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in the introduction of new ideas. Indeed, Dr. Movius is clearly able to demonstrate the
survival, even into early Christian times, of a culture essentially to be regarded as
stemming from the old food-gathering traditions of the Mcsolithic. Throughout the
work thcrc is a clear appreciation of the part played by human ingenuity in meeting
environmental problems as well as being retarded b y them. The significance of diffusion
is recognized and given its proper place, but it is not permitted to become a mechanical
concept in whirh the human carriers of culture lapse into a shadowy automatism.
Dr. Movius reaches the conclusion that there is no reliable evidence of an lrish
naleolithic. The presence of a partial land bridge between Great Britain and Ireland
during the Boreal climatic period (circa 6000 R.C.) enabled the first settlers to enter.
These folk, of essentially upper paleolithic tradition, scem to have come from southern
England, attracted, quite possibly, by the rich flint tlcposits of Counties Antrim and
Down. Here they were joined by Azilians from southern France and Spain. For this
culture the term Lawtian is suggested. I t s early phase closely corresponds to the Creswellian of Britain. Later, however, it takes on a completely indigenous cast. Tartlenoiscan influence is lacking, as is shown by the absence of microliths.
The story of Ireland in insular isolation on the outermost periphery of Western
Europe is essentially one of lagging response to new influences and of strange survivals
out of the millcnial past. Dr. Movius has left the story of Irelands full neolithic to other
hands, but the influences of Irelands peculiar geographical situation, so thoroughly
appreciated in this book, cast long shadows clown her later history. Dr. Movius sensitive insight into the play of forces behind stones and bones has aided him in the production of an archcological classic.
LORENC. EISELEY
OBERLINCOLLEGE

The Influence of the Potato on the Course of Irish History. REDCLIFFE

N. SALAMAY
(Tenth Finlay Memorial Lecture, pp. 4-32. Dublin: Browne and Nolan, 1943.)
Dr. Salaman has done both the public and students of ethnology a great service in
his study of the potato as a culture agent in the social history of Ireland. Opinion is
is evenly divided among competent students on the subject of the introduction of the
potato into Great Britain. The tendency of late is to favor the view that it was brought
to Spain by the Rev. Father Hieronymus Cartlati. Carl Sprengel credited Sir John
Hawkins with its introduction into England in 1563, though Sir Joseph Banks, that
shrewd and meticulous scholar, believed this was the swect potato and not the white or
lrish potato which was imported and grown on Sir Walter Raleighs estate in Cork i n
1588. I t was, however, Sir Walters neighbors, the Southwells, who were rcally instrumental in its cultivation and popularization in the early years.
The author holds the view that social environment conditions the acceptance or
rejection of a new culture element and cites the example of Seville where five years after
the introduction of the potato it had become the staple article of diet in the hospitals
of the city. The first recorded mention of the crop is to be found in the Montgomery
manuscript of circa 1606. Dr. Salaman assumes that any mention or reference to the
consumption of root by the Irish in the seventeenth century can only mean the potato,
since parsnip and carrot cultivation was rare and in any case these items of diet were

