The Great Depression as Transition of the Global Food Regime?
Sprache des Vortragstitels:
Englisch
Original Tagungtitel:
World Economic History Congress 2018
Sprache des Tagungstitel:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
The literature on the role of agriculture and food in the Great Depression oscillates between theoretically strong but empirically weak approaches on the one hand and empirically strong but theoretically weak approaches on the other hand. The paper addresses this tension by combining food regime theory with empirical evidence on agriculture and food in the interwar period. Accordingly, the Great Depression played a key role in the transition from the British-centered food regime (1870-1914) to the US-centered food regime (1947-1973): from extensive to intensive agricultural growth, from free trade to more protectionist policies and from plant-based to animal-based diets. Confronting this notion with evidence from data-driven studies, the paper reviews the conventional wisdom about the role of agriculture and food in the Great Depression.
Forschungs-