Food Warfare
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Description
Food has become a central dimension of contemporary conflict, with major ecological and humanitarian consequences across the world. This book offers the first conceptual framework for understanding “food warfare”, exploring how food and hunger are deliberately manipulated to undermine enemies and gain advantage during wartime.
Papale provides a detailed examination of the practices adopted by both state and non-state actors, including blockades, contamination and the destruction of supplies, shedding new light on their strategic rationale and far-reaching consequences. As he shows, food warfare is not a modern invention but has characterised military activities since ancient times. Bringing together case studies from Assyria's military campaigns and the Spanish conquest of Mexico to current security crises, such as the war in Ukraine, the siege of Gaza and terrorist insurgencies, the book spans four continents and nearly thirty centuries of history. The emerging picture is that of a challenging form of violence whose impact, if left unaddressed, might grow even further in the years ahead.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 –Making sense of food warfare
Chapter 2 –Food diversion
Chapter 3 –Food sabotage
Chapter 4 –Is food warfare effective?
Conclusion–The timeless modernity of food warfare
Notes
Bibliography
Product details
| Published | 18 Mar 2027 |
|---|---|
| Format | Paperback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 224 |
| ISBN | 9781350546899 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Dimensions | 234 x 156 mm |
| Series | Studies in Contemporary Warfare |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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'Exceptional and urgent. Papale offers the first sustained International Relations analysis of food as neither simply driver nor consequence of conflict, but integral to how wars are waged and won. Rigorously tracing food warfare from historical uses to our globalized, climate-affected present, this is essential reading across security and development studies.'
Caitriona Dowd, University College Dublin, Ireland
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'Papale's new book offers an urgent and much-needed treatment of the significance of food in warfare. By demonstrating how food is fundamental to the dynamics and outcomes of conflict, it challenges International Relations scholarship to grapple with the sabotaging, capture, contamination, and destruction of food. Powerfully illustrated with rich historical and contemporary cases, the book offers a vital new framework for exploring and unpacking one of the key security challenges of our time. Timely, wide-ranging, and expertly crafted, Food Warfare deserves the widest possible readership.'
Lee Jarvis, Adelaide University, Australia

























