Nourishing Victory

Food Shortages and Post-Imperial Transition in the Bohemian Lands and Slovenia
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-963-386-918-5
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 334 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 238 mm, Gewicht: 610 g

Reihe: Central European University Press

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.

Zielgruppe

Academic

Autoren/Hrsg.

Stergar, Rok

Smidrkal, Vaclav

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien Marxismus, Kommunismus

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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

Über Autor(innen)

Smidrkal, Vaclav
Václav Smidrkal is a researcher at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences and an assistant professor at Charles University in Prague. His research focuses on post-war transitions, war veterans, and military propaganda in twentieth-century Central Europe.

Stergar, Rok
Rok Stergar is Professor in Modern History at the University of Ljubljana and a historian of the Habsburg Empire, the First World War, and of nationalism. He is the author of two books and numerous articles on nationalisms in the Habsburg Empire, the First World War, and post-imperial transitions.

Václav Šmidrkal is a researcher at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences and an assistant professor at Charles University in Prague. His research focuses on post-war transitions, war veterans, and military propaganda in twentieth-century Central Europe.

Rok Stergar is Professor in Modern History at the University of Ljubljana and a historian of the Habsburg Empire, the First World War, and of nationalism. He is the author of two books and numerous articles on nationalisms in the Habsburg Empire, the First World War, and post-imperial transitions.