Page 135 - Mocarelli, Luca, and Aleksander Panjek. Eds. 2020. Maize to the People! Cultivation, Consumption and Trade in the North-Eastern Mediterranean (Sixteenth-Nineteenth Century). Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 135
kwheat or maize? Ultimately, potatoes!
The Slovenian experience with maize
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Žarko Lazarević
Institute of Contemporary History
University of Primorska, Faculty of Humanities
Introduction
In the nineteenth century, modernization or the introduction of the achieve-
ments of the agrarian technical revolution took place in Slovenian agricul-
ture, as Jože Maček put it (Maček 1995). This process changed the techno-
logical aspects of agriculture, and new crops were being introduced. One
of them – maize – had a far-reaching impact: it became the driving force
of the changing structure of crops. We can hardly say that maize has been
overlooked by historiography. Its rise has been simply impossible to ignore,
as it influenced the structure of agriculture and people’s diet. However,
it never achieved the cult status of potatoes, which became known as the
plant and crop that put an end to hunger and malnutrition. Much research
has been dedicated to potatoes. The cult status of potatoes in Slovenia was
established by the book with a very suggestive title Kruh ubogih (“The Poor
Man’s Bread”, Stabej 1977). This work corroborated the thesis that only po-
tatoes managed to ensure adequate nutrition of the population. Allegedly,
they also contributed to population growth. Another emphasis of the book
was social – we could even say class-related. The stratification of society
was supposedly related to potatoes, which delivered the lower social stra-
ta from famine and food shortage. This thesis left no room for the impor-
tance of maize as a supplementary crop. With the exception of the western
part of Slovenia, maize could not compete with potatoes as far as the nutri-
tion of the population was concerned. In the majority of the territory, it was
doi: https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-6963-09-1.133-162 133
The Slovenian experience with maize
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Žarko Lazarević
Institute of Contemporary History
University of Primorska, Faculty of Humanities
Introduction
In the nineteenth century, modernization or the introduction of the achieve-
ments of the agrarian technical revolution took place in Slovenian agricul-
ture, as Jože Maček put it (Maček 1995). This process changed the techno-
logical aspects of agriculture, and new crops were being introduced. One
of them – maize – had a far-reaching impact: it became the driving force
of the changing structure of crops. We can hardly say that maize has been
overlooked by historiography. Its rise has been simply impossible to ignore,
as it influenced the structure of agriculture and people’s diet. However,
it never achieved the cult status of potatoes, which became known as the
plant and crop that put an end to hunger and malnutrition. Much research
has been dedicated to potatoes. The cult status of potatoes in Slovenia was
established by the book with a very suggestive title Kruh ubogih (“The Poor
Man’s Bread”, Stabej 1977). This work corroborated the thesis that only po-
tatoes managed to ensure adequate nutrition of the population. Allegedly,
they also contributed to population growth. Another emphasis of the book
was social – we could even say class-related. The stratification of society
was supposedly related to potatoes, which delivered the lower social stra-
ta from famine and food shortage. This thesis left no room for the impor-
tance of maize as a supplementary crop. With the exception of the western
part of Slovenia, maize could not compete with potatoes as far as the nutri-
tion of the population was concerned. In the majority of the territory, it was
doi: https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-6963-09-1.133-162 133
