Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T03:38:45.986Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Food Production and Policy in the United Kingdom, 1914–1918 The Alexander Prize Essay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2009

P. E. Dewey
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 30 , December 1980 , pp. 71 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1980

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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

2 Middleton, , Food Production, ch. III and p. 83.Google Scholar

3 Beveridge, , British Food Control, p. 321.Google Scholar

4 Salter, , Allied Shipping Control, pp. 122–8.Google Scholar

5 Middleton, , Food Production, p. 166Google Scholar. The Food Production Department is hereafter referred to as the F.P.D.

6 Salter, , Allied Shipping Control, p. 125Google Scholar. A brief account of Lloyd George's action is given in Taylor, A. J. P., English History 1914–1945 (Oxford, 1965), pp. 84–5.Google Scholar

7 The chronology of rationing is conveniently set out in Marrack, J. R., Food and Planning (London, 1943), p. 169.Google Scholar

8 Beveridge, , British Food Control, p. 313Google Scholar, Table X. The concept of the ‘average man’ was employed in preference to a per capita measurement. The reason for this was that the latter did not provide a satisfactory means of assessing the adequacy or otherwise of available supplies, since the total population included persons of differing dietary needs. A per capita measurement would have yielded a much lower figure. The basis of definition of the ‘average man’ is detailed in Beveridge, , British Food Control, p. 311.Google Scholar

9 Report of the Sumner Committee on the Working Classes' Cost of Living (1918), Parliamentary Papers, 1918, VII, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

10 Beveridge, , British Food Control, p. 313, Table X.Google Scholar

11 Royal Society, The Food Supply of the United Kingdom (London, 1916)Google Scholar, Cd. 8421, Parliamentary Papers, 1916, IX, p. 18.

12 See, for example, Franklyn, T. B., A History of Agriculture (London, 1948), p. 181Google Scholar: ‘The farmers and farm workers had saved the country from starvation by the blockade of the enemy submarines.…’

13 Ibid.

14 Whetham, E. H., The Agrarian History of England and Wales: volume VIII, 1914–39 (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 112–18.Google Scholar

15 Ashworth, A. W., An Economic History of England, 1870–1939 (London, 1960), p. 281.Google Scholar

16 Dictionary of National Biography: Supplement, 1931–40 (Oxford, 1949), p. 218.Google Scholar

17 Who was Who (London, 1946), p. 461.Google Scholar

18 Prothero, , English Farming, ch. XIXGoogle Scholar; Prothero, R. E., The Land and its People; chapters in rural life and history (London, 1925)Google Scholar, chs. 6 and 7; Middleton, , Food ProductionGoogle Scholar, chs. VI–XII. The 24 per cent increase cited by Ashworth is attributed to Hurwitz, S. J., State Intervention in Great Britain: a study of economic control and social response, 1914–1919 (Columbia, 1949)Google Scholar, but Hurwitz was clearly drawing on Middleton, , Food Production, pp. 319–22.Google Scholar

19 Whetham, , Agrarian History, pp. 112–18Google Scholar, especially Table 14, p. 116.

20 Ernle, , English Farming, p. 407.Google Scholar

21 Middleton, , Food Production, p. 322.Google Scholar

22 (Sir)Rew, R. H., ‘The Progress of British Agriculture’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, lxxxv (1922), 19.Google Scholar

23 Olson, M., The Economics of the Wartime Shortage; a history of British food supplies in the Napoleonic War and in World Wars One and Two (Durham, North Carolina, 1963), p. 103, n. 90; p. 107.Google Scholar

24 A ton of wheat flour yields 3.7 million calories, and cost £6 16s. at 1909–13 wholesale prices, whereas a ton of beef yields 2.9 million calories, and cost £54 16s. Thus in 1909–13, £1 spent on flour produced 0.54 million calories; £1 spent on beef produced 0.053 million calories only. The calorie-equivalents used are from Royal Society, Food Supply, pp. 6–7Google Scholar; prices from Board of Agriculture, Agricultural Statistics, 1909–13, Part III.

25 Relative food prices in wartime are summarized in Agricultural Statistics (1924), Part III, pp. 140–1Google Scholar. For changes in relative production, see below, p. 84.

