The food policy of Tuscan landowners between the Great War and the postwar period: a case study of a rural municipality

Abstract

ABSTRACT The management of the home front played an important role in the First World War. Countries involved in the conflict had to implement policies to solve subsistence problems, making control of food supplies essential to the internal social order as the concept of moralizing the economy increased in importance. But in Italy this happened late and with profound contradictions. The Italian government was slow to act on free market controls, delegating the arduous task of rationing food resources to local administrations. This article analyses the policies implemented by the ruling class of the Tuscan municipality of Barberino Val d’Elsa during and after the Great War. In this rural territory, establishment landowners implemented a successful food policy based on a concept of common good derived from the sharecropping contract. They managed to guarantee continuous and superior food supplies, in contrast to the reality of other territories. The objective of this strategy was to prevent possible revolts. National level solutions to supply demands, including the moralization of the economy, were implemented only after 1917, through a problematic framework. Yet after the war, the rapid disappearance of this structure produced several riots and protests. I argue that the food policy adopted by the ruling class of Barberino protected the municipality from possible revolts. Furthermore, the analysis of this locality’s situation casts new light on the deficiency of Italian food management policy on the home front during and after the war and improves our understanding of the 1919 food riots.