaret's dad has a bayonet. Yeah, yeah, totally.
During World War Two, potatoes help people across Europe survive.
They were the single most important food in aiding survival
during the Siege of Leningrad, which lasted for almost two
and a half years and killed over eight hundred thousand
Soviet civilians.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Thank god.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Yeah, really really really sad in a move that I mean,
so much of this is all just actually so sad.
In a move that harkens back to James Scott, at
least one poor family outside Rome replanted their entire garden
with potatoes is a way to prevent the German military
from taking their crops. Back to that underground food thing.
And also Jewish children living in the Warsaw Ghetto would
(28:09):
sneak past the guards on a daily basis, an incredibly
brave and dangerous endeavor to find food outside of the
ghetto's walls. In addition to begging, this included digging up
potatoes that grew on the outskirts of the city.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
So earlier we talked about state evating potatoes in early
modern Europe, and interestingly, potatoes played a similar role in
China many centuries later. Potatoes likely arrived in China in
the seventeenth century and were first grown by peasants eking
out a living on marginal mountainous land in the north
of the country, like in so many other places, a
(28:42):
way to survive, you know, kind of on the fringes.
And that Chang dynasty, which ruled China at the time,
was interested in preventing famine, but thought the path to
doing so is through growing rice and other grains, not potatoes.
Three centuries later, under Mao, potatoes became a method of
survival and communities where they were grown. During the Great
Leap Forward of nineteen fifty eight to nineteen sixty two,
(29:05):
the state appropriated grains, but they didn't appropriate potatoes well.
The famine that resulted is considered by submetrics to be
the largest famine of all time. Entire villages survived on potatoes,
and there was also another state evating element at play
in MAOIs China, in which there was a certain quota
of wheat that farmers were required to grow, and instead
(29:27):
of switching to wheat, farmers would convert the number of
potatoes they grew into what they believed would be an
equivalent amount of wheat and report that to the authorities.
Instead Okay, So there's this interesting history of potato growing
areas continuing to grow potatoes and just saying they were
growing wheat.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Yeah. Yeah, no, they're like, no, we were quite happy
with this thing that it's harder for you to tax
and this, yeah, takes less work and feeds us better.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah, totally. So I want to end by talking about
the South Africa potato boycott of nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Well, before we talk about that, boy, what you shouldn't
boycott is these goods and services unless they're for bad things,
in which case you should boycott them. We have no
legions to advertisers. Ye. Yeah, we just have to do
it in order to eat potatoes. You're the ads and
(30:23):
we're back. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
So, as I mentioned, I want to end by talking
about the South Africa potato boycott, which happened in nineteen
fifty nine. And I do want to say that in
an episode about sad, hard things, this felt like one
of the absolute hardest to research, and I want to
give listeners a heads up about the intensity of violence involved.
But it also feels like a really important sort of
historical episode to talk about it. We're talking about potatoes
(30:47):
from a people's history perspective. So before I go into
the boycott itself, it feels important to discuss the historical
circumstances that gave brise to this. And to do this
it depended pretty heavily on a book called These Potatoes
Look Like Humans. The Contested Future of Land, Home and
Death in South Africa by Umbuso Wacosi, which I definitely
recommend folks check out to learn more about the political
(31:10):
and spiritual components of black farm workers struggles from early
colonial South Africa to the present day. And I've also
used several other sources, but I want to be sure
to mention this book by name. Okay, So, the Potato
boycott was a response to the South African apartheid state,
in which segregation as well as political and economic discrimination
were codified into law to uphold the power of the
(31:32):
country's minority white population. While only given the name apartheid
after is that if super racist laws were passed in
nineteen forty eight. Segregation and white supremacy had long been
part and parcel of life and the legal system in
South Africa since it's settlement by Dutch and English colonists
starting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the history
(31:52):
of South Africa apartheid and the whole scope of this
decade's long anti apartheid movement are more than I can
talk about in this episode, but I'll sort of be
touching on these topics here and there while discussing the boycott. So,
the boycott centered on a town called Bethel, which is
in a region that was then called the East trans
Fall and that's now part of Malonga, where large white
(32:13):
owned potato farms employed a black workforce comprised of locals
who had been dispossessed by colonialism and white land ownership,
contract workers from elsewhere in South Africa and neighboring countries,
and prisoners. Throughout the forties and fifties, these farms gained
a reputation for brutality, which included owners for men and
boss boys, which were kind of like local workers who
(32:34):
were employed in intermediary physician murdering and beating to death
workers and burying their bodies in the fields.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Jesus. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
While abuse and brutality weren't unique to Bethel, the town's
potato farms were considered so violent that recruiters looking for
workers along the border with Rhodesia, a former colonial state
that bordered South Africa, regularly changed their vehicle registration plates
so that workers didn't know that they'd be going to
the East.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Trons Fall Jesus.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
In the early fifties, three laborers found out that they
were being taken to Bethel instead of the place they
thought they were going, and they jumped off the train
they were on, and at least one of them died
in the act. Throughout the forties and fifties, exposes were
published that revealed conditions on Bethel potato farms. In nineteen
forty seven, Anglican priest and anti apartheid activist Michael Scott
(33:26):
and journalists Ruth First, working as a photographer, collaborated on
an expose about the Bethel farms with help from investigative
journalist Henry Nukmalo. They were horrified to find child laborers
working in the fields alongside contract workers from Nyassaland, which
is now Malawi. These workers had signed contracts that promised
(33:47):
poor pay and few protections, either because they were illiterate
and were told deceitful information about what the contracts contained,
or because they were so desperate for work that they
knew they were terrible deals, but they signed them anyway.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Happens all over the world now, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
And other workers included prisoners who were sent to the
farms for the duration of their sentences. On some farms,
these prisoners had their clothes confiscated and were forced to
wear potato sacks, a measure that the landowners believed would
prevent them from running away.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Fuck.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
In nineteen fifty two, Nukmalo built on first in Scott's
work by publishing another expose and Drum magazine. Unlike Scott
and First, who were white, Nucmalo was a Black African,
which allowed him to go undercover for the assignment. Additionally,
laborers spoke to Nucmala more freely than they had to
Scott and articulated their fears of speaking up against the
(34:40):
farmers into the police. And This expose includes quotes from
Bethel based organizer and African National Congress member Gert Sabandi,
who may have also helped First in Scott and their
reporting and is often considered to have played an organizing
role in the boycott, although the scope of his contributions
stopped fully known. Nonetheless, to Bendi's work exposing the case,
conditions of farms and Bethel and organizing labors there played
(35:03):
an important role in laying the groundwork for the boycott.
So while prison labor had long been used on South
African farms, including in Bethel, in nineteen fifty three the
petty offender scheme landed on the books. As part of
this scheme, black South Africans who are found guilty of
petty apartheid crimes either had to serve a three month
(35:24):
jail sentence or spend that time working on a farm
for a pittance, a scheme device to ameliorate both overcrowding
in jails and labor shortages on farms.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
When you say like apartheid crimes, is this like I
don't understand enough about a parteid South Africa's It's like, oh,
you were in the wrong part of town where black
people aren't allowed or something.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Essentially, yes, yeah, okay. Petty apartheid crimes were any of
any crime that transgressed the laws that kept South Africans
of different racial groups apart. But one of those is
breaking the past laws which required non white South Africans
to carry documents that authorize them to travel through a
work in white classified areas, and these his laws actually
had a particular impact on black South Africans, and when
(36:04):
the nineteen fifty two Natives Act instituted reference books in
the place of passes, every black man sixteen years of
age or older was required to have his on him
at all times.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Jesus uh huh, So you.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Could, yeah, you could end up sent to one of
these farms because you didn't have the proper documentation on you.
