ABSTRACT
The Introduction to Nourishing Victory pursues four main objectives. First, it situates the problem of food supply during the transitional period between the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the consolidation of the post-imperial order within a broader historical and scholarly context. Second, it outlines the book's methodological approach, treating food supply as a lens for analyzing shifts in political legitimacy and in the meaning of victory and defeat. This section also explains the choice of the book's two comparative cases: the Bohemian Lands and Slovenia. Third, it reviews the existing literature in order to summarize the state of the art and to identify the research gap. Finally, the Introduction presents the overall structure of the book.
