Den heliga kon : Mejeriindustri i brytningstid 1914–1918

Sammanfattning: Swedish dairy industry was established in the late 19th century to provide butter for the evergrowingBritish consumer market. The first world war (1914–1918) reformulated the conditionsof the export dependent Swedish dairy industry and threw farmers and dairy men alike into atime of dwindling profits. This thesis study how Svenska mejeritidningen as a representative ofthe organized Swedish dairy industry responded to the war-time challenges and what strategieswere formulated to find and create markets for dairy products and thus maintain the Swedishdairy industry.The thesis concludes that the first world war may have been a catalyst for a Swedish dairyindustrial transformation, bringing many industrial bottlenecks to the surface such asinfrastructure and technology and stating that considerable efforts would be needed to regainits economic significance of the late 19th century. Moreover, the scale of these concerns incombination with the uncertainty of milk’s profitability makes development blocks a usefultheory for understanding the nature of dairy industrial change in Sweden 1914–1918.