Alchool in The Age

Toner, Deborah. "Introduction." Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War. Ed.
Deborah
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INTRODUCTION
DEBORAH TONER
The period 1850 to 1950 was transformative for the history of alcohol around the world.
Important shifts in the economic, social, and cultural status of alcohol had already been
underway from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but these would coalesce
and solidify in the next hundred years. Concerns about the various problems alcohol
consumption—and particularly drunkenness—could cause were not new in the 1800s, but
these had generally been counterbalanced, even overshadowed, by recognition of alcohol’s
medical, social, and spiritual benefits. Such positive views were progressively displaced
during the nineteenth century and into the twentieth in many parts of the world. The increas-
ing accessibility of cheap, non-alcoholic beverages undermined long-held assumptions that
alcohol was a necessity and made it possible to see alcohol consumption as a recreational
choice. Powerful anti-alcohol movements took hold. Broad anxieties about rapid social
change, industrialization, urbanization, and national development manifested as fears about
the impact of alcohol on society, particularly in relation to the drinking habits of the urban
working classes, the poor, and non-white, imperial subjects. Medical, psychiatric, and social
science researchers questioned the long-accepted therapeutic and dietary necessity of
alcoholic beverages. They theorized about a range of alcohol-related pathologies—includ-
ing the new concept of alcoholism—as being both cause and consequence of criminality,
insanity, and racial degeneration. Taken together, these developments placed alcohol at the
center of major historical processes during the modern era: industrialization, state-building,
colonialism, and war.
This volume examines alcohol production, consumption, regulation, and commerce,
alongside the gendered, medical, religious, ideological, and cultural ideas and practices that
surrounded alcohol. Each chapter provides a comprehensive analysis of major changes in
these different aspects of alcohol’s place in society during the period 1850 to 1950 and a
historiographical synthesis of this rapidly growing field. Our global framework shows how
the history of alcohol addresses key challenges for historians of the modern world: bringing
geographically distinct historiographies into dialogue, combining economic and socio-cul-
tural approaches, and analyzing the role of individual states within and alongside broader
global formations (Berg 2013: 5–17). In doing so, the volume demonstrates not only the
important connections between industrialization, empire-building, and the growth of the
nation-state, but also how diverse actors and communities built, contested, and resisted
those processes around the world.
Scholarship on the history of alcohol during the age of industry, empire, and war is
very extensive, although it has tended to concentrate on several major issues and areas:
the rise of temperance and prohibition, the medicalization of problem drinking, and the
impact of modernity on social norms of alcohol consumption. Temperance movements and
prohibitionist legislation, particularly, have been the subject of much research, and rightly so.
They marked a significant historical departure in the discussion and regulation of alcohol’s
place in society, as well as having long-lasting effects that transcended the life-span of any
one organization or piece of legislation. This is a point worth dwelling on, as the widespread
misconceptions that surround the period of national prohibition in the United States (1920–
33), as unpopular, unusual, and wholly unsuccessful, continue to inhibit how historians at
large engage with histories of alcohol in other contexts. Judging prohibition to have been the
work of a small group of puritanical American fanatics, for instance, has allowed the temper-
ance movement to be dismissed as a fringe concern, in comparison to the anti-slavery
and women’s rights movements, and obscures the significance of anti-alcohol debates
that were happening globally (McGirr 2016: xiv–xvi). Temperance organizations in fact often
shared goals and members with those campaigning for the abolition of slavery and women’s
suffrage. Indeed, in this introduction I argue that efforts to restrict or eliminate alcohol’s
influence in North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australasia, and the
multiple interest groups involved in promoting and resisting this process, reveal the variety
of social and political responses to industrialization and urbanization around the world, the
development and application of new forms of state power, and how ideas of class and racial
difference underpinned that power.
Historians of alcohol have also focused on the emergence and spread of medicalized
understandings of problem drinking and associated concerns about public health. Until
the nineteenth century, habitual drunkenness was largely understood as a moral failing.
Across the nineteenth century, and gathering apace in its second half, habitual drunken-
ness and other drinking behaviors were pathologized. New terms like inebriety, dipsomania,
addiction, and alcoholism diagnosed certain drinking patterns and practices as medical or
psychiatric problems. Moral judgments and social prejudices were embedded within these
new concepts, which varied in their definitions and applications from place to place, and
belief in the positive medical benefits of at least some alcoholic drinks remained fairly strong.
Nevertheless, these medicalization processes gave rise to conflicting views of problem
drinking with lasting legacies. In some places, heavy drinking, often referred to as “alcohol-
ism,” was studied and treated within the context of degeneration theory and, later, eugenics.
This located the source of the problem in the inherited characteristics of the individual.
Elsewhere, and sometimes overlapping with this, were understandings of alcoholism as a
product of unhealthy social environments, and alcohol itself, or specific types of alcohol, as
inherently addictive. By the middle of the twentieth century, Alcoholics Anonymous, estab-
lished in 1935, helped to popularize a version of the “disease” concept of alcoholism that
in many ways combined moral and medical ideas about problem drinking (Levine 1985;
Sournia 1990; Piccato 1997; Tracy 2005).
Scholarship examining the relationship between alcohol, modernity, class, religion,
gender, race, and ethnicity adds greater nuance to our understanding of these long-term
trends toward anti-alcohol activism, prohibitionist legislation, and medicalization. A far greater
diversity of actors participated in anti-alcohol movements than is typically assumed, encom-
passing Mexican Catholics, Indian nationalists, Turkish doctors, and Russian socialists, in
addition to the Protestant missionaries with whom temperance is most often associated.
Racial ideologies legitimizing colonialism shaped discriminatory policies of prohibition in
2 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

North America, Latin America, Africa, and Australasia, which were contested and resisted
in a variety of different ways. Even as it was attacked from several directions, alcohol also
continued to be important to sociability, community, and identity. Across the United States,
Britain, Europe, Latin America, and parts of Africa, urbanization led to a strong connection
between drinking places, masculinity, and working-class organization. Women’s increas-
ing roles in public life in the early twentieth century helped to transform attitudes toward
women’s public drinking (Powers 1998; Heron 2005; Moss 2015). Such research reminds
us not to fall into the trap of examining alcohol in the same way that dominant discourse did
from 1850 to 1950: solely as a problem.
In assessing how alcohol was connected to industrialization, empire, and war, this intro-
duction proposes a new global framework that is vital to understanding how deeply alcohol
was involved in central processes shaping the modern world. Industrialization transformed
alcohol production and commerce into big business, reshaping consumption habits. Diverse
and international anti-alcohol movements developed in reaction to these changes. Empires
were partly built through alcohol, in both economic and ideological terms. Yet alcohol
production, trade, and consumption were also sites for anti-colonial resistance. Changes to
alcohol regulations in the period of the First World War bring into sharp relief the increased
intent and reach of state power to monitor and police its citizens, the increasing legitimi-
zation of that power through nationalism, and its interaction with public health discourses.
Alcohol, the various rules, norms, and concepts surrounding its place in society, and the
people, spaces, and institutions it brought into contact, are fundamental to understanding
the making of the modern world.
Industrialization
The intensification of industrialization across the Western world after 1850 supported, and
was supported by, major changes in the production, trade, and consumption of alcohol. As
Jeffrey Pilcher has noted, throughout this period alcohol was a “pioneering sector of early
industrialization” and “remained at the forefront of innovation and expansion” (2015: 165).
New technologies and scientific advances in brewing, fermenting, and distilling facilitated
major increases in the production of beers, wines, and spirits in the United States, Britain,
and parts of Europe. As Andrew McMichael and Gina Hames explain in this volume, the
adoption of steam-powered mills, mechanized bottling systems, metal storage containers,
artificial refrigeration, continuous distillation techniques, and improved understandings of
the biochemical processes involved in fermentation created economies of scale previously
unworkable in the alcohol industry. The brewing, distilling, and to a lesser extent wine indus-
tries consolidated into fewer, larger-scale enterprises, marked by vertical integration: major
commercial breweries, for instance, often owned and controlled substantial elements of
their supply chain, as well as bottling, packaging, transport, and retail infrastructure.
Industrialization also financed and was driven by improved transport infrastructure, espe-
cially railroads, which connected these economies of scale in the alcohol industry to new,
mass markets in growing urban centers. Mass production meant that beers, wines, and
spirits became much more affordable, while improved preservation techniques, and rail
and shipping connections, made them more widely available both within national markets
and internationally. In developing new, mass-produced, lighter beers, with the use of hops
Introduction 3
helping to preserve them for long-distance transport, the new center of the British brewing
industry, Burton-on-Trent, exported India Pale Ale throughout the British empire, as well
as to parts of Latin America and Japan. Bavarian-style lager beer was the real winner of all
these processes, becoming globally dominant in the beer industry, as German immigrants
led the expansion of the US brewing industry and their lagers changed tastes of consumers
as far afield as British India (Pilcher 2015: 166). The greater interconnectivity of producers
and markets was not all positive for the alcohol industry, however, as it was one of the
factors that led to an outbreak in France in the 1870s of vine disease phylloxera, which
wreaked havoc upon wine production in France, before spreading to Italy, Spain, California,
Peru, Australia, and Southern Africa (Phillips 2014: 178; Olsson 2018: 30).
Hames also shows that as production expanded and as fewer, larger companies
dominated the alcohol industry, advertising became increasingly important for gaining a
competitive edge. Often, it constructed images that obscured the increasingly standard-
ized, technological, and affordable nature of industrialized alcohol products. Brand images
frequently drew on claims to authenticity rooted in romantic nostalgia for a national or regional
past, traditional or historic production methods, or the product’s origin in an immigrant
homeland. Marketing some brands as markers of distinction, luxury, and sophistication was
another common strategy, in some cases supported by legal frameworks recognizing the
special characteristics of products connected to specific regions. The French appellation
d’origine contrôlée (AOC) of 1908, for instance, established that only wines from the regions
of Champagne, Cognac, Bordeaux, Banyuls, and Armagnac could be labeled as such to
protect their reputation as high-end, quality products.
Newly industrializing countries, such as Argentina and Mexico, which gained their inde-
pendence from the Spanish empire in the early nineteenth century, saw similar developments,
albeit on a smaller scale, with a symbiosis between the development of a manufacturing
sector in general and industrialization of the alcohol sector. From the 1880s to the 1920s,
Argentine wine grew from an artisan sector to a large-scale industry. This was made possi-
ble by the construction of a railway from the main wine-producing province of Mendoza to
growing urban markets, and by the rapid expansion of those markets, particularly Buenos
Aires, which became home to the majority of the 7 million immigrants, mostly Spanish and
Italian, who came to Argentina between 1847 and 1939 to work in the expanding manu-
facturing economy. These immigrant communities consumed 80 percent of Argentine wine
by the 1910s and early marketing approaches were shaped accordingly. Like advertis-
ing trends elsewhere—for instance the US lager beer industry which often referenced the
German immigrant homelands—Argentine winemakers used labels evocative of Spain and
Italy. However, contrary to dominant marketing approaches in Britain, the United States, and
Europe that romanticized traditional production methods, Argentine wine labels explicitly
referenced factory-buildings and production lines, creating a positive narrative around the
efficiency, modernity, and affordability of their wine industry (Hanway 2014: 91; Stein 2014:
210–15).
Mexico’s newly developing beer and tequila industries combined similar images of
modernity with referents to the ancient Aztec past in promoting their products at home and
abroad. Cervecería Cuauhtémoc, named for the last Aztec emperor, began beer production
in northern Mexico in 1891. Steam-powered mills, imported technical expertise, and an
expanding rail network enabled the company to grow rapidly and cater to export as well

as domestic markets from the outset (Hibino 1992; Bunker 1997: 231–3). Leading tequila
distilleries, owned by the Sauza and Cuervo families, introduced modern steam-powered
machines, expanded land-holdings in the 1870s and 1880s, and took advantage of the rail-
road to target export markets. Like Canadian, US, and British distillers, Sauza and Cuervo
sought international recognition for their products to market them as luxury goods, markers
of taste and sophistication, with considerable success: American judges gave Mexican spir-
its twenty-two awards at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, including a gold medal certificate
for Sauza’s “Mezcal Brandy” (Gaytán 2014: 39–40; Orozco 2014: 187–91).1
It is clear, therefore, that industrialization transformed alcohol production and commerce
from 1850 to 1950, and not only in the most heavily industrialized parts of the world. As
the chapters by James Kneale and Stella Moss explore further, industrialization also shaped
consumption practices, not just overall rates of consumption, but also who consumed alco-
hol, when, where, in what form, and across social contexts. Industrialization afforded more
disposable income for working people at the same time as mass-produced spirits, wines,
and beers became cheaper and more accessible (Pilcher 2015: 165). Yet, except for France
and Italy, in most countries for which we have available data, overall per capita consumption
of alcohol between 1850 and 1950 either declined precipitously or was markedly lower than
it had been in the preceding century. This general trend masks considerable fluctuations
in rates of consumption between 1850 and 1950, first rising and then falling, and in many
cases was due to the increasing popularity of beer over spirits, since the figures are generally
measured in terms of absolute alcohol. Nevertheless, the overall trend is noteworthy both as
a counter to contemporary perceptions advanced by anti-alcohol movements that drinking
was spiraling out of control in this period and, perhaps, as a measure of their effectiveness
in persuading some constituencies to drink less.
The gradual solidification of more regimented working practices, particularly in urban,
industrialized areas, and new regulatory regimes partly driven by anti-alcohol movements,
shaped patterns of alcohol consumption. In many places, this meant less drinking through-
out the day as a dietary norm, and the rise of drinking as a leisure activity in and of itself.
Specialized drinking places, catering to distinct social classes, became increasingly common
in industrial towns and cities. For instance, the greater break between work and leisure
time, and the greater availability of free time and disposable income for working people,
helped to spur the development of saloons in American cities as spaces for working-class
sociability and recreation. These bars were often used as the headquarters of labor unions,
which held official meetings in them as well as social events, at which bands sponsored by
the Industrial Workers of the World played satirical, pro-worker, and anti-employer songs.
Saloons also provided essential social services for workers new to city life, having either
migrated from rural areas or other countries. Local political magnates who relied on personal
ties and exchanges of favors for votes (often referred to as political machines) commonly
based their headquarters in saloons or had close ties with saloonkeepers. By promising to
vote for the political machine, workers could expect to call on them in times of hardship,
whether to help find a job, get a cash loan, or be supported in court; this was all mediated
through saloons and saloonkeepers. Although female workers participated to an extent, this
pattern of saloon-going during workers’ leisure time often created spaces in which specif-
ically masculine, working-class values and identities could be performed and expressed
(Rosenzweig 1991; Powers 1994; Powers 1998).
Introduction 5
Similar relationships between specialized urban drinking venues, working-class organiza-
tion, and masculinity developed across a wide variety of different places. Haine has shown
that cafés were integral to working-class culture and politics in nineteenth-century France.
Even as working-class communities built new institutions like unions, labor exchanges, and
popular universities in the early twentieth century, cafés remained important sites in times
of strikes and for organizing demonstrations and were systematically used by Communist
groups between the First and Second World Wars (Haine 2006: 135–40). In Argentina,
as the city of Buenos Aires rapidly transformed through immigration and industrialization,
the number of cafés and bars doubled to serve these largely immigrant, working-class
communities. Arrested workers—Spanish, Brazilian, Argentine, Chinese, Italian, and
French—sometimes strategically pleaded drunkenness in testimonies to deny culpability
for certain crimes and to perform manliness. This demographic diversity is striking since it
indicates the development of a shared set of working-class, masculine norms in the drinking
places of Buenos Aires across ethnic and racial lines (Gayol 1993).
While many scholars have thereby emphasized the solidarity that grew out of urban
drinking places, many contemporaries viewed urban, working-class drinking cultures as
the source of most social ills, as discussed in the chapters by Sarah Tracy, Paul Townend,
and Deborah Toner. Temperance movements emerged in the United States, Britain, British
Canada, Scandinavia, and elsewhere partly in response to the changing fabric of urbanizing,
industrializing societies: their concerns often focused on reforming the drinking habits of urban
workers and the poor, or on demonstrating cultures of middle-class restraint and sobriety in
opposition to them. French and German temperance movements in the 1870s and 1880s
focused on the dangers of cheap, mass-produced, industrial alcohols such as absinthe
and schnapps, urging workers to return to what they viewed as more natural beverages like
wine and beer. The influential American organization, the Woman’s Christian Temperance
Union, often explicitly located drinking problems in the United States as the preserve of poor
immigrants, calling for a halt to immigration as well as for anti-alcohol education programs
and restrictions on licensing. In 1892, its leader Frances Willard urged Congress to prohibit
the “influx into our land of more of the scum of the Old World, until we have educated those
who are here” (Phillips 2014: 195). Before turning its attentions to the campaign for national
prohibition via a constitutional amendment around 1913, the Anti-Saloon League, formed
in the 1890s, concentrated all its considerable propagandizing and legislative efforts on
attacking saloons, the heart of urban, immigrant, working-class communities in the United
States. Rod Phillips has emphasized how the broader socio-cultural conditions created by
industrialization were key to this outpouring of anti-alcohol sentiment. According to many
middle-class temperance advocates, who claimed self-discipline, moderation, and rational-
ity to be distinctively middle-class virtues, “Alcohol led drinkers to lose control of their minds
and bodies, and they made irrational decisions that led them to embrace poverty, indolence,
crime, immorality, and impiety. Stop the consumption of alcohol, the argument went, and
you would solve most of the problems that bedeviled workers and the poor and that threat-
ened social stability” (Phillips 2014: 206).
However, the image of the temperance movement that can emerge from this perspective,
as a predominantly white, middle-class, Protestant concern, is overly simplistic, as the chap-
ters by Townend and Toner show. Temperance organizations attracted major support from
Catholic communities in Ireland, North America, and some Australian colonies; orthodox

Christians and various sectarian groups in Russia; and among various Indigenous peoples
that Protestant missionaries sought to Christianize. Nationalist liberationist movements in
Ireland, India, and Poland connected temperance to their cause. Socialists, working-class
communities, and organized labor movements in Britain, America, Australia, France, Russia,
Mexico, and elsewhere drove temperance campaigns as part of their critique of capital-
ist inequality. Socialists often interpreted alcohol as a tool for the exploitation of workers:
drinking not only kept workers in a state of impoverishment, they argued, but was also
likely to divert them from participating in organized labor movements, protests, and political
activism. Literary works from Mexico, Spain, and France depicted alcoholism as a new
kind of medical condition that especially afflicted working people because it was the prod-
uct of urbanization and industrialization. In these portraits, workers were either driven to
drink by the oppressive conditions of their lives, echoing socialist thinkers, or, revealing a
more conservative outlook, as a consequence of being untethered from traditional values,
communities, and institutions.
The different trajectories of temperance in Bulgaria, Turkey, and Mexico in the early
twentieth century reveal how the global anti-alcohol movement, often spear-headed by
the international activism of Protestant American missionaries, was taken up for different
reasons and by very different constituencies experiencing profound social and political
change. Both Bulgaria and Turkey emerged as nation-states from the long break-up of
the Ottoman empire; Bulgaria became independent following the 1877–8 Russo-Turkish
War and Turkey became independent with the dissolution of the Ottoman empire in 1922.
Urbanization and the proliferation of public drinking places in some cities toward the end
of the nineteenth century gave rise to increasing concerns about the corrupting effects
of modernity, and belie the popular misconception that the formal proscription of alcohol
consumption in the Muslim faith has meant that the history of alcohol in the Islamic World
was less contested than elsewhere (Matthee 2014: 114–16; Evered and Evered 2016: 50–2;
Kamenov 2019). In Mexico, meanwhile, concerns about alcohol consumption amongst the
Indigenous, mixed race, and poor population had long occupied Mexican elites, govern-
ment officials, and Catholic Church leaders during the colonial period (c. 1521–1810) and
throughout the nineteenth century following Mexico’s independence. Beginning in 1910, a
political crisis sparked more than a decade of war that produced a socialist constitution in
1917 and a revolutionary government seeking to overhaul structural inequalities through
land reform, industrial development, and education that included temperance as a strong
component (Pierce 2009: 151–80; Toner 2015a).
Bulgaria’s anti-alcohol movement started to develop under the influence of American
Protestant missionaries in the 1890s. Over the next three decades, Bulgarian doctors,
educators, and politicians shifted the contours of the temperance movement to encompass
both socialist and eugenicist perspectives. This shift was shaped by international scientific
research, particularly the Swiss psychiatrist Auguste Forel’s interpretation of how alcohol
abuse caused degeneration by poisoning the germ plasm of conceiving parents, and by
the damaging legacy of decades of military losses. Temperance publications of the 1920s
and 1930s popularized eugenicist theories about the degenerational consequences of
alcoholism as a major social problem and called for greater state intervention to address
it. Socialist voices within the movement argued capitalism produced alcoholism both by
creating cheap, industrial drinks and by impoverishing working people en masse, so they
Introduction 7
called for improved public health, welfare, and educational provisions. Nikolay Kamenov
has characterized the state response as one of positive eugenics, creating maternal and
child health care services to promote reproduction among demographic groups deemed
physically and mentally healthy and, above all, free from hereditary disease. The 1929 Law
for National Health did, however, contain a commitment to negative eugenics—preventing
the reproduction of those deemed unfit—although this did not translate into aggressive
measures like sterilization (Kamenov 2017: 125–35).
In Turkey (Anatolia while still part of the Ottoman empire), American missionaries played
a preliminary role in the development of temperance activism in the late nineteenth century,
mostly working with Christian communities within the empire. The World League Against
Alcoholism, created by the Anti-Saloon League in 1919, campaigned for stricter application
of the Islamic religious prohibition against alcohol consumption. However, the debates within
Turkey’s Grand National Assembly, which introduced a total prohibition on the produc-
tion, sale, and public consumption of alcohol in 1920, reveal a much more complex set of
motivations. Progressivists concerned with the impact of alcohol on public health joined
Islamic supporters of prohibition. Turkey’s first anti-alcohol organization, the Green Crescent
Temperance Society, established in 1920, likewise represented a coalition between religious
figures, generally seen as socially and politically conservative, and medical personnel aligned
with more progressive and secular politics. The prohibition law only narrowly passed and
was short-lived, being reversed by 1924. Arguments against prohibition in 1920 centered
on the financial value of alcohol taxation and the benefits for social stability of respecting the
rights of non-Muslim minorities and foreigners to consume, produce, or sell alcohol. These
arguments became more powerful following the tumultuous events of the early 1920s, in
which the Ottoman empire collapsed, the Turkish Republic was declared, and Islamic law
was abolished. The Green Crescent Society remained influential, though, continuing to
shape government policy toward alcohol with a greater emphasis on public health until the
mid-twentieth century (Evered and Evered 2016; Evered 2019).
The World Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WWCTU) started to report on organ-
ized temperance activity in Mexico, emanating from Protestant church communities and
American missionaries, in the 1890s, charting the establishment of eleven union branches
across seven cities by 1897 (WWCTU 1890: 26; WWCTU 1895: 162; WWCTU 1897:
142–4). Addie Fields, a leading figure of the WWCTU who made several trips to Mexico,
also helped to establish the first national body, the Mexican Temperance Society, in 1903.
Its board of directors included Mexican physicians and social scientists, for whom alcohol
abuse and its connection to poor health, mental illness, crime, and other social problems had
been a major concern since the 1870s. The society’s early campaigns, lobbying the munic-
ipal government of Mexico City to tighten restrictions on popular drinking places, likewise
revealed a continuation of the preoccupation with lower-class drinking behaviors that had
animated anti-alcohol debates in Mexico for decades (“Sociedad Mexicana de Temperancia”
1903; Archivo Histórico del Distrito Federal 1907). In Mexico’s revolutionary years, however,
especially between 1920 and 1940, temperance expanded beyond this elite group of intel-
lectuals and policy-makers to encompass major state-sponsored programs and grass-roots
involvement. The National Committee for the Struggle Against Alcoholism was formed in
1929 by “representatives from various governmental departments, workers and peasant
leagues, and private groups with an interest in temperance,” and this body encouraged the

establishment of auxiliary, grass-roots groups led by women, teachers, workers, and church-
goers (Pierce 2009: 158). The campaign was animated by the revolutionary goals of social
transformation through land reform, education, and economic development, and of molding
Mexicans into “New Men and Women as sober, healthy, and rational individuals” (Pierce
2009: 152). They also sought to reduce the influence of the Catholic Church, whose calendar
of religious festivals they blamed for fostering drunkenness and inhibiting loyalty to the nation-
state. Complementing more aggressive taxation and regulation systems implemented by the
government, these organizations launched mass education programs, making temperance
part of school curricula and communicating temperance ideas through leaflets, radio inter-
views, parades, Anti-Alcohol Days, temperance conferences, and even some anti-alcohol
movies. Although there was popular opposition to the anti-alcohol movement, there was
also substantial popular involvement, with anti-alcohol activists going on to join movements
in favor of women’s suffrage, land reform, and secularization (Pierce 2009: 151–80).
The three cases of Bulgaria, Turkey, and Mexico illustrate that while Protestant missionar-
ies and American temperance organizations often contributed to the formalization of specific
anti-alcohol bodies around the world, the ideas and policies linked to temperance developed
in their own distinct directions. As in the Anglophone world, some of these developments
were linked to urbanization, industrialization, and reactions—either socialist or conserva-
tive—against these changes. But the development and impact of temperance movements
were also deeply rooted in local geopolitical changes and in class, ethnic, and/or religious
divisions. What they have in common with each other and many other cases was the devel-
opment of a state that was increasingly willing, if not always able, to shape its citizens’
private lives, bodies, and social behaviors.
Empire and Colonialism

Industrialization shaped new practices of alcohol production, trade, regulation, and consump-
tion, which in turn gave rise to increased concerns about alcohol’s effect on society. Both
processes were accelerated by the global expansion of European and American imperialism.
Alcohol became central to the economics of empire, and to the racial ideologies that legiti-
mized imperialism. The internationalization of anti-alcohol activism and regulation was also
driven by imperialism. However, to suggest that the relationship between alcohol and empire
was solely about the creation of relations of dependency between imperial powers and
colonial subjects is too simplistic (Mills and Barton 2007: 11–12). Alcohol production, trade,
and consumption could also be important sites for resistance to colonialism. Difficulties of
enforcement surrounding alcohol regulations and the unintended consequences of some
policies reveal the significant limits of colonial state-building.
As detailed in the chapters by McMichael, Hames, and Kneale, alcohol was increasingly
used as a trading commodity, a source of taxation revenue, and as a form of currency for
European powers in their colonization of Africa and Asia. This was also the case in North
America, as both the United States and Canada extended their domination over Indigenous
nations. This fueled the expansion and integration of alcohol markets around the world. In
the nineteenth century, for instance, rum production and commerce became truly global.
The Indian Ocean territories of Madagascar, Réunion Island, and Mauritius were exporting
rum to India, Australia, and East Africa by the nineteenth century. Following the abolition of
Introduction 9
slavery in the British and French Caribbean in the first half of the nineteenth century, plan-
tations increasingly shifted focus from sugar to rum production, in the face of rising labor
costs and intense competition in sugar markets. Rum accounted for up to 20 percent of
Jamaica’s exports by the 1880s, while Martinique became the Caribbean’s largest exporter
of rum by the 1890s, both profiting from great reductions in taxes applied to rum imports in
Britain and France respectively (Smith 2005: 195–6, 203–12). Distilled spirits were the single
most important import in many African colonies in the second half of the nineteenth century,
providing lucrative tax revenues to colonial administrations. More than half the revenues of
British colonial governments in West Africa came from taxes on imported alcohol. Workers
in British and German colonies in West and Southern Africa were often paid at least partly
in alcoholic beverages or compelled to purchase alcohol and other goods from employers
to trap them in systems of exploitative labor known as debt peonage (Korieh 2007: 103;
Phillips 2014: 216–20; Nugent 2014: 136; Ambler 2017: 106; Olsson 2018: 47).
Colonialist ideologies generally held that engaging Indigenous peoples in trade, including
the trade in alcohol, was fundamental to the imperial objective of “civilizing” them. As the
chapters by Dan Malleck, Townend, and Toner show, by the end of the nineteenth century,
the trade in alcohol came into increasing tension with the other twin pillars of colonialist
ideologies of “civilization”: Christianity and sobriety. Evangelical beliefs about drunken-
ness being an obstacle to conversion encouraged Protestant missionaries to promote the
temperance cause around the world, and this also became a concern of colonial govern-
ments. Non-white peoples were generally portrayed as needing paternalistic protection,
being less capable of exercising the self-control and restraint that had become cornerstones
of temperance thinking, and were therefore considered more susceptible to drunkenness
and alcoholism.
While Indigenous peoples sometimes drove anti-alcohol measures themselves, this
racial assumption fueled the targeted imposition of more extreme forms of alcohol regu-
lation, including prohibition, on particular demographics within settler colonial and imperial
systems. Different laws prohibiting the sale of distilled spirits to Native Americans and prohib-
iting their patronage of taverns had been applied in various parts of North America since the
eighteenth century. The United States passed a more comprehensive federal law in 1892,
making it illegal to “sell, give away, dispose of, exchange, or barter” any alcoholic drink,
including wine and beer, to any Native American. This was superseded by the national prohi-
bition law from 1920 to 1933, but the 1892 legislation remained in force until 1953 (Phillips
2014: 234). Similar prohibition laws targeting Indigenous peoples were applied in Canada
from 1876 to 1985 and in New South Wales from 1869 until the mid-twentieth century
(Pilcher 2015: 171). England, France, and Germany established specific bodies to lobby for
an end to the alcohol trade in many African colonies on the premise that Africans “lacked
willpower and self-discipline” and therefore needed greater protection from alcohol than
Europeans. As a result, the 1889–90 Brussels Conference, a diplomatic conflagration of all
the major European colonial powers engaged in the “Scramble for Africa,” prohibited the
further extension of the trade and production of distilled spirits beyond where they already
existed in Africa, excluding Southern Africa and French North Africa (Phillips 2014: 218).
New research on colonial India and North Africa reveals the fragility of the racial discourse
upon which restrictive alcohol controls were based, and demonstrates how the drinking
behaviors of Europeans threatened the colonial ideology of racial superiority. In the 1860s,

