Croatology, Vol. 13 No. 1-2, 2022.
Original scientific paper
The First World War and the Social Crisis in Northern Croatia
Nikola Anušić
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb
Abstract
Due to agrarian fragmentation, high population density and slow industrialization, northern Croatia was on the brink of a food crisis even
before the First World War. During the war, and certainly by 1918, this crisis turned into a general societal crisis. Mobilization of able-bodied
men at the beginning of the war, and even more so during the war, had severe consequences for low-productive agricultural production, making
the food crisis permanent, and, from 1917, critical. The deepening crisis was particularly affected by rising inflation and price increases, but the
final disintegration of the existing society was caused by general chaos, crime and frequent peasant uprisings after the disintegration of the army
and the complete paralysis of the state apparatus in 1918. The exclusion of Croatian industry from the wider economic system of the Austro-
Hungarian Monarchy, the immediate postwar destruction of large estates and the impoverishment of the agrarian population, who often destroyed
the agrarian economy in the struggle for survival, weakened both the economic potential and its regenerative potential. All this shows that the First
World War had devastating consequences for Croatian society and that by joining the Yugoslav state union it could not fully capitalize on the development
advantages it had gained over other South Slavic societies before the First World War.
Keywords
World War I; Northern Croatia; Society; Crisis
Hrčak ID:
281459
URI
Publication date:
19.7.2022.
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