Introduction : food shortages and shifting loyalties

Šmidrkal, Václav (author), Stergar, Rok (author)

The Introduction to Nourishing Victory pursues four main objectives. First, it situates the problem of food supply during the transitional period between the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the consolidation of the post-imperial order within a broader historical and scholarly context. Second, it outlines the book’s methodological approach, treating food supply as a lens for analyzing shifts in political legitimacy and in the meaning of victory and defeat. This section also explains the choice of the book’s two comparative cases: the Bohemian Lands and Slovenia. Third, it reviews the existing literature in order to summarize the state of the art and to identify the research gap. Finally, the Introduction presents the overall structure of the book.

• Language: English
• Keywords: food supply, historiography, First World War, Habsburg Empire
• Work type: Other
• Typology: 1.16 - Independent Scientific Component Part or a Chapter in a Monograph
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2026
• Number of pages: Str. 19-42
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-183242
• UDC: 641:94(436+439)"1914/1918"
• DOI: 10.5117/9789633869185-1
• COBISS.SI-ID: 272093699
• Publication date in RUL: 09.06.2026

Record is a part of a monograph

• Title: Nourishing victory : food shortages and Post-Imperial Transition in the Bohemian Lands and Slovenia
• Editors: Václav Šmidrkal, Rok Stergar
• Place of publishing: Budapest [etc.]
• Publisher: CEU Press
• ISBN: 978-96-3386-918-5
• COBISS.SI-ID: 272024579

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: preskrba s hrano, zgodovinopisje, prva svetovna vojna, Habsburška monarhija

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: N6-0190-2021
• Name: Hraniti zmago: Preskrba s hrano in postimperialna tranzicija v čeških deželah in Sloveniji, 1918-1923