Full Description
The aggravating food shortage was the central internal crisis in Habsburg Austria during the First World War and posed a major challenge to the consolidation of the successor states. Nourishing Victory offers a fresh comparative perspective on food and the collapse and rebuilding of political legitimacy from the regional vantage point of the Bohemian Lands and Slovenia before and after 1918. Zooming in on multiple levels of society, the book explores how politicians, local officials, and grassroots protagonists navigated collapsing supply systems, relied on black markets, and sought to make sense of the chaos around them. Since this was a crisis of international proportions, the book also examines foreign food aid and the contradictions it entailed. At the same time, to emphasize the local dynamics of food supply and political legitimacy, it explores how food became a political weapon in struggles over contested borderlands such as Teschen Silesia and Prekmurje.
Contents
List of Maps, Figures and Tables
List of Abbreviations
Note on Place Names
Acknowledgements
Introduction - Václav Smidrkal and Rok Stergar
Chapter One: Breaking the State: Food, Hunger, and Power in War - Maja Godina Golija and Václav Smidrkal
Chapter Two: Building the State: Hunger, Anger, and Postwar Consolidation - Václav Smidrkal and Maja Godina Golija
Chapter Three: Hopes, Promises, Realities: Food Scarcity and Foreign Aid - Dagmar Hájková and Rok Stergar
Chapter Four: Nourishing Contested Borderlands - Pavel Horák and Jernej Kosi
Epilogue - Václav Smidrkal, Rok Stergar, Maja Godina Golija, Dagmar Hájková, Pavel Horák, and Jernej Kosi
Bibliography
Index
