Adrian Buck’s Reviews > The Hungry Empire: How Britain’s Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World > Status Update

"We no longer feel confident that we know the answer to the question of how we should grow and acquire our food." - for other, non imperial reasons

"Hitler drew onspiration from the British and American examples"

During the war, the hierarchy of priorities that had always operated within the Empire became glaringly obvious. British citizens were prioritized, below them were the white settlers in the dominions, and lastly, and definitely least, came Britain's [non-white] colonial subjects."

"While 31,000 Allied infantry died in the North African campaign, around three million Bengalis died from starvation and the effects of malnutrition"

The various post-war 'development' failed even to produce food for Britain. More lamentably, the string of development failures did not sufficiently discredit the belief that Africa would be best served if it were transformed into a version of south-eastern England"

"The East Africans would have been better off if they had continued to grow millet, sorghum, njahi and plantain, using traditional farming methods." - only one side of this argument is presented, the author elsewhere mentions labour intensity, but issues of scalability and learning curves also come to mind."

"The East Africans would have been better off if they had continued to grow millet, sorghum, njahi and plantain, using traditional farming methods." - only one side of this argument is presented, the author elsewhere mentions labour intensity, but issues of scalability and learning curves also come to mind."

"Amid the atmosphere of protectionism during the inter-war years, the government worried about its dependency on unpredictable foreign partners..." - why then did they then abandon the Commonwealth for he EEC in the 1970s?

"...in the1920s...Sunday high tea...consisted of tinned Canadian salmon...and...canned Australian pears with tinned Carnation milk" - something I enjoyed as a child in the 1970s

"By the 1890s, Britain absorbed 60 per cent of the meat that was traded globally" - how responsible was Britain for the development of Chicago's stock yards?