the Government of India restricted licenses for drinking places in major cities and established
workhouses for the confinement of out-of-work Europeans found drunk. Colonial officials
were especially concerned about Europeans consuming locally produced drinks, purchas-
ing alcohol from Indian traders or in Indian-run premises, and the visibility of Europeans’
drunk and disorderly behavior to Indian observers. They worried that the combination of
the Indian climate, consumption of Indian produce, and liaisons with Indian people caused
European workers to become “very similar to the ‘natives’,” losing the ability to exercise
moderation and self-control and corrupting their racial identity. But they also gravely feared
that the drunkenness of white Europeans, together with alcohol-induced violence, crime,
and poverty, was a very “public demonstration that British rule was not inevitably linked with
‘moral progress’” (Fischer-Tiné 2014: 97, 107).
Similarly, while Spanish and French physicians based in Tangiers pathologized the alco-
hol consumption practices of Moroccans as a means of justifying the need for colonial rule,
they also came to view Tangiers itself as a corrupting, racially unhygienic environment for
European colonists. Colonial authorities believed that Europeans were undergoing a process
of degeneration in this environment. This was due to the intercultural and interracial socia-
bility experienced in Tangiers’ bars, a culture of consumption that liberally mixed imported
and local drinks, and Tangiers’ situation as an international trading hub rife with smug-
gling, crime, and prostitution. In this vein, while physicians deemed the excessive drinking of
Moroccans to be evidence of their racial inferiority and lack of “civilization,” they interpreted
the excessive drinking habits of European colonists as a form of psychosis engendered
by the environment of Tangiers (Martínez 2016). In French Algeria, doctors and colonial
officials attributed to colonized Muslims a voracious thirst for absinthe, which derived from
their predisposition to excess and loss of control in all things, and led to the development
of a condition known as “absinthism,” the hallmarks of which were insanity, criminality,
and ultimately death. French colonists, meanwhile, were more vulnerable to succumbing to
absinthism in the “uncivilized” environment of Algeria. Both groups were exhorted to drink
French wine as a remedy: for the colonizers, this would help to preserve their French civility;
for the colonized, wine should assist in their assimilation to French rule and culture (Salouâ
Studer 2016).
Debates about alcohol and its regulation therefore reveal the tensions in the racialized
ideologies that legitimized imperialism. Moreover, the differential application of regulatory
frameworks for accessing alcohol in colonial societies, based on ideas of racial difference,
often reinforced the social marginalization of Indigenous peoples by denying them the social
resources and opportunities provided by public drinking places. As the chapters by Kneale
and Moss suggest, bars in multiple cross-cultural contexts offered access to friendship,
socialization to new places, employment networks, unionization, and mutual aid schemes,
especially for working-class men. Efforts to strip such features from beerhalls in Southern
Africa, reducing them to purely functional spaces for the purchase of alcohol through disin-
terested management schemes, were partly driven by the desire to heighten control over the
African population. The legal exclusion of Indigenous peoples from public drinking places
in the United States, Canada, and Australia solidified barriers to their social integration and
mobility. For instance, at the turn of the twentieth century, it had been common for men and
women of the Anishinaabe nation of northern Minnesota to frequent saloons for the same
purposes as, and alongside, non-Native homesteaders: namely, for sociability, community,
Introduction 11
networking, and business purposes. From 1906, the Special Office for the Suppression of
Liquor among the Indians—a new body within the US Bureau of Indian Affairs—launched
a crackdown against the sale of alcohol to Native people. This excluded the Anishinaabeg
“from the possibility of … incorporation into the regional drinking culture of Northern
Minnesota, and from the larger socioeconomic functions of the saloon,” including networks
of sociability and business opportunities, that aided the social integration of other demo-
graphic groups in the region (Abbott 1999: 33–8). As Abbott argues, such policies also had
the effect of exacerbating, rather than ameliorating, problem drinking amongst marginalized
populations, by increasing opportunities for illicit trade and diminishing the socially positive
aspects of drinking cultures (1999: 39). In twentieth-century Australia, D’Abbs has similarly
argued that problem drinking was exacerbated by racially differentiated alcohol policies that
excluded Aboriginal peoples from urban spaces and reinforced racial prejudice, thereby
continuing their social marginalization (2012: 373–4).
The unintended consequences of imperial alcohol policy in India and parts of Africa
provide powerful evidence of the limits to colonial state-building and the agency of colo-
nized peoples in resisting it. Changes made by the British to the abkari system for collecting
taxes on the production and sale of alcohol and drugs in India were intended to encourage
European soldiers to consume only European drinks, because locally produced drinks were
deemed dangerous for them. By the 1860s and 1870s, the escalation of abkari taxes had
had little effect on European consumers, but did result in a shift in Indian drinking habits,
away from the traditional fermented drinks “toddy” and “Desi daru” (fermented from palm
tree sap and mahua tree flowers respectively) toward distilled spirits. This shift, together
with the licensing system that made drinking more visible in regulated places of sale, gave
rise to a powerful critique of British imperialism in which nationalist and temperance politics
converged (Gilbert 2007: 117–18; Wald 2018: 402–10). By the 1920s, this convergence
was so well-established that Indian nationalists were able to argue that British rule had
introduced alcohol into India altogether, immorally profiting from the associated taxation. As
revenues from alcohol production and sale had become such a significant income stream
for the colonial state, the campaign of civil disobedience launched by the nationalist move-
ment in 1930 heavily targeted liquor shops, producers, and drinkers (Colvard 2014: 174–7).
Indians involved in the liquor trade and drinkers themselves at times resisted both British
alcohol policies and nationalist anti-alcohol activism. An 1878 abkari law in Bombay that
made it very difficult for small-scale producers to survive in the alcohol trade provoked
widespread protests, including strikes, non-payment of taxes, and non-compliance with
licensing requirements (Saldanha 1995: 2324; Wald 2018: 411). Illegal alcohol production
grew substantially in defiance of nationalist moral suasion in the early 1930s and partial prohi-
bition laws introduced from 1937 in provinces controlled by the Indian National Congress,
and some traders relocated beyond prohibition boundary lines to defend their livelihoods
(Colvard 2014: 177–80, 193–4).
The dynamics between local resistance to colonial alcohol policy and emergent nation-
alist politics worked out differently in British West Africa. As in India, British and African
temperance activists criticized the British empire for profiting from the spread of alcohol to its
African colonies. However, debates about this issue in the early twentieth century show how
the racialization of alcohol policies was intensely contested. Participants in a 1909 inquiry into
the effects of alcohol in Southern Nigeria disputed the legitimacy of discriminatory legislation

for African consumers and rejected the “race argument” that prohibitionist p olicies applied
in other parts of Africa were appropriate for Southern Nigeria (Ambler 2017: 116–18). The
British authorities decided to increase tariffs on imported alcohol in Southern Nigeria in the
1920s in an effort to reduce consumption by making alcohol more expensive, and imple-
mented a phased prohibition on imported spirits in the Gold Coast in the 1930s. Instead,
local production of distilled spirits rapidly expanded; this was already an illicit trade in the
Gold Coast and colonial legislation criminalized it in Southern Nigeria in 1931. The wide-
spread view that these prohibitions reflected the colonial state’s desire to protect its own
revenues, at the expense of ordinary producers’ livelihoods and of the social freedoms of
consumers, led to “a situation in which alcohol could become a site for the defiance of the
colonial regime” (Korieh 2007: 101). Even those whose social or political status meant they
would normally disapprove of alcohol, and especially illegal alcohol trading, would not coop-
erate with colonial officials in identifying and prosecuting the trade. By the 1950s, nationalist
politicians embedded calls for the legalization of locally produced spirits into their cause,
including Kwame Nkrumah who founded the Convention People’s Party in 1949 and in 1957
became the first leader of an independent Ghana, formerly the Gold Coast (Nugent 2014:
141–2; Akyeampong 2017: 162–5, 172).
Discriminatory attitudes and policies regarding alcohol were not exclusive to colonial
and imperial contexts but were also manifest in Latin American nations where the legacy
of colonialism helped to embed similar racial ideologies about Indigenous peoples. In
early twentieth-century Guatemala, political leaders viewed alcoholism as one of several
endemic problems affecting the Indigenous population and that was holding back
national development and modernization.2 Evidence from national police records detailing
arrests for public drunkenness in the 1930s and 1940s suggests that the non-Indige-
nous population drank to excess more often, and in more socially disruptive ways, than
Guatemala’s Indigenous population (Carey Jr 2014: 137). Despite this, racial assump-
tions about the inherent susceptibility of Indigenous people toward problem drinking
meant that “the conflation of Indianness and drunkenness was so complete that the two
words became virtually synonymous with one another in official discourse” (Garrard-
Burnett 2012: 161. See also Garrard-Burnett 2000: 341–56). Such attitudes produced a
similar tension as that faced by European imperial powers in Africa; namely, between the
desire to promote temperate values among Indigenous peoples, making them into more
productive, virtuous, and “civilized” subjects; the belief that Indigenous peoples could
only be induced to work in industries by offering them payment in alcohol; and the state’s
heavy reliance on alcohol for tax and other revenues. In 1899, for instance, alcohol taxes
provided the Guatemalan state with its largest revenue stream. But when restrictions
on the supply and sale of alcohol were imposed, these were targeted on Indigenous
consumers: a 1940 law prohibited alcohol sales on large plantations, where Indigenous
people were the primary laborers (Carey Jr 2012: 122; Carey Jr 2014: 133, 138). Alcohol
history in Guatemala, as in the British imperial context, has important lessons for how
ordinary people engaged with and challenged state power. In particular, the key role of
women, often non-white, in the aguardiente (sugarcane liquor) trade, both legal and ille-
gal, has revealed their hitherto underappreciated contribution to Guatemala’s economic
development, their ability to exercise political agency in criticizing the damaging effects
of particular regulatory systems on their livelihoods, and their resistance to the increasing
Introduction 13
criminalization of informal, unlicensed trading (Carey Jr. 2012; Opie 2012; Reeves 2012;
Schwartzkopf 2012). The same is true for Mexico (Toxqui 2014; Pierce 2014).
War
Anti-alcohol movements that responded to the concerns raised by industrialization and
racially discriminatory policies that restricted Indigenous peoples’ access to alcohol were
both connected to the development and application of new forms of state power that
concentrated on monitoring, controlling, improving, and policing citizens and subjects. This
power was frequently challenged and contested, but the alignment of government, busi-
ness, and medical interests in the management of public health, economic efficiency, and
social order took on heightened urgency in the context of the First World War, which has
been credited with “triggering a global wave of prohibition” (Pilcher 2015: 173). It is impor-
tant to recognize, however, that the extension of prohibition during the First World War was
facilitated by a longer-term development of ideas about the state, as an organism whose
health must be preserved, and the nation, as a body of people with some unifying essence
under threat by corruption of various kinds. Concerns about both converged in the early
twentieth century, and not just because of the First World War. Moreover, despite the widely
publicized failures of national prohibition in the United States, the management of alcohol
in everyday life remained a major concern of states around the world. At the same time,
while wars often presented temporary problems for the alcohol industries, they also helped
to drive technological, business, and commercial innovations that facilitated longer-term
expansions of production and trade. In turn, these contributed to social transformations that
changed attitudes and practices around alcohol particularly in terms of gender and health.
As is explained in the chapters by Malleck, Tracy, Townend, and Toner, accumulating
concerns about the impact of alcohol on social order, economic productivity, the vitality,
health, and morality of the population at large, and the overall strength of the state took on
heightened importance in the context of war. Defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1
gave impetus to the anti-alcohol movement in France, fueling medical and psychiatric
concerns that the rising consumption of industrial alcohols like absinthe had weakened the
population, especially young men, and was leading to national degeneration. Criticism of
Russia’s State Vodka Monopoly increased sharply in the wake of the Russo-Japanese war,
based on the belief that heavy drinking habits had fatally crippled the Russian military. In
Britain, defeat in the Boer War sparked debates about alcohol and national degeneration
too (Phillips 2014: 202).
By the late nineteenth century, degeneration theory became a major part of medical and
psychiatric debates, as well as cultural representations, of alcoholism and alcohol-related
disorders in France, Spain, Germany, Britain, the United States, and Latin America. Articulated
most systematically by the French psychiatrist Benedict Morel (1809–73), degeneration
theory described the hereditary passing on of deviant behaviors, mental illnesses, and phys-
ical maladies from generation to generation. Within this theory, excessive patterns of alcohol
consumption were both a cause and consequence of degeneration. Parents with alcohol
problems were more likely to produce unhealthy, unstable, or perhaps even criminal children,
and those children were also more likely to become alcoholics themselves, thus continu-
ing the cycle of degeneration. Although degeneration theory was increasingly disregarded in

scientific circles by the 1910s, except notably in the field of eugenics, its core language and
ideas about alcohol had penetrated public discourse and remained influential particularly in
times of national crisis (Bynum 1984; Snelders et al. 2008; Edman 2015: 600–1; Kamenov
2017: 134–9). Because degeneration was conceptualized as a cumulative, progressive
process, alcohol abuse was regularly framed as a “public health and social order problem of
enormous proportions that threatened the very fabric of the nation,” drawing on metaphors
of contagion, military conflict, and extinction (Toner 2015b: 161). One of Mexico’s leading
national daily newspapers in 1899, for instance, described alcoholics and their degenerate
offspring as “a shambolic army, a tragic phalanx, an advancing troop that is painfully unfit to
engage in the battle for life” (“Las víctimas del alcohol” 1899). In declaring his support for a
constitutional ban on alcohol in America in 1913, war hero and congressman Richmond P.
Hobson declared “the principles of war are the same whether it is a war between nations or a
war between civilization and its destroying foe, the liquor traffic” (McGirr 2016: 4).
Following this longer-term framing of the alcohol question in the language of degenera-
tion, national strength, and a war for survival, the 1910s saw the introduction of prohibitionist
policies in Russia (1914–25), Iceland (1915–35), Norway (1916–27), Finland (1919–32),
Hungary (1919), and the United States (1920–33). Short-lived and more partial prohibition
laws were also enacted in various parts of Canada, France, Mexico, and Denmark in the late
1910s, while in Britain the government established state control over the alcohol industry
in regions of strategic importance and much stricter licensing regulations across the coun-
try (Edman 2015: 592–600; Pilcher 2015: 173). Many of these measures were explicitly
framed as necessary for victory in the war: emphasizing the need to preserve grain and
other supplies as opposed to wasting them on alcohol production, reducing inefficiencies
in the civilian workforce and improving military discipline on the front, and diverting alcohol
production toward strategic industrial purposes (Phillips 2014: 240–1). Even in countries not
directly involved in the war, such as Norway and Iceland, governments viewed prohibition as
a means of mitigating against food shortages and potential unrest that the war brought to
Europe as a whole (Johansen 2013: 46–7). But it is also clear that the longer-term prohibi-
tion campaigns that had been gathering apace during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries meant that approaches to alcohol regulation were already traveling in a more
stringent direction and the laws went beyond, and indeed outlasted, what was necessary
for wartime austerity. The war itself did not produce a sea-change in the way that alcohol
was understood and regulated. By the early twentieth century, many politicians, medical
professionals, business leaders, and social reformers were already in favor of expanding
“the police power of national governments” to mold a healthy, orderly, and productive citi-
zenry “that guaranteed the state’s security and prosperity” (Courtwright 2017: 315). The
context of war, and the long-term use of military metaphors in the fight against alcohol which
chimed powerfully with patriotic wartime rhetoric, often made the case for prohibition more
persuasive to be sure, but prohibitionism was rooted in the longer-term development of
state power and its convergence with nationalist concerns.
Changes in state regulatory frameworks, the alcohol industry, cultures of consumption,
and medical understandings of problem drinking between the 1920s and 1940s meant that
there was not such a major turn toward prohibition during the Second World War. In France,
there were some echoes of previous fears about alcohol weakening its military power and
causing national degeneration, and the Vichy government introduced a range of restrictions
Introduction 15
on alcohol production and sale during the war. Nazi Germany also undertook major efforts
to restrict alcohol production, preserve grain supplies for food, and limit consumption in the
armed forces. The United States, Canada, and Britain rationed alcohol and increased taxes
to generate more revenue for wartime governments. But in most places, nothing like the
crackdown that occurred during the First World War transpired (Phillips 2014: 296–9). This
is partly attributed to the discrediting of prohibition as an approach to alcohol regulation,
both in policy-making circles and in popular culture, that had occurred during the demise of
national alcohol prohibition in the United States. The widely publicized and often sensation-
alized failures of American prohibition, particularly its relationship to the expansion of violent,
organized crime, were noted vociferously by an organized repeal movement, politicians,
and journalists, mocked by many leading literary figures, and immortalized in an emergent
gangster movie genre, in such films as The Public Enemy (1931), Little Caesar (1931), and
Scarface (1932) (Munby 1999: 39–65; Shadoian 2003: 40–68; Drowne 2005: 3–4; Clark
2009: 127–8).
However, the regulatory landscape following the repeal of national prohibition laws and
other wartime measures reminds us that states did not suddenly relinquish the ability or the
desire to manage their citizens’ access to alcohol. In the United States, most elements of
alcohol regulation were devolved from federal to state or county jurisdiction in the mid-1930s.
Two states continued with total prohibition, and a further five continued to prohibit all alco-
holic beverages except beer. Twelve states legalized only the home consumption of alcoholic
drinks and fifteen adopted state-run monopolies for the sale of alcohol. Across those states
that legalized public drinking in hotels, bars, and other venues, many had strict laws against
Sunday openings; differentiated rules for selling beer, wine, and distilled spirits; and regula-
tions against the involvement of breweries in the management of drinking places (Aaron and
Musto 1981: 173). In addition, changes to the criminal justice system brought in to enforce
prohibition—new powers of surveillance, federal crime agencies, expanded border patrols,
an expanded federal prison system, and national statistical surveys—had lasting legacies.
The federal government remained responsible for investigating illegal production of alcohol
and the federal apparatus constructed to do so became central to America’s “domestic and
global war on drugs” that continues today (McGirr 2016: 211). Norway’s prohibition law was
repealed for many of the same reasons as the American: to tackle economic difficulties, illicit
trade, and organized crime. Prohibition was replaced, however, by a very restrictive regu-
latory framework. The state managed a monopoly on the importation and sale of wine and
spirits with only thirteen state-run stores across the country, imposed high taxes on alco-
hol, applied age limits for sales and strict rules around the serving of alcohol in restaurants
and hotels, and allowed municipal governments to ban alcohol sales in their own localities
(Johansen 2013: 60–1). In Britain, licensing laws governing opening hours remained stricter
than they had been before the First World War until the 1960s, and in some districts much
longer, while the system of state management of the drinks trade in the Carlisle region
remained in place until the 1970s (Yeomans 2014: 115).
In many ways, these regulatory systems made prohibition unnecessary during the
Second World War, as did the changing nature, operation, and strategies of the alcohol
industry. As the chapters by McMichael and Hames explain, these changes had themselves
been shaped by the impact of the First World War and the strict regulations it brought. In
much of Europe, the physical destruction of agriculture in sites of occupation and conflict

hit the wine industries very hard, shortages of grain and manpower led to reduced beer
production, and distilleries were diverted to the production of industrial alcohol in aid of the
war effort. In response to the decline of alcohol production and consumption during the
war years, the interwar period saw major industry consolidation and, in the case of distill-
ing, diversification. By 1936, five companies—all members of the conglomerate Distillers
Company, Ltd—owned 70 percent of the UK’s malt whiskey distilleries, compared to sixty
years previously when they had all been individually owned. Although consolidation began
in the late nineteenth century, this process greatly accelerated in response to the challenges
the industry faced during and following the First World War. At the same time, Distillers
Company, Ltd managed to grow steadily throughout the war and interwar years by diversify-
ing production toward not only beverage alcohol but also fuel, pharmaceuticals, and various
industrial products.
With the alcohol industry dominated by larger, fewer companies by the onset of the
Second World War, they were more able to coordinate efforts to mitigate against any hostile
policy change. In Britain and the United States, distilleries cooperated to divert produc-
tion into industrial alcohol for military supplies. Although beer production contracted during
the war, and damage to facilities in European breweries necessitated major consolidation
post-1945, many breweries mobilized successful marketing strategies during the war itself.
Advertisements portrayed beer as moderate, healthful, and essential to both military and
civilian morale. Some companies actively publicized their contribution to the war effort,
creating a patriotic brand image. Guinness, for instance, donated free beer to military hospi-
tals, shipped beer to soldiers on the front line, and arranged discounts for soldiers on the
home front. American brewers were required to donate 15 percent of their produce to the
armed forces; while this was a temporary financial loss, in the long run it created strong
brand loyalty, rooted in patriotism, that helped the industry. Wartime diversification away
from beverage alcohol by the major US and UK distilleries, meanwhile, stimulated spirits
production elsewhere. The sharp decline in imports of alcohol from Britain and then the
United States to British West Africa in the early 1940s added further fuel to the expansion
of illegal gin production and contributed to the trade’s growing role as a symbol of anti-im-
perial sentiment (Akyeampong 2017: 165, 171–2). Mexico’s tequila industry benefitted from
a huge upswing in exports during the war, growing from 21,621 liters in 1940 to 4.5 million
liters in 1944. While this international demand for tequila was short-lived and fell even more
precipitously after the war than it had risen, the new economies of scale developed to meet
the demands of the export market supported a longer-term expansion of production for the
domestic market (Gaytán 2014: 65).
Wartime conditions and changing regulatory frameworks had broader social ramifica-
tions, as the chapters by Kneale and Moss show. In Britain during the First World War,
women’s growing participation in wage labor, particularly in the munitions industry, and the
high wartime wages earned through this work, meant that women’s drinking in public places
became both more affordable and more socially acceptable. While this was not uncon-
tested, the trend continued through the interwar years, as women who had experienced
greater social liberties because of participation in the wartime economy continued to patron-
ize pubs more frequently. The pub improvement project, influenced by the Central Control
Board’s wartime disinterested management scheme, likewise made pubs into more socially
respectable venues for women and families. The “improved” pubs sought to attract female
Introduction 17
customers by decentering the “bar” as a masculine space and expanding the purpose of
pub-going beyond alcohol consumption itself, providing seating, food, and entertainment.
As Tracy’s chapter suggests, the First World War also contributed to a widespread
de-investment in specialist alcohol treatment facilities and programs, such as inebriate
asylums and social workers. Institutions that treated problem drinking were affected in
all countries participating in the war. Nevertheless, government officials, researchers, and
temperance advocates from a wide range of countries continued to debate how to deal
with the alcohol problem at international conferences during the interwar years in similar
terms that had driven the wartime restrictions: national efficiency, health, and strength. In
some places, the emphasis on alcohol’s negative impact on racial hygiene increased in this
pursuit of national vitality: sterilization programs were implemented to “treat” the spread of
alcoholism, and the range of social ills with which it had been associated since the emer-
gence of degeneration theory, in Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, and parts of
the United States and Canada. Such measures were typically concentrated on the lower
classes (Valverde 2003a: 189–90; Phillips 2014: 292; Edman 2015: 597–609; Sevelsted
2019: 88, 93). At the same time, the growing acceptance of the disease model of alco-
holism by the early 1940s helps to account for the muted response to the drink question
during the Second World War (Yeomans 2014: 130–1). In the United States, for instance,
organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous, the Yale Center for Alcohol Studies, and the
National Committee for Education on Alcoholism, all founded between 1935 and 1945,
helped to spread public awareness of alcoholism as a sickness rather than a moral conta-
gion, through “mass-circulation magazines, radio interviews, and educational campaigns
targeting social workers, clergymen, doctors, and even film producers” (Rotskoff 2002: 66.
See also McIntosh 2003: 32–3). The Alcoholics Anonymous model for treating alcoholism
spread around the world quite quickly, with branches opening in Mexico in 1940, Ireland in
1946, Scotland in 1948, France in 1960, and, in adapted form, in Japan in 1963 (Sournia
1990: 172; Blocker Jr et al. 2003: xlii–xliv; Butler and Jordan 2007: 880). As the chapter
by Toner suggests, literary and cinematic explorations of alcoholism as a psychological
illness, which became more common by the middle of the twentieth century, also spread
public awareness. Some iconic works, including Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises
(1922) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) and Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano (1947),
explored alcoholism in symbolic connection to the horrors of twentieth-century wars—the
First World War, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second World War, respectively—and
masculine responses to these crises of modernity.
Nevertheless, all these changes did not represent a simple transition in understandings
of problem drinking from a predominantly moral issue to a medical one. The elaboration of
models of addiction and the increasing use of alcoholism itself as a physiological and/or
psychological diagnosis in social, cultural, and medical spheres certainly speak to a much
greater pathologization of alcohol use and abuse than had prevailed in the early nineteenth
century. Yet, although members of Alcoholics Anonymous played a significant role in popu-
larizing the “disease model” of alcoholism, the organization itself did not endorse this view.
Key elements of its method for dealing with alcoholism had much in common with the moral
ethos and suasion of the earlier temperance movements: the role of spirituality in seeking
and maintaining sobriety, combining a personal commitment to total abstinence from drink-
ing with the responsibility to spread the message of sobriety, and sharing experiences of

the devastation wrought by alcohol as well as stories of recovery (Kurtz 2002). In this and
other ways, the medicalization of alcohol consumption as a health problem was not linear
or uncontested. Well into the twentieth century, beers and wines were still seen as healthy
and were specifically and effectively marketed as such. Medical professionals continued to
use alcohol extensively in treatments for certain ailments, such as tuberculosis and diabetes,
in the second half of the nineteenth century, and to a lesser extent in the early twentieth
century. It is also clear that class, gender, moral norms, and even racial prejudice shaped
the evolution of medical concepts that sought to explain, categorize, and treat alcohol prob-
lems. This is especially evident from the embedding of degeneration theory and eugenicist
thinking into definitions of, and treatment for, alcoholism.
Conclusions
Between 1850 and 1950, the interrelated social, political, economic, and cultural issues
raised by industrialization, empire, and war led to the intensive re-evaluation of alcohol’s
place in society in many countries around the world. On the one hand, the greater availabil-
ity and affordability of different types of alcohol diversified cultures of consumption, making
alcohol and the places in which it was consumed a key part of leisure pursuits across the
social spectrum. The alcohol industry also became big business, helping to stimulate the
integration of national and international markets, and providing substantial revenues for both
colonial and national states. New branding practices intersected with nationalist ideologies
to make some alcoholic drinks emblematic of various nations’ heritage, tradition, and iden-
tity. Yet this was also a key century in the reframing of alcohol as a, or even the, source of
other problems, and treating alcohol as a problem in and of itself. Powerful anti-alcohol
movements emerged and gathered strength, and intersected with the increased use of state
power to mold a healthy, productive, and obedient citizenry, contributing to the overhaul of
regulatory frameworks, ranging from higher taxation, stricter licensing systems, and govern-
ment monopolies to partial or complete prohibitions. There was also an increase in medical
and psychiatric research, institutes, and conferences devoted to the treatment, identifica-
tion, and stigmatization of certain categories of problem drinkers, often along class or racial
lines. Cultural representations of alcohol use increasingly, though not exclusively, depicted
problem drinkers through the pathologizing lens of alcoholism.
There was, however, no straightforward transition from tradition to modernity in ideas and
practices surrounding alcohol. The drinks industries certainly modernized in many parts of
the world; industrialization contributed to changing patterns and places of alcohol consump-
tion; many states acquired the capacity to regulate, police, and treat drinking behaviors on a
much larger scale; and the powerful anti-alcohol movements that thrived in this period were
in large part driven by concerns about how the conditions of modernity brought disruption
to the social fabric. But what we might call ritual and community drinking patterns—at secu-
lar and religious festivals, rites of passage like funerals and weddings, family celebrations,
election parties—continued to mark drinking behaviors in industrializing societies like Britain,
where urban, leisure-based drinking was on the rise, as well as in less industrialized socie-
ties in Russia and East Africa. Religious views about the immorality of drinking first became
more influential, before they were joined by secular ideologies and medical interpretations
about the problems of drinking. Some initiatives, like the pub improvement project in Britain,
Introduction 19
aimed to show that modernizing drinking practices could be more socially beneficial than
preserving “traditional” drinking habits. Others, like the attacks on absinthe in continental
Europe, emphasized the dangers of “modern” drinks. Latin American physicians and poli-
ticians widely understood alcoholism as a disease of the poor that had been at least partly
produced by industrial modernity. Nationalists in India invented a tradition of non-drinking to
strengthen their critique of British imperialism.
Finally, alcohol was fundamentally embedded in both top-down and bottom-up
state-building processes. This becomes clear by combining analysis of how alcohol has
been politicized, debated, and regulated through official institutions and policies, with
investigation of the real people, who worked in the alcohol industries, consumed alcohol,
socialized in drinking places, campaigned for change, and worked within and against these
structures more broadly. Moreover, the global framework of this introduction demonstrates
that the relationship between alcohol and state-building goes beyond the widely acknowl-
edged tension between the state’s desire to restrict the alcohol trade to foster social order,
worker productivity, and public health, and the desire to retain valuable state revenues gath-
ered from multiple levels in the alcohol commodity chain. Anti-alcohol movements brought
together, in cooperation and conflict, extremely diverse sets of actors in trying to manage
urbanization, modernization, political upheaval, and class, ethnic, and religious divisions, in
multiple national and colonial settings. Governments, business interests, the medical profes-
sion, religious institutions, and civil society aligned in different combinations around the
world to manage access to alcohol, and through that, the private lives, bodies, and social
behavior of individuals. Ordinary men and women engaged in alcohol production, sale, and
consumption variously challenged the legitimacy of laws or moral norms that threatened
their livelihoods and lifestyles, while others participated in their construction. This volume
therefore argues that the age of industry, empire, and war transformed the place of alcohol
in many societies; more importantly, in all these ways, alcohol also made the modern world.

Illustrations
Figures
Chapter 1
1.1 Brewing, Louis Pasteur 25
1.2 Malthouse superintendent checking temperature at Pabst brewery, c. 1944 30
1.3 George Ehret’s Hell Gate Brewery 31
1.4 Brewery Joseph Schlitz, 1900 33
1.5 Submersion of vineyards to fight against the phylloxera, France, 1939 34
1.6 Whisky in Scotland, c. 1940 39
Chapter 2
2.1 Outside a public house, London, c. 1903 49
2.2 Drinkers in the public bar of an English public house, 1938 51
2.3 “Saint Monday in the Prater wine tavern,” 1818 54
2.4 Exterior of the Horseshoe & Wheatsheaf public house, Southwark, London, 1898 57
2.5 “Les débits de boissons au Champ-de-Mars,” Paris, 1879 58
2.6 “Mexico: Scenes before a Pulquería in the City of Mexico” 60
Chapter 3
3.1 Inside the French café “L’Assommoir,” c. 1900 67
3.2 The prohibition of absinthe in Switzerland 69
3.3 Neal Dow, the Mayor of Portland, Maine, c. 1851 71
3.4 The Redfern Inn, Etterbury, Carlisle 76
3.5 Wayne Bidwell Wheeler, Anti-Saloon League, 1883 79
3.6 Customers at the counter in a liquor store in Moscow, Russia, c. 1950 82