And although theoretically offenders were given the choice to work
on farms versus serving their sentences in jails, in reality
they were often coerced. He j the Bear, the public
prosecutor who put this scheme into motion, was known to have,
at least in certain instances, sent to restues straight to
(36:38):
the farm without them appearing in court first. And he
also told arrestees that if they didn't accept work on farms,
they'd be punished by their ancestors, which is a threat
that Ukosi describes as eschatological terror.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
WHOA, that's yeah, I mean, it's funny because it's like
this is the way that people are going to talk
about the United States. It's hopefully soon. You know, the
prison labor systems that exist within the United States of
like you're more or less coerced into these jobs that
pay basically nothing and all of these things.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Yeah, and there was a whole there's a whole sort
of thread to this story that in this book These
Potatoes Look like Humans really goes into thinking about like
the spiritual violence. And I don't get too much into
that in this section, but if you are interested in that,
there's like a lot more within the book talking about
like sort of the yeah, eschatological terror that was wielded
(37:36):
against people. So the potato boycott itself was catalyzed by
a few different factors. So by nineteen fifty nine, almost
all other forms of political action had been outlawed by
the government, so boycotts were among the only options that
anti apartheid activists had, huh.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
And so that probably ties into the broader like because
one of the main things that thought apartheid global he
was you know, sanctions or boycott's yes, boycott, devestment, sanction.
That's interesting.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Yeah, and it really was spurred by this this moment
where like everything else had basically been outlining criminalized. Yeah,
and yeah, the exposs that had covered Bethel had put
a spotlight on the plight of farm laborers there when
Cosey argues that the death of Cornelius Mogoko, a twenty
four year old farm laborer who died on the Lake
(38:29):
Dar farm on March five, nineteen fifty nine, also played
a particularly decisive role. He was seen as a slow worker,
which was unacceptable on the potato farms, and because of this,
Mokogo was beaten dehydrated and he was made to keep
working in the full sun until he collapsed and died.
The boycott was initially called for by activists Robert Reisha
(38:50):
at the African National Congress's annual Anti pass conference, which
took place at the end of May nineteen fifty nine.
And the ANC is actually now the governing party of Africa, Yeah,
but at the time it was an opposition party that
was extremely instrumental in the fight against apartheid. So the
call goes out at the end of May and the
boycott begins on June twenty six, and according to historian
(39:14):
Cornelis Muller, it took some time to gain steam. Things
picked up after several protest marches in which activists made
their way to Johannesburg markets dressed in potato sacks and
potato necklaces bearing banners with slogans like potatoes are produced
as slave labor and donate potatoes don't buy chips, meaning
of course chips in the British English.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
Sense of funch fries.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
I guess they're both actually made of potatoes. But yeah,
it doesn't actually matter, but it totally yeah. And it
was also effective because there was this belief that potatoes
were taking on the shape of the humans that had
been buried in the fields.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Oh shit, so this is where the book gets its name.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yes, yeah, And for some this was a metaphor, while
for others it was, according to Whenkosi, seen as the
spiritual return of a dead worker, embodying that which was
buried in the land. And according to trade unionist and
ANTSI organizer Francis Bard, we used to contemn a potato
when we see one that had a hole or of
black mark. We used to tell the people in the
(40:14):
public meetings, you see this mark here, it's where your
child's blood went in. You see this mark here, it's
the blood of our children. That's why the potato is
So the people started hating potatoes like anything, and even
the whites when they heard that we are boycotting the
potatoes and that we say that these potatoes are full
of the blood of the African people, then they also
began boycotting them. That boycott was very affective, you know,
(40:38):
the farmers couldn't sell their potatoes anywhere, and that the
market the workers wouldn't even carry the potatoes.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Were the white people boycotting because they were like, oh,
this is a simple thing we can do against apartheid,
or are they like I just don't want to eat
African blood in my food.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
I think it was the latter, is how I'm reading this.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
There, No, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Yeah, there certainly were white anti apartheid activists, but I
don't think they were the majority by an So yeah totally.
And bard Ward about the economic success of the boycotts
and the fact that it was called off in August
nineteen fifty nine because the farmers gave up this business
of making the boys work on the farms, The economic
impacts of the boycott are debated. It seems like different
(41:18):
newspapers with different political viewpoints are reporting different things. Though
I strongly sort of air on believing the anti apartheid
and farm labor.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Activists who said it worked, who.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Said that it worked. Yeah, you just see this kind
of like sort of semantic war in the press about
you know, how effective the boycott is. And even before
the boycott began, farmers had started sending farm workers back
to the labor bureaus driven by the negative media attention,
and the South African government decided to end the petty
(41:48):
offender scheme on June sixteenth, nineteen fifty nine, shortly before
the boycott began, in the wake of mounting pressure and
ongoing media attention, and a memo was issued that August
requiring farmers to real workers covered by the scheme.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Yeah, And one thing I found interesting was that the
boycott also had an impact on the stabilization scheme of
the South Africa Potato Board. In this scheme, the board
would get rid of third rate potatoes by selling them
for cheaper and black communities. And because of the boycott,
these potatoes were piling up in markets, and one article
published in the wake of the boycott mentioned that the
(42:23):
Potato Board had started encouraging farmers to buy these potatoes
as feed. The research I found felt a little bit unclear,
but it was suggested that the Potato Board also stopped
selling these scratching potatoes on the market for human consumption
in general, So that might have been another impact of
the boycott, But for sure, the biggest impact of the
boycott was the role that it played in catalyzing international
(42:45):
support for the anti apartheid movement. So a British boycott
of South African goods kicked off in the same day
June twenty sixth, nineteen fifty nine. It became a large
scale mobilizing force for the next eight months, and it
laid the groundwork for future British anti apartheid actions, and
you see international solidarity, boycotts and sanctions that would grow
over the coming years to become a major part of
(43:06):
the anti apartheid movement. Apartheid only ended in a formal
political sense in the nineteen nineties, although of course the political, social,
and other effects of racism and white supremacy linger on
in South Africa. As of twenty nineteen, whites, who make
up less than ten percent of the country's population, still
own seventy two percent of individually owned land in South Africa.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Yeah, I was expecting you to say, like fifty percent.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
I don't know you know, yeah, and the struggle, you know,
the struggle for liberation continues as well, and there's been
I think a lot of tensions recently actually between like
white landowners and like wealthy farmers and labors in the area.
But yeah, so that's the South Africa potato boycott, and
(43:51):
that's sort of where we're ending for today. So we've
talked about potatoes over a span of thousands of years
and in more than a dozen cultures and resisted spoovements,
and I'm wondering at the end of all this, what
you think about the potato.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
I still like the potato, although right now I'm like
so sick that I'm like, food is I know, I
just ate some, but that's because I need to in
order to survive.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Totally.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Like right now I'm like, oh, I ate food, and
I feel terrible, even though it's not the potato's fault.
It's the cold virus's fault. But it's so fascinating, like
I was saying at the end of the first episode,
like the fact that it's like all of these different things,
you know, the potato is being used for all of
these different things. And then even like this last one
with the you know, the potato boycott. It's like, well,
(44:36):
that's not the potato's fault. And everyone knows that it's
not the potato's fault. Do you It's okay if you don't,
But like, do you know how that affected like potato
consumption and potato culture in South Africa after the boycott?
Speaker 1 (44:47):
I don't. Okay, yeah, unfortunately not.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
But it's just no, it's just interesting to me how
all over the world this uh is very effective food.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
You know. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Yeah, It's just I don't know. That's all I got.
That's all I got. I guess a lot of stuff
I'm gonna be thinking about for a while. As potatoes.
