Hunger Redraws the Map

Food, State, and Society in the Era of the First World War

Mary Elisabeth Cox, Claire Morelon

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009441315
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The First World War resulted in major economic and agricultural strains to neutral and belligerent countries alike, including shifts in trading patterns, blockades, and extensive physical destruction on a unique scale. The resulting hunger crises transformed relationships between the state, citizens, and civil society and had a profound and lasting impact on the twentieth century. As civilians across Europe and the Middle East struggled to survive, new emphasis was placed on the state's responsibility to provide food for its citizens, leading to emerging concerns about 'nutritional sovereignty', the viability of new states, and a huge expansion of international humanitarianism. This innovative history utilises both contemporary and modern maps to analyse food shortages and responses to them across Europe and the Ottoman Empire from 1914 to 1923. Through a comparative approach, the authors demonstrate the consequences of civilian hunger in its military, international, political, social, economic, and cultural dimensions.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Maps
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Hunger Redraws the Map
• 1 War of Want: The Impact of the First World War on the Global Food Economy
• 2 Siege and Blockade: Starvation as a Weapon of War
• 3 The Politics of Food: State Reactions
• 4 Individual Strategies of Survival
• 5 Food as Experience
• 6 Hunger Envisioned
• 7 Hunger in Urban and Rural Areas, and Children on the Move
• 8 Food Hierarchies: Class, Status, and Social Divisions
• 9 Hungry for Change: Civilian Challenges to the State and Demands for Food
• 10 Measuring Food Requirements and Deprivation
• 11 The Science of Hunger and Malnutrition
• 12 Famine in Russia and parts of Europe, 1914–22
• 13 Healing Hunger: Post-War Humanitarian Action
• 14 “Hunger Draws the Map”
• Bibliography
• Index