Chapter 4
4.1 Anheuser Busch brewery, St Louis, Missouri 89
4.2 Royal Blend whisky advertisement 92
4.3 Scotch whisky “White Label” John Dewar advertisement 93
4.4 Duminy & Co. champagne advertisement 95
4.5 Canning process at the Acton factory, 1937 101
4.6 Schlitz beer advertisement, 1904 103
Chapter 5
5.1 Gilbert and Parsons “Hygienic Whiskey for Medicinal Use,” advertisement, 1860 112
5.2 Absinthe versus alcohol, c. 1900 115
5.3 Vin Mariani: “The original French Coca Wine,” advertisement, 1893 118
5.4 The New York State Inebriate Asylum, Binghamton 123
5.5 Man speaking at Alcoholics Anonymous. c. 1950 124
5.6 “The Keeley Cure: For liquor and drug use,” advertisement, 1907 129
Chapter 6
6.1 Cowboys drink and play card games in a saloon, c. 1890 137
6.2 Gambling Den, c. 1875 139
6.3 Temperance movement: “Ohio whiskey war,” 1874 141
6.4 Patrons of The Crown public house, London, 1947 145
6.5 Men and women drinking and dining in the cocktail lounge, 1944 147
6.6 Pacific Street, San Francisco, California, c. 1930s 149
Chapter 7
7.1 Total Abstinence Society pledge card, 1845 158
7.2 Plate II of George Cruikshank’s “The Bottle,” 1847 161
7.3 Plate VI of George Cruikshank’s “The Bottle,” 1847 162
7.4 “L’absinthe allegory,” 1883 164
7.5 Beat the enemy of the cultural revolution poster, 1930 169
Illustrations vii
Chapter 8
8.1 Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, 1941 180
8.2 L’Assommoir theatrical poster, 1877 182
8.3 Errol Flynn, Ava Gardner, José Ferrer, Tyrone Power, and Eddie Albert
acting in The Sun Also Rises, 1957 185
8.4 “The Absinthe Drinker,” by Edgar Degas, 1876 190
8.5 “The Night Café at Arles,” by Vincent Van Gogh, 1888 191
Table
Chapter 2
2.1 Alcohol consumption, liters of absolute alcohol per capita,
1844–5 to 1954 46
viii Illustrations
1 PRODUCTION
ANDREW MCMICHAEL
Introduction
The production of alcohol underwent a fundamental, if not revolutionary, series of changes
in the period from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Technological and scien-
tific advances in a variety of fields spurred greater efficiency in alcohol production, storage,
and distribution. In Europe, Louis Pasteur’s experiments with yeast and what would come
to be known as Pasteurization ushered in an era of experimentation, precision, and a more
scientific focus on production. Prior to 1900, production in the Caribbean underwent a
shift as labor patterns changed and less sugar was available for rum. Meanwhile, industry
consolidation, factory-level brewing, and railroads changed the face of the industry in the
United States. In Europe, likewise, railroads greatly influenced wine production, but the intro-
duction of a new, devastating disease fundamentally altered wine production and culture
across the continent. As the twentieth century dawned, various African countries under
colonial European rule faced many of the same changes seen in the United States and
Europe a century earlier. Finally, two global wars profoundly affected alcohol production,
stimulating demand in some cases but devastating productive capacities in others.
Technological Changes
The period from 1850 to 1950 witnessed far-reaching technological changes in the alcohol
industry. Some were largely packaging and distribution methods that affected the pace
and methods of production. These changes included the introduction of mechanized
bottle-blowing, mechanical bottle-washers, the development of the cork-lined metal crown
(and the attendant capping machines), and advances in metal-fabricating technology that
made possible stable aluminum cans and metal kegs (Baron 1962; Stack 2000: 435–63;
Beatty 2009: 317–48). Several major technologies had immediate, far-reaching, direct
influences on production.
First, the invention and then widespread use of steam power in milling fundamentally
altered the ability of brewers and distillers to churn out ever-larger quantities of their prod-
ucts. Maltsters in major European cities introduced steam power in the eighteenth century,
and by the mid-nineteenth century this trend had begun to spread to smaller cities around
England, Europe, and the United States. As early as 1865, post-war New Orleans boasted
a brewery in which steam powered a grist mill, heated kettles, pumped mash and wort, and
moved the liquid to cooling vessels (Baron 1962: 229). Over the course of the nineteenth
century, the use of steam-powered mills in small towns around Europe and the Americas
had greatly increased the output of breweries and distilleries, fostering industry consolida-
tion (Hornsey 2003: 439–40). The combined effects of technology and science were seen
in England and Wales, between 1850 and 1880, where an increase of just under 9 percent
in the number of breweries, from 2,305 to 2,507, nonetheless translated into a leap of more
than 105 percent in output, from an average of 4,062 barrels each to an average of 8,362
barrels (Hornsey 2003: 476). Distillers, most utilizing steam power and the new column stills,
also increased Scottish whiskey output by almost 125 percent in the latter half of the nine-
teenth century, from just over 19 million proof-gallons to more than 43 million proof-gallons.
Of greater importance to alcohol production was the introduction of mechanical refrig-
eration by means of compression. For centuries, alcohol production followed the cooler
seasons, and in some climates stopped altogether in the hot summers. When and where
possible the preservation of locally harvested ice might extend production into the warmer
months or even year-round (Baron 1962: 231–4). The amount of ice necessary to allow
brewing in warmer months in the United States could be staggering. Pabst and Schandein,
in the relatively mild climate of Milwaukee, used around 15,000 tons of ice each year, while
Baron estimates that the Phillip Best Brewing Company used around 60,000 tons in 1880
(Baron 1962: 234; Ogle 2006: 58). When the Pabst and Schandein families expanded their
Midwest brewing operations into Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871, their warehouse held
600 tons of ice dedicated to the storage of beer (Ogle 2006: 59). Indeed, while ready access
to clear water is critical to the success of a brewery, “any town which had its own ice was
considered to have an immediate advantage” (Baron 1962: 234).
Artificial refrigeration freed alcohol production from nature’s rhythms and revolutionized
the production of alcohol. While some forms of artificial refrigeration had been available since
the mid-eighteenth century, refrigerators that utilized the more efficient compression technol-
ogy first saw practical development and manufacture in Australia in the mid-1800s (Hornsey
2003: 465. See also Hård 1994). Refrigeration gave brewers, distillers, and vintners a better
ability to store ingredients, and especially yeast, for longer periods and to ship their products
over ever-greater distances. More importantly, ever-larger brewing vessels could be joined
to ever-smaller refrigeration units, allowing for quicker chilling of boiled wort, thus reducing
the chances for infection. As refrigeration technology improved, American brewers—many
of whom specialized in German-style light lagers dependent on cool fermentation tempera-
tures—became the leading purchasers of the technology (Rees 2005: 551. See also Appel
1990: 21–38). One of the earliest breweries to use artificial refrigeration seems to have been
the S. Liebmann’s Sons Brewing Company in Brooklyn, New York, in 1870. By 1876, argues
Baron, the introduction and early adoption of artificial refrigeration by brewers meant that
“the modern brewery was virtually a reality” (1962: 235–6).
At the same time, new techniques in spirits production began to emerge. Prior to 1850,
the vast majority of spirits around the world were produced using pot stills, in a process
sometimes called batch-distilling. In this process the fermented mash, called wash in
whiskey-making, or wine in brandy-making, is placed into a large pot, to which heat is
applied. During the heating process, the liquid evaporates and rises into an arm. There it
condenses—either on its own or with the help of a cooling chamber—and then runs out
of the arm into a container. At the end of this process, the distiller refills the pot and begins
a new batch. The development of the column still (also known as a patent still), and in
particular the modifications developed by Aeneas Coffey, allowed distillers to produce larger

batches of whiskey in continuous cycles, leading to ever-increasing quantities of product as
the size of column stills grew (Stewart et al. 2003: 2). The Coffey still also had the advantage
of being heated by steam, which applied a more even heat to the liquid, allowing for greater
control over the final product.
The column still, with its greater technological sophistication, required correspondingly
greater capital outlay. Nonetheless producers of brandy and rum in England, Europe,
and then the Americas adopted the technology beginning in the mid-nineteenth century
(Weir 1984: 50). The greater costs of a patent still meant that smaller producers in the
UK, including home distillers, continued to utilize the older, smaller pot stills. Large-scale
patent-still distillers quickly outpaced the supply of local grain production, forcing them to
rely on ever-increasing imports of grain from around the world. In particular the proportion of
foreign grain used in the production of Scottish whiskey grew steadily in the latter half of the
nineteenth century. A series of protectionist measures on the part of the British government
led to a steady decline in production between 1920 and 1930, and when pot-still distillers
engaged in a self-imposed reduction, the production of whiskey fell almost 97 percent in
three years (Weir 1984: 56, 59).
In the Caribbean, the opposite trend dominated, with distillers in most of the islands prefer-
ring to stick with a tried-and-true technology. This could have been due to the conservative
nature of Caribbean distillers finding themselves in the midst of a decline in production and
not willing to gamble on a new technology. Alternatively, perhaps the expense of importing
new, expensive stills did not offset the savings in fuel costs, or Caribbean distillers might have
believed that the pot-still produced a better-tasting liquor. Whatever the case, the pot-still
remained the still of choice for rum producers until the mid-twentieth century, with some
continuing to use them at the beginning of the twenty-first century (Smith 2005: 198–9).
No discussion of technology in the production of alcohol can neglect to at least mention
the role of railroads in production and distribution. While there exist only a few direct stud-
ies of the impact of the spread of railroads on alcohol production, studies of railroads
and economic systems acknowledge the impact of this technology. In some areas, the
effect was to revitalize regional local alcohol production, as with the wine industry in Cuyo,
Argentina, in the mid-nineteenth century. As transportation costs decreased, local wineries
expanded their distribution to become more regionally and nationally competitive with their
increasingly expensive European counterparts, although questions about the quality of the
wines certainly highlighted the extent to which a single technology could spur an increase in
production (Goodwin, Jr. 1977: 616, 622, 631). In the United States, a brewery or distillery
could only transform itself from a small, regional to a national producer with the help of rail-
roads (Baron 1962: 257).
Scientific Advances
The effect of scientific advances on the industrialization of alcohol production cannot be
overstated. By the late seventeenth century, Antonj van Leeuwenhoek had discovered
the existence of microorganisms. Building on that work, in 1762 Michael Combrune first
published The Theory and Practice of Brewing, which described the process of fermentation
as the “motion of particles … gradually removed from their former situation, and after some
visible separation, joined together in a different order and arrangement so as to constitute
Production 23
a new compound” ([1762] 1804: 6). While all brewers and distillers understood the neces-
sity of yeast as part of the process, arguments over the exact nature of yeast and its role
in the process of fermentation continued to puzzle scientists in the century before 1850.
Combrune himself distinguished between “natural fermentation,” which “rises spontane-
ously,” and “artificial fermentation,” which requires adjuncts to initiate the process (1804:
80). Most vexing for scientists was the question of whether yeast was a living organism or a
chemical compound of some kind.
By the mid-nineteenth century, scientists understood yeast to be a living organism. Louis
Pasteur, building on the work of other scientists, while at the same time forging a new path
into brewing science, discovered that fermentation was a chemical process dependent on
a microscopic form of life (Hornsey 2003: 415). As E. M. Sigsworth notes, Pasteur initially
hoped to liberate brewing from seasonal temperature restrictions and help prolong storage
(1965: 536). The changes he brought to alcohol production—as well as to the food industry
and science in general—were so far-reaching that even by the end of the nineteenth century
scientists sometimes referred to the period before the publication of Études sur la Biére as
“the dark ages of the brewing industry” (Sigsworth 1965: 537). Sigsworth, speaking to the
immediate effect on the process of making alcohol, argues that “no comparable revolution
in practice occurred” at any other time in history (1965: 541).
Some argument could be made that Pasteur’s discoveries had relatively little immediate
effect on alcohol producers. Pasteur’s work in understanding microorganisms certainly led
to a greater understanding of the need for sanitization, but in fact this advice had been
around for centuries. It had also shown that lower fermentation temperatures helped control
microorganisms. But lower temperatures also changed the ultimate flavors of the product,
something which consumers were not likely to accept, and that was not easily achieved
until the widespread use of refrigeration. Still, the potential for a revolutionary application
of Pasteur’s work was not lost on brewers, who helped fund Pasteur’s research, and who,
along with vintners, distillers, and cheesemakers, were among the earliest to put his work
to practical application (Geison 1995: 41). While the “scientification” of alcohol production
spread from Europe to England to North America and around the world, the main effect of
Pasteur’s discoveries on alcohol production came in the form of a deeper understanding of
process and practices, as well as the professionalization of brewing and distilling. Brewers
and distillers opened institutes and schools that focused on training professionals in the
science and process of alcohol production. These included the Siebel Institute in 1872 in
Chicago, the Research and Teaching Institute for Brewing in 1883 in Berlin, the forerunner
of the Institute of Brewing and Distilling in 1886 in London, and the incorporation of the
Weihenstephan Brewery as the Royal Bavarian Academy for Agriculture and Beer Brewing
in 1893.
Even with the disclaimer, Sigsworth identifies four main effects that scientific advances
had on the production of alcohol. The first came from a better understanding of the malt-
ing process and the conversion of malt to sugar, which gave more precise control over
efficiency and alcohol percentage. Second, the work of the Guinness Company on the
nitrogen content of barley allowed brewers and distillers to more accurately select types of
barley. Third, scientists better understood the relationship between pH values in water and
the quality of the product. Finally, though not directly related to production, fertilization and
pest control increased yields, lowering prices of raw materials (Sigsworth 1965: 549–50).

Figure 1.1 Brewing, Louis Pasteur (1822–95). French chemist and pioneer microbiologist used
this apparatus for cooling and fermenting during his work on beer. From Louis Figuier’s “Les
Merveilles de la Industrie,” published in Paris c. 1870. Image by Hulton Archive/Stringer via Getty
Images.
Of perhaps more importance was the ability to better understand the underlying causes of
spoiled fermentation, which, if the case of the Whitbread brewery in London is typical, could
account for around 20 percent of production (Sigsworth 1965: 538). Overall, Sigsworth did
not see a great deal of change in England or Europe.
Production 25
According to Martin Stack, however, American alcohol producers were quicker to adopt
Pasteur’s methods, with late nineteenth-century American brewers leading the way (Stack
2000: 440). This quick adaptation in some ways reflected a broader trend in nineteenth-
century industrialization—the United States, slower to begin industrialization than the UK,
was better positioned to adapt and install new technologies. Alcohol production was no
different in this regard.
By the end of the nineteenth century, alcohol production in Europe and the Americas had
entered the age of science and technology on the back of industrializing economies. Steam
engines and refrigeration resulted in more efficient and cleaner processing, while railroads
increased the scale of the distribution system. Brewers, distillers, and vintners began to
employ scientists and establish facilities to help them better understand their products and
production process, while laboratories such as those at Carlsberg developed into centers
for the understanding of yeast and its role in fermentation, as well as for the development of
new strains of yeast. While alcohol production at the end of the nineteenth century remained
an art, Baron’s assertion was also true, in some sense, that the brewer and distiller, who “at
one time had been little more than a superior cook, had been transformed into a mechanic
and an engineer” as well as a “chemist and a biologist” (1962: 237).
Industry Trends in the Americas, Europe, and the UK

While no general survey of the alcohol industry in the Americas as a whole exists, studies
of brewing, viticulture, and spirits production speak to the role of both voluntary and invol-
untary migration to the Americas. In the French and British Caribbean in the mid-eighteenth
century, rum production continued to dominate the economic landscape. While various
Western countries emancipated their slaves at different points in the nineteenth century,
most quickly implemented restrictive vagrancy laws that in the Caribbean forced freedpeople
back into the sugar mills and rum distilleries (Smith 2005: 168). French rum production,
spurred by Napoleon I’s decision to allow imports to France from the French Caribbean as
well as a more friendly American market, skyrocketed. French Martinique saw exports rise
from just more than a quarter million gallons in 1850 to almost 4 million gallons by century’s
end (Smith 2005: 212).
In the Spanish Caribbean, where rum manufacture was illegal, fermented cane sugar in
the form of aguardiente continued the popularity it had enjoyed for several centuries. Cuban
rum production fluctuated in the last half of the nineteenth century, with exports ending up
where they began, at around five hundred thousand gallons (Smith 2005: 216). Frederick
Smith argues that the lack of rum production was due in large part to “the slow transition to
free labor,” as well as the technological sophistication of the Cuban sugar industry (2005:
217–18). On the one hand, advanced sugar-extraction technology left smaller amounts of
the by-products that might profitably be distilled into alcohol. On the other hand, emanci-
pation came slowly to Cuba, spanning the several decades in the last half of the century at
which point Chinese immigrants supplemented the free labor population. Most of this labor
went into the ever-expanding sugar industry (Scott 2000).
The transition to free labor in sugar cane and rum production served as a daunting chal-
lenge for former slaves as well as rum distillers in the latter half of the nineteenth century, a
problem made worse for British distillers by decline of British sugar production that began

mid-century. Soil exhaustion and increased labor costs made Caribbean rum more expen-
sive to produce, while increased competition with beet sugar importers led to lower overall
sugar prices. Protected markets in Continental Europe decreased profitability for distillers
in the Caribbean and in England, while increased competition resulting from the spread of
rum production to other sugar-producing areas of the world further lowered prices (Smith
2005: 194–5). An increased effort to promote temperance among African laborers on the
part of European and American missionaries also reduced the amount of alcohol consumed
in the islands. As a result of these and other factors, British rum production declined around
the Caribbean and in England. While the decline was not uniform, the overall trend was
clear. Jamaica serves as an instructive example, where exports of rum declined from around
4.5 million gallons in 1800 to a bit more than 1.5 million gallons in 1900 (Smith 2005: 204).
While the number of distilleries in the United States decreased after 1850, production
increased as small producers slowly gave way to more efficient larger operations (Rorabaugh
1981: 87). Those spirits found a ready market among working-class communities, including
immigrants—who by 1910 comprised 14 percent of the US population and who brought
their own drinking traditions to the United States (Pegram 1998: 88; US Census Bureau
1999. See also Martin 2010). Under the twin pressures of progressive reform and immigrant
drinking patterns, American alcohol production underwent a slow change between 1850
and 1915.
Production of wine, spirits, and beer all increased in the years before the end of the
First World War, mirroring the increasing population as well as greater industrialization. As
Richard Mendelson notes in his legal history of wine in America, small-scale wine production
occurred in ten different states, with New York, Ohio, and California (with its Spanish-
Catholic heritage of wine consumption) leading the way (2009: 25). In 1880, the United
States reached peak annual per capita consumption of wine for the nineteenth century, at
one gallon, with California producing about 75 percent of all the wine in the United States.
In the first decade and a half of the twentieth century, a bit less than half of the wine output
focused on fortified wines, with California again leading overall production (Mendelson 2009:
41, 46).
The early history of Kentucky bourbon has been examined by historians in some detail,
but studies after 1850 tend to be older, somewhat romanticized, and focus more on local
issues and social history (Veach 2013 is an exception to this). The general trends in bourbon
distilling between 1850 and the First World War mirrored Europe and the UK technologically,
with bourbon producers introducing column stills late in the century, and adopting steam
power, refrigeration, and pasteurization as the century closed. As in other alcohol-related
industries in the United States, and like other elites in the South, families who manufactured
bourbon tended to intermarry, creating dense interconnected family networks (Carson 2010:
84. See also Crowgey 2008). As with other distilled beverages, the late nineteenth-century
bourbon industry saw a drastic increase in taxation and regulation after 1850, to the point
that “distilling soon became the most regulated industry in the United States,” and with
taxes generated by distilling “the largest source of income for the federal government” prior
to the First World War (Veach 2013: 63). Whiskey distillers found increasing competition after
1860 with “rectifiers” who took cheap barrels of whiskey, often imported, and mixed them
with other whiskeys or flavoring agents. The resultant product might be sold as something
entirely new—perhaps akin to fortified wine—or it could be a fake copy passed off as an
Production 27
authentic brand (High and Coppin 1988: 290–1; Crowgey 2008: 133; Veach 2013: 45). The
battle between the two groups—producers who made whiskey and sold it to retailers, and
merchants who blended whiskey—in the legislative arena saw whiskey producers trying to
protect their brand and rectifiers trying to protect their right to sell spirits.
The Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897 was an early attempt to set a standard definition of
distilled spirits, and to guarantee quality. A specific reaction to rectifiers, the Act meant
that manufacturers could print the “Bottled in Bond” status on a bottle if the contents were
distilled in a single season, by a single distiller at a single distillery. Rectifiers could continue
to “manufacture” their product, but there would be no government guarantee of authenticity
(Hucklebridge 2014: 143). Even without that guarantee of quality, producers of blended
whiskies controlled almost “90 percent of the market” (High and Coppin 1988: 291). The
Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 attempted to further clarify what manufacturers could call
their spirits by creating the category of “straight whiskey” that contained no adulterants.
The resultant lawsuits pitted American distillers (and ironically enough some temperance
advocates, who viewed pure whiskey as less problematic than adulterated spirits) against
rectifiers and distillers in Canada and the UK who worried that the law would force them to
re-label their products. In 1909, the courts delineated between straight and blended whis-
key, depending on the adulterants, and defined bourbon and rye by their ingredients (Veach
2013: 70–6).
While distilled spirits manufacturers highlight some of the definitional issues for alcohol
production in the period between 1850 and 1950, beer serves as an instructive lens through
which to examine the differentiated growth in alcohol production in the United States prior
to the end of the First World War. As Martin Stack argues, the American Civil War of 1861
to 1865 is a logical dividing point in understanding the transformation of the brewing indus-
try in the United States. Beer production in the United States rose from 1.7 million to 3.7
million barrels in the last two years of the war, probably due to wartime demand. St. Louis,
Milwaukee, and Chicago supplied a great deal of beer to the western states while dozens or
even hundreds of local breweries produced beer for neighborhoods and extended localities.
But several factors prevented them from establishing themselves in the national beer market
before the 1880s (Stack 2000: 437).
First, in Chicago the Great Fire of 1871 caused more than $2 million in damages spread
across at least nineteen breweries (Skilnik 2006: 24). This virtually wiped out the brew-
ing industry in that city. Eager brewers in St. Louis and especially Milwaukee stepped up
production and distribution to, and then built new facilities in, Chicago in order to fill the gap
(Ogle 2006: 58). While the Chicago fire was an important factor in shifting production from
a major metropolitan center to a developing town, the greatest hindrance to the expansion
of American alcohol production in the nineteenth century was the lack of an efficient system
of distribution in the American west, which before the 1880s prevented western manufac-
turers from dominating anything more than their local markets. While massive populations
in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia provided a ready, local market for all forms of locally
produced alcohol, access to outside markets proved difficult. As the railroad networks in
the United States slowly improved before 1900, and as immigrants poured into the country,
brewery output expanded greatly and as with distillers, local production gave way to factory
output. Where more than 2,200 brewers produced 3.7 million barrels of beer in 1865, by
1895 the number of brewers had dropped to 1,771, but output had grown to more than

33 million barrels (Stack 2000: 437). Efficient rail networks for beer also meant efficient
networks for ancillary industries, as, for example, the Willamette Valley became “one of the
world’s leading hop exporters” due to excellent local soil and an efficient distribution rail and
shipping network (Kopp 2011: 406).
Martin Stack provides a logical four-square framework for understanding the changing
nature of beer production in the United States prior to the First World War by dividing brew-
eries along the lines of what he terms “large-scale shippers,” “large-scale local breweries,”
“medium-sized shippers,” and “small-to-medium-sized local breweries” (Stack 2000: 439).
This division seems to allow for more nuance in understanding production and distribu-
tion within their own context. Stack argues that Pabst serves as a useful example of the
way in which a local brewery rode the wave of late pre-First World War technology and
industrialization to become a “large-scale shipper” and for a time the largest brewery in the
United States. The second largest American brewery at 121,000 barrels in 1877, Pabst
was nonetheless a local distributor, serving Milwaukee, Chicago, Kansas City, and a few
other Midwestern cities. In the early 1880s, Pabst started to manufacture its own ice, and in
the 1870s and 1880s the company introduced mechanical bottle-washing and automated
bottling systems, as well as a metal crown cap for the bottles. Decreased railroad trans-
portation costs, along with the invention of refrigerated railroad cars, further extended the
reach of Pabst beers (Stack 2000: 440–2). The construction of local beer depots allowed
Pabst to store its beer prior to distribution, and the advent of the “tied house” system gave
the company a ready outlet for its products (Duis 1999: 24–6). By the end of the 1880s,
Pabst produced more than 800,000 barrels annually, and the company’s profits rose from
between $17,000 and $200,000 in the 1870s to more than $1.5 million by the early 1890s
(Stack 2000: 440–2).
The distinction between large-scale and “medium-sized shippers,” according to Stack,
is largely one of the scales of production and reach of distribution, with some distributing
nationally, while others such as Hamm’s, Heileman, and Stroh’s produced larger quantities
of beer but distributed regionally (Stack 2000: 444). These breweries generally adopted the
same technologies as the larger brewers, and used those advantages to dominate regional
markets and compete with local brewers.
The Ehret Brewery in New York City represents Stack’s third category—the “large-local”
breweries who increased production but focused on local distribution. The largest brewery in
the United States in 1877 at 138,000 barrels, it consistently upgraded its production facilities
while selling beer to New York City’s ever-increasing population. As a local producer, Ehret
had no need for pasteurization, far-flung rail networks, or many of the scientific advances
adopted by the large-scale shippers. However, artificial refrigeration allowed Ehret to free
itself from expensive and unreliable ice to increase production. The other important factor
for large-local brewers such as Ehret was to maintain a firmly established network of saloons
through which it could distribute beer, and to continue to provide beer in less expensive
kegs. In 1892 Ehret, despite (or perhaps because of) its local distribution, produced more
than 400,000 barrels, and by 1892 was the fourth largest brewery in the country at 550,000
barrels (Baron 1962: 258; Stack 2000: 443).
Finally, breweries in Stack’s “small- to medium-sized local” category included most brew-
eries in the last half of the nineteenth century. Producing around 1,800 barrels of beer in the
1880s and distributing in its home town of Chippewa Falls, Leinekugel focused its energy
Production 29
Figure 1.2 Malthouse superintendent checking temperature at Pabst brewery, c. 1944.
Photograph by Ed Clark/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images.
on high-quality beer and brand loyalty, doing so in a town in which it was the only brewer.
Similar breweries operated in large cities around the United States where ready markets in
neighborhood saloons allowed brewers to compete alongside breweries that fell into the
other three categories. These breweries “generally sold their beer on tap in saloons,” many
of which were formally or informally tied to the breweries (Stack 2000: 443).

Figure 1.3 George Ehret’s Hell Gate Brewery, undated. Established 1866. Lithograph by
Trautmann, Bailey & Blampey, N.Y. Image by The New York Historical Society via Getty Images.
Breweries continued to expand production after the turn of the century becoming, as
Stack notes, “one of the largest manufacturing sectors in the country” (2000: 448). While
the number of US breweries continued to decline in the period from the turn of the century
to the onset of national prohibition in 1920, annual beer production rose to 66 million barrels
by the start of the First World War. Annual per capita consumption increased from fifteen
Production 31
gallons in 1895 to twenty-one gallons in 1913 (Stack 2000: 448). Most of the increase in
twentieth-century beer production in the United States before national prohibition happened
in breweries producing between 15,000 and 170,000 barrels per year, with most of the rest
occurring in breweries that made more than 170,000 barrels per year (Stack 2000: 456).
Much of that increase in production and consumption, however, occurred in the context of
a lack of real growth among larger breweries. While Hiatt, Sine, and Tolbert see a direct link
between increased temperance activity, particularly on the part of the Woman’s Christian
Temperance Union, and the failure of breweries, Stack sees a more nuanced link between
the twin forces of competitive local breweries as well as temperance and prohibition activists
(See Hiatt et al. 2009: 635–67).
As with brewing in the United States, winemaking underwent profound transformations
driven by science and technology, albeit with significant differences. Like beer in the United
States, locally produced wine rarely traveled far from its point of origin, and indeed the hall-
mark of viticulture is that growth of the base ingredient—in this case grapes—generally
occurred on or very near to the same site where the alcohol was fermented. Likewise,
low-quality wine, low rates of land ownership, poor transportation, and high taxation in
France, Italy, and Spain—the largest producers of wine in the world—meant that in the
nineteenth century most wineries sold their product within a few tens of miles of their vats
(Simpson 2011: 21). Small family estates, worked by family members rather than contract
laborers, took few risks and had little incentive to boost the quality of their products, while
effective local political organization allowed wineries to protect their status quo. Where import
restrictions in Great Britain favored Spanish and Italian wines over French, English wine
consumption remained relatively flat in the half-century before 1914, even as the consump-
tion of beer and spirits rose by more than 50 percent (although per capita consumption of
spirits declined) (Briggs 1985: 71).
As in the United States, the introduction of the railways changed the economic metrics of
production in France. In the late 1850s, “French railways annually transported three million
tons of wine and spirits” (Simpson 2011: 31). By the eve of the First World War, that number
reached almost 9 million tons. Aside from lowering shipping costs, the expansion of the
railways opened up new wine regions to production and prompted greater competition
among European wineries as table wines from around Europe became more readily avail-
able. Indeed, exports from Spain show a steady growth over the last half of the nineteenth
century before leveling off and then dropping slightly from 1900 to 1910, and then rising
again before 1915 (Simpson 2011: 42). As another example, the construction of railroads in
the Duoro region of Portugal expanded the prosperity of an area already famed for its forti-
fied port wine (Macedo 2011: 159). Europe and the United States provide useful contrasts
in railroad development, government support, and the alcohol industry. In general, railroad
construction in European countries was a state-sponsored affair that in some cases was
meant to specifically benefit national identity and regional wine-producing—as in the cases
of Bordeaux and Duoro. In the United States, railroads received government support in the
form of land grants but were otherwise engaged in competition with each other as private
entities. Indeed some breweries, such as Anheuser-Busch and Schlitz, established their
own rail lines (Baron 1962: 259–62). In all areas increased track mileage lifted the alcohol
industry along with other sectors of the economy.

Figure 1.4 Brewery Joseph Schlitz, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1900. Image by ullstein bild via
Getty Images.
The expansion of rail-based distribution represented a double-edged sword in the

production of wine as greater exposure to other regions brought increased risks. An

outbreak of powdery mildew on the grape vines in France was initially treated by introduc-
ing hybrid, disease-resistant American vines. In the 1840s, those American vines brought
a devastating vine disease—phylloxera, which obliterated tens if not hundreds of millions
of hectoliters of French production in the 1860s and 1870s before moving to Spain in the
1880s and Portugal soon after. The disease spread to Italy in the 1870s but never took
hold there in the way it did elsewhere. Where breweries and distilleries in the United States,
Europe, and the UK adopted scientific advances with an eye toward greater efficiency and
product improvement, in French viticulture phylloxera forced the government and wine
producers to turn to more scientific methods of crop management and production. Across
Europe national governments gathered scientists and took action in an attempt to protect a
vital national industry, and nationalism certainly played a factor in the early response to the
disease, as countries and regions sought to protect their brand imagery by saving vines.
While the government offered prizes of hundreds of thousands of francs for a cure, farm-
ers spent billions more tearing out and replacing diseased vines and trying to eradicate the
disease in what remained. Farmers across the region engaged in what Marta Macedo has
called “chemical war,” bathing the soil in carbon disulfide and other harsh chemicals in an
attempt to kill the aphids at the heart of the disease (2011: 166). Other farmers discovered
that flooding their fields in the style of rice paddies helped to control, but not eradicate, the
problem. Those remedies had little effect. By the 1880s, one answer to the disease had
been found in its source—grafting disease-resistant American vines onto existing European
regional varieties (Simpson 2011: 37). Although many growers fought this solution on
Production 33
Figure 1.5 Submersion of vineyards to fight against the phylloxera. France, 1939. Photograph by
Boyer/Roger Viollet via Getty Images.
the grounds of the national purity of vines, grafting, while expensive, provided the most
economical and safest long-term solution to the problem.
To say that phylloxera and the reaction to it changed wine production in Europe in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would be an understatement. The phylloxera
outbreak was at the center, and in some ways the source, of all major changes in wine
production in that period. Unlike in beer production in the United States, and spirits produc-
tion in Great Britain and the Americas, scientific innovation was thrust upon European
winemakers as the phylloxera outbreak forced governments to react on a national level and
to propose nationally driven scientific solutions to rescue a critical economic and cultural
industry. While French vines recovered after the 1880s, the industry as a whole suffered
from price instability brought on by expanded acreage, cheaper transportation costs that
promoted the mixing of imported wine with local to offset poor quality, and an overall influx of
cheap artificial wines. French wine production fell so dramatically that “the country switched
from being a net exporter to an importer in 1879,” and remained so for most of the rest of
the century (Simpson 2011: 41).
As a result of the outbreak, winemakers in affected areas encouraged scientific innovation,
while those in as-yet-unaffected areas stepped up production to meet increased demand,
shipping their products via the newly expanded rail networks. Tariff structures shifted in
response as devastated local industries sought protection. Finally, the longstanding practice
of blending low-quality local wines with imports came under fire as producers reacted by
looking, as they had in the midst of the phylloxera outbreak, for state help in defining their

products. The result was a 1905 law, not unlike the US Bottled in Bond Act, that “provided
the legal framework to establish regional appellations” that would help combat the practice
of fraudulent mislabeling and clearly delineate regional wines as a means of boosting local
producers (Simpson 2005: 550).
Africa
By the early twentieth century, beer production in the United States and Europe had largely
completed the shift from small batches made at home to that produced through large-
scale industrial processes. In France, wine production remained firmly in the hands of
smaller producers, while in Great Britain and the United States distilling was trending toward
large-scale production. The days of kitchen alcohol were largely over, replaced by modern
machinery and mass production. The shift from home to industrial alcohol production served
as a dominant theme in Africa as well, although African nations found themselves, to one
degree or another, beset by nearly uncontrollable external pressures not seen in the United
States or Europe.
Africans in various nations along the western coast had been fermenting palm wine and
brewing grain-based beer for centuries and production of both liquors was a gender-based
activity (Curto 2004: 24–5). Palm wine, made from the raffia plant, was largely a male,
outdoor activity, while the production of grain-based beer was a female activity that occurred
in the kitchens. And while Simon Heap notes the existence of a small commercial distillery in
Nigeria likely producing rum for a few years in the 1880s, industrial-scale production of the
kind that developed after the 1500s in Europe or in the Americas after colonial settlement
did not exist before the twentieth century (Heap 1996: 72). The reasons were related to the
nature and use of the alcohol produced by coastal western Africans. Both palm wine and
grain-based fermented beverages contained relatively low percentages of alcohol, and little
aside from the alcohol itself to act as a preservative. As a result, both types of alcohol had to
be consumed within a few days in order to avoid spoilage. Alcohol consumption in coastal
western Africa was also a communal affair, and production and consumption therefore
occurred locally and in groups. Up through the early twentieth century, as David J. Parkin
argues in writing about eastern Africa, any large-scale production of palm wine (and by
extension grain-based beer) was “dependent on a local and neighbourhood labour force”
and because the producers were almost certainly also the consumers, it required producers
to maintain “cordial relations with the men who constitute the labour force” (1972: 10). As a
result, production and consumption were proximate group activities.
The latter half of the nineteenth century witnessed what is commonly referred to as the
“Partition of Africa,” or the “Scramble for Africa,” where European powers competed to
exercise control over the African continent, its peoples, and its resources. As European
countries worked to divide and control the continent, their ideas and attitudes about
alcohol, and alcohol production, were influenced by their preconceived notions about
Africa and Africans (Pan 1975). As A. Olorunfemi argues, liquor production in British
West Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sat squarely “between
two powerful British pressure groups” (1984: 229). Temperance advocates comprised
both humanitarian groups and cotton factors borrowed the language of anti-slave
trade crusaders to argue that health and moral concerns should limit both trade and
Production 35
production in British-held areas. Standing in opposition, liquor producers and merchants
saw alcohol as a useful means of colonial domination (Korieh 2003: 114).
Prior to the Scramble, production and trade in alcohol in western Africa attracted ineffec-
tive opposition. The onset of direct imperial control changed that, as former African nations
became colonies subject to different pressures and regulations. More importantly, at the
dawn of the twentieth century alcohol production and trade in British and French Africa were
bound up in an increased sense of urgent competition with Germany. For the British govern-
ment as well, customs duties on imported alcohol served as a major source of revenue in
West Africa, averaging more than 50 percent of total revenue in Lagos, and more than 60
percent of the total revenue in Nigeria in the period between 1894 and 1918 (Olorunfemi
1984: 237, 238).
Two factors contributed to a change in patterns of consumption and production in Africa
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. First, the establishment of European-
style urban centers, and an increase in population, changed drinking patterns among
colonial Africans (Akyeampong 1996a: 53–62). Individual, private consumption, particularly
among men, replaced communal gatherings in rural areas, while Western-style nightclubs,
saloons, and pubs attracted larger crowds of urban dwellers. As rates of drinking rose, and
as Muslim-dominated areas of western Africa battled increased drinking, alarmed Europeans
at the Brussels Conference in 1890 responded by declaring a prohibition on imported spir-
its in British- and German-controlled areas in East and Central Africa. Other areas saw the
imposition of stiff import tariffs designed to limit imported alcohol. In Portuguese-controlled
Africa “the old colonial rum industry” became the “metropolitan wine industry, which now
specialized in an extremely alcoholic ‘colonial wine’” manufactured locally (Clarence-Smith
1979: 177). In French-controlled Côte d’Ivoire, local French officials feared that palm wine
(so-called “African Bordeaux”) production would divert valuable palm sap from oil to alcohol
production, and that “backward” Africans would misspend their money (White 2007: 670).
Alcohol served as a form of currency in many local areas, and domestically produced
grain beer proved impossible to control as traders who did not include alcohol in their deal-
ings found it difficult to expand into new territories. Moreover, local British officials required
a source of revenue to fund their colonial offices, and for all European powers, “access to
alcohol did represent power” (Schler 2002: 316). As tariff rates increased, imports and reve-
nue at first declined. The result, unsurprisingly in hindsight, was an increase in domestically
produced alcohol in rural areas, which Europeans generally did not regulate except through
an effort to tax (Heap 1998: 29).
As a result, and somewhat alarmingly for those who saw the restrictions the Brussels
Conference imposed on European manufacturers and merchants as a way to bring civiliza-
tion to Africa, western Africans began to distil palm wine in the 1920s. For western Africans
locally produced distilled palm wine “gin” solved the problem of supply and demand as
European imports dwindled or got more expensive (Korieh 2003: 116–17). At the same
time social and economic pressures begat more occasions in which to drink (Akyeampong
1996b: 58–62). For European governments in non-prohibition zones, revenues on locally
produced alcohol generated revenue for the colonies.
Alcohol manufacturing of the type seen in factories in Europe or the Americas after
the turn of the century was quite limited. Simon Heap notes the existence of small opera-
tions that took imported alcohol and added flavorings and water before reselling it. These

