Food and War

[Afterburner]

Alright as far of one of my classes we have to write several short papers about various food-related topics, mostly from an anthropological point of view. Anyways I'm looking for books or articles about the relationship between food and warfare, as I know there is a rather close connection. I've found at least one book in the library that is akin to what I'm looking for but I'd figure I'd grasp at straws and see if anyone here happens to know any good publications off the top of their head, even if it is just a section in a book they've read.

[MrFancypants]

I don't know any publications, but you might find something by reading books about different wars. Egypt was an important source of food for the Roman empire. I think the Vandals, who settled in Carthage, used that to their advantage when dealing with Rome.

Slightly different topic but maybe also revelant would be food conservation during WW2. As far as I know the Nazis tried to maintain a good food-supply as they were worried about losing their grip on an uhappy population.


A good way to find more of such instances is probably to look for pdf-versions of books. If you're lucky they are no scanned but proper pdfs that you can search for keywords.

[SeinfeldRules]

I have a book about stories from Army Ranger School. If you don't know what Army Ranger school is, it's basically 61 days where students are up 23 hours a day (literally), given 2 MRE's day and are expected to walk upwards of 10 kilometers a day with a 70 pound rucksack. In other words, it's a tough course. My friend's brother just came back from Ranger School, and he lost 50 pounds and said the most amount of straight sleep he got was 4 hours. Food, given the amount they are given and the physical exertion, obviously becomes very valuable. The story I read involved a food thief. A Ranger student was stealing food from other student's MREs and keeping it for himself. The food thief was very harmful to the other Ranger students given the starvation diet they were on, and it got to the point where the other students would start writing their names on every piece of their MRE.

The other Ranger students eventually caught the food thief, and quickly proceed to beat him within an inch of his life. In fact, the author stated that if the Ranger Instructors hadn't intervened, "there was no doubt in anyone's military mind they would have ended his life". The author also remarked that he now understood how people who are starving can be driven to levels of unbelievable violence, and if it could happen in some place as controlled as Ranger School, where they know the instructors won't actually let them starve to death, then it's easy to see how such violence can occur in places with no such control.

Just though it was an interesting vignette on food and violence. Book was No Excuse Leadership, chapter was "Rangers are Dutiful".

[Roaming East]

you dont need to be on a starvation diet to fucking kill a man who steals your pound cake bro...

[SeinfeldRules]

That's true, pumpkin pound cake is the shit.

[Crazy Wolf]

You could write about how agricultural societies won out over hunter-gathering societies, the origin of the food's important.

[Nemmerle]

Benjamin Kidd, (1898) The Control of The Tropics. The Macmillan Company, London.

Jared Diamond (1998) Guns Germs and Steel, a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years. Vintage, London

Patrick Kirch (1994) The Wet and The Dry. University of Chicago press, Chicago.

Of these the second is most specific, especially if you lack a general subject knowledge within which to place the information of the other two. The first is related through economics and its perception of power structures around the turn of the century - quite interesting though not necessarily immediately relevant. The last is concerned with the cultural difference among polynesian islands which had disparate farming/gathering enviroments.

[Anlushac11]

Before the late 1790's troops in the field had to gather what they wanted and in some cases local populations were forced to house and feed troops.

Thats why scorched earth tactics were so successful against invading armies.

IIRC canning food was implemented by Napoleon Bonaparte to allow the carrying and storage of food for his armies, thus inventing the C-rat's. In Russia, Napoleon's supply lines were subject to attacks by partisans and the supply lines had problems supplying troops when they got to be extremely long, something the Germans experienced as well in 1941-1942.

When I got out of USMC we were still eating MCI's and MRE's were just starting to show up. The coolest was the little fuel tablet "stove", I still have my "P-38" somewhere.

Alot of guys used to moms home cooking didnt like C-rats but my mom worked so I are alot of canned foods when I came home from school so C-rats were just fine for me. Loved the Beanie weenies and upside down pineapple cake.

By comparison MRE's when I finally got to try some were light years ahead. I will never forget first time I had dehydrated peaches. They looked like styrofoam and once rehydrated tasted like fresh peaches to me.