Maybe I'm gonna bring it back as a sponsor of
the show. You know. I think part of the reason
I kind of dropped that bit talking about this show
is brought to you by Potatoes is because I was like,
is it just a tool of colonization? And now I
know the answers is no, you know, yeah, and it's
(45:23):
it's a complicated thing and we should embrace all of
our weird complications, like just like being you know, white
person in North America is complicated and we need to
for sure accept that complication rather than like, you know,
wallowing and guilty not doing anything. You know, we just
need to like accept that it is complicated and continue
(45:45):
on with it. And that's how I feel about potatoes.
It's the same as white people. No, this metaphor didn't
really work, but I'm going to blame that on how
sick I am.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Totally. I also asked your ridiculous question, which was to
have the singular opinion about a really complicated thing.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
So oh no, no, it's all right. Normally that's like
my job, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
You know, what do you think about the potato?
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Yeah, potato, Yeah, it's all right, that's how I feel.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Yeah, it's all kind of I want. Yeah, I want
to live in a world where potatoes are in the
service of everyday people in resisting states, and you know,
may that be so as we move forward.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Totally, I love that they're are the anarchy vegetable that rules.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Yeah, potatoes canonically anarchist.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
Yeah. Well, if people want to know more about your
work or want to follow you on the internet or
read your book, or what do you got for them?
Speaker 1 (46:41):
Yeah? Right now, I'm mostly only on the internet on Instagram,
just under my name at ren A Rye and I
edited an anthology called Nourishing Resistance. I also work on
a project called Living and Fighting out of Tucson.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Yeah awesome. And if you want to follow me, I'm
trying to not be on Twitter anymore, and so you
can yell at me if you see me there. Maybe
I don't know. Probably I am on Blue Sky. I
got on it early enough that my name is just
Margaret on Blue Sky. I'm very proud of that. I
don't know why I am because I'm sick and my
(47:16):
brain doesn't work, that's why. But you can follow me there.
You can follow me on Instagram at Margaret Kiljoy. You
can follow me on substack at Marter Kiljoy. And you
can organize with your friends to build networks of mutual
aid and solidarity, because that's all what good things are
built on. Yeah, and you can take care of each
(47:38):
other during bad times totally.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
And I'll also say throughout this whole working on this episode,
I've been thinking a lot about the people of Gaza
who are facing huge like starvation in a huge way
and lack of food access in a huge way. And
I've given some money to this project called the Santabel Team,
which does like food distribution in Gaza, so I kind
of wanted to shout them out too, or like supporting
(48:04):
in any way the folks over there, you know, as
we're talking about famine, and that's not the only place,
right there are famines happening all over the world. Ye,
but yeah, I have been thinking a lot about that
while I've been writing and working through this, and I
just wanted to mention.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
It isn't there Some fiction book I just read has
people of different religious faiths making the statement to save
one person is to save all of humanity, and I
don't know which religion said it first. That concept, I
think is a good example of that. It's like, oh,
you can't save everyone, so you shouldn't save anyone. That
(48:42):
is the least sensical thing anyone has ever said. Totally,
there's a lot of us. If everyone saves someone, then
we've saved twice as many people as there are, you know, Yeah,
just find a way to help and start helping. What
is the name of the place that you just said that?
Speaker 1 (48:59):
What the Suna Belt Team. It's s A N A
B E L. And you can find them on Instagram
and I think they also have a website awesome.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
So yeah, all right, and yeah and if you want,
there's going to be show notes in with sources in
the show notes. That's this is why Ren had to
be the host today, is that my brain is totally Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
But you're a great guest.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Thank you. I thanks. I watch a lot of guests
on this show. So yeah, and we'll be back when
my brain works soon. Take care of each other. Bye.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Cool Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to the History of Potatoes, Part two
with ren A Rye. I'm your host Margaret Kiljoy, who
always talks in this voice or it's just the voice
I have because I have a cold. This is cool
people who did cool stuff. I'm your host Margaret Kiljoy,
but I'm not the host today because Ren's the host today. Hi, Ren,
how are you doing good?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I really appreciated that, like intense serious Margaret voice. Yeah,
it's definitely like a mix up from your usually you know,
your usual friendly demeanor.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah. Yeah, potatoes are serious business.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
They are serious business.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Much like serious business. Is Rory our audio engineer who
Hi Rory Hi Rory, an unwoman who wrote our theme music.
And Sophie, who is our producer, who is not here today,
so we can do whatever we want and that I
mean we can try and do our job without Sophie around.
(01:00):
But where we last left off? Wait, I got so
distracted at the end of last episode. I'm talking about
other stuff. Where did we last leave off? Where's our cliffhanger?
Speaker 1 (01:10):
We actually left off talking about Ireland. So our cliffhanger
was that there was this Scottish guy McCullough who claimed
that the Irish had been prevented from rising up because
they were, you know, so tied to their little plots
of land and their potatoes. They didn't even know that
(01:30):
their lives.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Were hard, right, and we're going to learn he's wrong. Yeah, yeah,
hell yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
And I should say that there is a lot of
information about potatoes in Ireland, in fact, an overwhelming amount
of information.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
What uh huh so much?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I uh yeah, it was both wonderful and sort of
deeply I guess I'm just going to repeat the word
overwhelming here, overwhelming to dig through. So I do want
to say I don't actually know enough to make a
sweeping generalization about whether or not these sort of self
sufficient life ways of Irish presidents negatively impacted their ability
(02:10):
to organize with one another. I like can't say overall.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I'm guessing that's wrong. I'm guessing that's some usual like
Marx shit totally.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
So I don't know enough to make a whole sleeping
generalization about you know, self sufficiency and how it impacted
organizing in rural Ireland. But there was a ton of
resistance to British colonization. The Irish rose up again and
again over eight hundred plus years, and in fact they
sometimes even rose up in directly potato related ways.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Oh hell yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
So most notably among these were food riots. So food
riots were common in Ireland, as they also were in
other parts of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
They were typically in response to sudden price surges and
other concerns about food and security, and they took different
They took the form of blockades to prevent food from
being exported, as well as your classic plundering and looting,
(03:07):
and less common but still notable were price riots, which
is when protesters would exppropriate a store of food and
then sell it for what they saw as a fair price.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
That is so interesting you mentioned that last time.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
It is.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah, that's such a like robinhood, but like it's like
kind of almost like a liberally robinhood, but not like
in a bad way, just to like, I don't know,
it's interesting to me.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, it's funny, isn't it. I would like to learn
more about, like some of the dynamics behind why people
were choosing this Instead of choosing just to like give
away the potatoes.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
They probably saw it as like this is well, this
is what the world should be is that things should
be fairly priced as compared to like, whereas I'm like, well,
everything should be free. That's the fair price for everything,
you know. Yeah, but you know, I don't know they
were willing to throw down for it, So I'm not
going to nitpick, you know, totally.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah, And it does seem like they were selling it
at what was affordable for the peasantry. So it did.
It did people's lives easier. And many of these riots
targeted grain, oats, and meal, but they also very often
targeted potatoes, which, as we discussed previously, were becoming an
increasingly important food stuff at this time. And historian James Kelly,
(04:14):
who drew on newspaper reports and registers of correspondents to
write a book about food rights in Ireland during this time,
offer some examples of potato riots that took place between
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It would be
an entire project in and of itself to go into
all of these riots. There were so many.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Okay, good because I might do an episode later sometime.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah, So I'm going to keep it pretty basic and
just mention a few. Okay, So while carts full of
potatoes were intercepted, and mills and stores of potatoes were plundered.