“compounded spirits” mirrored the “rectifying” that went on in the United States. In fact, as
Heap notes, import tariffs charged duties on alcohol percentage prior to “home consump-
tion,” freeing compounders to import high-gravity spirits and water them down, thus
increasing their profits (1998: 73–4).
As in Europe and the United States, Africans generally considered beer to be a safe and
healthy alternative to spirits. In this atmosphere, as well as in the context of a need to self-
fund the colony, the Southern Nigerian Government in 1912 applied for a patent to open a
brewery in the capitol, Lagos. The British government, eager to promote local industry as
well as a source of revenue, seemed receptive, but protracted negotiations, the outbreak
of the First World War, and then an economic downturn in the 1920s prevented any action
(Heap 1998: 80). Despite all this, beer production and drinking increased in Africa from 1900
to 1930, which may have been linked to mechanization and better grain harvests (Heap
1998; Korieh 2003; McAllister 2006).
The War Years

Home production was beginning, albeit slowly, to give way to the first stirrings of industrial
manufacturing. A temperance movement exerted pressure to curb alcohol manufacture.
Just as the First World War delayed the opening of the first production brewery in Lagos, the
European war that spilled into the rest of the world had dramatic effects on liquor produc-
tion. In fact, alcohol production in the first half of the twentieth century was dominated by
two factors—two world wars and worldwide depression. The onset of the First World War
in 1914 brought major changes to alcohol production to every country in Europe and the
Americas. In some cases, as in Europe, this was due to the physical devastation of war.
In the United States pressures from temperance and prohibition advocates steered that
country toward national prohibition. In many countries the demands for grain and other raw
materials for the war effort led to a shift in production.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the net effect of the war years from 1914 to 1950 was to delay the
onset of industrial alcohol production, as colonial powers found themselves distracted by
events in Europe. In equatorial Nigeria during the Second World War, imports from continen-
tal Europe declined sharply to zero by 1943, while imports from Great Britain slowly declined
but never fully ended. Imports from North America rose sharply in 1941 and 1942, but then
also declined and finally ended by 1948 (Heap 1998: 81). Localized production worked
to fill the demand, although it would not be until the end of the war, and especially after
1950, that colonial disruption and attendant shortages in supply would spur local production
(Akyeampong 1996a: 229). The meager production in mostly Muslim North African nations,
likewise, has been little-studied, with major influences occurring in the desert campaigns
of the Second World War. Both of those regions await new examinations by historians of
alcohol.
In European countries the period from 1914 to 1950 brought expected chaos. In France,
for example, wine and spirits suffered greatly. As noted by Leo Loubére, the First World
War broke out at the beginning of the grape harvest, robbing the vineyards of workers, draft
animals, and wagons, and leaving women and children to bring in a record-breaking 1914
crop (1990: 17). Unlike beer and distilled beverages, the grain for which would be needed
for wartime food supplies, wine grapes had no other natural market. In fact, wine production
Production 37
during wartime could be seen as superfluous, taking away arable land and valuable labor
from other wartime crops and industries. The response among grape-growers was to tout
their product as innately healthy, and therefore necessary for soldiers (Loubére 1990: 17).
Government contracts had the potential to rescue, or at least prevent the death of, an indus-
try only just recovering from phylloxera. Instead high taxes on what the French government
considered a luxury item, closed markets, and a battlefield that ran across some of France’s
most important wine regions stifled or ended production entirely. In particular the occupa-
tion of Alsace and battles in Reims and the Marne in Champagne destroyed thousands of
acres of vineyards.
The interwar years saw something of a return to prosperity for French wine producers. A
greater focus on terroir and an effort to tie wines to a regional identity contributed to greater
exports in the 1920s, especially in Burgundy (Whalen 2009: 73). In that region folklorists,
historians, viticulturalists, and even religious authorities worked “to link viticultural ceremo-
nies to ancient traditions” (Whalen 2009: 77). Local festivals and fairs, aimed at tourists and
with an eye toward export sales, featured supposedly longstanding cultural practices that
emphasized the heritage of the region and the link between wine production and almost
every facet of French and Burgundian culture. What began in Burgundy eventually spread
across France, and a national wine heritage became a key selling point of French culture
and, more importantly, French wine. Record harvests in the late 1920s and the mid-1930s
helped exports, and over the course of the 1930s French wines became increasingly profit-
able as exports and domestic consumption both grew.
The Second World War brought another setback as the Vichy government sought to
impose tighter control of the French economy. This included a ban on the production of
non-grape-based aperitifs in 1940 and an outright ban on advertising distilled spirits in
1941. The Germans alternated between outright confiscation of wine and purchasing at
greatly reduced prices. A need for self-sufficiency on the part of farmers, a lack of herbicides
and pesticides, and continuing armed conflict led to an overall deterioration in acreage as
well as the quality of available wine in France 1941–5 (Loubére 1990: 33).
In Great Britain the first decades of the twentieth century, and especially war years from
1914 to 1950, contributed to the further decline in spirits production seen in the latter part
of the nineteenth century (Weir 1989: 378). From a high point of a bit more than 37 million
proof-gallons sold domestically in 1900, spirits declined to just under 26 million proof-gallons
on the eve of the First World War. Wartime production was hobbled by both the needs of
wartime industries at home and protective tariffs imposed on luxury goods by allies. While
the end of the war should have brought a boost in production and consumption, American
Prohibition closed off a lucrative market for European imports, threatening the recovery of
the industry. Likewise the high tariffs and an ongoing temperance campaign in the UK and
Europe reduced domestic demand in the UK by 3.6 percent each year from 1900 to 1934
(Weir 1989: 379).
Brewers in the UK—who had suffered since 1880 under tariffs that taxed beer by origi-
nal gravity—also suffered from criticism prior to 1914 that they were contributing to public
alcohol abuse. After 1914 they endured charges of threatening the war effort. In response
they reduced the average alcohol content of their beer by as much as a full percentage point
ABV between 1900 and 1945 (Hornsey 2003: 568). Then in 1915 and then again in 1917,
the Home Office floated serious proposals to nationalize alcohol production and guarantee

pre-war profits (Turner 1980: 589). Neither effort came to fruition, but both events reflect
the problematic nature of alcohol production and consumption in the wartime decades
of the twentieth century. The 1915 proposal was meant to help wartime industries beset
by worker absenteeism, while in 1917 fears over wartime food shortages led to renewed
calls for nationalization. In both instances the proposals were met with some acceptance
by a brewing industry threatened with a decline in production fueled by wartime pressures,
higher tariffs, and an influential temperance movement. But both efforts failed in the midst
of overall industry resistance (particularly on the part of distillers), political squabbling, and
varied wartime demands. Even so the Central Control Board, created in 1915, restricted
sales of alcohol in and around areas with war-critical facilities such as munitions factories
and shipping ports.
Producers of Scotch whisky in the UK responded to the overall decline in consumption
and production in two ways. First, the industry consolidated between 1920 and 1936, then
slowly expanded again through 1942. Where all thirty-six malt whiskey distilleries had been
individually owned in 1874, by 1927 six companies owned twenty-seven of the seventy-three
distilleries, and by 1936 five companies owned fifty-one of the seventy-three malt whiskey
distilleries. All five companies belonged to the amalgam Distillers Company, Ltd or DCL. By
the middle of the Second World War, production had increased—mostly on the backs of
exports and especially cash-rich American servicemen arriving in the UK to help fight the
Figure 1.6 Whisky in Scotland. Stillman Sandy Phillips polishes the gleaming copper stills where
the spirit is vaporized by heat in the UK, c. 1940. Photograph by Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho
via Getty Images.
Production 39
war—and so had the number of distilleries. Nonetheless in 1942 eleven companies controlled
fifty-eight malt whiskey distilleries. The numbers for grain whiskey producers are even more
stark. In 1900, the DCL owned eight of the twenty-seven grains distillers in the UK. By 1927
it controlled twenty-four of twenty-seven (Weir 1989: 380).
Diversification had a greater impact on production in the first half of the twentieth century.
As demand for alcohol declined, and as wartime and post-war pressures mounted, alcohol
industries with the resources to invest responded by diversifying into related industries such
as pharmaceuticals, anti-freeze, fuel, and synthetics. Of the many alcohol producers in the
UK, the DCL was the most successful, seeing growth of around 10 percent each year from
1915 through 1939. Where in 1905 DCL was barely in the top fifty of the largest companies
by capital in the UK, in 1948, due to diversification and wartime demand for scotch whiskey,
it was the fourth (Weir 1989: 381).
In the United States the years leading up to the First World War saw an increase in
anti-alcohol campaigning. The cause of temperance coincided with an industrializing
economy, increasing technological efficiency, and an emerging middle class who viewed
drunkenness, and especially spirituous liquors, as an impediment to progress and a threat
to “traditional” American values (Pegram 1998: 88). What originated as forces for temper-
ance focused more and more on outright legal prohibition. During the First World War beer,
heretofore considered a “safe” alternative to spirits, became a particular target associated
with German culture and an overall waste of grain. Progressive forces then scored a victory
with the enactment of Constitutional Prohibition in 1920. Alcohol producers sought to move
into other industries, with some, such as Coors Brewing, turning to the ancillary industries
of glass and ceramic production in an attempt to remain afloat. Others produced foodstuffs,
but most could not adapt and went out of business before repeal in 1933.
In Kentucky during Prohibition in the 1920s, by contrast, Lewis Rosenthal incorporated
the Schenley Distillers Corporation, producing small amounts of medicinal whiskey and
buying up shuttered distilleries and warehouses with an eye toward the hoped-for end of
Prohibition (Purcell 1998: 65). As in the UK, industry consolidation had a profound effect
on production, albeit with the twist of Prohibition, as the 1930s witnessed the surviving
American brewers and distillers restarting production and preventing smaller producers from
effectively entering the national market. Beer production saw moderate growth over the
course of the 1930s, with the big jump occurring from 1933 to 1935, where shipments rose
almost 52 percent. From 1935 to 1939 shipments rose almost 23 percent (McGahan 1991:
230). Overall alcohol consumption, however, remained below pre-Prohibition levels, as an
economic depression and lingering temperance sentiments helped tamp down demand.
Where Americans consumed twenty-one gallons annually per capita in 1914, that consump-
tion never rose above 12.6 annually in the 1930s, meaning that much of the production was
headed outside of US borders (McGahan 1991: 251). In response, many brewers and distill-
ers who celebrated the end of Prohibition as saving their livelihood nonetheless shuttered
their businesses soon after repeal. Others turned to better production technology to help
save on costs.
The Second World War in Europe at first revived the hopes of American prohibitionists
optimistic that patriotism and the demands of the war effort could bring the same success
as in 1920. A bill to prohibit the sale of alcohol to military personnel gained some traction in
May 1941, but was ultimately defeated. Having absorbed the lessons of the First World War,

brewers and distillers in the Second World War took great pains to publicize their contri-
butions to the war effort, especially in the realm of tax receipts. The pressures of supplying
the British war effort, along with a growing sense of inevitability, led distillers in late 1941
to design a plan to convert distilleries to wartime production. The attack on Pearl Harbor
killed the formal plan but led American distillers to, by October 1942, voluntarily convert their
plants to the manufacture of wartime supplies. As with the DCL in the UK, American distillers
manufactured precursor alcohol for products as varied as synthetic rubber to replace natural
rubber imported from Japanese-held areas, smokeless gunpowder, and fuel (Purcell 1998:
74).
Brewers in the United States and UK saw a different war than distillers. As a source of
tax receipts and as a refreshing beverage for factory workers, beer came to be seen as an
essential tool of the war effort. Through their advertising, brewers sought to undercut one
of their greatest foes by promoting beer as a drink to be enjoyed by men and women, with
women especially shown as forces of moderate drinking (Corzine 2010: 844). Likewise the
war years saw tightly regulated supplies of grain force brewers to attenuate their strong
beers, which suited the changing palates of American men and women and led to a long-
term trend in beer production from 1945 to 1990.
Ironically, the divergent paths of the producers of two types of alcohol in the United States
led to two very different post-war paths. Distillers, having converted to wartime production
and enjoying government-subsidized and protected supplies and makers, emerged from
the war in largely the same state as they entered: somewhat consolidated but fairly diverse.
Brewers, on the other hand, suffered from market forces outside of their control. As a result
the industry there began a trend of very sharp consolidation that would continue for the next
several decades (McGahan 1991: 265).
Conclusion
Overall, the period from 1850 to 1950 witnessed a number of changes in production
driven by technology, science, general industry trends, temperance forces, and war. Some
changes came out of necessity, as in the way that phylloxera wrecked production and
pushed French wine producers toward a different scientific approach to viticulture. Other
changes cut across a broad geography in alcohol production, as technological innova-
tion—in steam power, railroads, refrigeration, and a new type of still—helped transform the
industry in Europe, Great Britain, and the Americas. Two world wars had profound, imme-
diate effects on European alcohol production, while bringing about different changes in the
United States. By 1950 the alcohol industry in Europe, Great Britain, and the United States
would hardly have been recognizable to someone from the mid-nineteenth century.
Production 41
42
2 CONSUMPTION
JAMES KNEALE
Introduction
Between 1850 and 1950, observers around the world described the growing intoxication
they saw around them as the result of a shift from what was understood as “traditional”
drinking to a newer culture of consumption. However, traditional drinking turns out to be
something of a chimera. Many characteristics of this newer culture were in existence well
before this period and, while consumption rose and fell in many places, this period was
generally drier than the eighteenth century. Nevertheless it is worth considering the argu-
ments that were made about this shift, as they have shaped the historiography of alcohol
consumption in the age of industry and empire. After introducing these ideas, we will
consider what is known about consumption, about drinkers and drinking occasions, and
finally about drinking places and practices.
“Traditional” drinking was associated with the rhythms of holidays and rites of passage,
but between 1850 and 1950 drinking became much more regular in Europe, and perhaps
elsewhere; distilled liquor became more available and affordable. Traditional drinking
seemed strongest in the countryside, and weakest in urban centers. In Tsarist Russia, “in the
village … drinking was not centered around a specific site, and it did not separate people
by age, gender, or income to the extent more modern drinking did” (Transchel 2006: 21).
Evaluations of traditional drinking varied, however. On the one hand, in some places—
particularly colonial Africa—it was thought to unite social groups, and newer customs were
felt to bring disorder. In Southern Africa this idea informed ethnographies and histories
of drink from the 1930s (Ambler and Crush 1992). In fact alcohol could simultaneously
support and threaten social order; in East Africa older men’s “controlled, ritual” drinking
co-existed with reports of the drunken violence of younger men (Willis 2002: 47). Similarly
Paul Nugent suggests that “competing visions of modernity … played themselves out in
attitudes towards alcohol in West Africa and South Africa alike” (2014: 145).
On the other hand, social historians of Britain saw traditional drinking as a source of
disorder; industrial capitalism sought to tame an unruly popular culture, and employers
supported temperance because drink was “the most dangerous agent of destruction of
laboring power” (Gramsci 1971: 303). Industrial cities represented the front line of this strug-
gle as capitalist discipline confronted a traditional festive culture and rural migrants were
shaped into proletarians. When Welsh Eisteddfods became established in pubs, they drew
the attention of reformers for this reason (Pritchard 2012). From this perspective the rise and
fall of alcohol consumption in Europe, North America, Russia, and elsewhere in this period
represent the liberating and repressive consequences of capital. However, drink historians
have been slow to engage with newer ideas about the timing and consequences of both
work-discipline and paid employment (Glennie and Thrift 2009; Zelizer 2011).
In many influential accounts distillation was the most important element of a new drinking
culture. David Christian suggests that “distilled drinks were to fermented drinks what guns
were to bows and arrows: instruments of a potency unimaginable in most traditional soci-
eties” (1990: 33); Wolfgang Schivelbusch agrees that “gin struck the typically beer-drinking
English populace like a thunderbolt” (1993: 156). However, while Schivelbusch argues that
“the maximised effect, the acceleration, and the reduced price made liquor a true child of
the Industrial Revolution” (1993: 153), distillation is an early modern technique, and the first
European concerns over its use come before the period we are examining here. We should
also be wary of the idea that these different drinking cultures reflected a tension between
the rhythms of industrial and rural life. In England and Wales both clock-time—a shared and
public sense of time—and a preindustrial urban work time-discipline predated, and were not
the result of, industrialization as E. P. Thompson (1967) had claimed (Harrison 1986; Glennie
and Thrift 2009). Neither the still nor work discipline was industrial, then. Even in Britain few
cities were genuinely industrial before the middle of the nineteenth century; industrial drinks
arrived quite some way before “industrial drinking,” and in many places “traditional” drinking
co-existed with the new craze for distilled spirits for quite some time.
Colonial contact and imperial conquest heightened the novelty of new drinking substances
and practices. By 1850 many cultures had long been producers of their own alcoholic
beverages, from Africa to Central America (Pan 1975; Carey 2015), but a cash economy
freed brewing and drinking from the rhythms of the seasons, as it did for Swazi women
brewers (Crush 1992). In other places, like the Pacific, Europeans had introduced both
fermented and distilled alcoholic drinks long before 1850 (Marshall and Marshall 1975) but
these did not always become ordinary commodities. In Papua New Guinea drugs like betel
and kava were well known before contact, but “alcohol was always treated as a substance
apart” (Marshall 1982: 8). In Africa the threat of alien European “trade liquor” persuaded the
imperial powers that Africans needed to be protected from distilled drinks (Pan 1975; Willis
2001). However, in East Africa what Europeans saw as traditional “native” drinking contin-
ued to evolve through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the availability of imported
or local spirits was in fact only one of the three dynamics that shaped alcohol consumption
in colonial Africa, alongside the growth of centralized states and the spread of money (Willis
2002: 23–40; 2003b).
Turning to the locations in which drink was consumed, while places devoted to drinking
had of course existed for centuries, this period saw them becoming increasingly important,
and perhaps increasingly specialized. By 1850 public drinking in Ireland had to be done
within the “confined and regulated space of the government-licensed drinkshop” (Malcolm
1998: 72). Similarly, Justin Willis sees the East African bar, shaped by colonial regulation,
as “a place to drink which was regulated and formalized and set aside; a place to drink,
just as the hospital was a place to be ill and the court was a place to judge” (2002: 156).
These drinking places may have become increasingly like the “third places” described by
Ray Oldenburg (1989). Neither home nor work, these inclusive “great good places” offered
respite in otherwise unfriendly cities, and were key locations for the formation of civil soci-
ety and social capital. Nathan Booth shows that mid-nineteenth-century Cheshire pubs
provided a comfortable, domestic sociability somewhere between the public and private,

for example (2018). While not by any means new, between 1850 and 1950 these associ-
ations may well have been strengthened by the specialization of space brought about by
increasing urban size and complexity, as well as restrictions on workplace drinking and the
poor quality of home life. However, the relations between first, second, and third places still
troubled critics who felt drinking places encouraged absenteeism and diverted time and
money away from homes.
Having sketched out some of the key dimensions of changes to drinking in this period, it
is time to consider the evidence for changing consumption rates.
Known Consumption Rates, 1850–1950

Despite the fact that governments took a good deal of interest in drinking, our knowledge of
consumption rates is partial and uncertain in this period. Consumption itself is rarely if ever
recorded; state taxation records measure production, imports and exports, and sales, and
these figures are often used as proxies for consumption, although illicit production could
be an enormous problem for governments everywhere. There are also many problems with
state records (Dingle 1972; Brennan 1989; Fahey 2003). Changing borders make it difficult
to track national consumption. Drinks were sold in different volumes and strengths; these
can be converted into a standard measure (usually liters of pure alcohol), although some
historians have calculated per capita figures based only on the drinking population, while
others consider the total population. Perhaps most importantly, per capita consumption
figures tell us nothing about how much individuals or groups drank, or how they drank it.
Here we have to rely on even less reliable proxies like counts of drink-related crimes and
nuisances, deaths associated with alcohol, or numbers of drink retailers.
For these reasons and others, some historians have been skeptical of the value of
consumption data. For example, Kate Transchel suggests “[Russian] figures are suspect
because all published studies of alcohol consumption were designed for a political purpose”
(2006: 28). Similarly, consumption data from Southern Africa reflected white assumptions
(Ambler and Crush 1992). However, all sources are inevitably shaped by their makers, and
we might take heart from Brian Harrison’s observation that “historians do not usually allow
themselves to be discouraged by lack of firm evidence. Some sort of general picture … can
be built up from scattered and incidental contemporary references” (1971: 22).
This section will attempt to construct just such a general picture, drawing on Rorabaugh’s
collection of statistics for twelve American and European states from about 1830 to 1974
(1979: 237–9, see Table 2.1) as well as other studies and countries beyond this sample
(adapted from Rorabaugh, Table A2.4, 1979: 239).
In the United States annual per capita consumption had been 13.2 liters of absolute
alcohol in 1800; this rose to a peak of 14.8 liters in 1830 but had fallen to 3.8 liters by 1850.
It rose slightly after that but its highest point between 1850 and 1950 (6.4 liters, 1910) was
less than half of the 1800 level. During Prohibition it was around 2.3 liters, although rates
climbed after 1933, with the average rate for those of drinking age reaching 5.3 liters in
1950. The proportion of this alcohol derived from beer rose throughout this period, and
by 1890 the shares contributed by beer and whiskey were equal (Rorabaugh 1979: 232).
Again, it seems likely that consumption was falling in Canada from the start of this period.
By 1890 it was 3 liters of absolute alcohol per capita (Rorabaugh 1979: 239), although there
Consumption 45
Table 2.1 Alcohol consumption, liters of absolute alcohol per capita, 1844–5 to 1954
Country 1844–5 1861–70 1881–90 1901–5 1919–22 1937 1954

USA 3.8 4.9 4.9 5.7 2.3 4.2 6.8
Canada 3.0 2.3 2.3 4.2
UK 4.2 9.8 10.6 11.0 6.1 4.2 6.4
Denmark 10.2 8.3 3.0 2.3 3.0
Finland 1.9 0.4 1.5 1.9
Norway 2.3 2.6 1.9 2.3 2.3
Sweden 14.0 5.3 4.5 4.9 3.0 3.4 3.8
Netherlands 6.4 5.7 3.0 1.5 1.9
Germany 8.7 9.8 2.6 4.2 3.8
France 14.8 14.4 16.3 21.6 17.8 21.6 20.1
Italy 13.2 15.5 13.6 9.8 12.9
Poland 1.1 3.0
(adapted from Rorabaugh, Table A2.4, 1979: 239)
was a good deal of regional variation: the Maritime provinces consumed far less than British
Columbia in 1880 (Cafferky 2003a: 22). Prohibition, state controls, and Depression kept
consumption low until the 1940s (Rorabaugh 1979: 239).
Consumption was also falling in Russia, where most of the alcohol consumed was in
the form of vodka until beer became more popular after 1900. Between 1864 and 1879
the per capita rate was 4.3 liters of pure alcohol per annum. This then fell until the 1890s,
when 2.4 liters of vodka per capita marked the lowest point of alcohol consumption in
pre-revolutionary Russia, before rising slightly again before the First World War. Wartime
temperance, continued by the Bolsheviks, depressed drinking further, with per capita vodka
consumption at 0.9 liters of pure alcohol in 1925, 1.0 liters in 1932, 1.9 liters in 1940,
and 1.85 liters in 1950 (Krasnov 2003: 14–15). Before 1917 St Petersburg and Moscow
recorded higher rates than the rest of the empire, but while the revolution brought changes
to the habits of working-class drinkers in St Petersburg (Phillips 2000), older customs may
have prevailed in Moscow, Kharkov, Saratov, and Tomsk (Transchel 2006).
The Scandinavian countries also sobered fairly rapidly, although Norway lagged behind.
Swedish per capita consumption declined markedly after 1850—from 14 to 5.3 liters of
absolute alcohol between 1844–5 and 1861–70—and this continued through the twentieth
century, reaching 3.8 liters by 1950 (Rorabaugh 1979: 239). While the high point of Danish
consumption came in the middle of the nineteenth century, this also declined rapidly, from
10.2 liters in 1881–90 to a low point of 2.3 liters in 1937, as the result of high taxation and
beer’s popularity at the expense of spirits (Rorabaugh 1979: 239; Eriksen 2003a: 193–4).
In Finland consumption fell from 3 liters of pure alcohol per annum per capita in the 1870s
to 1.9 liters in 1900, reaching 0.5 liters before Prohibition (1919), one of the lowest levels
in Europe at that time. After Prohibition ended in 1932 per capita consumption was 1 liter
(Rorabaugh 1979: 239; Österberg 2003: 240). In Norway, however, rates remained rela-
tively high until the First World War. In 1851 per capita consumption for those aged fifteen
or more stood at 5.5 liters of absolute alcohol, and this rose and fell (nearly 7 liters in 1875,

only 3.5 in 1887) until 1900 (Nordlund 2003: 460). Wartime controls and forms of prohibition
between 1919 and 1926 may have had a longer-term influence, as consumption fluctuated
between 1.1 and 3.1 liters per capita for those aged fifteen or older between 1926 and 1950.
In Britain high levels of consumption in the eighteenth century gave way to more moder-
ate drinking at the start of the nineteenth. The liberalization of the sale of spirits and beer in
the 1820s and 1830s spurred small increases in consumption but the 1840s marked a low
point. Consumption then rose, recording its highest levels in the 1870s and a second, lower,
rise in the 1890s; from that point on it declined rapidly, as it had in other European countries
(Wilson 1940). Government intervention encouraged extremely low levels during the First
World War, but consumption was already falling steeply and continued to do so until the
1930s; at both of these low points per capita consumption was around 4 liters of absolute
alcohol. Consumption rose again in the 1940s but after the Second World War it was again
about 4 liters per capita.
Why did British drinking change after the 1870s? Anthony Dingle notes that while wages
were rising at the start of this decade, especially for skilled workers, there was little to spend
them on. The 1870s peak represented “a situation in which purchasing power had tempo-
rarily outstripped the supply of consumer goods available” (1972: 618). In the first half of the
1870s, real purchasing power came from higher wages, so drink remained good value; but
from 1880 to 1895, purchasing power was derived from falling prices, and drink became
relatively expensive compared to other commodities. Higher wages favored male workers
while lower prices meant the householder had more control over purchasing. After 1900
real wages stagnated, but families drank less alcohol to allow them to continue their new
consumption habits.
Elsewhere in Europe wide variations were visible, both in terms of the amount consumed
and in rates of change. The citizens of Belgium continued to drink heavily, for example; in
1900 this was 12.5 liters of pure alcohol per capita, with spirits contributing 4.7 liters of this
total (Karlsson and Österberg 2003: 103). Their neighbors in the Netherlands consumed
around 7 liters of pure alcohol per capita in 1880, 5.7 liters in 1901–5, and about 2 liters
in 1950 (Rorabaugh 1979: 239; Garretsen, Bongers, and van de Goor 2003: 450). In
Austria the consumption of spirits peaked at around 10 liters per capita in the middle of
the nineteenth century, with beer becoming increasingly important after this, especially in
Vienna. The high point of overall consumption came in the years between 1881 and 1910
when per capita consumption reached around 11 liters of pure alcohol; between the wars
this figure was only 6 liters (Eisenbach-Stangl 2003: 79).
In Germany alcohol consumption rose from a low point in the 1840s to a peak of 10.2 liters
of pure alcohol per capita in the early 1870s, following rising real wages until industrial
depression in that decade (Roberts 1984: 43–4). Real wages recovered in the mid-1890s,
although alcohol consumption began a sustained decline falling from 9.1 liters in 1900 to
6.9 in 1913—only a little more than the 1850 figure of 6.4 liters. As in many other northern
European countries, beer’s popularity had risen at the expense of spirits (Roberts 1984: 109).
In all the countries considered above, the per capita consumption of alcohol declined
over this period, reflecting changing habits, wider social developments, and the influence
of temperance. The French case is rather different, with consumption remaining very high
throughout this period, dipping only when depression or war interfered with the production
and sale of drink. In 1848–50 each French adult consumed 26.8 liters of pure alcohol,
Consumption 47
in 1900–2 this was 34.7 liters, and in 1950–1 the “involuntary detoxification” of war and
occupation had reduced this to 28.6 liters (Prestwich 1988: 24, 257). There were important
regional differences, though; consumption was highest in the north and the Midi, associated
with beer and wine production respectively, and in some urban or industrial areas. As per
capita consumption rose between 1850 and 1900, it was more evenly divided across the
population, as peasants caught up with urban workers (Brennan 1989). The French pattern
was even more unusual after 1900, when consumption fell in many other Western European
nations. However, Italy seems to have followed a similar trajectory, recording high levels from
1881–90 as well as an increase in the first few years of the twentieth century, when most
other European countries were turning away from alcohol. While consumption fell between
the wars, and did not reach French levels, this pattern reminds us that not every European
nation sobered up in the first half of the twentieth century.
Australia followed a similar path to Britain after the first years of colonization. Consumption
then declined in both New South Wales and Victoria before rising to peak figures of 7.0 and
11.0 liters respectively in the 1850s (Lewis 1992: 9). After the 1850s consumption declined
fairly steadily in both colonies, and while intercolonial variations were recorded from the
1880s, with Western Australia recording the highest rates (Dingle 1980: 233), by federation
(1901) Australians were drinking less than the British. The lowest point was reached in the
1930s, although by 1950 consumption had risen to around 6.0 liters per capita, more or
less the rate recorded by New South Wales a century earlier. Other British colonies were
certainly drinking less than the British by the 1890s, with the Cape of Good Hope and New
Zealand recording only 46.3 and 35.6 percent of the pure alcohol consumed per capita in
Britain (Rowntree and Sherwell 1899: 436).
Published work on alcohol consumption elsewhere around the world is much patchier for
this period, at least in Anglophone historical work. Justin Willis notes, “We have absolutely
no idea of how much alcohol was consumed in East Africa in the nineteenth century …
There is just as little real information for most of the twentieth century” (2002: 4). There are
no figures for Indian alcohol consumption either, although numbers of licensed distilleries
and liquor shops greatly increased between the 1870s and 1920s (Tyrrell 2003: 309).
These consumption rates tell us nothing about who actually consumed alcohol, when
they drank, how, or with whom. The next sections aim to answer these questions, beginning
with drinkers and then examining drinking occasions.
Drinkers
David Fahey’s sketch of British drinking is a useful starting point: “Nobody challenges the
broad outlines of the orthodox view: the working class drank more than other classes, men
drank more than women, and thus working-class men drank the most” (2003: 16). However,
this was not always true everywhere, and we also need to remember that not everybody
drank, even where there were no laws to forbid them doing so. The drinking of elites is
also harder to track, especially masculine drinkers, as concerns over their consumption
were less well-developed; however, archaeological and material culture studies can provide
some clues (Glanville and Lee 2007; Mosher and Wilkie 2010). We will consider issues
of class, gender, and “race” in turn, although some have been covered elsewhere in this
volume.

