Preface

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List of Figures

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Sharing Authority

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Abstract Chapter 5 explores the legacy of the Wheat Executive by detailing the creation and institutional design of its first successor institution, the Allied Maritime Transport Council (AMTC). By mid-1917, shipping problems increased exponentially. American entry into the war increased Allied shipping demand. The United States needed tonnage as it scoured the world for war materials and to send troops to Europe. Yet, initially, the United States was unable to significantly contribute to the pool of available Allied ships. With the expansion of German submarine warfare, the ability of the Allies to ship all goods, not just wheat, was grim. The Allies were again facing the cooperation problems associated with resource scarcity, only now on a grander scale. Yet, the Allies had a successful model for solving the problem: the Wheat Executive. Though American concerns over losing autonomy prevented the AMTC from having full decision-making authority, the AMTC was still marked by a notable degree of ceded authority, especially compared to the early war Allied efforts.

Wheat at War

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Abstract While the limits of manpower and steadiness of morale were being tested on the battlefields of the Somme and Verdun, the Allied powers of France, Britain, and Italy faced a more fundamental problem: how to ensure their soldiers and civilian populations were fed. Wheat at War explores the story of how the Allies coordinated wheat and shipping during the First World War. The desperation of the situation led the Allies to eventually create the Wheat Executive in late 1916, an international body imbued with the authority to make shipping and wheat distribution decisions on behalf of all the Allies. This book traces the Allied efforts at international economic institution creation, starting with then Commission Internationale de Ravitaillement (CIR) and the Joint Committee in the early war years, to the creation of the Wheat Executive itself, and then how the Wheat Executive was eventually extended to become the Allied Maritime Trade Council late in the war. The book also explores how the isolationist streak that kept the Americans out of the League of Nations and a general desire on the part of the victors to return to business as usual after the war led the Allied powers to eventually pull back from their embrace of supranational management of global economic affairs.

Retaining Authority

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Abstract Chapter 3 explores the first two international institutions the Allies, namely Britain and France, created in response to initial wheat shortages: the Commission Internationale de Ravitaillement (CIR) and the Joint Committee. The CIR was an informal nonbinding institution that was designed to coordinate purchases but was at best a “talk shop.” As the scale and duration of the war started to become evident through the later months of 1914 and supply complications emerged throughout 1915, the Allies considered alternative cooperative solutions, namely the Joint Committee. The Joint Committee, however, was only a modest improvement over the CIR. Overall, these two early attempts at international institutional solutions to the problem of supply, while inadequate, set the stage for the eventual creation of the Wheat Executive.

Reclaiming Authority

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Abstract Chapter 6 concludes the narrative of Allied attempts to create institutions to assist with supply issues by discussing the short history of the Supreme Economic Council (SEC). The signing of the Armistice on November 11, 1918, ended both the war and much of Allied economic coordination. Yet, supply problems ensued. While war needs abated and attacks on tonnage ceased, the Allies faced a new mandate—reviving their civilian economies and the reconstruction of the Central Powers. Tonnage was scarce, creating shortages of wheat and other commodities. The cooperation problems due to resource scarcity had not subsided. But rather than adapting the Allied Maritime Transport Council to the new challenges, the Allied governments, especially the United States, lacked the appetite to establish and maintain a permanent institution for peacetime economic cooperation. The institution that was created in the war’s aftermath, the SEC, was limited to operating as a forum for information gathering and discussion, akin to the Committee Internationale de Ravitaillement created at the war’s onset, before being finally abandoned.

Wheat During the Great War: Legacy and Implications

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Abstract The concluding chapter explores how our analysis of the institutions created during World War I to address allied supply problems in wheat and shipping sheds light on several literatures specific to scholars of international relations and builds upon existing historiographies of the First World War. The chapter specifically addresses the weaponization of wheat during wartime. Simultaneously to their efforts to acquire food, the Allies were cutting off food to the Central Powers. It then suggests why the Central Powers did not create such institutions like the Allied Wheat Executive. The chapter then suggests avenues for future research, notably the wartime origins of contemporary economic institutions, supplying coalitional warfare, and managing global supply chains.

List of Tables

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Ceding Authority

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Abstract Chapter 4 explores the creation and institutional design of the Wheat Executive. The situation deteriorated quickly in the fall of 1916. Low crop yields and mounting tonnage losses from Germany’s submarine warfare made acute the political consequences of not solving the wheat supply crisis. The Allies needed a new solution. French Minister of Commerce Étienne Clémentel capitalized on the exigencies of the moment to convince the British of closer economic unity. In the spirit of the principles of allied economic unity laid out at the Paris Conference, Clémentel and his deputy Jean Monnet worked with Clémentel’s British counterpart, Walter Runciman, to create an international institution imbued with the authority to make decisions on behalf of the Allies. Their work culminated in November 1916 with the signing of the Wheat Executive Agreement, which created the Wheat Executive, a body to which the member states ceded decision-making authority.