In coastal areas, writers often block shipments of potatoes from
leaving the ports. So here's a snippet from a newspaper
article about one such incident in the town of Clonakilty
in May seventeen eighty three. A few days ago. The
(04:58):
inhabitants of Klonakilty have had intelligence that several sloops then
in that harbor were freighted with potatoes at a time
when a most dreadful jarth of that useful necessity prevailed,
assembled in large bodies, and in the first transports of
their resentment, tore away the rigging, demolished the mast yards,
et cetera, and cast their anchors overboard. They afterwards unloaded
(05:19):
several vessels and obliged such masters as informed them of
their destination for Quark Market, solemnly to swear that they
would dispose of their cargo there and nowhere else.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Oh, so they would be like, oh, we're not going
to mess up your ship because you're going to Ireland,
like you're staying in Ireland.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
In this case. Yes, that wasn't actually always the case.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Oh but that's interesting. That's kind of like you get
this again, like these like rioters who are like, well,
it's about an ethic and not just like I went wild,
you know, yes.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah, totally, And like there's this idea that food riots
are spontaneous uprisings and they're often caused by crises, but
also they're often the result of like a lot of
careful thinking and planning about access to food. Yeah, and
since city dwellers had to purchase most of the provisions,
they couldn't grow them. Food riots in Dublin often took
(06:09):
the form of riotous mobs that plundered and redistributed food.
There were also demonstrations, including one in seventeen ninety six
in which protesters gathered at the Dublin Quays near the
potato boats to voice their anger at the price of potatoes.
They chanted bread or potatoes, we are starving.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
That goes hard.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah. In his book, Kelly talks about food scarcity leading
to an intense localism and othering of people from elsewhere,
even of other Irish people. So in Skibboreine, a town
and County Cork, in eighteen twelve, potato cargo from a
sloop bound for Dublin was expropriated and then sold locally
at a cheaper rate. Several decades later, residents of Sligo
(06:47):
Town barred people from a neighboring county from buying potatoes
at their market, and the eighteen forty two Claire massacre,
rooted in a similar impulse, left five people, including three
protesters dead. Interestingly, while food protesters were certainly met with
violence and arrest, as was the case in Claire, Kelly
mentions that the authorities were inconsistent in their responses, that
(07:09):
they were sort of softer on food riots and other
forms of revolts and protest. Only a fraction of participants
in food riots were prosecuted, and Kelly argues that this
is because food was seen as a necessity, so participants
had a moral right to riot in the eyes of
the ruling class.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
That that makes some sense.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
I remember reading a while ago about I don't want
to say what country it was, because I'm not sure
if it was true or not. I never looked it up.
I was reading about a country that it wasn't illegal
to try to break out of prison. They would catch you,
they would stop you, and they put you back in prison.
And if you hurt people in the process, that was
a separate crime. But the actual physical act of trying
to leave prison was seen as like a human like
(07:53):
not right, but like natural instinct that is like, well, well, yeah,
I locked you in a cage, you tried to get out.
I could get mad at you about that, you know,
and I feel like that.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
The idea that like, well, whatever, you were starving, and
I'm still going to stop you from stealing this.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, I'm still not going to go out and distribute
food to you. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, yeah, I see why you're mad, and I'm not
going to change anything, is what they're saying. Yeah, just
still somehow still more human than like the US system totally.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah. Yeah, slightly more human for sure. And it wasn't
every single case, but that was sort of like in general,
And from about eighteen fifteen until eighteen forty five there
was an uptick in social protest and rebellion in Ireland
in general, and it included in some of those years
a dramatic increase in food riots. They were particularly widespread
in the counties of North Munster, including Claire and Limerick.
(08:43):
In an article that looks at these two counties, Andres
Erickson reports on food related unrest and protests that occurred
in the eighteen thirties and forties, many of which had
to do with potatoes. So beginning in the eighteen twenties,
the price of potatoes rose steeply, which Ericson argues related
to greater consumption in Ireland rather than because they were
being exported. I think there's a little bit like a
(09:04):
lot of these things have like tensions between different historians
about what some of the causes were right. The population boom,
coupled with the unjust distribution of land, probably caused a
rising demand for potatoes that couldn't be met. In the
late eighteen thirties and early eighteen forties, potato harvest made
the situation even more acute. In those years, June and
(09:25):
July were referred to as the hungry weeks because it
was common for the World War to run out of
potatoes by that time and depend on purchased spuds and
other purchased food. In an effort to make sure potato
prices remained affordable for the poor, groups of men organized
attacks on wealthy farmers and posted threatening notices demanding ceilings
(09:45):
on potato prices. And so those actions would typically get
carried out between March and early June, before or right
as the hungry weeks began and the cost of potatoes
started to rise. And this really points to the fact
what we were talking about before. These weren't taneous uprisings,
but well planned operations that were based on knowledge of
the potato harvest and the market. Yeah. And they were often,
(10:08):
although not always, carried out by secret societies and militant
rebels who were referred to as the White Boys, the
Rock Heights, the Terry Alts, or the Men of Lady Claire.
And I know you talked about the White Boys, which
have a very weird name and complicated history on your
show before right the Molly Maguire episode.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, there's a bunch of different Ireland got stuff done
through secret societies while England got stuff done through unions.
Is like kind of a rough It's an unfair dichotomy
to draw, but like Ireland was all about the like
you get together in the pub with your friends, you
decide to go cross dress and fuck some stuff up totally. Yeah,
(10:47):
And I hadn't heard about it specifically as relates to
the food riots. I only read about it as relates
to like killing landlords and stuff, but it makes sense
that the same groups would also go and do food riots.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Make sure that potato prices weren't getting too high.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, it's like kind of like an Yeah, it's funny
because it's like sort of an organized crime, you know.
But it's also I don't know, Yeah, it's interesting, and
it's not like I'm not even like saying like, and
that's the correct organizing method, you know, but I don't
have a this is a different one.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
You know, totally. Yeah, Yeah, and it's really interesting and
I'd like it. I read about it in this one
article and that's enough. Like all of these things are
just things I want to know so much more about.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
But well, and even the like one of the things
that I can't remember enough, and so I'm like afraid
I'll be wrong. So if you're listening, don't take this
as necessarily the truth. But you're saying about how the
like land distribution was getting worse. I'm under the impression
that traditionally Irish land would be divided amongst all of
the kids, and then the Protestant method was like, no,
(11:49):
you have to only give it to one kid, So
you start having these like disenfranchised people, and you have
this like rise in landless people, and that's like where
some of the uh where a lot of the diaspora
comes from. But I don't know the timing of that.
And then part of me is like, wait, what if
I haven't inverted right, because I know that there's the
oh lord, I just don't have my notes in front
(12:09):
of me. There's like the system by which traditionally Irish
people would like elect their ruler after one ruler died, right,
and you know, the way that things would get divvied
up is just like different than the western capitalist system.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
It's not totally.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Inherently better, but it was certainly worked better in Ireland.