Figure 2.1 Outside a public house, London, c. 1903. From George R. Sims, Living London, Vol.
II (Cassell and Company Ltd, London, Paris, New York, and Melbourne, 1903). Artist: Unknown.
Image by The Print Collector via Getty Images.
Class was clearly important. One contemporary observer suggested that the British work-
ing class bought three-quarters of all beer and spirits, and a tenth of all wine sold in the
1880s; they accounted for between two-thirds and three-quarters of all drink spending (Dingle
1972: 612). We have some sense of the proportion of household budgets that was spent on
drink—a peak of 14.5 percent in Germany in 1870–4, with British estimates ranging from a
sixth to a half (Dingle 1972: 610; Roberts 1984: 45)—but this was not evenly distributed. In
France between 1890 and 1910 better-paid workers spent more of their income on alcohol,
and men spent more on alcohol than women (Prestwich 1988: 86–7). In fact the better- and
the worst-off workers may have consumed more than those on average wages. In Paris in
the 1880s and 1890s some workers responded to economic uncertainty by privileging drink
over food; at the same time café customers tended to be skilled, well-paid workers (Haine
1996: 94, 65). In Russia in the first decade of the twentieth century, the best- and worst-paid
workers and peasants drank more than moderate earners (Krasnov 2003: 15).
Consumption 49
The suggestion that better-paid workers drank more than others is supported by evidence
from the United States, Britain, and Russia. Thorstein Veblen suggested that the free drink-
ing of journeyman printers reflected the character of their employment. Highly skilled and
well paid, printers were in demand everywhere, and well informed about their prospects;
more mobile than other workers, they were constantly thrown into new friendships in new
workplaces. All of this encouraged public drinking, especially “treating” or buying rounds,
a form of conspicuous consumption that advertised the printer’s affluence (and therefore
ability) as well as building social bonds (1915: 90). Thomas Wright claimed that English
engineers (“the trade of the day”) had invented the custom of “Saint Monday,” missing work
at the start of the week, with some having had “a drop too much at the suburban inn” the
night before (1867: 114). We will consider Saint Monday (Reid 1976) in a moment, but it is
possible that these workers used their extra income to offset the demands of the working
week (Dingle 1972: 617). In industrial Wales employers complained that it was hard to find
and keep skilled workers amid a general labor shortage; higher wages meant more drinking
and drunkenness, but well-paid workers were harder to discipline (Lambert 1983: 36, 44).
In Russia in the early 1930s skilled workers were rarely punished for drinking on the job or
turning up drunk, even when this meant closing a factory. Like their Welsh peers they were
too valuable to sack or discipline (Transchel 2006: 132–5). At the end of our period a clas-
sic study of a West Yorkshire mining community suggested that when higher earners paid
for the drinks of others this was a form of “capital destruction” which narrowed the gap in
income and status between different groups of men (Dennis et al. 1956).
Medical and actuarial evidence suggested other links between employment and heavy
drinking. In England and Wales inn or beershop keepers had the eighth worst mortality of all
male professions, and their servants had the worst of all (General Register Office 1885: 24–5).
Excessive drinking also played its part in the poor life expectancy of cabmen and commercial
travelers (35–6, 65). At the turn of the century the six occupations with the highest rates of
death from alcoholism were hotel servants, innkeepers, chimney sweeps, dock laborers,
brewers, and costermongers (Smee 1901: 28). British and American life insurance companies
worried about drinkers since their early deaths meant a loss for the firm. Their own mortality
statistics confirmed the patterns noted above and firms began to price insurance accord-
ingly; from the 1870s onwards many charged publicans extra, or refused to insure them at
all (Kneale and French 2013, 2015). In France a similar group of occupations—hospitality
workers, butchers—displayed significant alcohol-related mortality problems (Prestwich 1988:
84). There is much less evidence of this kind for middle-class and elite drinking, although
insurance fraud cases often revealed hidden drinking in respectable circles.
While gender is considered in more depth elsewhere in this volume, it is worth making
a few points about women consumers of alcohol here. They made up between a quarter
and a third of pub drinkers in England at the end of the nineteenth and start of the twentieth
century (Gutzke 1984) and on certain nights of the week some rooms or pubs might be
dominated by women (Ross 1983; Paul Jennings 2007; Gleiss 2009). Attitudes relaxed in
some countries during the world wars, reflecting women’s wider participation in work and
public life (Gutzke 1994; Langhamer 2003; Moss 2008; Gutzke 2013), but even between
the wars women made up between 12.5 and 41.5 percent of British patrons (Langhamer
2003: 426). Before the era of six o’clock closing Australian pubs were not, in general, as
masculine as US saloons (Blainey 2003).

Figure 2.2 Drinkers in the public bar of an English public house, 1938. Photograph by Felix Man/
Picture Post/Hulton Archive via Getty Images.
Other kinds of evidence reveal women’s drinking. Records of arrests and convictions
of women for drink-related offences suggest they took part in drinking in many places:
Guatemala from the 1920s to 1944 (Carey 2014: 143), late nineteenth-century England
and Wales (Rowntree and Sherwell 1899: 89), Ontario between 1881 and 1914, and
Ottawa between 1893 and 1901 (Warsh 1993: 78). We have to be wary of these figures, of
course, as they were shaped by ideas of appropriate feminine behavior (Gutzke 1984; Moss
2009; Beckingham 2010, 2012), but they do suggest that many ordinary women did drink.
Similarly Catherine Gilbert Murdock provides a good deal of evidence for women’s drinking
in the United States between 1870 and 1940 (1998) and Laura Phillips does the same for
Russia before and after the revolution (2000).
Religious belief, culture, and ethnicity also guided drink consumption. Christian temper-
ance organizations encouraged abstinence, moderation, and alcohol control across the
world. In Islamic countries traditions of elite drinking continued in private, although individual
rulers varied in their attitudes and the drinking of non-Muslims was prohibited on occa-
sion. In Iran during the reign of Naser al-Din Shah (1848–96), some members of the elite
were enthusiastic private consumers, although most, particularly women and rural Iranians,
did not drink (Matthee 2005). Increasing contact with Europeans seems to have coincided
with the growing availability of alcohol, especially distilled drink, in Iran in the later decades
of the nineteenth century. The consumption of alcohol by Muslims was also proscribed
within the Ottoman Empire, but again elite groups indulged in the private consumption of
wine, beer, and raki, especially after European drinks became symbols of modernity in the
reign of Sultan Abdulmecid (1839–61); by the twentieth century all classes of the Empire
Consumption 51
were drinking alcohol, especially in the port cities and other cosmopolitan areas of the
Empire (Georgeon 2002; Furhman 2014; Mathee 2014). Fonder suggests that British troops
encouraged shifting consumption habits in Imperial Cairo from 1882 (2013). In Nigeria and
North Africa Europeans observed some Muslim drinking in the first half of the twentieth
century, especially of African drinks not proscribed by the Koran (Pan 1975: 25); similar
arguments were employed to justify the use of raki in Turkey.
In Africa both aggressive imperialists like Cecil Rhodes and more sympathetic temper-
ance campaigners agreed that Africans had to be kept away from strong drink (Pan 1975).
Sales of European spirits to Africans were banned throughout most of Africa from 1919, but
the general principle also informed local legislation (Parry 1992). Of course the sale of alco-
hol to African Americans was strictly controlled in the southern states of the United States at
the start of our period (Herd 1991), and sales to Native Americans were effectively prohibited
from the start of the nineteenth century (Ishii 2008). In Canada questions of “race” contin-
ued to trouble the post-Prohibition beer parlour and Aboriginal people were not allowed to
drink in public until 1951 (Campbell 2001; Heron 2003; Malleck 2012, and this volume); in
Australia Aboriginal drinking was controlled from the 1830s (Brady 2019).
Drinking Occasions
In many places established drinking customs persisted alongside newer expectations of
everyday drinking. In Wales this meant drinking was associated with festivals, the end of
periods of communal working, rites of passage like weddings or funerals, secular events
like auctions and elections, and the meetings of friendly and literary societies, or of political
groups like the Chartists (Lambert 1983). Despite pressure from Methodist reformers, these
recreations clung on in the new industrial towns of south Wales.
In pre-revolutionary Russia alcohol had a central role in village life, taking the form of
“‘ceremonial’ binge drinking associated with church festivals, rites of passage, family cele-
brations, and any special occasions in the life of the rural community” (Transchel 2006: 15).
There were twelve main church festivals, each of which might require three to five days of
drinking, as well as local festivals. Weddings required enormous amounts of vodka; elec-
tions and work parties (pomochi) were also opportunities for drinking. In contrast, regular
individual drinking was rare and considered anti-social, and drinking on non-ceremonial
days only became possible with the arrival of taverns and a cash economy. In 1911 one
observer distinguished between the two worlds of “Mr. Harvest” and “Mr. Capital”: sporadic
peasant drinking and regular proletarian consumption (22). However, these worlds over-
lapped where households engaged in both farm and urban wage work, leading to a hybrid
“third culture” of drinking; in a tavern in Bogorodsk in 1859 the men met there most days,
while women would only join them for communal holiday drinking.
There is also extensive evidence for the “near ubiquity of alcohol in rituals in
nineteenth-century East African societies” (Willis 2002: 61). The rites of passage of Maasai
men were associated with alcohol, while older men required alcohol for blessings. While
alcohol was almost ubiquitous in Nyakyusa rituals, its use marked individual and domes-
tic crises, household sickness or poor weather rather than moments of transition. In the
Gold Coast palm wine played an important role in organizing work parties, marking rites of
passage, and establishing the patronage of older men (Akyeampong 1996b).

In many industrializing societies the opportunity to drink was greatly extended by cash
and new work rhythms. Alcohol consumption began to be understood as a “right” or custom
rather than an occasional “treat.” In France drink was beginning to be thought of as “not
simply a consolation, but part of an acceptable standard of living” by the 1890s (Prestwich
1988: 23). This attitude can also be detected in drink riots and “strikes” (or boycotts) in
several countries. State control of alcohol made drink a political issue everywhere, but
in these cases it was very clearly a question of custom. In Russia before emancipation,
Western India in the 1880s, and the North German Bierkrieg of 1909, drinkers swore oaths
of sobriety and boycotted drinksellers to demand lower prices and defend their standard of
living (Roberts 1984; Transchel 2006; Colvard 2013).
In France regular drinking was perhaps encouraged by the new habit of taking an
aperitif before meals, made affordable because of the cheapness of spirits made with
industrial alcohol (Prestwich 1988: 93). Across the Channel many of the rituals recorded
by John Dunlop in 1839 may have developed in small workshops and artisan trades well
before 1850, while others may have been much more recent; some were associated with
rites of passage and others with labor or craft customs. Alcohol was also a central part
of everyday life in Germany. Roberts’ description of a typical “drinking day” starts with
spirits taken on the way to work; some workers would then drink through the day and
most drank with the meals they took at work. Additional drinking might celebrate birth-
days and holidays, specific craft traditions, or new workmates; the worker would then go
home, often via taverns and bars (1984: 46–7). The drinking day could be long, although
most of it involved small amounts. However, the appointment of a factory inspectorate
from the 1870s, the availability of alternative beverages, and better conditions for workers
encouraged many to stop or reduce on-the-job drinking, especially in the best-paid and
most-unionized trades.
In Chicago, the drinking day began with early morning “bracers” for men on their way to
work; at lunchtime, taverns served diners and growler rushers (children bringing pails in to
be filled with beer); in the afternoon women or children bought drink to take home; business
would be brisk from the later afternoon (Duis 1983). Saloons also played an important role
in “the daily cycle of life on the skids” for bums and flophouse dwellers, from the dawn “eye
opener” to the free lunch (89). By the twentieth century the drinking day was much drier in
many places; in Bolton, England, in the 1930s most pubs were virtually empty during the
middle of the day, except at weekends (Mass-Observation 1943).
Drinking rhythms were structured by payday, which offered short-lived prosperity. In
Paris by 1870, however, there were more cases of public drunkenness on saint-lundi (“Holy
Monday”) than Saturday, which was payday for most workers (Haine 1996). This pattern
may have reflected greater police tolerance on Saturdays, but Monday night café visits were
still very popular with workers. The pulquerías of Mexico City were busy on “Saint Monday,”
but María Áurea Toxqui Garay suggests that this marked the end of the weekend, not the
most drunken day of the week (2008). Similarly, in nineteenth-century Russia “Blue Monday”
(absenteeism or “hair of the dog” drinking at work) was common in the mining and metal
industries, and as a result mines might remain closed after the weekend (Transchel 2006).
In England this structured working week seems to have predated industrialization, at least in
towns and cities, and “Saint Monday” was well established before 1850 as “a fixed arrange-
ment and not merely a by-product of weekend inebriation” (Harrison 1986: 167, 140).
Consumption 53
Figure 2.3 “Saint Monday in the Prater wine tavern,” 1818. Image courtesy of Wien Museum.
Mass-Observation’s study of Worktown (Bolton) drinking in the 1930s demonstrated that

pubs were busiest on Saturday, the day after payday (1943). Patrons drank faster on Fridays
and Saturdays, with the slowest drinking being recorded midweek. The last hour of the night
and the last day of the week were the times for heaviest drinking. Similarly, the pub was the
last place visited by Bolton workers leaving Blackpool at the end of their holidays. Many left
drunk, laden with bottles for the journey so they could make the most of the last moments
of their holiday (Cross 1990).
Of course, drinking rhythms were also shaped by regulations and licensing. Perhaps
the most obvious example from this period is the “six o’clock swill” of Australia and New
Zealand, introduced as a result of temperance pressure and wartime patriotism in South
Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, and Tasmania from 1915. Queensland and Western
Australia allowed pubs to open until 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. respectively from 1916, and controls
were relaxed in Tasmania in the 1920s and in New South Wales in the 1950s, but six
o’clock closing remained in force in Victoria and South Australia until the 1960s and in New
Zealand it lasted for half a century between 1917 and 1967 (Blainey 2003). With only an
hour between the end of work and closing time, everything that got in the way of drinking
was removed and Australian pubs became mere drinking environments. This had been the
reformers’ intention, but consumption levels hardly changed, although drinkers “drank most
of it between five and six o’clock in the evening and the rest from bottles they took home”
(Phillips 1980: 251).

Elsewhere drink became more, not less, central to the workplace. The South African “tot
system,” by which African agricultural workers received part of their pay in wine, dated from
the eighteenth century. In the Western Cape at the end of the nineteenth century, workers
received up to two quarts each weekday, or a bottle a day at the weekend; “work time came
to be marked by the intervals between the pouring of the tot” (Scully 1992: 59) and drinking
at work symbolized domination and repression.
Finally, it is worth remembering that the rhythms of local drinking cultures were affected
by other temporalities beyond those of work. In late nineteenth-century Britain football drew
crowds away from pubs on Saturday afternoons, making it a rival in terms of the weekly
rhythms of masculine working-class life (Collins and Vamplew 2002: 15). In many places
shifts in working-class spending meant that drinking customs had to co-exist with rival
claims to the time of workers and their families.
Drinking Places and Practices

The consumption of alcohol is often closely related to the places in which it is consumed;
in this way public and private drinking are practices as much as locations. Ray Oldenburg’s
suggestion that drinking locations represent one kind of “third place” between work and
home (1989) echoes Perry Duis’ description of saloons as “semi-public city spaces”
between the public and the private (1983: 3). For Oldenburg the German-American lager
beer garden offers “the model, par excellence, of the third place” in our period (1989:
103). It was more inclusive than the saloon, with family-friendly amenities, although it could
not compete with the saloon, which was cheaper to run and more profitable. Still, a late
nineteenth-century American sociologist recognized that the saloon “unites the many
ones into a common whole which we call society … and intemperance is but its acci-
dent” (Moore 1897: 4) and historians have tended to agree that drinking places could be
collective social spaces. In Tsarist Russia “the tavern took on some of the characteristics
of the commune” (Transchel 2006: 28), the chapel and the pub were the “twin foci of most
nineteenth-century Welsh communities” (Lambert 1983: 13), and in Germany “the tavern
was … the locus of working-class social life” (Roberts 1984: 117). Surveying Bolton’s pubs
in the 1930s, Mass-Observation concluded that the pub was stronger than rival collective
institutions like churches, political parties, and the cinema (1943). Drinking places could
be “great good places,” then, though not everywhere; in the cities of the Ottoman Empire,
coffeehouses were symbols of the public sphere, not the taverns operated by non-Muslims
(Matthee 2014).
While these sentiments obviously reflected genuine feelings of commensality and
belonging, this was not universal; women were only likely to join male regulars at the
Russian tavern on weekends and feast days, for example (Transchel 2006). In fact drink-
ing places made the stratification of societies highly visible, and this was sometimes
seen to be a positive thing. What Willis calls “mixed drinking”—bringing together drink-
ers of different genders, age groups, classes, and ethnicities together—was a cause for
concern beyond East Africa (2002: 10). In Victorian Britain dram and beershops were
associated with working-class drinkers (Paul Jennings 2007); and in France “the tradi-
tional assommoir, run by husband and wife, might count a few tables by the fire” while
“elegant boulevards boasted of cafés that could serve several hundred people” (Prestwich
Consumption 55
1988: 80). There were around 30,000 cafés in Belle Époque Paris, providing plenty of
variety for every occupation, taste, and political affiliation (Haine 1996: 4).
We should also remember that these were commercial as well as communal sites (Powers
1998). The bar or counter, common to many drinking places around the world, was also
found in other nineteenth-century retail spaces; its adoption may have been a pragmatic
response to the problem of serving crowds of customers quickly (Gorham and Dunnett
1950; Girouard 1975). Premises with a bar but little or no seating characterized a “drink and
go” culture of “perpendicular drinking,” but this might reflect a mobile urban culture where
drinkers circulated quickly between premises, or deliberate attempts to discourage lingering
while improving surveillance of a single open space (Kneale 1999).
British pubs of this period have received a good deal of attention (Harrison 1973;
Girouard 1975; Kenna and Mooney 1983). The best recent work is that of Paul Jennings
(1995, 2007), supplemented by studies associated with English Heritage, now Historic
England (Brandwood et al. 2004; Fisher and Preston 2015), the work of Alistair Mutch
(2003, 2004, 2006, 2008), David Beckingham’s research on Liverpool and Glasgow (2017a,
2017b, 2017c), and studies of “improved houses” (Greenaway 1998; Gutzke 2005; Fisher
and Preston 2019). British drinking places catered to many different types of drinkers. This
can be seen in the differences between the pub and the beerhouse, introduced before
this period in an attempt to liberalize drinking. In Wales the beerhouse was more like a
cottage than a pub, and across England and Wales licensing authorities sought to either
improve or close beerhouses (Lambert 1983; Paul Jennings 2007). Mutch notes that where
Manchester was dominated by beerhouses, Liverpool’s pubs were larger and grander, due
to the economic geography of the two cities, the attitudes of their magistrates, and the
management of Liverpool’s pubs (2003).
These differences could also be found within drinking places. Open plan rooms, asso-
ciated with the “gin palaces” of early nineteenth-century London, became less popular by
1850, as pubs divided into smaller compartments, snugs, and more comfortable lounges
and saloons (Gorham and Dunnett 1950; Girouard 1975). In cities this was encouraged
by “the ineradicable class-consciousness of the English,” as “customers had to be segre-
gated from each other” (Gorham and Dunnett 1950: 26). In Hackney in the 1890s G. H.
Duckworth, one of Charles Booth’s social investigators, noted that pub spaces reflected
The separation of the classes. It is the object of the publican to separate his customers
as far as possible into their social grades. That is why there are so many divisions …
different articles are sold at the saloon bar than are at the public bar & not the same thing
at a higher price. (1897: 199)
For much of the twentieth century many British pubs offered “public” and “lounge” bars,
respectively more working-class and masculine, and middle-class and feminine. While the
lack of table service in many British pubs still puzzles international visitors, there is evidence
for it, at least in lounges, in pubs in London, the Midlands, and northern England until the
second half of the twentieth century (Gorham 1949; Brandwood et al. 2004).
After 1900 temperance pressure encouraged a general reduction in the numbers of
licenses, which tended to improve the quality of the surviving stock of British pubs. Many
breweries played an active part in this process (Gutzke 2005). “Improved” pubs were better-
run, more hygienic, and easier to supervise, designed to appeal to women as well as to

Figure 2.4 Exterior of the Horseshoe & Wheatsheaf public house, Southwark, London, 1898. The
chimney bears an ornate datestone of 1897, below which is a plaque carrying the name of the
pub. Two large lanterns decorate the facade. The brewery name, Whitbread and Co, is displayed
prominently in a shaped gable. Photograph by English Heritage/Heritage Images via Getty
Images.
men. Seating was encouraged, and gardens, food, and entertainment provided alternative
attractions to drink (Fisher and Preston 2018, 2019), although these features could also be
found in the altogether livelier “roadhouse” (Law 2009; Gutzke and Law 2017). In Britain
improvement culminated in the premises operated by the Central Control Board during the
First World War, which will be considered in a moment.
Irish pubs resembled British ones, although gin palaces were rare outside Belfast and
Dublin. However, the absence of “ties,” the relationships by which brewers owned or managed
pubs in return for the sale of their beer, meant that Irish pubs remained far more independent
and local in character; many were converted homes or shops (Malcolm 1998). In France the
liberalization of licensing from 1880 led to a great increase in the number of debíts de bois-
sons (drinksellers, for consumption on and off the premises). “Urban, working-class, and
dominated by the still” (Prestwich 1988: 17), they sold brandy, absinthe, and other spirits
made with industrial alcohol. These drinks, much cheaper than wine, became a staple of
working-class French drinking (Prestwich 1988). Haine’s excellent study of the Parisian café
provides a detailed appraisal of its importance for the city’s working class (1996). A similar
picture prevailed in Germany, where liberal licensing laws encouraged taverns to open and
Consumption 57
Figure 2.5 “Les débits de boissons au Champ-de-Mars,” Paris, 1879. From Simon de Vandière,
Exposition universelle de 1878 illustrée (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1879). Image courtesy of Brown
University Library.
forced them to become more attractive in competition with one another. At the same time
the growth of an associational world of clubs, societies, and family entertainments within
taverns and beer gardens “disciplined drinking behaviour by subordinating it to other goals
and purposes” (Roberts 1984: 117). Russian taverns, state-owned as part of the Tsarist
vodka monopoly, did not prosper until the spread of a cash economy in the nineteenth
century, when they rapidly became important, and increasingly masculine, social spaces
(Transchel 2006).
There are rich histories of African drinking places during this century, largely because
colonial states sought to suppress or to profit from them, and because developing cash
economies dissolved restrictions on who could drink which drinks, making these sites of
conflict and anxiety. In British East Africa, the Uganda Liquor Ordinance of 1917 controlled
production, sale, and consumption of all alcohol, “native” or otherwise, while in the Buganda
kingdom ebirabo (clubs for the sale of local drinks) were banned (Willis 2002). This was
reversed in the 1930s and ebirabo were encouraged as regulated outlets, as a source of
income for local “native” authorities. In Kenya privately owned beerhalls were encouraged
after Mombasa’s prospered; in 1940 white Kenyan employers were allowed to estab-
lish beerhalls as long as profits were for the benefit of Africans (138). These specialized
commercial urban sites quickly became important. “In 1940 most of the alcohol consumed

by Africans in East Africa was drunk at or near people’s homes, and much of it was still
being drunk without payment,” but “by the late 1950s, much—probably most—drinking
across the region took place in urban beerhalls or rural clubs” (141). This was driven by
a shift from state monopolies to private clubs, benefiting both colonial states and local
entrepreneurs.
In Gold Coast in the late 1920s, restrictive liquor laws—higher import duties, half as
many licenses, shorter opening hours, and above all a crackdown on akpeteshie or local
gin—had serious consequences for “a vibrant popular culture … of drinking bars, popu-
lar music (‘highlife’) and comic opera (concert), that was emerging in urban Gold Coast”
(Akyeampong 1996a: 221–2). These bars were an integral part of an urbanizing, developing
society, important for both the elite and the working class, and remained important after
independence.
In Southern Africa drinking places were closely bound up with the labor migration, urbani-
zation, and development that followed the mining boom of the 1870s and 1880s. Employers
sought to maximize efficiency by licensing or prohibiting sources of alcohol, by establishing
closed compounds (some “dry,” others provided with their own company beerhalls), or by
adopting the “tot” system (Van Onselen 1976). “Employers and local authorities in towns
and cities combined not to destroy the liquor trade but to seize control of it, shape it to their
needs, and profit from it” (Ambler and Crush 1992: 18). By the start of the early twentieth
century, the domestic production and consumption of “native” drinks were limited to the
countryside, and in towns only state-licensed or state-owned outlets could sell them.
We have excellent studies of drinking places in the United States, Canada, and Central
America for this period. The US saloon adapted to different political, social, and economic
contexts. Both Boston and Chicago adopted a policy of “high license”—making licenses
expensive in order to reduce their number and drive out marginal proprietors—but this
had different outcomes (Duis 1983). In Boston nearly three-quarters of all licenses were for
“restaurants” by 1895, although many offered limited food; these cheap “barroom-restau-
rants” drove out grocery stores, especially in tenement areas, and this brought about a subtle
but significant “transition from private to public drinking, from grocery store to common
victualler” (30). Boston sought to limit the number of saloons, which meant that there was
no incentive for their owners to improve their quality. Chicago adopted a more laissez-faire
approach that encouraged competition for patrons; attractions like billiard tables flourished,
but not in Boston, and the provision of lavish free lunches sometimes drove saloons into
bankruptcy. The World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago World’s Fair) of 1893 prompted a
“beer war” as 700 new saloons opened to meet the anticipated demand.
Canadian cities were well stocked with legal and illegal taverns by 1850 (Cafferky 2003b).
“Joe Beef’s,” an infamous late nineteenth-century working-class tavern on Montreal’s water-
front, provided patrons with information, entertainment, public debates on topical matters,
accommodation for up to 200 men, and emergency funds to help support regulars in trou-
ble; the proprietor also actively campaigned for better medical and employment prospects
for the city’s working class (DeLottinville 1981–2). However, liquor control would transform
Canadian drinking places after the First World War, as we will see in a moment.
Pulque, a fermented drink made from the sap of the maguey plant, was popular in
Mexico long before European contact. Studies of the pulquerías of Mexico City note that
the liberal administrations of the second half of the nineteenth-century prohibited new
Consumption 59
businesses within middle-class areas, imposed strict regulations on pulquerías, and forced
improvements on them (Toxqui Garay 2008; Toner 2011, 2015a). The microgeographies of
these places attracted a good deal of discussion and concern, as they did in Britain, and for
part of this period the authorities were keen to discourage loitering by removing seats and
tables and placing the bar counter just inside the doors to the street. Regulations forbade
customers staying any longer than was necessary to finish their drinks and specified a mini-
mum distance between pulquerias (Toxqui Garay 2008). Comparing these premises with
Mexico City’s other drinking places—vinaterías, largely selling spirits, and cafés, which were
Figure 2.6 “Mexico: Scenes before a Pulqueria in the City of Mexico,” c. 1900. Image by Bettman
via Getty Images.

elite spaces—Deborah Toner concludes that “popular and elite drinking places operated
as microcosms of the contests over Mexico City’s social space in the nineteenth century”
(2011: 27).
The regulation of drinking places was clearly significant in shaping drinking cultures
(Valverde 2003b). From 1865 “Gothenburg” or “disinterested management” ideas spread
from Scandinavia to Britain, to Britain’s African colonies, and—after Prohibition—to North
America, arguing that commercial motivations encouraged drinking. The first British outlets
at the turn of the century were run for the benefit of investors (Gutzke 2003), inspiring the
Central Control Board (Liquor Traffic) to borrow their ideas during the First World War. The
Board purchased, improved, and ran local pubs and built new ones, first near the Royal
Small Arms Factory in North London, and then at Cromarty Firth, Carlisle, and Gretna Green
(Nicholls 2009; Duncan 2013; White 2014). This brief wartime experiment was to prove
influential in terms of “improved” pub design.
A similar system had already been implemented in Southern Africa in 1909 when Durban’s
municipal government instituted a local monopoly on making and selling beer to fund munic-
ipal improvement, encouraging similar schemes in Southern Rhodesia and Johannesburg
(La Hausse 1992; Parry 1992; Rogerson 1992) and municipal beerhalls in Nairobi, Dar es
Salaam, Mombasa, and elsewhere (Willis 2002, 2003a). South African beerhalls were delib-
erately “bleak functional buildings with little character and no charm” (Ambler and Crush
1992: 25) and Johannesburg’s beerhalls were not popular with drinkers (Rogerson 1992).
In the 1930s, “in the clubs of Nairobi and Mombasa, with their brick and wire-mesh walls,
turnstiles, and ‘stalwart attendants,’ the cheerless colonial vision of urban drinking as a
physiological function came closest to realization” (Willis 2002: 129). In their determination
to provide the bare minimum beyond access to alcohol, African beerhalls resembled the
“pure drinking environments” of Britain, although the latter were shaped only by lightly regu-
lated market forces. In Canada after Prohibition, many provinces experimented with closely
regulated privately owned public “beer parlours,” designed to minimize the corrupting effect
of alcohol and improve the conduct of their patrons (Malleck 2012; this volume). These
resembled less appealing versions of the improved or state-controlled British pub.
Alcohol could of course be found in many other leisure places in this period. Some, like
British singing or dancing saloons, or twentieth-century roadhouses (Law 2009), grew out
of pubs. Others, like music halls or members’ clubs—both working class and aristocratic—
were effectively parallel institutions. While clubs, political organizations, and societies had
met in drinking places around the world for centuries, not everyone wanted to drink. In
Britain the Club and Institute Union was initially set up to support “dry” clubs, although from
1865 it accepted that clubs could opt to sell beer to members (Tremlett 1987; Cherrington
2012). Club numbers grew slowly at first, picked up after 1900, and boomed after 1945.
From 1872 they were exempt from licensing but after 1902 had to register with licensing
authorities. Drink was cheap because clubs did not need to make a profit, but the attraction
of most clubs seems to have been the entertainment and sociability they offered, rather
than low prices. Women could only attend as guests until full membership was extended to
them in 2007.
Gentlemen’s clubs were also sites for masculine homosociality, but drink played a much
more important role than it did in working men’s clubs. However, excessive intoxication was
frowned upon as “a serious breach of gentlemanly status,” and members were forced to
Consumption 61
resign if matters got out of hand (Milne-Smith 2011: 79). Similarly homely yet masculine,
the clubs of British East Africa were often much less well-behaved, and many seem to have
made the most of the looser regulations that surrounded them (Willis 2002).
Of course other kinds of retail site could be licensed for consumption of alcohol on
the premises. The liberal licensing of Second Empire Paris encouraged shops of many
kinds to offer drink to their customers, particularly women (Prestwich 1988). In Ireland the
spirit grocer’s Licence (1791–1910) allowed grocers to sell a limited amount of spirits for
consumption off the premises; critics claimed it was widely abused, particularly by women,
who stayed to drink in the shops (Kearns 1996). British women do seem to have been shop
drinkers but as yet there is little published research on this topic.
As home brewing became increasingly rare in many places, the sale of alcoholic drinks
for consumption off the premises connected drinking places and homes. In Chicago “rush-
ing the growler” made the saloon an extension of the home (Duis 1983). In Britain a license
for “off” sales represented a major source of income for small grocers; in Leicester they
defended their customers against teetotal criticism, arguing that it was better that they came
to them than to the pubs and in doing so shopkeepers “assumed the role of stewards of
working-class respectability” (Hosgood 1989: 453).
Of course an unknown amount of alcohol was drunk “nowhere in particular,” that is, not
in homes, workplaces, or specialized drinking places. In rapidly urbanizing societies the
provision of drinking places fell behind population growth even where alcohol regulation was
liberal. In Russia a brief ban on new establishments exacerbated this problem in the 1890s;
street drinking increased near off-sale premises and canny entrepreneurs set up stands
hiring out drinking glasses (Transchel 2006). The same reforms sought to separate drink
from food by prohibiting the sale of food in drink stores, but were confounded by drinkers
smuggling vodka into traktirs (cheap eating places) (Herlihy 2002). Later prohibitions on
public drinking in the USSR were ignored by workers who drank in parks, dining halls,
cooperatives, and workers’ clubs (Transchel 2006).
Of course there were many illicit drinking places too. In Boston in 1884 there were
perhaps 1,300 unlicensed and 2,808 licensed places; in Chicago these figures were around
1,500 and 3,500 respectively (Duis 1983: 62–3). It seems likely that “high license” fostered
these illicit “Blind Pigs,” as did lax policing. Chicago’s lakefront meant it was possible to
operate bumboats—floating saloons—outside the territorial limit, and drinkers were also
served by wagons selling bottles, some illegally. In Wales unlicensed premises were known
as “jerries” (Lambert 1983). In many other places—Ireland, Scotland, the United States, and
Africa (West, Southern, and East)—unlicensed drink shops were more likely to be called
“shebeens,” a word borrowed from the Irish. In Africa it was these shebeens that prompted
prohibitions on African production and sale of drink, and ultimately state monopolies and
municipal beerhalls.
Conclusions
We have considered evidence for how much alcohol was consumed, its drinkers, the occa-
sions on which they drank, and the places where they drank it between 1850 and 1950.
While there may be some evidence for a shift away from “traditional” drinking, it does appear
that rhythms and practices that we associate with industrialization were in existence long

before this period, and that elements of past custom survived throughout this century. The
picture is complicated even further by imperialism and by the global exchange of drinks
and drinking practices it fostered. It is possible that the spread of cash economies made
it possible to make and drink alcohol more freely, and distilled spirits did become much
cheaper. However despite this, it seems that average consumption fell in many countries in
the twentieth century, due to a mix of changing habits and government controls. It does also
seem to be true that alcohol was chased out of workplaces, or at least urban ones, meaning
that specialized drinking places became more important.
Given that past experiences of drinking are often drawn upon in discussions of contem-
porary alcohol policy, it is important that we recognize that consumption in this period
was not, on the whole, shaped by powerful logics, and that countries took rather different
paths—we might compare France and the Scandinavian nations, for example. A better
sense of the reasons behind these outcomes would help us make better sense of contem-
porary debates about alcohol consumption.
Consumption 63
64
3 REGULATION AND PROHIBITION
DAN MALLECK
Introduction
In many countries, alcohol consumption presented a dilemma that required strategies for its
regulation. The very theme of “industry and empire” highlights the challenges of managing
various communities of people, most notably the working classes clustered into rapidly
growing cities to fuel the industrial machine and aboriginal peoples subjected by colonizing
and conquering populations. This chapter considers the examples of regulation and prohi-
bition in several countries, the impact of alcohol upon people in colonized regions, and the
significant effects that war, most especially the First World War, had on alcohol policy.
The efforts of governments to license alcohol have several main features. In the middle of
the nineteenth century, many governments were wrestling with the issue of how to regulate
a commercial product and not violate laissez-faire principles. These worries often evapo-
rated, however, under the pressure of temperance advocates, or concerns about the effect
of drink on the nation voiced by government itself. Yet liquor licensing offered a paradox. To
impose high license fees in an effort to promote moderate drinking also enriched govern-
ments, so the subsequent decline in drinking could reduce revenues. This tension between
revenue and moderationism was a persistent feature in many national stories. Confounding
the prohibitionist efforts was the liquor industry. Its power varied in different countries, and
often it was much less organized than temperance, at least before the end of the nineteenth
century. These three factors are the main influences over the regulation of liquor in this
period, resulting in a range of strategies to tax and control the consumption of beverage
alcohol, while often nurturing domestic drinks industries. One of the most significant results
was the advent of the idea of state-centered “disinterested management,” often related
to the system of government organization of the manufacture and distribution of alcohol
pioneered in Gothenburg, Sweden, and adopted and adapted in various countries around
the world.
Licensing before the First World War

