Potatoes are Not Vegetables

Chris Gratien, Georgetown University

I would love to say that after this piece our readers will never be exposed to another article about potatoes again. But this is too much to expect from a blog that has almost as many articles about cats as Nir Shafir's Facebook feed. Tozsuz Evrak is nothing if not committed to its bizarre fixations. And so while I cannot promise that this will be the last potato-based content to appear on the page, I do hope that it will provide a definitive answer to the question: is a potato a vegetable?

Guess what? It's not. At least not according to this Ottoman document regarding trade and taxation. For those who watched a blob of half-chewed potato chips (also not a vegetable) drop onto their keyboards as they read that jaw-dropping and perplexing piece of information, we should remember that such categories, even the ones we ostensibly employ in making daily shopping and diet choices, are all constructed.

For example, the term vegetable might simply mean an edible plant. This definition could lead to botanical justifications for distinction between fruits and vegetables, the former being defined as a flowering portion of a plant that we consume. However, nutritionists will offer a different ways of classifying plants, acknowledging the vegetality of a potato while stressing its nutritional similarities to plants such as wheat and corn as opposed to green vegetables like spinach and broccoli. This makes sense in a society where somebody might carry the mistaken belief that upgrading to the large fries at MacDonald's will fulfill their daily requirements for servings of vegetables.

In this case presented here, a similar distinction is made between green vegetables and their others, only here on the basis of their durability. What begins as a discussion about taxation and supporting domestic agriculture leads Ottoman lawmakers to the conclusion that the potato and a few other foods were not quite vegetables in the fullest sense, i.e. not fresh vegetables (yaş sebze) like carrots or lettuce. It starts with an order regarding local customs duties in Ottoman ports. Much has been written about the rise of intra-Mediterranean trade during the nineteenth century and the importance of commercial agriculture in the rise of ports such as Beirut and Izmir, but the majority of trade in the Ottoman Empire was still local. While big British, French, and Russian steamships were visible signs of a growing European presence, the hundreds of smaller Ottoman sailing vessels that accompanied them in the ports were the principal targets of this new legislation. 

Coming from Şura-yı Devlet in 1905, this document rendered a category of domestic fresh fruits and vegetables exempt from customs duties in order to protect Ottoman farmers from having to compete with imports. The sound reason behind this decision states that since the Ottoman Empire had different climates and soil types, internally exchanged domestic fruits and vegetables should not be subject to customs duties. This order would encourage local farmers to grow more during their peak season and send produce not consumed locally to other parts of the empire. Alongside encouraging agricultural production, this decision would make a wider variety of produce available at all times of year in different Ottoman cities while also protecting local producers from imported fruits and vegetables. This was a good decision given the link between food self-sufficiency and autonomy within the global political economy, and thus, subsidies and tax breaks for local farmers could even be seen as an Ottoman attempt to protect their sovereignty in an increasingly penetrated economy.

Yet, the ruling gave rise to new questions coming from Trabzon and Trablusgarb alike asking exactly what qualified as a fresh vegetable. This might seem like bureaucratic hair-splitting. But of course the profits that could be gained from complete exemption from customs duties were not small potatoes. As it turns out, however, small potatoes were subject to customs duties. In addition to potatoes, this decision mentions three other vegetables that would not be counted as yaş sebze: pearl onions, chestnuts, and pumpkins. The reason for this distinction was the long shelf life of these particular items. The logic behind it was that fresh produce spoiled quickly and therefore should also not be impeded by customs. But if the original goal was to encourage local agriculture, it is not clear why this distinction was necessary. Maybe it was an issue of limiting the amount of revenue lost to customs exemptions, or maybe there were some personal interests involved. It is also possible that Ottoman administrators simply got sidetracked as we so often do by a debate about categories and definitions. Whatever the case, the Ottomans knew that a potato is not a vegetable, so maybe next time you should opt for the side salad, Dad.

Source: BOA, BEO 2649/198624 (21 Cemazilahir 1323 [23 August 1905]), no. 2.

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