And when it got disrupted, then you started having all
these landless people and stuff. That's my Yeah, don't take
my details on that, but the overall thrust of it
I feel confident about.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
And I do know by the time that we're talking
about I don't know the exact reasons, but there were
a ton of landless labors in Ireland. So there definitely
was like a vast landlessness that was happening, Like people
that didn't even have like a tiny little plot of
land to grow potatoes. Yeah, so I wanted to share
one instance of this sort of secret society Potato organized
(13:00):
crime patrol. In eighteen thirty seven, twenty men in County
Limerick broke into the homes of seven farmers, smashing their
doors and windows, and ordered those farmers to sell potatoes
at an affordable price and rent out their land to
cottiers on the Konaker system. And so that's that system
where laborers could rent a plot of land for the
season to grow potatoes, and for some of them that
(13:21):
was the only way to survive. Two years later, in
nearby County Claire, a farmer was dragged outside and forced
to swear an oath that he would have the price
of his potatoes, and he actually was forced to refund
money to the people he had already overcharged. And these
roping bands also sent letters to the homes of targeted
farmers and posted notices in public places, and one notice
(13:45):
posted in the town of Fakeal and County Clare read,
all persons are hereby required to take due notice that
any person or persons having the assurance to charge over
three pence for white potatoes three and a half pence
per cups his coffe will be his doom if he
goes beyond the rule of the terry alts. As for strangers,
they are welcome here so long as they won't go
(14:06):
beyond the rules of the country. If they do, their
cars will be cut. And then it signed corffin boys
with the PS. Any person that takes this down will
be sorry.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Hell yeah. It just don't make fucking threatening letters like
they used to. Totally yeah. Also, I love the like
shout out that being like, look, hey, this isn't a
this isn't a nationalist thing. If you're not from here,
it's fine. You just still can't sell potatoes for a lot.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Respect the rules of the country. Yeah, totally yeah. And
this all becomes far more acute with the onset of
the Great Hunger. So the Great Hunger, which is also
referred to as the Irish Potato Famine, was caused by
a potato blight that originated in North America and spread
across Europe starting the summer of eighteen forty five, and
thousands of people actually died in other countries, including the Netherlands,
(14:53):
Prussia and Belgium, but no place was quite as effected
as Ireland. And this is partially because of how hea
the Irish poor depended on the potato. Between forty and
sixty percent of the population subsisted almost entirely on the
potato by the eighteen forties, and the lumper, the primary
variety of potato grown in Ireland around the time of
the famine, was chosen to be grown so widely because
(15:16):
it produced huge crops, but it wasn't very blight resistant.
The famine was also really bad in Ireland because of
Britain's response to the situation. By eighteen forty six, the
Irish were in a desperate situation, but the English ruling
class stock cries for help is classic Irish exaggeration.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Charles Treveillyon, the Assistant Secretary to the Treasury who oversaw
the British response to the famine, viewed it as a
wage to reduce the surplus Irish population. The Irish who
survived would, he hoped, join the ranks of the proletariat
instead of eking out subsistence on the conager system and
lazy beds. They would become wage laborers who primarily ate
(15:58):
purchase grain and then, even like half hearted English attempts
to ameliorate the famine, didn't work. The English refused to
send grain because it might mess with the free market.
I tried to figure out exactly, like map out exactly
what they're thinking was around this, and I couldn't. People
have written about it, and I couldn't quite figure it out.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
I know, I had always read that they were subsisting
off potatoes because they were more or less economically forced
to export all of their other crops, and so yeah,
that was why when the crop that they actually ate
for themselves at home, when that one failed, and England
didn't let them like throw up some trade protectionism or whatever,
(16:40):
you know, totally yeah, and didn't limit exports.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
But it also seemed like the English could have sent
additional food and decided not to, And that had to
do with some like thinking around free market capitalism.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah. And they sent like weird corn that you couldn't
really eaten. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, they sent the hard flint corn that the Irish
didn't have the rightquipment to mill.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
And another English suggestion was to strain rutting potatoes and
bake them, so the rotten part was baked off, which
sounds disgusting.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, these the potatoes. I grew some rotten I grew
blite potatoes this year, as we're saying, and yeah, they're
one of the nastiest things in this world I've ever seen,
like little I don't even like a little whatever I
might even describe as too gross.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Well, there were like gross little bugs on them, right,
were the bugs good? Well?
Speaker 2 (17:30):
And like I pulled, there was bugs in my stupid
and the bugs were nasty. Anyway, it was all bad
and I starved to death. That's what happened.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Wait, no, as you're eating your your takeout.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah huh, yeah that someone delivered to me. Yeah no, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
And as you were talking about, Ireland was actually producing
enough grain to feed the entire population, but most of it,
alongside barley, oats and other crops, were exported to England
while the Irish people start. So in eighteen forty six
and eighteen forty seven you have this wave of riots
that are related to securing food and famine relief, and
there was also an increase in this tradition of plundering
(18:11):
of provisions of just taking food that was needed. Of course,
these food riots weren't centered on the potato because the
potatoes were rotting in the fields, right, so they were
focused on meal and grain and later on influencing how
soup kitchens were run. In April eighteen forty six, in
the southern part of County Tipperary and adjacent areas of
County Waterford and Cork Town, dwellers and the rural poor
(18:33):
rated cart convoys, cargo boats, meal stores, mills and bakeries
for food. Food riots and next proporations spread across the
country in eighteen forty six and forty seven, and there
was a real emphasis on the western half of the island,
which is where famine hit the hardest. County Cork alone
saw one hundred and forty one food riots in eighteen
forty seven, while Galway, Tipperary and Limerick all had over
(18:56):
one hundred. There were also marches, including one in County
May in which ten thousand to forty thousand, which is
a huge range of numbers, but that's what I got.
Starving peasants walked to the town of Castle Bar to
protest that there is not a stone of sound potatoes
among the whole of us.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
What they should have done is that they should have
marched to these deals services that advertise and asked to
purchase here's ads and we're back.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
So from March to May eighteen forty seven, protesters fought
against the closure of the public works and the indignity
of soup kitchens.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
What is that? What is the public works?
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Like, that's a great question. The public works is like
people getting hired to maintain roads and stuff.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Oh yeah, it made me think of.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Like works progress administration stuff during the Great Depression. Yeah yeah,
just like you know, digging ditches and building roads, doing
like work for the state that would get folks who
are otherwise unemployed paid. Cool, but they did it. Seems
like sometime in eighteen forty seven most of the public
works were closed. They were also protesting against the indignity
(20:14):
of soup kitchens, but then sort of shifted to being like,
let's make these soup kitchens better, demanding bigger and better
rations as well as uncooked meals that they could prepare
in the privacy of their own homes. There was a
very strong stigma against things like having to beg for
food or show up and ask for aid, at least
within the parts of Ireland that were really hard hit
(20:36):
by the famine, and so people really wanted to be
able to take food and cook it in their own homes.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
That makes sense, Yeah, I mean, there shouldn't be that stigma,
but it doesn't surprise me that there is.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah, totally. And so by the end of eighteen forty seven,
these protests had largely waned. Ericson attributes this to an
increased in hunger, disease, and fatigue.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
But also after the conic or system lapses, the public
works close, there's no longer jobs, wages, or even potato
growing land to fight for. So even the famine evictions
of eighteen forty eight met with little resistance, which followed
on the footsteps of other mass evictions that had happened
over the previous decade. More than one hundred thousand families
(21:18):
lost their homes because they couldn't pay rent, or because
their landlords wanted to use the land for grazing and
other large scale agricultural activities. I know. Yeah, that's how
at least some of my ancestors ended up turning into
settlers in this country. So yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
While a lot of genuine solidarity poured in from around
the world, the results of the famine were devastating. In
the end, over one million Irish people died from hunger
and disease, and one point twenty five million emigrated.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Which is like a together, that's like a quarter of
their population.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yes, yeah, it's a huge number. And many of these emigrees,
of course came to the United States, where they became
the settlers and colonizers, and according to Earle, the Italian
economist Francesco Nitty believed that a shift from potatoes to
meet likewise explained why the Irish workers, who in their
homeland were idle, week and whimsical, were transformed into energetic
(22:16):
and productive workers on emigration to the United States, which
leads into my terrible, terrible joke, which is does eating
meat turn people into cops? Oh?