England
In England, liquor licensing was debated within the context of laissez-faire economics that
expected government to keep regulation to a minimum and mostly function to make capi-
tal accumulation easier. The main purpose of licensing legislation to mid-century was to
regulate the trade in the interest of the “‘public good,’ … by preventing disorder, curbing
adulteration and by raising taxation.” From the 1820s to the 1870s legislation was focused
upon curbing local magistrates’ power and endorsing laissez-faire principles (Greenaway
2003: 13–17). This form of legislation has been called “free licensing,” an approach embed-
ded, for example, in the 1830 Beer Act which was “a victory of free trade capitalism over the
established power of local economic and political elites” (Nicholls 2009: 80). The legislation
swept away magistrates’ oversight and expectation that licenses would be granted only to
individuals of “good” character, instead requiring anyone who wished to sell beer to pay a
small license fee for the privilege. Clearly favoring producers and vendors, this legislation
galvanized the anti-spirits movement into “a radical and well organized teetotal temperance
campaign” (Nicholls 2009: 90).
Free licensing faced persistent attacks as critics noted that the free market did not
seem to be regulating the trade as it should, temperance became more popular, and drink
became a partisan issue. Gladstone’s 1864 “Permissive Prohibition Bill” introduced the
idea of the local veto, where localities could vote to ban alcohol sales. The Wine and
Beerhouse Act (1869) was intended to deal with the dramatic increase in drink outlets that
resulted from the permissive Beer Act a generation earlier (Nicholls 2009: 122). Intense
debates around the 1872 Licensing Act had several results. First, the resulting legisla-
tion was significantly less excessive than initially intended. Second, a strong advocate
for the drinks industry, the Licensed Victuallers Defence League, emerged to counter the
strong and vocal temperance movement. Third, the debates fleshed out emerging parti-
san delineations, with Liberals supported by Drys and Conservatives supported by Wets.
Gladstone even attributed his electoral failure in 1874 to the increasingly toxic issue of drink
(Greenaway 2003: 33–5).
James Nicholls has identified several key principles that underpinned debates on drink
at this time. Could a state retain free trade principles while simultaneously placing limits on
a specific trade; should local populations have control over the trade in alcohol; and was
it best to remove the profit motive from the liquor trade, instituting “disinterested manage-
ment” such as represented by the Gothenburg system? These principles were tested in
the next half century. A 1891 Queen’s Bench decision known as Sharp v Wakefield set
the precedent that licensing justices had the right to refuse any license, not only new
license applications (Nicholls 2009: 131–2. See also Greenaway 2003: 54). In 1897 a Royal
Commission on Licensing decided that the government needed to reduce the number of
licenses, but it could not agree upon how to do this. A key issue of division was how
to compensate licensees whose businesses were closed, as per Sharp v Wakefield. As
a result, a Conservative Licensing Act of 1904 reduced the power of local magistrates by
prescribing financial compensation for anyone who was denied a license renewal (Gutzke
1989: 155–6; Greenaway 2003: 79; Nicholls 2009: 144, 146).
After Asquith’s win in 1906, his Liberal Party’s 1908 Licensing Bill was intended to radically
alter the licensing landscape. Among other things, the bill would reduce licenses by a third,
alter compensation provisions from the 1904 Act, centralize the compensation process,
make all new licenses subject to a local option vote, and prohibit women from working in
pubs. Opponents argued that the bill was a step toward socialism, a harbinger of govern-
ment control of the drinks industry, while the provision about women saw the drinks trade
frame the bill as an attack on barmaids (Greenaway 2003: 81–3; Nicholls 2009: 150–1).
Although the bill passed easily through the House of Commons, it was rejected by the
Conservative-dominated House of Lords. Apart from passing a local veto bill for Scotland in

1913, no other significant licensing legislation came into place before the beginning of the
First World War. Liquor licensing remained a hot, partisan, and divisive issue.
France
French legislation was focused upon revenue generation rather than imposing moderation
until at least the beginning of the twentieth century. Facing a strong and entrenched liquor
industry, albeit divided between the liquor producers of the north and the wine producers of
the south, and an influential class of retailers, French politicians generally shied away from
any actual legislative change. Except for passing a 1873 law against drunkenness after the
Franco-Prussian War, legislation that was more about public disorder than drink, and forbid-
ding the serving of alcohol to minors, legislation relating to liquor, when it was passed, was
generally just about raising revenues.
Legislative changes in 1880 removed many barriers to the retail sale of liquor. To own a
débit de boisson—essentially any outlet that sold liquor by the glass or to takeaway—one
had merely to pay the fees and observe the rules. Debits were nearly ubiquitous. Nearly any
type of shop could hold a license, from cafes, bistros, and cabarets to fruit markets, grocers,
and dairies. By the end of the nineteenth century the system experienced extraordinary
expansion. Débitants were also politically powerful (Prestwich 1988: 16).
The Regime des boissons system of licensing retail sales generated substantial revenue
while “leaving considerable freedom to producers and distributors” (Prestwich 1988: 109).
Figure 3.1 Inside the French café “L’Assommoir,” c. 1900, France. Image by Photo12/Universal
Images Group via Getty Images.
Regulation and Prohibition 67

Producers paid a variety of taxes and observed rules against fraud, and debitants had to
pay license fees and comply with extensive regulations on the operation of the business.
But in all other aspects, drinks vendors and producers were free to operate as they wished.
Things changed early in the twentieth century, but only in moderate ways. In 1900,
wine, beer, cider, and other drinks of moderate strength were labeled “hygienic drinks” and
producers paid only one tax. To offset losses in revenues, taxes were raised on distilled
beverages, and license fees were increased. The northern distillers fought for years to resist
these changes, and had some success. Some politicians advocated a state takeover of the
industry, but there was little movement until the First World War.
The main temperance organization, the Ligue nationale contre l’alcoolisme [National
League Against Alcoholism] initiated a campaign in 1903 with an aim to increase legislative
action against liquor. Although advocating a broad range of issues, from 1903 the ligue
sought mostly to limit the number of debits and to prohibit absinthe. Part of the campaign
was aimed at supporting an 1899 bill to reduce the number of debits which wound its way
through parliament for over a decade before being defeated in 1912. The absinthe issue
was only moderately more successful. Absinthe, a strong spirit that was infused with a
range of plant essences, had been framed as a problematic substance, as much a hallu-
cinogenic drug as a beverage. With associations with bohemian debauchery, along with
medical concerns over the physiological effect of the infusions, absinthe had become a
problematic drink seen as debilitating to the French state. The movement against absinthe
was strengthened when Belgium and Switzerland both banned it in 1906. Yet a 1907 push
to ban absinthe failed in favor of adding another surtax. It was not until the beginning of the
First World War that absinthe was banned. It was one of the few forms of alcohol prohibition
that lasted for decades, although distillers managed to create similar products “in slightly
less toxic but no less appealing form.” As Prestwich notes, the absinthe ban, then was “a
hollow victory” (1988: 128–9, 134, 140).
Canada
In the colonies of Canada, which were governed by a combination of British common law
(and in French parts of Canada, some holdovers of French common law) and local legisla-
tion, liquor licensing reveals tension between laissez-faire ideals and the need for tight control
over an increasingly problematized substance. Evangelical temperance advocates pushed
for a government solution to what others might see as a personal moral issue whereas both
the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church tended not to espouse legislated
solutions (Heron 2003: 155–6). By 1864, the United Provinces of Canada (which became
Ontario and Quebec) passed the Dunkin Act, “local option” legislation permitting individual
municipalities to hold referenda on the interest in having a dry community. This legislation
remained intact after Confederation in 1867 created the Dominion of Canada.
According to the British North America Act (1867), the Canadian constitution until the
1980s, liquor licensing was a provincial matter, although the federal government attempted
at times to intervene. Consider the case of Ontario. In the 1870s, the government of Oliver
Mowat—a powerful Liberal premier who was in office for nearly a quarter century—passed
increasingly stringent licensing legislation which centralized control. Some saw this as a

Figure 3.2 Lithograph marking the time and date of the prohibition of absinthe in Switzerland.
An evil man, representing medicine and religion, gloats over the death of the freedom of the
individual in Switzerland to consume absinthe, represented as a green woman stabbed by a
cross. Colour lithograph after A.-H. Gantner, 1910. Courtesy of Wellcome Library, London.

result of his Liberal politics while critics argued that he was pandering to the drink indus-
try and seeking more government revenue (Romney 2003). The Licensing Act of 1876
(called the Crooks Act after the legislator who proposed it) placed limits on the number of
licenses for both taverns and shops and created a provincially appointed Board of License
Commissioners (BLCs) for each municipality. Over the next several decades, the Ontario
legislation broadened the complexity of licensing, while similarly limiting access to alco-
holic beverages. In 1915, the municipal BLCs were replaced by a central provincial board
(Malleck 2014).
Federal-provincial jurisdictional disputes abounded. In 1878, the Dominion government
passed the Canada Temperance Act broadening the local option legislation of the Dunkin
Act. Although provinces cried constitutional foul, both the Supreme Court and the Privy
Council ruled that the CTA fell within federal jurisdiction. However, a subsequent federal
Dominion Licensing Act was declared unconstitutional. So provincial rights to license liquor
had to function in tandem with dominion rights to restrict it (Malleck 2015a).
In other provinces, licensing acts similar to the Crooks Act became law in British Columbia
(1878), Nova Scotia (1886), New Brunswick (1887), and Manitoba (1889) (Heron 2003:
158–9). This is not to say they simply followed Ontario’s lead. Indeed, in such a diverse
country liquor licenses operated in many forms. In the province of Quebec, for example,
with a Roman Catholic and French-speaking majority, government control of liquor was
less popular than elsewhere and prohibition was a non-starter. Conversely, in the Maritime
Provinces—Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island—the combination
of evangelicalism and progressive politics meant that the idea of prohibition was much
stronger. The first province in the country to institute prohibition, PEI, went dry in 1906
(Heron 2003: 176).
By the beginning of the First World War, dry sentiment was strong, although it was hardly
an uncontested battle. Many communities which had voted themselves dry under local
option returned to a wet status after a few years. Nevertheless, alcohol was increasingly
framed as a problematic substance. The national Patent or Proprietary Medicines Act in
1908 emerged partly from the concern about prefabricated remedies containing high propor-
tions of alcohol (Malleck 2015b). The law required manufacturers of proprietary medicine to
indicate on their labels whether their product contained specific problematic substances,
including alcohol. Provincial legislatures expanded restrictions on the availability of alcohol.
But it was the First World War that gave increased force to the argument that prohibition was
necessary for the future of the nation, and prohibitionists would see the victories for which
they had long prayed.
United States
In the United States, liquor legislation was similarly under the authority of individual state
governments, although for much of the early years of licensing regulation, states often
devolved authority and responsibility to individual communities. Reformers had much
success in the first part of the century obtaining “special legislation” empowering local
governments to create more stringent liquor regulations than occurred at the state level.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, decades of locally focused legislation had created
confusion and some chaos in liquor licensing and regulation (Szymanski 2003: 112).

Figure 3.3 Neal Dow (1804–97), the Mayor of Portland, Maine, a staunch Prohibitionist, c. 1851.
Engraved by J. C. Buttre. Image by Kean Collection via Getty Images.
Temperance campaigns were populist and influential in the United States, and saw a range
of legislative innovations throughout the nineteenth century. Popular approaches included
“high license” campaigns, demanding license fees that were so high that only the more
“respectable” could afford them, and “no license” campaigns, where the state would refuse
to grant any liquor licenses (Blocker 1989: 53–4; Pegram 1998: 34–8). Complete prohibition
also became a viable option relatively early compared to other countries. In 1851 Maine
was the first state to pass a prohibition law. Championed by Neal Dow, mayor of Portland,
the law outlawed the sale of all alcoholic beverages except for medical, mechanical, or
manufacturing purposes. Twelve other states quickly followed suit, with several other states
passing watered down versions. By the end of the decade, however, all had either rescinded
their laws or left them ignored or unenforced. The supreme courts in Massachusetts and
New York deemed their Maine Laws to be unconstitutional and four other states’ courts
weakened the provisions (Blocker 1989; Pegram 1998: 40–1).

Temperance reformers sought to influence not only legislation, but also state constitu-
tions. For example, in 1851 Ohio passed a no-license constitutional amendment that forbade
the state from granting licenses at all (Blocker 1989: 54). Yet many politicians argued that
embedding prohibition amendments in a state constitution could restrict the ability of state
legislatures to create licensing laws. Still, many state constitutions by the last part of the
century contained specific provisions limiting the ability of lawmakers to legislate a range of
booze-related issues (Szymanski 2003: 96–7).
The Civil War interrupted the zeal of temperance, which had already been set back by
the failures of the Maine Laws. Post-war reconstruction included taxes on liquor, thereby
undermining the no-license idea that states should not be involved in legitimizing the liquor
industry through licensure. Some temperance reformers also complained that the war had
reinforced—or reignited—the place of liquor in a male-centered culture. Moreover, the
liquor industry became more organized, reacting as it did against various liquor taxes. As a
result, efforts to see new legislation enacted had more active resistance from the industry.
Nevertheless, some changes were made. Some states began to enforce their dormant
prohibition laws (enforced by veterans of the Union army), and others passed restrictions
such as bans on Sunday sales. In the 1870s, with liquor legislation becoming an increasingly
politically touchy subject, some state politicians returned licensing power to local jurisdic-
tions. Illinois and Wisconsin, for example, allowed municipal officials the right to license liquor
sales. Pennsylvania passed local option legislation. Kansas required all license applications
to be accompanied by a petition endorsing the application (Pegram 1998: 45–8; 50).
In South Carolina, a unique experiment with state control emerged at the end of the
century in the creation of a dispensary system. Modelled upon the principles of disinter-
ested management, the South Carolina Dispensary was the innovation of Benjamin Tillman,
a southern reformer who was governor from 1890 to 1894 and US senator from 1894 to
1918. The dispensary system gave the state complete monopoly over the sale and distribu-
tion of alcohol within the state. It existed for a relatively short time, from 1894 to 1907, but
some have seen it as influential in post-prohibition liquor control regimes in both Canada and
the United States (Welborn 2013; Powell 2015).
By the last quarter of the century, the focus on state efforts was joined by an increased
emphasis upon the need for national prohibition. This was the approach of the aptly named
Prohibition Party, which formed in the 1880s but fractured in the 1890s. Its decline had
several facets: prohibitionists were reluctant to pull support from their preferred major
party (usually the Republicans), disagreement on how prohibition should be enacted, and
conservative members’ distaste for the party’s endorsement of radical ideas like female
suffrage (Blocker 1989: 99–101).
The fate of the Prohibition Party informed the founders of the Anti-Saloon League (ASL)
which was organized in 1895. The ASL took a narrow approach, attacking the liquor traffic
specifically at the site of the saloon but avoiding more “radical” policies. The ASL accom-
panied such organizations as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in pushing for
various forms of prohibitory legislation, but its biggest success was in the drive toward
national prohibition. The prohibitionist push accelerated around 1912 with numerous victo-
ries in state legislatures, which, Jack Blocker observes, resulted in much of the south being
“rendered legally dry” (1989: 111). In 1913, Congress passed the Webb-Kenyon Act, which
prohibited the shipment of liquor into states where such commerce violated that state’s

laws. Soon after the United States entered the First World War, a new prohibition-minded
Congress passed a war-related food conservation bill that included provisions forbidding the
use of grain for distillation (Blocker 1989: 102; 111–13). Prohibition soon followed.
Russia
The situation in Russia was different for many reasons. First of all, the common drink of
Russians was vodka, a distilled spirit that was intertwined with Russian identity, rather than
milder beverages popular elsewhere. Second, the trade in vodka had been controlled by—
and had enriched—the government for centuries. Ivan the Terrible established state-run
taverns (kabaks) and outlawed private vendors. Kabak revenues filled his coffers. Catherine
the Great instituted a system known as vodka tax farming, in which individuals bid for the
right to administer the liquor system in a set area. This system increased revenues and tied
the sale of vodka to an elaborate social system supporting the established aristocracy by
providing a system of revenue for the government, income for individuals, and dependency
from licensees (Herlihy 2002: 5–6; Schrad 2014: 80–1; 94).
The alcohol revenue system came under scrutiny during a period of intense political
reform in the nineteenth century. Alexander II abolished tax farming because of the wide
proliferation of taverns and vendors it had created. He shifted the system to one of direct
taxation of distillers and vendors, but no real change in the extent of the liquor business
was realized. The number of taverns and liquor stores increased, and the cost of vodka
declined. In 1886, the state passed a law making it illegal for employers to pay their employ-
ees in vodka, but it had little impact on drinking rates. As with other countries, the state also
increased license fees; they rose from 10 rubles in 1865 to 1,100 in 1885 and jacked up
excise taxes on liquor. A reduction of liquor stores and a decline in consumption were the
result (Herlihy 2002: 6; Schrad 2014: 122–3).
Nevertheless, alcohol consumption continued to be problematic. To address it, Tsar
Alexander III introduced the idea of government monopoly, which Nicholas II made a real-
ity after Alexander’s untimely death. The State Vodka Monopoly, created in 1894, banned
taverns where only drink was sold and established state-run liquor stores. Although private
distillers still operated, they could sell only to state-owned vendors. Some argued that it
actually increased drinking, since workers would bring their own vodka to their lunch and
drink it surreptitiously, faster, and in greater quantities than were they to drink at a tavern
(Herlihy 2002: 92; Shrad 2014: 176). Critics argued that these initiatives—dubbed “the
drunken budget”—were nothing more than attempts to continue to profit from the sale
of vodka. In 1895 to address such criticisms, the state set up The Guardianship of Public
Sobriety. This large and well-funded temperance agency’s goal was to encourage modera-
tion (but not total abstinence) and establish amusements to serve as alternatives to the pubs
(Herlihy 2002: 15, 38; Shrad 2014: 176).
Critics of the government’s actions with respect to the liquor monopoly were given
louder voices after the October Revolution of 1905, which led to the establishment of
the Duma and reduction of Tsarist power. The Revolution was partly the outcome of the
Russo-Japanese war of 1904, in which Russian forces were defeated, many believed, not
by Japanese military power so much as by the drunkenness and consequent incapacity of
the military. In contrast to the partisan nature of liquor control in other countries examined

here, in Russia criticism of the State Vodka Monopoly came from all political directions.
Left-leaning activists saw alcohol as a tool of oppression of the working class. Centrists
felt that the decline of social order, as viewed in the 1905 revolution, was at least partly
the result of the easy availability of vodka. Conservatives, claiming that drunkenness had
been reduced in the countryside but was rampant in industrializing cities, used the issue of
drunkenness to condemn modernization (Herlihy 2002: 134–5).
The members of the Duma worked quickly to address the state alcohol monopoly,
although its divisions made rapid success difficult. In 1907 a bill proposing a one-eighth
reduction in alcohol production and a price increase did not pass. A 1911 bill imposed fines
and imprisonment for bootlegging, reduced sales of vodka to one bottle per person per
day, prohibited vodka sales in state buildings or places of amusement, and allowed village
assemblies to ban liquor stores in their districts. The bill was approved by the Duma, but
stalled in the State Council (the upper chamber) for two years, emerging significantly modi-
fied. One of the provisions that remained was local option (Herlihy 2002: 129–38).
By 1914, as Patricia Herlihy notes, Tsar Nicholas had decided “the ‘drunken budget’
had to go” (2002: 138). Announcing that he would support any citizens who were fighting
against drunkenness “by all means permitted by the law” the tsar had no choice but to act
when over 800 municipalities petitioned to go dry. In August of the same year, as the First
World War began, Nicholas decreed that all restaurants and clubs (except those “first class”
restaurants patronized by elites) would have to cease the sale of vodka during the mobiliza-
tion of the troops, a prohibition that soon extended to the duration of the war. (Phillips 2000:
17; Herlihy 2002: 138–9; Schrad 2014: 180–1). It was this decree that historians have called
the institution of prohibition in Russia, although it was incomplete and created a patchwork
of dry and not-so dry areas across the country.
World War One and Beyond

Although it may be clichéd to say that the First World War “changed everything,” the war
certainly saw significant events in the development of alcohol policy. Countries involved in
the war invoked a range of liquor restrictions. Many of these were designed to deal with a
concern over the scarcity of grains and other supplies vital to the war effort, but the power
of prohibitionists helped to push austerity policies beyond what may have been necessary.
After all, in both Canada and the United States during the Second World War, a longer war
with even greater resource outlay, prohibition was never seriously considered. So when
looking at liquor policy during the First World War, although the war initiated new restrictive
legislation and policy experimentation, we cannot forget the influence of the pre-war prohi-
bitionists upon the shape of that policy.
Britain
Britain’s approach was framed by the concerns over national efficiency, the loud
voices of the prohibitionists, and the examples of allies (notably Russia and France)
who were already acting to restrict trade in various areas of the liquor industry. As early
as August 10, 1914, the Home Secretary had been asked to impose restrictions on
licensees, resulting in legislation to allow licensing justices to limit hours of sale. By the

end of the year, such restrictions were in place in nearly half of the licensing districts in
England and Wales (Greenaway 2003: 91–2).
In David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer until 1916 then Prime Minister, prohi-
bitionists had an ally, and he increased restrictions although they fell well short of prohibition.
He famously said that “we are fighting Germany, Austria and Drink, and, as far as I can
see, the greatest of these three deadly foes is Drink.” Lloyd George increased govern-
ment control over factories, and over the drinks industry. Alcohol was not just a beverage;
it was a strategic commodity in munitions (such as cordite) as well as medically useful.
Still, alcoholic beverages could of course be considered detrimental to manufacturing: with
increased wartime wages, workers could afford more booze, and be less efficient. Lloyd
George sought agreements with unions over working conditions and control of manufactur-
ing for managing the war industries. Alcohol was one such industry. He also asked notable
social leaders to lead by example, convincing King George V to pledge (grudgingly) that
his household would be abstinent for the duration of the war, a pledge followed by Lord
Kitchener and the Archbishop of Canterbury (Greenaway 2003: 94–5).
In April 1915, the government passed legislation that increased liquor taxes and gave
itself broader powers to take over the drinks industry in areas of importance to the war
effort. A month later, it created the Central Control Board (Liquor Traffic) (the CCB) to
manage such strategic takeovers. Immediately, the CCB took control of the drinks indus-
try in ten shipbuilding areas. Opening hours were reduced significantly, introducing the
“afternoon gap” to ensure drinking coincided only with meal times; treating was banned;
spirits sold in pubs were diluted; in some areas, spirits sales were prohibited on evenings
and weekends; and private clubs were brought under the same rules as licensed public
houses. By early 1916, the CCB had expanded its remit under the view that the entire
country had been militarized for this total war (Greenaway 2003: 97–100; Nicholls 2009:
155–6; Duncan 2013).
The CCB’s work was not just to create new restrictions; it also took what James Nicholls
has called “an overtly constructive approach to the control of the drinks trade” (2009: 156).
The CCB set up 840 industrial canteens at factories to counter the often mediocre meals
served at nearby pubs. But it went further. With no room to expand the rifle factory in Enfield
Lock, the CCB purchased four pubs near the factory and used them to provide lunches
(while maintaining liquor sales). This excursion into Gothenburg-style disinterested manage-
ment was more expansive in Carlisle, where the CCB purchased the entire drinks trade,
controlling pubs, off-licenses, and four breweries in a 500 square miles area. It suppressed
104 licenses and improved the pubs that remained. Pub managers were not encouraged
to sell more booze; they were encouraged, and rewarded, for maintaining order. Pushing its
role further, in July 1916 the CCB opened a purpose-built pub, the Gretna Tavern, followed
by the London Tavern, also in Gretna. These pubs offered facilities beyond traditional pub
services, including bowling greens, billiards, large dining rooms, and even cinemas (Nicholls
2009: 156–7; Duncan 2013).
The wartime experiment of the CCB ended with the passing of the Licensing Act (1921),
dissolving the CCB and instituting new licensing regulations, but all did not revert back to
the pre-war state. Drinking patterns had been seriously disrupted, consumption had plum-
meted, the “afternoon gap” had normalized the idea that pubs should open only at certain
times, and state management was now a much more viable option than it had been prior to

the war. Although total state ownership did not take hold, state management did remain in
areas where it had been in place during the war, notably in Carlisle.
What may be the most significant result of the wartime situation was the drive, in the
immediate post-war period, to “improve” the pub. Inspired by the CCB’s new pub structures,
many brewers took up the task of converting the pub into a more diversified, multi-function
social space, with dining, dancing, cinemas, bowling, darts, any number of non-alcoholic
activities. Some were placed in expanding housing estates in the suburbs, while others
displaced old pubs in established areas. Legislators tried but failed to change licensing laws
to facilitate such improvements (Nicholls 2009: 182).
Opinions on the outcome of the improved pub movement varied. A Select Committee on
the issue of disinterested management which also considered the improved pubs reported
in 1927 that although the pub improvers had good intentions, some improved pubs alien-
ated traditional pub patrons (Nicholls 2009: 182). In contrast, a 1929–31 Royal Commission
struck to examine the social and economic aspects of the drink question, encouraged
further improvement, and recommended establishing a National Licensing Commission.
Greenaway argues that the commission’s report had little impact, and that the main issues it
was examining, “local option, disinterested management and license reduction, were really,
by now passé.” Indeed, this can be seen from the example of Scotland. In 1920, stringent
liquor policies that had passed in 1913 came into effect (the legislation included a seven-year
Figure 3.4 The Redfern Inn, Etterby Carlisle. Photograph by Olive Seabury, from The Carlisle
State Management Scheme, Its Ethos and Architecture: A 60 Year Experiment in Regulation of
the Liquor Trade (Carlisle: Bookcase, 2007).

ramp-up period). Before the war, the local option bill had been touted by prohibitionists as
a great victory, but the result was, as Greenaway notes, “puny.” Of 1,215 Scottish areas,
only 37 opted for limitation on licenses, and 36 for local veto (Greenaway 2003: 133, 146).
France
Being literally on the front lines during the war, France acted quickly to effect change in liquor
sales during the conflict, but as with earlier efforts, the actions often were mired in conflicting
interests. In August 1914 the Interior Ministry banned absinthe, and the government prom-
ised legislation against alcoholism. Regional leaders were similarly motivated, with some
prefects passing laws to reduce opening hours of debits and banning or restricting sales of
other spirituous beverages. Such government actions initially received public support, with
many social groups including unions voicing anti-alcohol rhetoric. Despite such patriotic
overtures, when governments began to contemplate restrictions on the consumption of
distilled alcohol, the liquor industry pushed back (Prestwich 1988: 154).
Three pieces of legislation were introduced in 1915 to deal with alcohol during wartime.
In January the government introduced a bill to prohibit new outlets that sold distilled alco-
hol over 23 percent. Amendments on the bill resulted in a law that was much less effective
than had been hoped. A bill to strengthen the (essentially dead) anti-drunkenness law of
1873 took two years to wind through the labyrinth of parliament process, also emerging
much weaker. Finally, the government introduced amendments to the regime des boissons
which increased taxes, and reduced some traditional tax exemptions on household alcohol
production, such as farmers making wine or cider. The privileges of such bouilliers de cru
had been, up to this point, politically untouchable. As with the other legislation, it, too, was
weaker after debate. Nevertheless, it did impose the significant restriction of requiring all
industrial alcohol to be sold to the state, thereby removing it from the consumer market
(Prestwich 1988: 157–61).
More effective were efforts to reduce drinking in war zones, or by military personnel.
Whereas the civilian government had been hamstrung by debates and industry influence, the
military quickly moved to ban the consumption of distilled spirits in war zones. Its attempts
to keep soldiers from stronger alcohol were not so successful in areas where soldiers and
civilians mingled, and many illegal débits were reported behind the front lines.
When the war ended, France saw both production and consumption levels return to
pre-war levels. The government encouraged the increased production of wine, eased
restrictions on debits to the point where, in 1931, the number of debits had reached pre-war
levels, and by 1935 they far exceeded them. The ban on absinthe remained in effect, but the
legislation was amended in 1922 to allow the sale of spirits similar to absinthe. By the 1930s,
as Prestwich notes, successive governments “had become the alcohol industry’s reluctant
captives” (Prestwich 1988: 202).
Much of the government activity was driven by the competing interests of the wine or
spirits industries. For example, when a wine overproduction crisis threatened to kill the wine
industry, its allies in parliament ensured that the wartime restriction keeping industrial alcohol
out of the consumer market remained in effect. But as plentiful harvests led to an increased
glut of wine, prices fell and fears of uprisings in the countryside spurred the government
to action. In 1935, it created a state alcohol monopoly, the Service des alcools, requiring

distilled alcohol including products from wine, cider, or beets to be sold to the state, easing
the pressure on the wine market but did nothing to address overproduction apart from
attempt to open up new markets, or re-establish markets in countries like Canada and
the United States, where prohibition had decimated its export industry (Prestwich 1988:
205–12).
Canada and the United States

In first Canada, and later the United States, the First World War led to prohibition. Since
the prohibition of sales of liquor was a provincial issue in Canada, prohibitory laws were
enacted at different times across the country. Canada entered the war at the same time as
Britain, and restricting the booze business quickly became an issue of national efficiency.
Between early 1915 and late 1916, nearly all provinces enacted prohibition. Only Quebec
moved slowly, passing legislation in early 1918 to abolish retail sales in May 1919 (Heron
2003: 179–81). Its actions came after the Dominion government passed a series of orders-
in-council to halt importation, manufacture, and interprovincial trade of alcohol, effectively
instituting prohibition on a national scale. This law was to be in effect until one year after the
end of hostilities.
National prohibition in the United States also came about during the war. On December
18, 1917, Congress passed a prohibition amendment (the Eighteenth Amendment) and
sent it to the states for ratification (three-quarters of states need to ratify an amendment
before it comes into effect). Impatient to see prohibition enacted, Congress passed a prohi-
bition law on November 21, 1918. The constitutional amendment was ratified in January
1919 and came into effect one year later with the Volstead Act defining how it would operate
(Blocker 1989; Pegram 1998; Szymanski 2003).
Thus for a brief period after November 1918 until November 1919, prohibition was the
law of the land in both northern countries of North America. Nevertheless, the differing
scopes of the laws and the jurisdictional distinctions (provincial versus federal in Canada,
in contrast to a constitutional amendment and national law in the United States) resulted in
considerable variation of enforcement. In Canada, it remained legal to manufacture liquor,
and in Ontario, for example, native wine sales were never made illegal (Malleck 2013a).
The stories of smuggling across the Canada-US border are many, sensationalist, and
even sometimes true, and the reader can refer to many books and documentaries on
the time, mindful to maintain skepticism of such salacious stories. Yet one thing is clear:
Canadian distillers operated a booming export business, legal on one side of the border,
but illegal on the other. Mexican border towns were similarly affected during prohibition
(Malleck 2013b: 746). Until 1930, the Canadian government took no interest in the fact
that spirits were legally being exported into the United States, but their importation into
that country was a violation of its own laws. Capitulating to US pressure, the Canadian
government made it illegal to export liquor to the United States, although smuggling
continued in excess (Siener 2008: 442–5). This capitulation was limited. When, by the
1930s, most Canadian provinces had repealed their prohibition legislation, they benefitted
from the subsequent uptick in tourism by thirsty Americans. Whether they consumed their
hooch in Canada or returned with it to the United States was of little concern to Canadian
authorities.