26 The use of rationing to reduce average consumption levels was not, however, absent from the minds of the civil servants at the Ministry of Food (Beveridge, , British Food Control, p. 321).Google Scholar

27 Royal Society, Food Supply, p. 3.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., p. 17.

29 The widest gap between the two appeared in 1917, with retail food prices at 198½ and all retail prices (including food) at 176 (July 1914=100) (Mitchell, B. R. and Deane, P., Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1971), p. 478).Google Scholar

30 Mitchell, and Deane, , British Historical Statistics, p. 368Google Scholar. The wartime data are, however, described as ‘very rough’.

31 In 1909–13, the ‘average man’ derived 35 per cent of his weekly calorie intake from (wheaten) flour, and 6 per cent from potatoes. In 1918 the proportions had risen to 41 and 9 per cent respectively. Calculated from Beveridge, , British Food Control, p. 313.Google Scholar

32 P.R.O., War Cabinet minutes, CAB 23/5, 329(6), 23 January 1918.

33 Mitchell, and Deane, , British Historical Statistics, p. 10.Google Scholar

34 War Office, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire 1914–1920 (London, 1922), Part V.Google Scholar

35 Dearle, N. B., The Labour Cost of the War to Great Britain (London, 1940), p. 16Google Scholar. On the same page, Dearle estimates total armed forces strengths as:

These figures suggest that the ‘residual’ column above is rather too low, partly because Navy enlistments have been ignored, and partly (presumably) because there was a lag before deaths in action were reflected in the returns of Army strength.

36 Salter, J. A., Allied Shipping Control (Oxford, 1921), Table 6, pp. 355–59.Google Scholar

37 Import volumes are from Annual Statement of Trade; calorie-ton equivalents are from Royal Society, Food Supply, Appendix 1a. It should be noted that a part of the decline in imports is accounted for by direct provision of troops overseas, chiefly on the Western Front. However, a substantial proportion of the Army remained in Britain; about 1.5 million men were engaged on Home Defence at the Armistice (War Office, Statistics, p. 877Google Scholar), to which one should add those on leave or receiving medical treatment in the United Kingdom.

38 Board of Agriculture, The Agricultural Output of Great Britain; enquiries made in connection with the Census of Production Act, 1906 (1912), P.P. 1912–13, XGoogle Scholar; Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, The Agricultural Output of England and Wales 1925 (1927), P.P. 1927, XXV.Google Scholar

39 Drescher, L., ‘The Development of Agricultural Production in Great Britain and Ireland from the Early Nineteenth Century’, Manchester School, xxiii (1955).Google Scholar

40 Bellerby, J. R., ‘The Distribution of Farm Income in the United Kingdom, 1867–1938’; Journal of Proceedings of the Agricultural Economics Society, x (1953).Google Scholar

41 Oxford Agricultural Economics Research Institute, Agriculture and Industry Research Enquiry (1954–1955)Google Scholar, unpublished typescript in the library of the Institute of Agricultural History, Reading University.

42 Prest, A. R. and Adams, A. A., Consumers' Expenditure in the United Kingdom, 1900–1919 (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 17–51.Google Scholar

43 Royal Society, Food Supply, Appendix 1a.

44 Agricultural Economics Research Institute, Agriculture and Industry Research Enquiry, Part II.

45 Royal Society, Food Supply, Appendix 1a.

46 Middleton, , Food Production, pp. 319–22.Google Scholar

47 Royal Society, Food Supply, p. 3 and Appendix 1a.Google Scholar

48 Middleton, , Food Production, pp. 88–91.Google Scholar

49 Murray, K. A. H., Agriculture (London, 1955), pp. 242–3.Google Scholar

50 Board of Agriculture, The Agricultural Output of Great Britain, pp. 28–30.Google Scholar

51 Middleton, , Food Production, p. 88.Google Scholar

52 Annual Statement of Trade, 1914–1918.Google Scholar

53 For the measures taken by the government, see Beveridge, , British Food Control, especially ch. VI–VIII and X.Google Scholar

54 Ibid., pp. 95–100.

55 Beveridge, , British Food Control, p. 375.Google Scholar

56 Ibid., p. 99.

57 See the table of rationed items in Marrack, , Food and Planning, p. 169.Google Scholar

58 Beveridge, , British Food Control, pp. 360–1.Google Scholar