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Sh I mean, it's one of the sadder things in
history is watching the political shift from the Irish person
in Ireland to the second generation Irish diaspora in the
United States in the nineteenth century, because, I mean a
ton of the Irish nationalists lived in the United States
(22:48):
for a while, but like, yeah, overall, pretty quickly, one
of the most politically annoying groups in history is the
Irish American So.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, totally yeah, And I think, I don't know, it
makes me sad. I feel like I have a personal
relationship to it, and it makes me sad, and that's
all I can really say about it at this moment.
So yeah, So now we're going to leave Ireland and
we're going to jump ahead in time. We're going to
talk about the world wars and the years in between them.
(23:20):
And there were times when potatoes played a role in
both perseverance and revolts. During World War One, Sweden, which
was a neutral country, exported goods, including potatoes and other
food stuff to Germany, and while this made wealthy traders
and farmers even richer, it led first to food rationing
for working people, and then to these rations being cut
(23:40):
and to widespread food shortages. At the end of April
nineteen seventeen, riots and protests spread across Sweden, starting in
the small towns, where women rallied to demand more rations
as well as a fair price for potatoes and milk.
In both rural and urban places, these protests often included
the plundering of provisions. For example, women would force their
way into a grocery store and if they found food hoarded,
(24:03):
they would demand the grocer sell it at the posted prices.
Conscriptive soldiers joined the protests, which really alarmed the authorities,
but their officers did disarm them before they hit the street,
so they weren't quite as that's funny. Their potential for
rebellion wasn't quite as strong as it could have been.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
But it's like the officers didn't stop them from going.
They was like, all right, you can go, but you
gotta leave your rifle at home.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
That seems to be, yeah, what the case was.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Which makes some sense honestly, like, yeah, there's many situations
where having a gun around makes everything worse, and riots
are among those situations.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Totally. Yeah, I feel like in a lot of cases
that is absolutely true. And there were these workers committees
that often included a Narcho, synaclists and socialists that formed
in about forty Swedish cities and towns. In the city
of Ostervik, the Workers Committee released a manifesto that called for,
in addition to an eight Tom day, the release of
(25:01):
all those arrested during hunger protests, and of course food,
the distribution of land to grow potatoes. And although it
was eventually quell due to infighting, repression and a decline
and leftist organizing, all the things that we see time
and time again over two hundred and fifty thousand people
participated in Sweden's Potato Revolution.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
And I think one of the things that it's interesting
about that is again, like I know we kind of
mentioned it earlier, but you know this idea that the
right wing worries about like lawless looting, right, and that
happens sometimes and people, you know, and there's times when
crowds like lose their mind and hurt people and all
of this. But it's like you're bringing up time after
time where they're like, look, we just want the food
(25:45):
to be sold at not price gouged prices. You know.
It's not like, oh, we want everything for free, although
I mean again I have no problem with everyone getting
everything for free, but like, it's not about entitlement. It's
just literally about hey, you can't just keep jacking up
the prices while we're all starving.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Totally, it's about survival.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yeah. That same year, in early July, there were also
potato rides in Amsterdam, and I had trouble finding too
much information about them in English, but this is what
he did find. When hungry women and children tried to
ride a potato ship, they were assured a new shipment
of potatoes for sale was coming in soon, but the
potatoes in that shipment were priced too high, and on
(26:28):
July second, crowd started plundering shops and warehouses. On July four,
three hundred women armed with bayonets, revolvers, and stones tried
to expropriate a stored potatoes that were being guarded by troops,
and on July five, a clash with the army resulted
in nine people kills and one hundred and fourteen injured.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
I feel like since we currently live in a country
where the price of basic goods not only went up
a lot in the past few years, but ye, if
Trump gets its way his way, then they are going
to go up way more real soon, totally with tariffs,
you know, I feel like this is relatable content.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Oh for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yeah, keep the food prices reasonable or otherwise people will
find bayonets.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Yes, although it might be hard to like literally find
a bayonet in this day and age, but you know equivalence.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Well, I mean, you know there's bayonets up through the
world Wars and yeah, totally, my dad has a bayonet,
you know, So if.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Anyone needs to expropriate potatoes, Margaret's dad has a bayonet. Yeah, yeah, totally.
During World War Two, potatoes help people across Europe survive.
They were the single most important food in aiding survival
during the Siege of Leningrad, which lasted for almost two
and a half years and killed over eight hundred thousand
Soviet civilians.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Thank god.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Yeah, really really really sad in a move that I mean,
so much of this is all just actually so sad.
In a move that harkens back to James Scott, at
least one poor family outside Rome replanted their entire garden
with potatoes is a way to prevent the German military
from taking their crops. Back to that underground food thing.
And also Jewish children living in the Warsaw Ghetto would
(28:09):
sneak past the guards on a daily basis, an incredibly
brave and dangerous endeavor to find food outside of the
ghetto's walls. In addition to begging, this included digging up
potatoes that grew on the outskirts of the city.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
So earlier we talked about state evating potatoes in early
modern Europe, and interestingly, potatoes played a similar role in
China many centuries later. Potatoes likely arrived in China in
the seventeenth century and were first grown by peasants eking
out a living on marginal mountainous land in the north
of the country, like in so many other places, a
(28:42):
way to survive, you know, kind of on the fringes.
And that Chang dynasty, which ruled China at the time,
was interested in preventing famine, but thought the path to
doing so is through growing rice and other grains, not potatoes.
Three centuries later, under Mao, potatoes became a method of
survival and communities where they were grown. During the Great
Leap Forward of nineteen fifty eight to nineteen sixty two,
(29:05):
the state appropriated grains, but they didn't appropriate potatoes well.
The famine that resulted is considered by submetrics to be
the largest famine of all time. Entire villages survived on potatoes,
and there was also another state evating element at play
in MAOIs China, in which there was a certain quota
of wheat that farmers were required to grow, and instead
(29:27):
of switching to wheat, farmers would convert the number of
potatoes they grew into what they believed would be an
equivalent amount of wheat and report that to the authorities.
Instead Okay, So there's this interesting history of potato growing
areas continuing to grow potatoes and just saying they were
growing wheat.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Yeah. Yeah, no, they're like, no, we were quite happy
with this thing that it's harder for you to tax
and this, yeah, takes less work and feeds us better.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah, totally. So I want to end by talking about
the South Africa potato boycott of nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Well, before we talk about that, boy, what you shouldn't
boycott is these goods and services unless they're for bad things,
in which case you should boycott them. We have no
legions to advertisers. Ye. Yeah, we just have to do
it in order to eat potatoes. You're the ads and
(30:23):
we're back. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
So, as I mentioned, I want to end by talking
about the South Africa potato boycott, which happened in nineteen
fifty nine. And I do want to say that in
an episode about sad, hard things, this felt like one
of the absolute hardest to research, and I want to
give listeners a heads up about the intensity of violence involved.