Figure 3.5 Wayne Bidwell Wheeler (1869–1927). American attorney and prohibitionist. Member of
the Anti-Saloon League. Image by Universal History Archive via Getty Images.
The end of prohibition in Canada resulted in a range of liquor control regimes across the
country. Quebec made the sale of light beer, cider, and wine legal in hotels, taverns, cafes,
corner stores, and clubs as early as 1919. Two years later, concerned about the exces-
sive amount of bootlegging and smuggling of spirits, the government instituted government
control of spirits sales, a system that remains to this day (Heron 2003: 272). Quebec’s

experience was the most liberal, but the pattern was normally the same: allowing limited
availability of some products followed by a gradual opening up of the system. Consider
British Columbia, which created government stores in 1921, but permitted no public drink-
ing. In 1924, a referendum on public drinking (usually called “beer by the glass” legislation)
was won by the Drys. Yet the referendum legislation allowed jurisdictions in which the Wets
had carried the day to institute licensed public beer drinking, a kind of reverse local option.
To the north, in Yukon Territory, the time line was roughly the same as BC, with govern-
ment control in 1921 and beer by the glass in 1925. Prohibition was dismantled in a similar
piecemeal way, moving roughly west to east from 1923 to 1930. PEI retained prohibition
until 1948, with repeal plebiscites in 1929 and 1940 reiterating the dry hegemony (Campbell
1991; Heron 2003: 272–6).
Government control involved oversight of manufacture, sale, and purchase. For example,
the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, like many other provinces, initially required custom-
ers to possess a permit in which all purchases would be logged. Distilleries, wineries, and
breweries could sell at shops on site which were scrutinized by government inspectors.
Wineries were allowed one shop each, but as large wineries purchased smaller ones, they
had the right to open additional stores. Breweries were allowed to consolidate their distri-
bution system in a cooperative brewers’ warehouse system, which was incorporated as the
Brewer’s Warehouse Corporation in 1928. In 1934 months after prohibition ended in the
United States, the province passed beer by the glass legislation, permitting beer in hotel
beverage rooms and beer and wine in hotel dining rooms with a meal. Clubs, steam ships,
and trains could also be licensed (Heron 2003: 280; Malleck 2012; Malleck 2013a).
Whereas the liquor control systems in Canadian provinces generally had similar elements
and trends of implementation, the end of national prohibition in the United States resulted
in a much more complex patchwork of liquor distribution systems. As the Twenty First
Amendment (the amendment that would repeal the Eighteenth) wound its way through the
various approval mechanisms, early in 1933 Congress modified the Volstead Act to allow
sales of beer of 3.2 percent Alcohol by Weight (ABW) or 4 percent Alcohol by Volume. States
scrambled to create legislation to facilitate its sale, well before Utah became the thirty-sixth
and final state to ratify the Twenty-First Amendment in December 1933 (Blocker 1989: 128).
States took a variety of approaches to managing alcohol. Eight states (Alabama,
Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Oklahoma, North Carolina, North Dakota, and Kansas)
retained state prohibition at the outset, but by 1950 only Oklahoma and Mississippi contin-
ued to be dry. By the 1950s, twenty-nine states had adopted a licensing system, where the
government, either state or local (or a combination), issued licenses to private businesses
to sell liquor (Barker 1955: 20–4). For example, New York State, after a series of consulta-
tions and investigations, created a system of state control of liquor, but with private sale, a
system Springfield calls “an off premise retail system as close to the Quebec plan without
having full government sale.” It also permitted, amidst much controversy, liquor to be sold
in bars (2013: 63–4, 76–8). The third approach to deal with liquor regulation after prohibition
was through a government monopoly. It is the form that most Canadian provinces adopted,
with government agencies running all wholesale and retail operations. Within two years
of Repeal, fifteen states had adopted a government monopoly. By 1939, seventeen had
taken this strategy. The connection between Canadian and American systems is significant.

Nearly all states sharing a border with Canada apart from New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota,
and North Dakota took on the monopoly system. Wisconsin and Minnesota, although not
creating government monopolies, allowed municipalities to take control of the sales, creat-
ing sort of local monopoly option by the 1950s (Barker 1955: 26–7).
Whatever the policy, the trend after prohibition in both Canada and the United States
was away from strict control and toward more liberal approaches. This movement away
from prohibition may have happened because temperance movements faltered after their
dream of prohibition was shattered. But it must also be attributed to the fact that, as several
historians have argued, prohibition seems to have worked. Although it did not last forever,
prohibition significantly altered drinking behavior, most notably in the volume of beverage
alcohol that people were drinking (Burnham 1968; Heron 2003: 265–6; Blocker 2006).
Russia
Prohibition lasted past the 1917 Russian Revolution. The Bolsheviks extended the wartime
prohibition measures, closing all wine and spirits factories, prohibiting the production or
sale of alcohol, and establishing a Commissariat for the Struggle against Alcoholism and
Gambling. Yet alcohol always fights back, and the Bolshevik measures led to illegal distilling
and hundreds of thousands of prosecutions for brewing or selling illegal spirits. In 1921, the
first New Economic Policy (NEP) permitted farmers to dispose of grain surpluses as they saw
fit; liquor distillation was a profitable way to do this. Concerned that this practice was redi-
recting essential grain from the food supply, later in 1921 the government legalized alcohol
sales, beginning with wines, and adding beer six months later. In 1923 it legalized the sale
of 40-proof liquor (roughly half the strength of traditional vodka). In 1925 it began making
80-proof vodka, ending entirely prohibition and instituting a new government monopoly.
Although it is difficult to tell given the general limited evidence from the revolutionary period,
it appears that post-prohibition consumption of liquor was slightly lower than pre-war (and
pre-prohibition) levels (Philips 2000: 20–1; Transchel 2003: 580; Schrad 2014: 225–8).
Embattled on all sides geographically, the revolutionary government was not ready to
give up entirely the fight with alcohol. In 1928, a group of state officials and medical profes-
sionals created The Society for the Struggle against Alcoholism (known by its Russian
acronym OBSA), which sought further restrictions on production, sale, and consumption
of liquor and launched a campaign to encourage abstinence. OBSA’s literature included
familiar temperance messages such as drinking led to drunkenness, criminality, madness,
and death. By the 1930s, however, the state’s new position was that socialism and the
socialist life would cure drunkenness, and the government encouraged OBSA to refocus on
urging improvements to everyday life. In 1931, it changed its name to the Society for Healthy
Living and ended its anti-alcohol messaging. This was part of a new (or, rather, quite old)
strategy in which the state needed alcohol revenues to survive. Discussions of drunkenness
ceased, the temperance movement was silenced, and by 1940 the Soviet Union had more
shops selling liquor than the combined number of stores selling meat, fruit, and vegetables
(Transchel 2003: 580–1). The secrecy of the Soviet government during this time makes
further information about liquor policy difficult to uncover. As Schrad has noted, discussions
on such policy remain categorized as state secrets (2014: 225).

Figure 3.6 Customers at the counter in a liquor store in Moscow, Russia, c. 1950, where alcohol
prices are high and vodka is the most expensive spirit available. Photograph by Three Lions via
Getty Images.
The Second World War and After

By the end of the 1930s, liquor policy had taken on a much more moderate tone. It is telling
that during the Second World War, although liquor supplies were rationed, and despite loud
entreaties from the Drys, prohibition did not return in either Canada or the United States.
There, and in Britain, the strategy was taxation for revenue purposes, some rationing, but
a decided shift in focus. In Canada, the prime minister met delegations of temperance
supporters who urged him to institute prohibition yet again, and although a Liberal and
therefore the traditional supporter of temperance, Prime Minister W. L. M. King chose not to
take that route. He did encourage provinces to strictly reduce opening hours, and through
the Wartime Trade and Pricing Commission instituted liquor rationing, but prohibition was a
non-starter (Heron 2003: 295; Malleck 2012: Ch 9).
In Britain and the United States, reactions to temperance entreaties were even less
positive. British leaders saw the possibility of serious reduction of beer supplies in the
interest of wartime productivity as decidedly counter-productive. Lord Woolton, Minister
of Food, declared in 1940 that government must maintain both life and “the morale” of
the people; beer was important to that latter goal. As Nicholls put it, “beer was too rich a
signifier of those [British] cultural values to be subjected to official condemnation” (Nicholls
2009: 188). In the United States, as Blocker notes, “federal officials turned a deaf ear
to dry advice.” Government required brewers to set aside 15 percent of their production

for military consumption and deemed brewery workers essential services. Although spirit
distillation was banned in 1942, the government paid distillers to convert their facilities to
industrial production and even declared “liquor holidays” in 1944 and 1945 allowing distill-
ers to produce beverage alcohol (Blocker 1989: 138–9). It did not hurt that, as with Canada
and Britain, increased liquor taxation boosted wartime revenues.
In France, the collapse of the Third Republic in 1940 led many anti-alcohol advocates
to argue that the country’s permissive approach to liquor regulation had resulted in national
degeneration and the German invasion. Without a parliament to debate and modify legis-
lation, the Vichy leadership quickly imposed restrictions on alcohol production and sale,
including dividing debits into four types, and licensing them differently. The new laws,
combined with shortages in wine and industrial alcohol, significantly reduced consumption
and alcoholism (Prestwich 1988: 246–8, 256). At the end of the war, however, and despite
the pledge by the provisional government to retain alcohol restrictions, as the drink indus-
try regained its strength, many wartime regulations were either dismantled, or simply not
enforced.
Scandinavia as a Case Study in Differences

The expansive national histories above provide details on how liquor licensing operated on
a relatively broad scale, but what may be lost in the details is an emphasis upon national
distinctions and liquor legislation. As Siedsel Eriksen has found in her comparisons between
Denmark and Sweden (1990), variations in policy are significant, depending upon the vested
interests in the different countries. What follows is a brief overview of the comparison she
provides, in order to direct the reader toward some key issues to consider when thinking
about national differences.
Denmark
The Danish government saw alcohol taxes as a way of generating revenue. In 1843, it
instituted a tax on alcohol production and simultaneously cracked down on illicit home
production. Although this move also had some vague temperance or at least moderationist
reasoning behind it, the sort of evangelical temperance agitation of the Anglo-American
world did not take hold in Denmark. The Lutheran priesthood did not approve of moral
societies operating outside of the church, and thus the sort of multi-denominational and
evangelical approaches to temperance that took hold elsewhere did not become influential
movements in Denmark (Eriksen 2003a: 193).
More influential were the liberalizing tendencies of the later nineteenth century. In 1873,
the government made it easier to obtain a saloon keeper license. The powerful breweries
of Carlsberg and Tuborg influenced the idea that beer was a healthy drink and a substitute
for traditional distilled liquor. A new, non-Lutheran temperance movement did emerge, but
it did not have the extent or the longevity of temperance movements elsewhere. Although
it grew to 10 to 15 percent of the population, it was centered in the more agricultural parts
of the country, and did not have strong support in urban areas. It did, however, include a
small group of influential intellectuals and professionals who, at the beginning of the twen-
tieth century, encouraged the government to impose restrictive alcohol legislation as a way

of solving social problems. Strategies included local option and restrictions on the ease of
obtaining a tavern license (Eriksen 2003a: 193–4).
Denmark felt the pressures of diminished food production during the First World War,
and these pressures affected alcohol production. For three months in the beginning of
1917, the government forbade the production, transportation, and sale of distilled spirit
and kept production low after the ban ended. The government also instituted high taxes
on spirits, which, combined with the restrictions on production, further inflated spirits prices
rapidly changing Denmark from a spirits-drinking culture, to a beer-drinking one. Tuborg
and Carlsberg were joined by a worker’s cooperative brewery, Star, established to direct
revenues from the worker’s “natural” beer-drinking preferences back to benefit workers
themselves (Eriksen 2003a: 194). Unlike other Scandinavian countries, the taxation on
private production was a preferred government strategy to the state monopolies of Sweden,
Finland, Iceland, and Norway.
Sweden
In Sweden beer was considered the traditional drink, but drinking shifted to distilled spir-
its—aquavit—in the 1700s, and home distilling was widespread throughout the countryside.
A temperance movement emerged in the first part of the nineteenth century, modelled on
American evangelical temperance (many Swedes learned of this movement in letters from
family in the United States). As with Denmark, evangelical temperance was decried by the
Lutheran hierarchy. Yet it had some results. The Swedish Temperance Society, which formed
due to concerns over widespread home distillation, disappeared after legislation passed
banning the practice in 1855. Yet temperance was not dead. Its supporters influenced the
creation of Gothenburg’s system of disinterested management which originated when the
town took ownership first of taverns, and later of retail liquor shops. The Gothenburg system
never became a national policy; it was adopted in and spread among municipalities.
Prohibition became a major issue in Sweden by the turn of the century. In 1909, a
referendum held by temperance societies showed that over 55 percent of the population
wanted prohibition. In response, the government created a committee to investigate the
issue further. One of the committee’s members, physician Ivan Bratt proposed that the
government focus upon controlling the individual’s purchasing, and removing the profit
motive from alcohol sales, an approach that became known as the “Bratt system.” In 1914,
Stockholm experimented with alcohol ration books (the “motbok”) which recorded all alco-
hol purchases. This system was adopted nationally in 1917 and lasted until 1955. The other
recommendation, the adoption of state control, resulted in the wholesale liquor trade being
consolidated in one state-controlled company, while municipalities controlled retail sales
and private restaurants. Strict rules limited how much alcohol an individual could consume
with a restaurant meal (Eriksen 2003b: 605). This system lasted beyond 1955; although it
came under threat when Sweden joined the EU in 2001, the state stores remained intact.
Liquor, Colonialism, and Indigenous Peoples

In an era of imperialism, those peoples who were conquered, subjugated, or assimilated
were frequently the targets of stringent liquor regulations. European imperialists often saw

aboriginal people as incapable of consuming alcohol without significant physical and social
upheaval. This was a cultural imperialism masked in pseudo-genetic notions of race. In
Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and much of Africa, the Eurocentric
view saw alcohol as a more significant problem among indigenous peoples than among
non-native, “white” communities. Hence, the approach to regulating often veered toward
the more extreme form: prohibition.
In North America, as more native lands came under control of settler governments, liquor
to natives was strictly controlled and usually forbidden. In Canada, the terms of the trea-
ties from the middle of the nineteenth century made native people the wards of the crown,
effectively infantilizing them. Selling liquor to native people was mostly illegal in Canada
until the middle of the twentieth century (Heron 2003: 133–5; Campbell 2008; Malleck
2012: 189–92). In the United States around the same time, Congress used its constitu-
tional authority to regulate commerce with native peoples. After passing several laws against
liquor sales to native people, in 1892 Congress passed legislation that sought to eradicate
the sale and trade in liquor entirely when native people were involved (Abbott 2003: 448).
Likewise in Australia and New Zealand, policies targeted the seeming inability for native
people to manage alcohol. In New South Wales, for example, sales to them were banned
from 1838, with all Australian states having similar laws by the 1920s (Brady 2001: 759–60;
Blainey 2003: 77; Wilson et al. 2010: 7). Aborigines could be exempt from the laws only if
they could demonstrate that they were suitably assimilated into non-aboriginal culture. In
New Zealand, in contrast to other countries examined here, Maori were not entirely banned
from drinking alcohol, although as with other countries, the idea behind strict licensing of
sales of liquor to Maori was presented as “protecting” them. Often restrictions on liquor were
initiated by Maori themselves. Whereas an 1847 ordinance prohibited sale of liquor to native
people entirely, by the 1870s laws became more moderate. From 1870 licensing rather
than prohibition was normally the pattern, allowing Maori communities to control access to
liquor in regions where they dominated. As a result, in the King Country region in the North
Island, Maori requested liquor be banned entirely in 1884. Elsewhere, Maori had limited
access, but access nonetheless, to liquor (MacDonald 2003: 454; Cook 2014). A licensing
amendment of 1910 allowed Maori men who lived outside of prohibition areas to drink
liquor only in licensed premises (not purchase it to take away) and declared women who
married non-Maori men to have “full drinking rights,” not unlike native women in Canada
who married non-native men (Saggers and Gray 1998: 46–7).
By the time European nations were taking extensive colonial involvement in Africa, the
temperance movement was a serious influence on policy. British temperance organizations
united in the rather awkwardly but descriptively named United Committee for the Prevention
of the Demoralization of the Native Races by the Liquor Trade and pushed for restrictions on
sales of liquor in Africa (Willis 2001; Willis 2003a: 312). Ironically, as Pani notes, liquor reve-
nues and taxes had played a significant role in funding colonial enterprises (1975: 14–15).
In the 1884 Berlin Conference, where European powers essentially divided up Africa, the
British delegation proposed restrictions on the free transit of liquor into Africa, but German
and Dutch delegates resisted. They knew that such a proposal put Britain in a strong posi-
tion, since any restriction on free transit meant British authorities could collect high duties
on liquor entering via key transportation conduits like the Niger River (Pani 1975: 31–2).
However, the 1890 Brussels Conference, which was ostensibly about suppressing the slave

trade, placed significant limits on the importation and sale of European liquor in many African
countries (Heap 1998: 23–4). Part of Africa would be a “prohibition zone” whereas other
areas would be subject to high duties. The measures passed due to the combination of a
vocal temperance lobby and the lure of high revenues from the import duties (Pani 1975:
33–6). At the same time, colonial authorities, in Britain at least, were concerned not to
ban native liquors, preferring licensing and regulation (Pani 1975: 20–3; Willis 2001: 57).
Subsequent Brussels conferences in 1899, 1906, and 1912 further increased taxes on
liquor. After the First World War, a conference at Saint Germain-en-Laye in 1919 extended
bans on the importation of certain types of alcohol (Pani 1975: 41–5).
Conclusions
Various governments have taken assorted approaches to the management of the sale and
consumption of liquor over time. In the period of the 1850s to 1950s, in most countries
the approach shifted from general open sale to increasingly strict management of the sale
of liquor. Except in Russia, the motivation seemed to be moderationist in general, with the
interest in restricting sales motivated by various temperance movements. In the Anglo-
American cases, the laissez-faire impulse was replaced only gradually, with liquor interests
continuing to have various degrees of influence over government policy. In Scandinavia this
was also the case, with Denmark especially seeing the power of the breweries in constrain-
ing any interest in prohibition or strict control. Russia’s unique case of a long history of
government control for the main purpose of revenues is an exception that proves the rule.
The push for moderation, coming from all parties after the 1905 revolution, shows that such
a policy, seemingly rapacious and profiting from the misery many saw arising from excessive
drinking, demonstrates the intricate connection between politics and liquor. To resist liquor
revenues was, in Russia, to resist tsarist authority. Liquor was a firmly political issue, while
conversely, liquor helped people ease the economic and emotional strife they may have
experienced in revolutionary times.
The intricate nature of liquor policy presented in this chapter should be a reminder that
it is inadvisable to make any broad generalizations about the relationship between govern-
ance and liquor policy. In democracies where free speech is generally accepted, policy is
not normally created through simple motivations. Temperance sentiment, moderationism,
religious perspectives, brewery and distillery interests, and ideas of the strength of a nation
(seen in the wartime austerity) all combine in shaping liquor policy. And as the case of Oliver
Mowat in Ontario indicates, even when a party is supported by temperance advocates,
the liquor industry can have significant sway over policy. The nuances make liquor policy
a fascinating topic, and like an alcoholic, we are drawn to and repulsed by this alluring,
pain-inducing yet inevitably complex substance called liquor policy formation.

4 COMMERCE
GINA HAMES
Introduction
The period of history spanning the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the
twentieth century can be characterized by the global transformations brought on by the
Industrial Revolution. As part of the same tide of change, the business of alcohol matured
through periods of extraordinary innovations as well as devastating setbacks. Although only
spanning roughly one hundred years, the monumental economic and political changes that
took place cannot best be understood as one era, but as having two rather distinct breaks
that each ushered in new phases. The first stage, from roughly the mid-nineteenth century
up to the beginning of the First World War, is distinguished by innovation and technolog-
ical advancement which brought to the alcohol industry mass production, the beginnings
of advertising, and rising numbers of middle-class consumers with disposable income to
consume new alcoholic commodities. The second stage, which spanned from the begin-
ning of the First World War through 1933, featured the increasing impact of temperance on
the industry, the disruption of markets brought on by the war, and the upheavals resulting
from Prohibition in the United States as well as in parts of Canada. Finally, the years from
the end of Prohibition in 1933 up to roughly 1950 saw a sharp increase in the consolidation
of breweries and distilleries, another war-related disruption in the Second World War, and
then dramatic shifts in the industries after the Second World War with the meteoric rise of
advertising, which forever changed the nature of alcohol commerce.
1850–1914
The latter half of the nineteenth century up to the beginning of the First World War witnessed
dramatic innovations affecting the business of alcohol. Technological and scientific changes,
transportation expansion, and the nascent advertising practices transformed the commerce
of beer, spirits, and wine. Mechanical refrigeration, the use of thermometers, the introduction
of pasteurization, and the manipulation of yeast revolutionized brewing. The invention of the
continuous still transformed distilling, and pasteurization modernized the wine industry. The
wine business also suffered setbacks, though, through a series of devastating epidemics,
particularly the phylloxera epidemic of the late nineteenth century that wiped out thousands
of acres of vines across Europe, rupturing the steady development of winemaking in the
nineteenth century.
One could argue that during this period beer enjoyed the most popularity among alco-
hol beverages. Particularly in Western Europe and the United States, its appeal grew as
innovation and technology modernized the industry. Innovation brought the use of ther-
mometers to monitor the brewing process; the use of the hydrometer to monitor specific
gravities, leading to more precise fermentation times; and the production of pure yeast
on a larger resulting in fewer failed batches of beer (Wilson and Gourvish 1998: 18, 25).
Perhaps the greatest technological innovation in this period that helped the beer industry
was the development of mechanical refrigeration, which became viable for the industry with
the patent of a successful commercial ice maker in 1873. Refrigeration particularly aided
the year-round production of lager beer. (Poelmans and Swinnen 2011: 15; Patterson and
Swinnen 2014: 37). Lager, which was paler and lighter, with more carbonation and less
alcohol than ale (Patterson and Swinnen 2014: 39), became the favorite of northern German
workers who could easily conceal a bottle to drink at work without undue effects (Wilson
and Gourvish 1998: 75, 102). Refrigeration enabled European beer makers to meet the
growing demand for lager (Bavarian-styled beer), and as the market for lager grew across
Europe and in the United States, its popularity expanded the entire market for beer. By
the late 1870s, it had almost replaced ales as the beer of choice. Exports from Bavaria,
for example, rose from 6,755 hectoliters in 1860 to 1,024,665 hectoliters by 1886 (Wilson
and Gourvish 1998: 20). The trend toward lager continued to grow as it followed German
immigration into the United States and across the west in the nineteenth century (Patterson
and Swinnen 2014: 40).
Improvements in transportation and mechanization also facilitated growth in the beer
market. The railroad allowed breweries to expand markets as they could ship their beer
faster and cheaper. Railroads made it possible for the already regionally dominant breweries
to become nationally known, unfortunately, some argue, at the cost of many small, local
breweries that could no longer compete. Shipping by rail led to less breakage, and refrig-
erated boxcars allowed beer to be kept fresh through longer journeys (Bellamy 2012: 16).
In Ireland’s countryside, for example, the railroad allowed Guinness to expand its markets,
which displaced many small, local breweries throughout Ireland, and enlarged Guinness’s
market share by 400 percent (Yenne 2007: 38). The number of breweries in Ireland dwin-
dled from a high of 245 in 1835 to only 38 by 1900, an 85 percent decrease across the
country. By the 1890s large commercial brewers controlled 90 percent of the market
(Wilson and Gourvish 1998: 5, 111). In addition, toward the end of the century most of the
processes associated with beer became mechanized. Electrification made this possible.
Mechanized cleaning and pasteurization of kegs and bottles led to fewer ruined batches
of beer (Poelmans and Swinnen 2011: 16), and, in part, led to breweries bottling their own
beer, as in the past they had sent their barreled beer out to bottling companies. Beer bottles
could now be produced at the rate of up to 6,000 per hour (Wilson and Gourvish 1998: 78).
More bottles meant that more beer could be preserved longer and be remain stable during
transportation.
The next predominant trend in the history of beer involved the rapid change in the domi-
nant business model for the industry. Originally made up of cottage industries, it developed
into big businesses, and those businesses soon integrated vertically. Vertical integration
added to the growth of large breweries by allowing them to control all aspects of the busi-
ness. Anheuser-Busch of St. Louis exemplified this trend as it owned its own bottling plant,
grain elevators, cellars, a steam and electric plant, wagons, a cooper shop, and its own
railroad to connect freight terminals (Wilson and Gourvish 1998: 181).

Figure 4.1 Anheuser Busch Brewery, St. Louis, Missouri, late nineteenth century. Image by
Bettman via Getty Images.
These large breweries required more workers, which changed the character of the
orkplace. As with workers in other growing nineteenth-century industries, brewery workers
w
began to unionize. In New York, brewery workers founded Brewer’s Union No. 1 in 1884,
initially as a part of the Knights of Labor. Within one year the union had expanded to the New
York metropolitan area, and it became the Brewer’s, Beer Drivers, and Maltsters Union. The
union continued its rapid spread, and by 1886 it included workers from Newark, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, and even Detroit; and these groups went on to form a national union, the Union of
Brewery Workmen (UBW), one of the first industrial unions. The UBW made the decision in
1887 to join the American Federation of Labor, moving from the Knights of Labor because
of their increasingly prohibitionist stance (Wilson and Gourvish 1998: 182).
These larger, capital-rich breweries set themselves apart, too, by embracing the new
sales strategy of advertising. Brewers learned that marketing could exponentially increase
their business. The trajectory of advertising began with branding. Benjamin Lee Guinness,
for example, chose a logo for his company in 1862, carefully deciding upon the Brian Boru
harp, which was one of the three oldest surviving Gaelic harps, and which had been used
as a model for the Coat of Arms of Ireland. His decision visually tied Guinness to Ireland,
giving it a sense of place, identity, and heritage in the consciousness of its customers (Yenne
2007: 37). The proliferation of logos allowed numerous beers to take on particular images,
and beer drinkers to “borrow” some of those images by consuming the brewer’s product.
Appealing, marketable associations became more important in an increasingly competitive
market. Carling Brewery of Ontario, Canada, clamored to keep up with the trend by naming
one of their early beers Carling’s Imperial Club Lager, which appealed to those Canadians
Commerce 89
who wanted to see themselves as affiliated with the Empire (Fahey and Miller 2013: 139).
Marketing only continued to influence the course of the beer industry, furthering the trend of
market concentration in the hands of fewer and fewer companies.
The spirits trade possessed characteristics similar to that of beer. Technological change
revolutionized the industry, and a restructured business model along with the increased
use of advertising formed the new face of spirits. The 1831 patent by Aeneas Coffey of the
continuous or column still, which came into popular use in the second half of the century,
remade the industry, allowing for more efficient and continual production of spirits like whis-
key1 (Veach 2013: 438, 444; McMichael, this volume). The taste differed, too. Its smoother
flavor opened the whiskey market up to many more customers. This, perhaps more than
anything else, facilitated the expansion of the trade from a cottage industry to big business.
Some of the Scottish distilleries that embraced this change included the Haigs, Dewars,
Walkers, Mackies (White Horse), along with James Buchanan and William Sanderson
(VAT69). These companies also led the industry in marketing, helping to make the new
blended whiskey a popular drink (Daiches 2002: 1038, 1054).
Later in the century the steam engine made an almost equal impact on the industry. It
allowed for both mass production of whiskey and improved shipping through rail. By 1860,
over 30,000 miles of railroad tracks criss-crossed the United States, and by 1869 a trans-
continental railroad had completed the link between east and west, opening markets across
the country. Within the distilleries, the new ability to heat warehouses accommodated year-
round aging, rather than limiting it to the warm summer months, thus speeding up the aging
process, bringing about higher production rates. Many scientifically based improvements
such as closer temperature monitoring, use of a hydrometer to check alcohol levels, and
use of litmus paper to check the pH at each step of the process brought increased profits,
as well, to the distillers who implemented them. Non-mechanical developments within the
distillery also led to higher profits. In 1879, Frederick Stitzel, of Louisville, Kentucky, patented
a system of tiered storage racks for barrels. Barrels, both in the United States and Europe,
had been stored one on top of the other, up to three or four high, each resting on the lid
of the lower barrel. The weight of the stack caused leaks, opening the barrels to seeping
air, which promoted the growth of mold and added a musty taste to the whiskey. The new
system laid barrels on tiers of wooden racks, allowing for air to circulate around the barrels,
preventing leakage, and making all levels of barrels easily accessible (Veach 2013: 383, 465,
474, 488).
The business structure for distilleries began to change in the late nineteenth century, just
as it had for breweries. Consolidations grew in number and these larger companies came
to dominate the industry. By the late nineteenth century just five firms controlled much of
the Scotch whisky industry: John Dewar, John Walker, White Horse, James Buchanan,
and the Distillers Company Ltd., or DCL. The DCL itself had resulted from an earlier merger
of six firms in 1877, and William Ross, its general manager, continually campaigned for
the four remaining large distilleries to merge with his company, which did eventually occur
in the 1920s (Rosie 2002: 382, 385). Consolidation characterized the American whiskey
industry as well. At the end of the nineteenth century, several American distillers formed the
Distillers’ and Cattle Feed Trust, which included up to sixty-five distilleries at its peak, most
located in Illinois and western and central Kentucky. Although it was never able to dictate
the price of whiskey, it did control much of the industry, with a particular goal to inhibit

overproduction and thus guard against lower prices, which had occurred in the 1870s. The
government eventually ruled that the group violated anti-trust laws, and broke up the trust
in the 1890s, forming three separate companies—the Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse
Co., the American Spirits Manufacturing Co., and Standard Distilling and Distributing Co. of
America, all under the parent company, Distillers’ Securities Corporation (Veach 2013: 768).
Irish whiskey distilleries, too, followed patterns similar to their Scottish and American
counterparts. The leading distilleries played an important role in the global market, even
outselling Scotch whisky in the nineteenth century (Kosar 2010: 44). Sales had steadily
grown in the second half of the nineteenth century primarily because of the concentration
of production in the hands of a few large, blended whiskey producers. The large, predom-
inantly column-still, blended-whiskey companies gained new global business, while the
traditional pot distillers were increasingly left out of the rapidly growing international market.
Between 1870 and 1900 production doubled, peaking at 9.9 million gallons, 60 percent
of which was for export, most of it from the thirty largest distilleries. Much of the blended
whiskey, which was produced largely in the north of the country, made its way to England to
be re-distilled into gin (Kosar 2010: 77–9). At the same time, though, due to the phylloxera
epidemic, both Irish and Scotch whiskies made it into the club and salon market in England
(McArthur 2002: 884). In addition, the United States became an important market as whis-
key consumption for men and women over aged fifteen increased to almost ten gallons per
year, compared to less than one gallon in the late twentieth century. Unfortunately, industry
success brought on overproduction, and along with a weakening international economy, led
to a slowdown after 1900 (Kosar 2010: 95).
As the handful of industry giants came to rule the market in Europe, Canada, and the
United States, they increasingly turned to advertising to gain a competitive edge. Scotch
whisky companies had the double task of not only proving the worth of their product, but
also disproving entrenched negative perceptions surrounding it, as Scotch whisky had been
perceived by the English upper class to be a “robust, outdoor drink with perhaps some
health-giving qualities,” associated with the lower classes, and therefore “unsuitable for club
or salon” (McArthur 2002: 869). Rather, brandy, wine, and gin were deemed socially supe-
rior (Ehmer et al. 2015: 143). Several factors in the mid- to late nineteenth century, taken
together, began to turn the tide. The English upper class increasingly vacationed in the
Scottish Highlands; then King George IV visited, even donning a tartan; and finally, in 1852,
Prince Albert and Queen Victoria purchased Balmoral Castle. These developments led to a
growing appreciation of the Scottish highlands, and thus Scotch whisky. Furthermore, the
phylloxera epidemic of the late 1800s that wiped out nearly 80 percent of the grape vines all
across Europe rendered wine scarce; and the new blended whisky, with its smoother flavor,
began to draw a wider audience (McArthur 2002: 884). Combined, these factors added up
to Scotch whisky’s growing marketability as an elite drink.
Scotch whisky producers pushed the trend along by increasingly turning to advertising.
Scotland’s John Dewar and Sons distillery banked on elite consumers’ desires to identify
with tradition, longevity, and a romantic (masculine) Scottish past. They designed a label
that sported a Scottish soldier in his kilt and feathered bonnet. Clearly marketing to a male
audience, they believed men could identify with the idealized masculinity of a Scotsman,
which had become a popular icon in much of Scotch advertising in the late nineteenth
century. Dewar’s was one of the first to borrow the symbol; and to avoid possible jealousies
Commerce 91
Figure 4.2 Royal Blend whisky advertisement, “Fit for a Prince,” c.1890–1900. Image by History
of Advertising Trust/Heritage Images via Getty Images.

