Ireland specifically switched to potatoes as a part of the tenant farming system the British instituted on the Island and its desire throughout Europe combined with the necessity to grow enough food to feed themselves off the product.
Pre-Colombian exchanges, Ireland mostly ate oats/grains, a small variety of veggies and fruits, dairy goods (cheese and milk), meats (cattle and sheep) and a lot of fish. You can still see a bit of this variety in certain areas like Howth in Dublin and the less touched western towns.
Yep, the potato was favoured for the ability to grow enough food to feed your family on the shitty scraps of ground your absentee landlords "allowed" you to keep.
In a similar vein, the potato revolutionised Māori inter-tribal warfare when introduced to Aotearoa New Zealand (possibly more so than the musket), as you could grow far more calories from the same soil with potatoes than the traditional kūmara/sweet potato - and they kept far better than kūmara while on the move.
This allowed for longer campaigning against opposing tribes, which led to widespread mass migrations to escape enemy tribes - hence why the area now occupied by Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau, our largest city, was mostly depopulated when Europeans started settling it.
And of course, those mass migrations led to more conflicts.
Yeah, as a rule of thumb potato and rice can feed twice as many people compared to wheat or other crops. Europe had neither so the potato was an instant hit since the alternative was to starve.
My ancestors left Ireland only to arrive in Canada to the same system of absentee landlords i.e. the British who took nearly everything from tenants, the farmers.
Pre-Colombian exchanges, Ireland mostly ate oats/grains, a small variety of veggies and fruits, dairy goods (cheese and milk), meats (cattle and sheep) and a lot of fish. You can still see a bit of this variety in certain areas like Howth in Dublin and the less touched western towns.