But it also feels like a really important sort of
historical episode to talk about it. We're talking about potatoes
(30:47):
from a people's history perspective. So before I go into
the boycott itself, it feels important to discuss the historical
circumstances that gave brise to this. And to do this
it depended pretty heavily on a book called These Potatoes
Look Like Humans. The Contested Future of Land, Home and
Death in South Africa by Umbuso Wacosi, which I definitely
recommend folks check out to learn more about the political
(31:10):
and spiritual components of black farm workers struggles from early
colonial South Africa to the present day. And I've also
used several other sources, but I want to be sure
to mention this book by name. Okay, So, the Potato
boycott was a response to the South African apartheid state,
in which segregation as well as political and economic discrimination
were codified into law to uphold the power of the
(31:32):
country's minority white population. While only given the name apartheid
after is that if super racist laws were passed in
nineteen forty eight. Segregation and white supremacy had long been
part and parcel of life and the legal system in
South Africa since it's settlement by Dutch and English colonists
starting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the history
(31:52):
of South Africa apartheid and the whole scope of this
decade's long anti apartheid movement are more than I can
talk about in this episode, but I'll sort of be
touching on these topics here and there while discussing the boycott. So,
the boycott centered on a town called Bethel, which is
in a region that was then called the East trans
Fall and that's now part of Malonga, where large white
(32:13):
owned potato farms employed a black workforce comprised of locals
who had been dispossessed by colonialism and white land ownership,
contract workers from elsewhere in South Africa and neighboring countries,
and prisoners. Throughout the forties and fifties, these farms gained
a reputation for brutality, which included owners for men and
boss boys, which were kind of like local workers who
(32:34):
were employed in intermediary physician murdering and beating to death
workers and burying their bodies in the fields.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Jesus. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
While abuse and brutality weren't unique to Bethel, the town's
potato farms were considered so violent that recruiters looking for
workers along the border with Rhodesia, a former colonial state
that bordered South Africa, regularly changed their vehicle registration plates
so that workers didn't know that they'd be going to
the East.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Trons Fall Jesus.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
In the early fifties, three laborers found out that they
were being taken to Bethel instead of the place they
thought they were going, and they jumped off the train
they were on, and at least one of them died
in the act. Throughout the forties and fifties, exposes were
published that revealed conditions on Bethel potato farms. In nineteen
forty seven, Anglican priest and anti apartheid activist Michael Scott
(33:26):
and journalists Ruth First, working as a photographer, collaborated on
an expose about the Bethel farms with help from investigative
journalist Henry Nukmalo. They were horrified to find child laborers
working in the fields alongside contract workers from Nyassaland, which
is now Malawi. These workers had signed contracts that promised
(33:47):
poor pay and few protections, either because they were illiterate
and were told deceitful information about what the contracts contained,
or because they were so desperate for work that they
knew they were terrible deals, but they signed them anyway.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Happens all over the world now, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
And other workers included prisoners who were sent to the
farms for the duration of their sentences. On some farms,
these prisoners had their clothes confiscated and were forced to
wear potato sacks, a measure that the landowners believed would
prevent them from running away.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Fuck.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
In nineteen fifty two, Nukmalo built on first in Scott's
work by publishing another expose and Drum magazine. Unlike Scott
and First, who were white, Nucmalo was a Black African,
which allowed him to go undercover for the assignment. Additionally,
laborers spoke to Nucmala more freely than they had to
Scott and articulated their fears of speaking up against the
(34:40):
farmers into the police. And This expose includes quotes from
Bethel based organizer and African National Congress member Gert Sabandi,
who may have also helped First in Scott and their
reporting and is often considered to have played an organizing
role in the boycott, although the scope of his contributions
stopped fully known. Nonetheless, to Bendi's work exposing the case,
conditions of farms and Bethel and organizing labors there played
(35:03):
an important role in laying the groundwork for the boycott.
So while prison labor had long been used on South
African farms, including in Bethel, in nineteen fifty three the
petty offender scheme landed on the books. As part of
this scheme, black South Africans who are found guilty of
petty apartheid crimes either had to serve a three month
(35:24):
jail sentence or spend that time working on a farm
for a pittance, a scheme device to ameliorate both overcrowding
in jails and labor shortages on farms.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
When you say like apartheid crimes, is this like I
don't understand enough about a parteid South Africa's It's like, oh,
you were in the wrong part of town where black
people aren't allowed or something.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Essentially, yes, yeah, okay. Petty apartheid crimes were any of
any crime that transgressed the laws that kept South Africans
of different racial groups apart. But one of those is
breaking the past laws which required non white South Africans
to carry documents that authorize them to travel through a
work in white classified areas, and these his laws actually
had a particular impact on black South Africans, and when
(36:04):
the nineteen fifty two Natives Act instituted reference books in
the place of passes, every black man sixteen years of
age or older was required to have his on him
at all times.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Jesus uh huh, So you.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Could, yeah, you could end up sent to one of
these farms because you didn't have the proper documentation on you.
And although theoretically offenders were given the choice to work
on farms versus serving their sentences in jails, in reality
they were often coerced. He j the Bear, the public
prosecutor who put this scheme into motion, was known to have,
at least in certain instances, sent to restues straight to
(36:38):
the farm without them appearing in court first. And he
also told arrestees that if they didn't accept work on farms,
they'd be punished by their ancestors, which is a threat
that Ukosi describes as eschatological terror.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
WHOA, that's yeah, I mean, it's funny because it's like
this is the way that people are going to talk
about the United States. It's hopefully soon. You know, the
prison labor systems that exist within the United States of
like you're more or less coerced into these jobs that
pay basically nothing and all of these things.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Yeah, and there was a whole there's a whole sort
of thread to this story that in this book These
Potatoes Look like Humans really goes into thinking about like
the spiritual violence. And I don't get too much into
that in this section, but if you are interested in that,
there's like a lot more within the book talking about
like sort of the yeah, eschatological terror that was wielded
(37:36):
against people. So the potato boycott itself was catalyzed by
a few different factors. So by nineteen fifty nine, almost
all other forms of political action had been outlawed by
the government, so boycotts were among the only options that
anti apartheid activists had, huh.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
And so that probably ties into the broader like because
one of the main things that thought apartheid global he
was you know, sanctions or boycott's yes, boycott, devestment, sanction.
That's interesting.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Yeah, and it really was spurred by this this moment
where like everything else had basically been outlining criminalized. Yeah,
and yeah, the exposs that had covered Bethel had put
a spotlight on the plight of farm laborers there when
Cosey argues that the death of Cornelius Mogoko, a twenty
four year old farm laborer who died on the Lake
(38:29):
Dar farm on March five, nineteen fifty nine, also played
a particularly decisive role. He was seen as a slow worker,
which was unacceptable on the potato farms, and because of this,
Mokogo was beaten dehydrated and he was made to keep
working in the full sun until he collapsed and died.
The boycott was initially called for by activists Robert Reisha
(38:50):
at the African National Congress's annual Anti pass conference, which
took place at the end of May nineteen fifty nine.
And the ANC is actually now the governing party of Africa, Yeah,
but at the time it was an opposition party that
was extremely instrumental in the fight against apartheid. So the
call goes out at the end of May and the
boycott begins on June twenty six, and according to historian
(39:14):
Cornelis Muller, it took some time to gain steam. Things
picked up after several protest marches in which activists made
their way to Johannesburg markets dressed in potato sacks and
potato necklaces bearing banners with slogans like potatoes are produced
as slave labor and donate potatoes don't buy chips, meaning
of course chips in the British English.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
Sense of funch fries.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
I guess they're both actually made of potatoes. But yeah,
it doesn't actually matter, but it totally yeah. And it
was also effective because there was this belief that potatoes
were taking on the shape of the humans that had
been buried in the fields.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Oh shit, so this is where the book gets its name.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yes, yeah, And for some this was a metaphor, while
for others it was, according to Whenkosi, seen as the
spiritual return of a dead worker, embodying that which was
buried in the land. And according to trade unionist and
ANTSI organizer Francis Bard, we used to contemn a potato
when we see one that had a hole or of
black mark. We used to tell the people in the
(40:14):
public meetings, you see this mark here, it's where your
child's blood went in. You see this mark here, it's
the blood of our children. That's why the potato is
So the people started hating potatoes like anything, and even
the whites when they heard that we are boycotting the
potatoes and that we say that these potatoes are full
of the blood of the African people, then they also
began boycotting them. That boycott was very affective, you know,
(40:38):
the farmers couldn't sell their potatoes anywhere, and that the
market the workers wouldn't even carry the potatoes.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Were the white people boycotting because they were like, oh,
this is a simple thing we can do against apartheid,
or are they like I just don't want to eat
African blood in my food.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
I think it was the latter, is how I'm reading this.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
There, No, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Yeah, there certainly were white anti apartheid activists, but I
don't think they were the majority by an So yeah totally.
