The Taste of War

Lizzie Collingham’s is a global history of food during the Second World War. Aimed at the general reader, the book draws upon recent scholarship to show how food was central to the origins, experience and outcome of the conflict. Economic historians have long appreciated the centrality of food in both world wars. Those with acute hearing will catch faint echoes of Avner Offer’s seminal monograph The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (1991; rev. ante, cvi [1991], 418–20) as they read Collingham’s work. Food and war remain of great interest to historians, judging by three recent essay collections: Food and Conflict in Europe in the Age of Two World Wars (2006) edited by Fleming Just and Frank Trentmann; Food and War in Twentieth Century Europe (2011) edited by Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Rachel Duffet and Alain Drouard; and War, Agriculture, and Food (2012) edited by Paul Brassley, Yves Segers and Leen Van Molle. Although aware of the global food system, most of the contributors to these volumes concern themselves with national experiences, which makes Collingham’s book, with its broader canvas, a welcome addition to the literature. As a global commodity, food lends itself to such treatment. In fact, Collingham is not the first historian to tackle the topic from a global perspective. Alan S. Milward devoted a chapter to the topic in his pioneering work War, Economy and Society, 1939–1945 (1977; rev. ante, xciii [1977], 885–8), the first global economic history of the war

Agrarian society · Agriculture · Ancient history · Battle · Economic history · Political science · Scholarship · Taste · World War II · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · History of Science and Medicine · Law · Psychology

• Food on the home front, food on the warfront

  T E Tunc, Annessa Ann Babic•Food and Foodways•2017

  Add to list