ABSTRACT
Thus, contemporaries perceived that dependency on the wheat loaf involved considerable risk to the nation and its social order, bringing periodic turmoil to the exchanges and money markets, at times requiring the subordination of Britain’s strategic interest and the transfer of resources from rich to poor. And according to the liberal economists, wheat dependency also induced the wasteful cycle of boom and slump. Surely a pragmatic society would have lessened such fraught dependency? And surely the poor too, would have benefited from a less vulnerable, more varied, and cheaper diet? Yet, during the century in review, dependency on wheat did not lessen, but intensified. Whereas in the decade 1771-1780 wheat represented approximately 60 per cent by value of Britain’s breadstuffs, by 1861-1870 the proportion had risen to 90 per cent of a much increased total.1