And bard Ward about the economic success of the boycotts
and the fact that it was called off in August
nineteen fifty nine because the farmers gave up this business
of making the boys work on the farms, The economic
impacts of the boycott are debated. It seems like different
(41:18):
newspapers with different political viewpoints are reporting different things. Though
I strongly sort of air on believing the anti apartheid
and farm labor.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Activists who said it worked, who.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Said that it worked. Yeah, you just see this kind
of like sort of semantic war in the press about
you know, how effective the boycott is. And even before
the boycott began, farmers had started sending farm workers back
to the labor bureaus driven by the negative media attention,
and the South African government decided to end the petty
(41:48):
offender scheme on June sixteenth, nineteen fifty nine, shortly before
the boycott began, in the wake of mounting pressure and
ongoing media attention, and a memo was issued that August
requiring farmers to real workers covered by the scheme.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Yeah, And one thing I found interesting was that the
boycott also had an impact on the stabilization scheme of
the South Africa Potato Board. In this scheme, the board
would get rid of third rate potatoes by selling them
for cheaper and black communities. And because of the boycott,
these potatoes were piling up in markets, and one article
published in the wake of the boycott mentioned that the
(42:23):
Potato Board had started encouraging farmers to buy these potatoes
as feed. The research I found felt a little bit unclear,
but it was suggested that the Potato Board also stopped
selling these scratching potatoes on the market for human consumption
in general, So that might have been another impact of
the boycott, But for sure, the biggest impact of the
boycott was the role that it played in catalyzing international
(42:45):
support for the anti apartheid movement. So a British boycott
of South African goods kicked off in the same day
June twenty sixth, nineteen fifty nine. It became a large
scale mobilizing force for the next eight months, and it
laid the groundwork for future British anti apartheid actions, and
you see international solidarity, boycotts and sanctions that would grow
over the coming years to become a major part of
(43:06):
the anti apartheid movement. Apartheid only ended in a formal
political sense in the nineteen nineties, although of course the political, social,
and other effects of racism and white supremacy linger on
in South Africa. As of twenty nineteen, whites, who make
up less than ten percent of the country's population, still
own seventy two percent of individually owned land in South Africa.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
Yeah, I was expecting you to say, like fifty percent.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
I don't know you know, yeah, and the struggle, you know,
the struggle for liberation continues as well, and there's been
I think a lot of tensions recently actually between like
white landowners and like wealthy farmers and labors in the area.
But yeah, so that's the South Africa potato boycott, and
(43:51):
that's sort of where we're ending for today. So we've
talked about potatoes over a span of thousands of years
and in more than a dozen cultures and resisted spoovements,
and I'm wondering at the end of all this, what
you think about the potato.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
I still like the potato, although right now I'm like
so sick that I'm like, food is I know, I
just ate some, but that's because I need to in
order to survive.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Totally.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Like right now I'm like, oh, I ate food, and
I feel terrible, even though it's not the potato's fault.
It's the cold virus's fault. But it's so fascinating, like
I was saying at the end of the first episode,
like the fact that it's like all of these different things,
you know, the potato is being used for all of
these different things. And then even like this last one
with the you know, the potato boycott. It's like, well,
(44:36):
that's not the potato's fault. And everyone knows that it's
not the potato's fault. Do you It's okay if you don't,
But like, do you know how that affected like potato
consumption and potato culture in South Africa after the boycott?
Speaker 1 (44:47):
I don't. Okay, yeah, unfortunately not.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
But it's just no, it's just interesting to me how
all over the world this uh is very effective food.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
You know. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Yeah, It's just I don't know. That's all I got.
That's all I got. I guess a lot of stuff
I'm gonna be thinking about for a while. As potatoes.
Maybe I'm gonna bring it back as a sponsor of
the show. You know. I think part of the reason
I kind of dropped that bit talking about this show
is brought to you by Potatoes is because I was like,
is it just a tool of colonization? And now I
know the answers is no, you know, yeah, and it's
(45:23):
it's a complicated thing and we should embrace all of
our weird complications, like just like being you know, white
person in North America is complicated and we need to
for sure accept that complication rather than like, you know,
wallowing and guilty not doing anything. You know, we just
need to like accept that it is complicated and continue
(45:45):
on with it. And that's how I feel about potatoes.
It's the same as white people. No, this metaphor didn't
really work, but I'm going to blame that on how
sick I am.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Totally. I also asked your ridiculous question, which was to
have the singular opinion about a really complicated thing.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
So oh no, no, it's all right. Normally that's like
my job, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
You know, what do you think about the potato?
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Yeah, potato, Yeah, it's all right, that's how I feel.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Yeah, it's all kind of I want. Yeah, I want
to live in a world where potatoes are in the
service of everyday people in resisting states, and you know,
may that be so as we move forward.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Totally, I love that they're are the anarchy vegetable that rules.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Yeah, potatoes canonically anarchist.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
Yeah. Well, if people want to know more about your
work or want to follow you on the internet or
read your book, or what do you got for them?
Speaker 1 (46:41):
Yeah? Right now, I'm mostly only on the internet on Instagram,
just under my name at ren A Rye and I
edited an anthology called Nourishing Resistance. I also work on
a project called Living and Fighting out of Tucson.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Yeah awesome. And if you want to follow me, I'm
trying to not be on Twitter anymore, and so you
can yell at me if you see me there. Maybe
I don't know. Probably I am on Blue Sky. I
got on it early enough that my name is just
Margaret on Blue Sky. I'm very proud of that. I
don't know why I am because I'm sick and my
(47:16):
brain doesn't work, that's why. But you can follow me there.
You can follow me on Instagram at Margaret Kiljoy. You
can follow me on substack at Marter Kiljoy. And you
can organize with your friends to build networks of mutual
aid and solidarity, because that's all what good things are
built on. Yeah, and you can take care of each
(47:38):
other during bad times totally.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
And I'll also say throughout this whole working on this episode,
I've been thinking a lot about the people of Gaza
who are facing huge like starvation in a huge way
and lack of food access in a huge way. And
I've given some money to this project called the Santabel Team,
which does like food distribution in Gaza, so I kind
of wanted to shout them out too, or like supporting
(48:04):
in any way the folks over there, you know, as
we're talking about famine, and that's not the only place,
right there are famines happening all over the world. Ye,
but yeah, I have been thinking a lot about that
while I've been writing and working through this, and I
just wanted to mention.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
It isn't there Some fiction book I just read has
people of different religious faiths making the statement to save
one person is to save all of humanity, and I
don't know which religion said it first. That concept, I
think is a good example of that. It's like, oh,
you can't save everyone, so you shouldn't save anyone. That
(48:42):
is the least sensical thing anyone has ever said. Totally,
there's a lot of us. If everyone saves someone, then
we've saved twice as many people as there are, you know, Yeah,
just find a way to help and start helping. What
is the name of the place that you just said that?
Speaker 1 (48:59):
What the Suna Belt Team. It's s A N A
B E L. And you can find them on Instagram
and I think they also have a website awesome.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
So yeah, all right, and yeah and if you want,
there's going to be show notes in with sources in
the show notes. That's this is why Ren had to
be the host today, is that my brain is totally Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
But you're a great guest.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Thank you. I thanks. I watch a lot of guests
on this show. So yeah, and we'll be back when
my brain works soon. Take care of each other. Bye.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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