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The peer-reviewed academic journal Střed | Centre. Journals for Interdisciplinary Studies of Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries invites authors to submit articles for special issue titled:
‘Food Shortages in Central Europe, 1914–1923’
From various perspectives and using different methodologies, recent historiography has shown that food ‘decided’ the First World War. Above all, it was the failure of the food provisioning system towards the end of the war that accelerated the disintegration of societies and the internal breakdown of states such as Austria-Hungary. The growing imbalance between appeals to self-sacrifice and the state’s worsening inability to satisfy the basic needs of its citizens became a symptom of the collapse. Although in this respect there were differences between the various regions and states of East-Central Europe, most were confronted with the basic problems of malnourished and frustrated populations, depleted agriculture and interrupted international trade routes.
For Central Europe, the end of war in the autumn of 1918 also heralded the end of the centuries-old empires of the Habsburgs, Romanovs, and Hohenzollerns. The redrawing of political boundaries brought about competing national projects and provoked border disputes and wars. Radical politics and new ideologies offered promises of a better social order and a way out of the chaos. The primary issue for the new governments was how to feed their exhausted populations as a means of demonstrating better governance than that of the monarchies, averting the threat of uncontrolled social revolution and securing civic loyalty in a situation of shattered state authority. The issue of food and other basic needs was thus connected to the ability of these new polities to overcome the post-war crisis by providing for the well-being of their citizens. Food, clothes, fuel and shelter were not only everyday necessities, but also a measure of the ability of the new states to provide their citizens with what the former states had failed to provide.
This issue of Střed | Centre aims to scrutinize the character and impact of the wartime and post-war provisioning crisis on the transformation of states and their populations. In addition to case studies from Central Europe in the period 1914–1923, this issue of Střed | Centre welcomes comparative, transnational or diachronic approaches to this topic.
The issue can include, but is not limited to, the following topics:
Articles are accepted in English or Czech and should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words long (footnotes excluded). Information about the referencing style and overview of the previous issues can be found on the journal’s website. All articles will undergo rigorous peer review, based on initial editor screening and double-blind peer review by at least two anonymous referees.
Deadline for submission of articles: September 30, 2023 via e-mail stred@mua.cas.cz
Střed | Centre is a Czech peer-reviewed academic journal that focuses on studies of the society, culture, politics and economics in Central Europe of the 19th and 20th centuries. The journal is ecumenical in its selected methodological and disciplinary approaches and strives to give space to scholars working on the broad field of humanities, who are involved in studies of the given period and geographical area. Střed | Centre has been published since 2009 by the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. It is indexed in SCOPUS,
EBSCO, CEEOL and other databases.
