Václav Šmidrkal – författare

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.