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Food Production and Policy in the United Kingdom, 1914–1918 The Alexander Prize Essay
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2009
Extract
Historians are in general agreement on the problem of United Kingdom food supplies during the First World War. The broad picture is as follows; during the first eighteen months or so of the war, supplies both from home and abroad were well maintained. The government therefore had no need to intervene, either in procuring or distributing food, although it took certain measures to safeguard future supplies for the Army. During 1916, however, the position changed; there had been poor harvests both in the United Kingdom and the Americas (the chief source of imported food), and the German High Command were known to be planning a new, ‘unlimited’ submarine campaign, with the aim of sinking as much shipping as possible (whether British or neutral), in order to drastically curtail imports of food and war material, and thus force a British surrender.
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References
1 This is substantially the picture presented in Middleton, T. H., Food Production in War (Oxford, 1923)Google Scholar, ch. I, and Lord Ernle (R. E. Prothero), English Farming Past and Present (6th edn., Lodnon, 1961)Google Scholar, ch. XIX. The early contracts made to assure supplies for the Army are dealt with in Beveridge, W. H., British Food Control (London, 1928), pp. 11–13Google Scholar. The progress of the submarine campaign is chartered in Salter, J. A., Allied Shipping Control (Oxford, 1921), especially Table No. 6, pp. 355–9.Google Scholar
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13 Ibid.
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