> I already mentioned the potato a while ago, suggesting that you look > at The Social and Economic History of the Potato. I intend to check that reference. It is a subject all its own. Last year the H-World list posted some recent books on just the potato which I will have to look at as well. But, so far, I looks to me like China benefited a lot more from this particular new world crop. You may recall my earlier reference to Braudel that, except for particular places like Flanders; for example, "The potato revolution took place there [France], as elsewhere in Europe, only in the 19th" I now have some interesting evidence re maize. I was pay little attention to this crop because Bray says the Han Chinese really disliked it, writing "Wagner points out that in the 1930s, while maize was a staple in the mountains of West Szechwan, Yunnan and Kwangsi, all areas where minorities abound and where maize was consumed as flour products, elsewhere maize flour dishes were unknown and maize was consumed only as a vegetable, the half-ripe cobs being rosted and eaten" (458). Those few Han Chinese who grew and eat this cereal did so only under threat of famine. But Hartwell (1994) appears to give it more importance. "High rates of growth, 1500 to 1800, also characterized some regions in which new world crops were most common, but the effects of these innovations had their greatest inpact in the subsequent period. Double-cropping rice regions continued to post above average rates of population growth during the 19th and twentieth centuries, but areas of West and North China where new world crops had their greatest influence also reported some of the highest rates of increase -- nearly 1 1/2 times the norm. Of particular importance were those areas in which maize became a summer grain planted after the harvest of a winter wheat crop...."