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[N. s.,

47, 1945

resisted by the people until the Great Famine. Turnips were of course unknown in Ireland in the seventeenth century.
We know that the potato reached Britain a t some late date in the sixteenth century
when it fell into the hands of Gerard the IIerbalist, but it took over 150 years before it
made any headway in England. Why then did it make so complete a conquest of Ireland
in so short a time? Aesthetic, nutritional, political and religious factors were necessary
to convert the people to its acceptanre. In the sixteenth century most of the existing
ports of Ireland did a good export trade in woollen fabrics, timber and live cattle, while
Dublin dealt more with the import of French wines and luxury goods. Iron antl metals
came from England and Spain. This foreign trade did not affect the lives of the maws
in the hinterland where each family lived on bare necessities mainly grown or made a t
home.
Communications and transport were primitive and travel was extremely hazardous
owing to the unsettled state of the country. The humid, friable, acid soil, the badly
drained boglands, and the enclosed nature of most Irish farming with its lazybed system
helped the potato enormously. The clan system, which some Irish scholars affect to
ignore, with its communal pride and ownership of the land, gave the Irish social grnups
of the day a feeling of belonging together. The potato which was easier to raise and
cheaper to kccp than cereals, was the only crop that could be stacked in the open without a shed without rotting.
Before the advent of thc potato the masses consumed abundant milk, sour curds or
honacllabc, butter, oatmeal, oaten bread, and pudding made from ox blood. The evidence
as to meat is conflicting. The lrish wars of Elizabeth with their attendant destruction
of herds and crops gave a n added impetus to the propagation of the new crop. I t is on
record that the potato was a t first resented in Scotland because it lacked biblical
sanction and authority. About 1660 Sir William Petty in his Politicnl A n c i h n y of
Ireland statetl that the potato had become the staple diet of the Trish. During the various wars up to the campaigns of Cromwell, we find that the new crop was the mainstay
of the people. The potato so retluccd the standard of living that young couplrs could
marry early, since the hutments which were their homes cost 23 to build, antl a n acre
of potatoes was enough to feed a family of six and the livestock. Besides thc Church
actively encouraged large families thus producing a state of affairs which was only
checked by famine, emigration and disease. While the new crop helped to stem stnrvation, it did not improve the material and social conditions of the peasantry. In 1846
when Phytophthora iizfrstans attacked the potato crop of Europe, the nation faced
starvation.
The Irish smallholder spends a fortnight planting, a fortnight digging and another
fortnight cutting turf, and for the rest of the year follows his inclinations without the
least ambition of any sort. The only remedy is to teach the peasantry better methods
and more variety of crops. Contrast this Irish peasantry with the 5000 Moravians rescued by Marlborough in 1709 and settled in Limerick and Kkrry where they worked for
themselves on the land on a four course rotation: potatoes, wheat, oats or wheat-barley,
and flax. They drilled their potatoes instead of using the lazybed system and fed their
cattle indoors on good hay in winter. Their homesteads, houses and barns were exceedingly clean and their diet consisted of potatoes, oatmeal, bread, milk, wheat, poultry
and some meat. And it is significant that they were:unaffccted by the famine of 1846-7.

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I n times of national danger the potato has been a mainstay of the people but by
encouraging the people to remain satisfied with their subsistence economy, it has undermined the national will, for the peasantry has neither possessions to lose nor social
ties to surrender.
R. E. G. ARMATTOE

LONDONDEKRY,N.IRELAND
ASIA

The People of Alor, A Social Psychological Study of an East Indian Island, Cora D u
Bois, with analyses by Abram Kardiner and Emil Oberholzer. (654 pp., $7.50.
Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1944.)
T h e People of AZm represents a most thorough and conscientious attempt to understand through a field study the role of culture in the conditioning of personality. The
author spent eighteen months in Alor, a small island in the Netherland East Indies and
obviously worked exceedingly hard. She used a number of techniques, some of them
frankly exploratory. She obtained in detail all the usual ethnological data about insti.
tutions, much material on early and late childhood, eight long autobiographies, a collection of childrens drawings, word associations, gave the Porteous Maze test, and conducted Rorschach experiments. The latter are analyzed by Emil Oberholzer. Abram
Kardiner is in the role of theoretical collaborator, analyzing the autobiographies,
which take up more than half the book.
The problem is stated separately by both Du Bois and Kardiner and their basic
points of view do not differ. I n its simplest form, Du Bois says, the question is, Why
is an American different from an Alorese? She makes three basic theoretical assurnptions: first, the psychic unity of mankind; second, this may be further elaborated by
individual, innate personality trends; third, these potentialities are acted upon by
common cultural pressures and result in central tendencies to which the term modal
personality has been assigned. This concept is the same as Kardiners formulation of
basic personality in T h e Individual and his Socidy. Both Du Bois and Kardiner are well
aware that their concepts are abstractions, since each person has an individual character and no two individuals are exactly alike. As Kardiner says, The concept of basic
personality structure describes an ambit within which the character of the individual
is molded.
D u Bois gives her own criterion of the success of such a psychocultural synthesis,
She thinks, it is in the range and variety of phenomenon that can be brought into coherent relationship. If, for example, one can establish a coherent trend in methods of
infant feeding, in sex attitudes, in attitudes towards food, economic activities, sacrifices
and myths, in such a fashion that it has meaning on both cultural and psychological
levels, then one will have achieved a functional synthesis of unusual importance for
the comprehension of cultural processes.
The book meets the above criterion, for both Du Bois and Kardiner do establish
this coherent trend. The following are the highlights of this trend. I n infancy, the chief
source of frustration is in feeding, and the author stresses the unsatisfactory feeding
that the child gets during this period. The women are horticulturists and they return
to their fields ten days or two weeks after the birth of the child. While the mother is