Food and Conflict in Europe in the Age of the Two World Wars (review)

War and revolution returned large parts of Europe to a "culture of hunger" in the first half of the twentieth century, a culture usually associated with undeveloped, subsistence economies. The editors of this collection are interested in the dynamics of conflict about food. Their intention is to open new perspectives by moving beyond the traditional historical attention to nutrition and state policy and exploring how consumers and civil society influenced policy, consumption, and claims to entitlement, as well as how social groups conceived of food problems and mobilized to make their claims. Competition for access to food, the editors contend, "produced a legacy of new domestic and global visions of solidarity, rights, and cooperation" (10).

The one essay sustaining this argument is Trentmann's overview of the development of global food networks and the conceptualization of solutions to shortages. He describes the integration of the global food economy during the late nineteenth century, a "historic breakthrough," via the sharp decline in transport costs. War in 1914 produced a severe shock to this new economy, disrupting international supply networks, imposing widespread rationing, provoking a re-conceptualization of social identity, and challenging state legitimacy in individual countries. Trentmann's survey is suggestive about the role of provisioning in social solidarity and state legitimacy.

Thierry Bonzon, writing of the French experience from 1914 to 1918, emphasizes the revival of a language of moral economy to demand state controls on food distribution and profit making, highlighting equity of access and affordability and thus a genuinely shared sacrifice in a "new social contract." Thimo de Nijs details state efforts to control food distribution in the Netherlands, where public demand for state intervention and cooperative efforts between the state and the retailing sector provided adequate provisions. The outcome, however, was greater polarization. Groups emerged to defend consumers' interests after the war, and retailers' associations resisted greater government control.

Trentmann argues that a new community developed after World War I, advocating global solutions to food crises in recognition that global interdependency required the conceptualization of global solutions, probably via global governance. The League of Nations made slight progress. Trentmann claims a reconceptualization of global food policy after 1945, though whether problems and institutions were reconceived or simply recast because of interwar failures and greater wartime distress is not clear.

The remaining essays follow national experience in preparing for and surviving the next war, often with a focus on the very issues of policy and nutrition that the editors had aspired to transcend. Alexander Nützenadel provides a generous, positive reappraisal of Fascist agricultural policy, particularly the battle for wheat, claiming significant accomplishment until 1935 but conceding failure in its medium-term objective of preparing Italy for self-sufficiency in war. Uwe Spiekermann compares German and British efforts to promote the consumption of wholemeal breads. Ralf Futselaar analyzes high Dutch mortality during the war, concluding that although rations supplied sufficient calories to avoid starvation, low meat rations failed to provide the micronutrients necessary for resistance to infectious diseases. Mark B. Trauger sifts through Joseph Stalin's published views on the peasantry and agriculture to argue for Stalin's sympathy for Soviet peasants, and the rationality of Soviet collectivization as a means to modernize agriculture. Some traditional policy analysis looking at the timing and nature of actual collectivization and its results would have been helpful in an essay remarkably detached from the appalling methods and impact of collectivization. Mogens R. Nissen's study of policy in Denmark provides helpful contrast to European experience with German policy elsewhere. The use of price incentives rather than controls and coercion yielded higher output and fewer market distortions.

The contributors to the volume who explore the important role of consumers and the demands made by civil society present results that advance the editors' agenda. In addition to the Bonzon and de Nijs essays already mentioned, Mark Roodhouse examines the ways in which participants in Britain...