Figure 4.3 Scotch whisky “White Label” John Dewar advertisement, 1953. Image by Apic via
Getty Images.
Commerce 93
among regiments, the designers carefully camouflaged the uniform, so the mustachioed, kilt
wearing pipe-major could fit any Highland regiment (Rosie 2002: 380).
While whiskey dominated the Western European and US spirits’ market during this period,
vodka controlled the market in Eastern Europe. The most well-known producer of vodka,
Pyotr Smirnov, had begun his distillery in 1864, and by 1872 he employed over sixty work-
ers and produced up to 100,000 pails of vodka, grossing 600,000 rubles annually, equaling
almost 7 million American dollars at 2014 levels. Smirnov’s vodka not only quenched the
thirst of Russians, but it also won prizes at international fairs. He brought vodka to the 1876
Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, where it won medals and even caught the attention of
the New York Times, which praised his products. By 1886, he had won the recognition of
Czar Alexander III, who officially endorsed the vodka, allowing Smirnov to display the honor
on his labels. Smirnov was so successful that when he died in 1898 he was one of the rich-
est men in Russia, worth the equivalent of 132 million in 2014 dollars. Perhaps his death was
timely, though, as the Russian state took over the sale of vodka in state-run liquor stores
in 1896, foreshadowing the twentieth-century Soviet practice of a state liquor monopoly
(Matus 2014: 12, 17). The highly regulated sale of vodka led to rampant adulteration, not to
mention illegal production. Tavern keepers were so notorious for watering their vodka that
patrons were known to set their glasses outside in the cold Russian weather to see if it froze
or not (Schrad 2014: 101).
European imperialism led to an increase in markets for distilled spirits, specifically in
Africa. Alcohol became such a large issue in many of the newly colonized regions in Africa in
the 1880s and 1890s that it was the single most important import, in both value and volume
to the colonies. It was used as currency throughout many colonies. For example, between
30 and 40 percent of southern Nigeria’s exports were traded for alcohol in the early twen-
tieth century. Alcohol was such an important import to the colonies that its import duties
in Cote d’Ivoire and the Gold Coast in the early twentieth century were 46 percent and 38
percent of their revenues respectively (Phillips 2014: 220–1).
Much like the beer and spirits industries, wine benefitted from both scientific innovation
that led to increased and more stable outputs, and advertising which gave some wineries
an edge over the competition. The wine business, though, also experienced a devastating
aphid infestation in the late nineteenth century in France, parts of Spain, and Italy, called
phylloxera. Phylloxera came to define the history of the wine business in this period. One
scholar noted that to understand the wine industry it must be broken into two distinct peri-
ods: before phylloxera and after phylloxera (Phillips 2000: 287). The outbreak helped spur
on wine production of what would later be called “New World” wines. Argentina, Australia,
and California in the United States began to produce wine in greater volumes. In Argentina,
for example, the influx of Spanish and Italian immigrants did for its wine industry what earlier
German immigration to the United States had done for its beer industry. Southern European
immigrants to Argentina consumed 80 percent of the wine produced in the country, up to
62 liters per capita per year (Stein 2014: 212).
Before the outbreak, though, important scientific improvements had resulted in increased
output in France, and improved planting practices in increased yields. Louis Pasteur’s
discoveries regarding yeast and fermentation, leading to pasteurization, also resulted in
fewer ruined bottles of wine. France, in particular, saw a dramatic rise in wine production
in the latter half of the nineteenth century as a result of these innovations. In 1840, French

wineries had produced 51 liters of wine per capita, but by 1872 production had grown to
77 liters per capita (Phillips 2000: 222–3, 231–2, 287).
Increased production led to an escalating desire by wine regions and individual wineries
to differentiate themselves from each other. Many wine regions in France produced wine
of average quality, but others stood out as producers of high-quality wines, and it was
these regions that began to employ marketing (Phillips 2000: 222). The region of Bordeaux,
especially, earned this reputation. Bordeaux’s popularity skyrocketed in the nineteenth
century, “attain[ing] unprecedented cultural prestige,” becoming a favorite of the expand-
ing middle class, and creating even more competition among the vintners in the region.
Bordeaux winemakers attempted to set themselves apart by suggesting their long herit-
age going back even as far as Renaissance castles, by using the word “chateau” in the
names of their estates (Lukacs 2012: 127, 140). The practice proved successful, which is
illustrated by the exponential growth of its use. In 1855, only five estates called themselves
“Chateau,” but by 1874 over 700 wineries had included the designation, an increase of
almost 14,000 percent, and between 1874 and 1893 the number increased another 85
percent to 1,300 (Clarke 2015: 1393).
Champagne houses, too, began advertising to differentiate themselves from their
competitors as their product became increasingly popular with the middle class. Much like
with the purchase of fine wine, the purchase of champagne allowed the growing middle
Figure 4.4 Duminy & Co. champagne advertisement. The advertisement for Duminy & Co,
wholesale agents of champagne, features an illustration of their premises in Ay, a town in the
French province of Champagne. Image by Science & Society Picture Library via Getty Images.
Commerce 95
class to emulate an elite lifestyle, in this case, represented by the “festival in a bottle” that
champagne provided. Champagne houses created posters showcasing products, and
even labels to demonstrate the elegance and beguiling nature of their bubbly. The prolifera-
tion of posters to tout the joys of champagne became emblematic of champagne marketing
throughout the latter part of the era. Some of the posters associated champagne with
sports and leisure activities of the very wealthy, like hunting, horse racing, and rowing.
Others linked champagne to love, excitement, and revelry, and still others demonstrated
lineage as well as associations with aristocracy and royalty in the very name of the vintage
(Phillips 2000: 243–4).
Champagne, too, became the lifeblood of bordellos and music halls in France. The
famous Moulin Rouge, for example, sold 14,795 bottles of champagne in 1905 alone,
employing 796 dancers to facilitate the flow of bubbly (Ehmer et al. 2015: 198–200). Perhaps
the embodiment of the extravagance and luxury that characterized the Belle Epoche,
champagne epitomized the era.
1914–33
The period that encompassed the First World War, Prohibition, and the worldwide depression
significantly interrupted the beer, spirits, and wine businesses. The shortages of grain as well
as manpower during the war forced breweries to slow or sometimes halt their production,
while spirits industries redirected their distilled alcohol to wartime use. Markets for all three
kinds of products fell, and in the case of wine, some vineyards were occupied by German
soldiers, or shelled and poisoned by mustard gas, which led to a halt in production and
long-term devastation for some vineyards. On the heels of the First World War, American
Prohibition put many US breweries out of business, and seriously affected European and
Canadian breweries as well. It shifted the distilled spirits business from a legal to an illegal
enterprise in the United States and parts of Canada, which led to the takeover of the indus-
try by a host of infamous mobsters. The vineyards of the nascent California wine industry
benefitted from the law, as the demand for grapes escalated because millions of households
turned to homemade winemaking. French and other European wineries spent this period
recovering from the phylloxera epidemic and attempting to weather an outbreak of adulter-
ated and outright fraudulent wine. The entire period was one of disorder, dislocation, and
even chaos, which did not begin to change until the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment in
the United States in 1933.
The First World War disrupted the brewing industry. A shortage of ingredients, work-
ers, materials, draught animals, and vehicles led to decreased production and an increase
in prices in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Production in Europe decreased by
about 70 percent during the war, especially in the occupied areas of Belgium and France
(Poelmans and Swinnen 2011: 17–18). Many US brewers experienced boycotts, as
many breweries had been founded or were owned by German immigrants, and anything
remotely related to Germany suffered a severe backlash (Patterson and Swinnen 2014:
35). Outside of the United States, in Ireland, Guinness continued with reduced production
while tangentially joining in the allied effort. Already well known for progressive benefits for
their workers, Guinness solidified this image by guaranteeing each worker who was called
up for service a job upon his return. Furthermore, the company pledged to provide each

family of a serviceman half of his salary while he was away. The brewery lost more than
500 workers to the army—nearly 20 percent of its workforce—but remained in operation
(Mansfield 2009: 210).
The war ended, only to be replaced by another interruption in business. Prohibition in the
United States and parts of Canada landed another devastating blow to the brewing industry.
Not all brewing ceased in the United States, as some brewers could legally produce near
beer, malted milk, malt syrups, root beer, and fruit-based soft drinks. These products did
keep some breweries afloat during the period (Patterson and Swinnen 2014: 38). Adolph
Coors Brewing Company, for example, manufactured these food products and expanded
its porcelain business, which continues today (Fahey and Miller 2013: 212). Other breweries
went underground. Despite its illegality, they continued to brew beer under the protec-
tion of corrupt politicians or government agents, and criminal gangs. One estimate put the
profits in Chicago alone at 1,150 percent. Overall, though, Prohibition led to an estimated
$300,000,000 loss in property value alone for brewers. Hundreds of brewers closed their
doors, thousands of brewery workers lost their jobs, barley farmers and hop growers lost
their markets, and the numerous other industries providing support for the trade had to lay
off workers (Wilson and Gourvish 1998: 193–5). Many breweries had already been forced to
shut down during the war, and with Prohibition coming in its wake, by 1933 when the law
was repealed, they no longer had the capital to complete the mechanized upgrades needed
in an increasingly competitive business (Poelmans and Swinnen 2011: 22). Even many
breweries that had been successful could not come back after the thirteen-year hiatus.
The Christian Moerlein Brewing Company of Cincinnati, for example, the largest brewery
in the state of Ohio in 1900, could not reopen after 1933 (Fahey and Miller 2013: 461).
These permanent closures fed the trend of concentrating breweries into larger and fewer
businesses. In 1915, in the United States, for example, 1,345 breweries actively made and
sold beer; by 1934, a year after the end of prohibition, only a few over 600 were back in
business (Poelman and Swinnen 2011: 24). Canada, too, enacted Prohibition during this
period, although provincially, and its enforcement was uneven, which meant less disruption
in overall production. Moreover, Canada’s prohibition laws did not outlaw the export of beer,
which helped brewers such as Molson, by opening up a wide market in the United States
for their product (Eberts 2007). Breweries in Europe were less affected by Prohibition, but
toward the end of this period the 1929 world economic crisis—that eventually helped end
Prohibition in the United States—led to significant hardships for breweries all over Europe.
British brewery sales dropped by 20 percent and, between 1927 and 1932, Guinness sales
dropped by 50 percent (Mansfield 2009: 229).
Distillers similarly made large adjustments as a result of the First World War and
Prohibition, and vodka distillers within Russia had to adjust to the watershed brought on
by the Bolshevik revolution. The Czarist state had had a monopoly on liquor stores, but
the Bolshevik state declared war on vodka, enacted Prohibition, and all exports collapsed.
Prohibition in Russia ended in 1925, but the Smirnov distillery, along with the rest of the
alcohol industry, now fell firmly under the control of the Soviet state (Matus 2014: 20). In the
United States, Prohibition, far from closing down distilling, merely allowed bootleggers to
accrue incredible wealth. An estimated 900,000 cases of liquor were shipped to US cities
during Prohibition, and Americans spent upwards of $36 million on illegal alcohol during that
period (Ehmer et al. 2015: 75–6).
Commerce 97
One famous bootlegger, George Remus of Cincinnati, ingeniously set up an elaborate
system that included purchasing a distillery licensed to manufacture whiskey for medicinal
purposes, buying a pharmaceutical company licensed to sell medicinal whiskey, and then
buying a warehouse containing stored whiskey, which had been produced legally prior to
Prohibition. He had all three legs of the stool to make legitimate income, but his profits came
from his manipulation of the system. Shipments from his warehouse to his pharmaceutical
company were often “lost,” and ended up in an off-the-books warehouse, where they were
reshipped out to bootleggers over a five-state area. He ended up supplying a good deal of
the East Coast, as he reputedly sold high-quality liquor. Remus’s accumulated wealth once
stood at an estimated $50 million (Burns 2004: 206).
Remus was just one of the famous bootleggers of the era. The trade fueled the growth
of organized crime in the United States, which became increasingly violent as competi-
tion among bootleggers heated up. It seemed to come to a crisis point with the 1929
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago where on February 14 seven men from a rival gang
were very publicly gunned down over a turf battle with the gang of Al Capone. This esca-
lating violence helped lead to the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. Perhaps even more
influential was the onset of the 1929 depression, which led the government to consider
lucrative alcohol tax revenues as a way of pulling the country toward an economic recovery
(Phillips 2014: 268).
Bootleggers flourished in Prohibition-era America, but alcohol venues grew as well.
Prohibition gave rise to one of the most popular kinds of social clubs in the early twenti-
eth century, speakeasies. Estimates placed the number at 32,000 in New York City alone,
nearly double that of pre-Prohibition pubs, taverns, and clubs. While there were clubs of all
kinds, including tiny hovels and filthy dives, several speakeasies were quite elegant. Replete
with thick carpets, guilt-edged mirrors, chandeliers, frescoed ceilings, and sculptures, many
had cover charges and live entertainment, and some made their owners incredibly wealthy.
Fortune magazine reported that the more successful speakeasies made up to $500,000
a year. With all this opulence on the inside, though, most speakeasies were non-descript,
sometimes to the point of dilapidation, on the outside. So as not to draw attention to the
establishment, would-be customers had to knock on the correct door, wait for someone to
appear at a peep-hole, and give either the code word or the name of a regular in order to be
allowed to enter. While this rigmarole might have deterred some, the ritual held a particular
cachet for many others. It simply added to an air of exclusivity, which made the nightclubs
exceedingly popular, according to a New York owner of several speakeasies, Barney Gallant
(Burns 2004: 199–201).
Whisky distilleries on the Canadian side of the border made extraordinary profits during
Prohibition. Many had started in the nineteenth century, but companies like Hiram Walker
and Joseph Seagram became big brands with the help of US Prohibition (Kosar 2010: 105).
The 1920s also saw a lively trade in spirits in Europe, through increasingly famous venues
where well-known expat Americans, along with European literati, met to drink and be seen.
One of the most famous was the New York Bar in Paris, which boasted such clientele as F.
Scott Fitzgerald, Noel Coward, Sinclair Lewis, Jack Dempsey, George Gershwin, and Ernest
Hemingway. Jumping on the bandwagon of the increasingly popular cocktail, the bar famously
invented the Bloody Mary, Sidecar, White Lady, and French 75 (Ehmer et al. 2015: 207).

The 1914–33 period brought unexpected change to the wine industry as well. During
the First World War wineries in Languedoc were called upon to distribute 200,000 hectolit-
ers of wine to military hospitals to boost the morale of wounded soldiers, and the Ministry
of War rerouted wine to soldiers regularly. Soldiers were requisitioned ¼ liter per day in
1914, which was later raised to ½ liter per day, and then ¾ liter per day by 1918. In all,
French soldiers at the front consumed 12 million hectoliters in one year toward the end of
the war. Winemakers made money by providing for the troops while supplies lasted. The
regions of Bordeaux and Burgundy, though, lost money, as the government only paid a
pre-set average price for wine, which was below the normal amount for finer wine. Virtually
all the wine distributed to the troops was red, as red wine was seen as a masculine drink,
more likely to “put fire into the soldiers’ blood and breathe courage into their hearts” (Phillips
2000: 293–5).
Wine shortages soon occurred during the war as production decreased from a lack of
labor and materials. Even though not all men were drafted into service, labor was funneled
into other sectors deemed necessary for war support (Phillips 2000: 296). One of the worst
affected areas during the First World War was the region of Champagne. The 1914 vintage
happened to be one of the largest in recent history, and as men were being called up to
service, women, children, and the elderly took on the responsibility for the harvest. That
year vineyards produced 60 million hectoliters, almost 50 percent more than in 1913, and
the next year, 1915, almost repeated the bounty of 1914. Several battles took place in the
region, and Germans dug trenches throughout the vineyards, making these two harvests
become the famous “blood vintages” in France, as twenty women and children lost their
lives gathering grapes in these two years. Moreover, Germans bombed Reims, an area in
Champagne, for 1,051 days during the war. The town was evacuated, and the tunnels of
the champagne cellars below the city became home to over 20,000 people who lived there
for over three years (Clarke 2015: 1621). In fact, it was a veritable town below ground, with
businesses, schools, and churches. Aboveground, by the armistice in November of 1918,
the region of Champagne had lost 50 percent of its population, 40 percent of its vineyards,
and of those vines left, many had been poisoned by gas (Lukacs 2012: 193). Germany lost
up to 75,000 hectares of wine-growing regions as a result of the war, in part because they
lost Alsace to France, but also because the post-war inflation in Germany in the 1920s
reduced the number of customers for German wines. Moreover, the Treaty of Versailles
required Germany to import 260,000 hectoliters of French wine each year without tariffs.
Spain and Portugal were much less affected by the war, however, and thus were able to
continue to export wines throughout the period (Philips 2000: 296–8).
The French rebuilt their vineyards in the 1920s, and by 1924 there were an additional
50,000 hectares of vines, mainly in the south. Per capita wine consumption in France grew
in this period to 136 liters per year, up 25 percent from 1904. In the United States, though
Prohibition halted commercial wine production, California grape growers’ output increased,
as demand skyrocketed, not for wine, but for juice concentrate or dehydrated grape “bricks.”
People were instructed in the art of how not to make wine in their homes, while at the same
time flavorings such as port, sherry, claret, and riesling were sold in casks that could be
easily fermented at home. To make the process even more convenient, home delivery was
available in many cities (Phillips 2000: 298, 303).
Commerce 99
1933–50
The post-Prohibition years brought back the trend of rapid consolidation in the beer and
spirits industries, and as mass media developed at breakneck speed with the proliferation
of the radio and then television, advertising thrived. The alcohol industry was one of the first
to embrace new strategies, and advertising came to dominate the way the alcohol industry
did business. Toward the end of the period, the Second World War affected the industries
much the same way as had the First World War, with shortages of materials and manpower,
but there were much less stringent restrictions imposed, and the industries quickly regained
their stature after the war, as television became more and more commonplace, providing a
lucrative medium in which to sell alcohol.
The beer industry in the post-Prohibition years was characterized by continued techno-
logical development, continued conglomeration, and an explosion of advertising through
radio and television. These changes were interrupted during the Second World War with
resource and manpower shortages, and a good deal of the beer that was produced was
directed to the troops (Fahey and Miller 2013: 212). The beginning of the period, though,
witnessed one of the most important technological advances to affect the beer industry in
this period: the proliferation of refrigerators into individual households. In 1921, only 5,000
refrigerators were manufactured; by 1929, that number had risen to 890,000, and by 1935,
to 1,882,000. This took away one of the side-businesses of brewers, though, which was
selling ice; but it also meant that people could buy more bottled beer as they could keep it
at home in their refrigerators, and drink it at their leisure. The packaging of beer changed,
too. Beer began to be sold in cans. The idea of canning beer had been around since the
first decade of the twentieth century, but did not become practical until the 1930s when
the American Can Co. developed “keg lined” cans, which had a coating on the inside of the
can to prevent leaching. Soon vinyl became the common material coating the inside of beer
cans, and by the end of 1935, 18 of the 750 breweries in operation in the United States were
canning beer (Wilson and Gourvish 1998: 199–200).
During the 1930s and 1940s beer companies in many countries continued the
decades-long pattern of consolidation. In Canada in the early 1930s, E. P. Taylor created
his Brewing Corporation of Canada when he merged his Brading Breweries Ltd, an Ottawa
company, with Capital Brewing of Ottawa; Kuntz Brewery of Waterloo, Ontario; The British
American Brewing Company of Windsor, Ontario; Carling Brewing Co. of London, Ontario;
and O’Keefe Brewery of Toronto. He continued to acquire roughly thirty more Canadian
breweries and changed the name of his company to the Brewing Corporation of Canada,
and then to Canadian Breweries Ltd. (Sneath 2001: 97). In Britain, consolidation meant
that the 11,752 breweries that had existed in 1903–4 had been whittled down to 567 by
1949–50 (Wilson and Gourvish 1998: 142). The US beer industry, too, became controlled
by fewer and fewer companies. Many of the small breweries in the United States had gone
out of business during Prohibition and did not reopen afterwards (Poelmans and Swinnen
2011: 23), so by 1940, while beer production had reached pre-Prohibition levels, it was
brewed by half as many companies (Wilson and Gourvish 1998: 201). Two main paths
to consolidation characterized the American brewing industry after Prohibition. Either
companies built regional breweries that brewed their national brands, as was the case for

Figure 4.5 Canning process at the Acton factory, 1937. “Fifty Pints Please! 3rd December 1937:
A new innovation—canned beer—is rapidly becoming very popular. Here at the Acton factory of
a well known brewer the canning process is well under way to satisfy an order for 250,000 cans.”
Photograph by Fox Photos/Stringer/Hulton Archive via Getty Images.
Commerce 101
Anheuser-Busch, or they bought regional breweries and those breweries continued to sell
under their original names (Wilson and Gourvish 1998: 202).
Consolidation was driven in part by the widespread growth of television, and the a bility of
the bigger brands to advertise nationally (George 2011: 225). Advertising became the hall-
mark of the beer industry. The large brewers took advantage of all possible media strategies
to sell their product. For a while in the 1930s breweries latched onto a health conscious
theme in advertising. In 1936, Schlitz Brewing of Milwaukee launched a campaign that
hailed its Schlitz “Vitamin D Beer” as “one of the Greatest Brewing Achievements of All
Time.” Other brewers jumped on the bandwagon. In 1937 Auto City Brewing of Detroit
claimed that their beer contained vitamins B and C, and Acme beer in California called their
beer “Dietically Non-Fattening.” The Federal Alcohol Administration stopped these kinds of
advertising claims in 1940 when they ruled that beer companies could no longer mention
vitamins on their packaging. Other breweries used less controversial methods. In the late
1930s, for example, Hamms brewery, in St. Paul, Minnesota, sponsored a radio music show
(Wilson and Gourvish 1998: 205–6).
Breweries strove to give their beer brands particular images in advertising that would
entice potential customers. In general, beer advertising honored male physical labor,
machismo, and male group bonding. Many commercials demonstrated how beer could
smooth acceptance into a group, where men “swapped stories, joked, bragged and
[swapped] good-natured insults.” Beer was also tied to sports, outdoor activities, a middle-
class lifestyle, and a frontier mentality. Examples of these kinds of advertisements include a
1940 Budweiser image that showed “a white picket fence, frisky dog, two exemplary chil-
dren, a devoted wife and a cold bottle of beer, all awaiting the breadwinner about to emerge
from the metropolitan bus” (Wilson and Gourvish 1998: 204–5).
The Second World War interrupted the growth of advertising, and interrupted the beer
industry as well. The US government mandated in 1943 that brewers allocate 15 percent
of their beer for the armed forces, which actually helped the industry, as the exposure
of millions of servicemen to national brands inspired loyalty to those brands after the war
(Wilson and Gourvish 1998: 202). There were fewer raw materials in general and those that
were available for beer were of poor quality. This, along with grain shortages, led to lighter
beers, which interestingly began to shift beer drinkers’ preferences, leading to the popularity
of lighter beers in the post-war world. Production declined in Europe during the war years,
too, as raw materials were strictly rationed. Breweries turned to substitute ingredients such
as beets, and flavoring substitutes such as coriander seed, chamomile blossom, skins of
lemons and oranges. Other supplies such as metal and cork became less and less available.
Many European breweries located in the occupied territories suffered substantial damage
to their plants, requiring significant investment in new materials after the war, which drove
companies to consolidate in order to pool resources (Poelmans and Swinnen 2011: 16, 22).
In Ireland, Guinness once again took the opportunity to demonstrate their patriotism in
wartime, this time by providing free Guinness to military hospitals, shipping beer to men at
the front, and serving it at a discount to all men in uniform at home. The company also will-
ingly set aside 5 percent of its production for the troops at the request of the British army.
In one of their most memorable gestures during the Second World War, Guinness promised
that each man at the front would have a Guinness with his Christmas dinner in 1939. To
fulfill this colossal undertaking, especially in the face of a war-depleted workforce, retired

Figure 4.6 Schlitz Beer advertisement from Harper’s Magazine, 1904. Image by Bettman via Getty
Images.
Commerce 103
Guinness workers eagerly came back to work, Red Cross workers volunteered, First World
War veterans joined the effort, and in a show of remarkable solidarity workers from compet-
ing breweries volunteered their time. The order was fulfilled (Mansfield 2009: 235).
Normal beer advertising commenced again after its hiatus during the war years. Pabst
Brewing Co. of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for example, advertised on the radio, sponsoring ads
during the Groucho Marx show and sponsoring the weekly Eddie Cantor show in 1948. It
was the only coast-to-coast network show sponsored by a brewer (Wilson and Gourvish
1998: 205). By the end of 1948, though, there were seventy-one television stations in forty-
two cities across the United States, with people clamoring to own their own televisions, and
by 1960, television ownership was a reality for over 90 percent of American households.
Beer advertising was there on the ground floor and became ubiquitous in early television. In
1949, Pabst sponsored “The Life of Riley” which was carried on both radio and television,
and in 1951 they became the first brewery to sponsor a color television show (Wilson and
Gourvish 1998: 206).
Television advertising, beginning particularly in the 1950s, intensified the trend toward the
domination of a few national breweries. For example, the number of breweries in the United
States dropped from 468 in 1945 to 292 in 1955. Overall production increased only slightly
in the 1950s from 86.6 million barrels to 89.8 million barrels, as demand was relatively fixed
during this period and did not begin to rise until the 1960s. The dramatic changes wrought
by advertising and economies of scale, though, transformed the market structure over the
next three decades. The top five breweries increased their market share from 19 percent in
1947 to 75 percent by 1980. The change was partly led by advertising ability. For example,
in 1965 breweries producing over 500,000 barrels a year were able to spend $2.07 per
barrel on advertising, yet those producing less than 100,000 were only able to spend 98
cents (Horowitz 1967: 11–12). Moreover, consumption habits changed. Before Prohibition
most people bought their beers from local or regional breweries, and most beer was sold
from casks in saloons. Packaged sales of beer rose from 30 percent of the market in 1930
to 72 percent of the market by 1950 (Stack 2003).
Sports broadcasting became the most popular arena for beer commercials. Narragansett
Brewery in Cranston, Rhode Island, one of the biggest New England breweries at that time,
began sponsoring the Boston Red Sox telecasts in 1945. Goebel Brewery of Detroit spon-
sored Detroit Tigers’ baseball games. These 1940s commercials were not viewed at home,
since few households owned their own television set. These sponsorships were within reach
of regional breweries at the time, as in 1948 a full hour of television time in New York cost
only $1,200, in Chicago, $700, and in Detroit, $400, while brief commercials cost a meager
$10 (George 2011: 213–16).
The post-Prohibition era brought change to the spirits industry as well. Many whiskey
distilleries consolidated during this period, while all companies jumped onto the advertising
bandwagon. And though these trends continued throughout the period, the Second World
War interrupted the flow, diverting all production to industrial alcohol for use in the machinery
of war. In the first year after Prohibition ended, three kinds of distilling companies emerged:
those that had some distilled liquor on hand because they had been granted licenses for
medical alcohol during Prohibition; companies that had been forced to close, but who
had been able to hold on to their brands, allowing them to maintain name recognition;

and start-ups, new companies that began to build themselves from the ground up after
Prohibition (Veach 2013: 1048). Many of all three kinds of companies failed, leading to
consolidations that created four giant companies, known as the “Big Four.” These North
American distilleries included Schenley Distilleries and National Distillers, the two largest
American companies, and Seagram’s and Hiram Walker, the two largest Canadian compa-
nies (Veach 1068). National Distillers owned the most famous brands such as Old Crow
and Old Taylor bourbons and Old Overholt and Mount Vernon rye whiskeys. Seagram’s,
a company that focused on blended whisky, sold Crown Royal Canadian whisky and
Seven Crown American blended whiskey. Hiram Walker owned Canadian Club, as well as
pre-packaged cocktails (Veach 2013: 1070). These four companies dominated the market,
demonstrated by the fact that in 1933 there had been 130 distilleries, but by 1958 that
number had dwindled to 76, with the “Big Four” controlling more than 75 percent of the
market. The two Canadian companies built distilleries in the United States to expand their
markets even more. Hiram Walker (Canadian Club) built a large distillery in Peoria, which
increased the company’s stock value by 2,700 percent, and Seagram’s, which became the
biggest distiller in the world, also built a plant in the United States. These “Big Four” took
advantage of their ability to advertise, regularly ranked in the top ten of America’s advertis-
ers. In addition, to ensure needed political support for their industry, they also created a new
lobbying organization, the Distilled Spirits Institute (Mitenbuler 2015: 198, 211, 219–20).
In contrast to the Big Four, a few new start-up distilleries came on the scene after 1933,
and some became quite successful. One of the most successful was Heaven Hill distillery in
Kentucky started by the Shapira brothers. The five brothers had no whiskey experience, but
they had owned department stores and were successful businessmen. They smartly hired
Harry Beam and his son Joe, relatives of the famous Jim Beam whiskey family, to run the
distillery. Heaven Hill had its own brands, but it also sold bulk whiskey, especially to liquor
stores that wanted to put their own name on the product. It sold extra whiskey to other
distillers when they needed it, and acquired brands from companies going out of business
or brands that companies no longer wanted (Veach 2013: 1093).
The onset of the Second World War shelved these trends, but did not devastate the
industry. Rather, it diverted it. During the war, governments enlisted distilleries to produce as
much industrial alcohol as possible. The War Production Board in the United States took over
control of the industry after Pearl Harbor, and converted virtually all distilleries to industrial
production, in other words, 190-proof alcohol. The distilling industry produced 44 percent of
the over 1.7 billion gallons of industrial alcohol used during the war. Industrial alcohol made
“antifreeze, tetraethyl lead, which was mixed with gasoline as an octane booster, plastics
for aviation, lacquer to protect metal from rust, insecticide, and medical supplies.” Much
of the alcohol also produced “synthetic rubber for tires, hoses, and waterproofing” (Veach
2013: 1121). War needs bred technological innovation in the industry, and Louis Rosensteil,
president of Schenley Distilling Co., directed his engineers to develop a modified column
still that could make high-proof alcohol less expensively. He then provided the plans to all
other distillers at no cost. Rosensteil continued his support of the war effort by instructing his
company’s chemists to make penicillin, not only for the military, but also for civilian use. His
chemists did not have to stretch their expertise very far, though, as the process for growing
the molds for penicillin was similar to that of yeast for beer (Veach 2013: 1130).
Commerce 105
The end of the war brought a return to advertising, and the necessity of companies
to solidify their images in the eyes of the public. An executive at the large corporation,
Schenley, argued that the industry needed an “increased accent upon the quality appeal
in liquor merchandising,” while another distillery marketer urged his sales force to focus
on luxury. Companies tried to sell heritage and history as well (Mitenbuler 2015: 204–5).
Advertising also attempted to convince homemakers that whiskey was crucial when hosting
a party or a dinner, transforming it into a household staple (Phillips 2014: 300). By employ-
ing the newfound popularity of mixed drinks, marketers were able to successfully boost the
sales of Irish whiskey in the 1940s through advertising the drink, Irish coffee (Kosar 2010:
83). Sales of US whiskey began to rise as well in the 1940s and 1950s, hitting their peak
during the 1950s. In 1940 there were 99 million gallons of whiskey bottled for consumption
and by 1960 the number had reached 147 million gallons, an increase of almost 68 percent
(Statistical Abstracts 1965: 797). Advertising aided the trend of consolidation that began
in earnest after Prohibition. Seventy-five percent of the market in the 1950s was controlled
by the top four conglomerates (Mitenbuler 2015: 204). As the American market declined
in the 1960s, American distilleries began to market their products internationally, espe-
cially following American servicemen to US military bases across the world (Veach 2013:
1182). International marketing helped replace some of the sales of whiskey lost in the United
States. The decade between 1960 and 1970 saw an increase of US whisky produced and
bottled for consumption from 147 million gallons to 192 gallons, an increase of close to 25
percent (Statistical Abstracts 1979: 815).
By middle of the twentieth century, whiskey no longer held the virtual monopoly on
spirits in the United States, as tequila, rum, and vodka began to catch on with the general
public. For example, Bacardi sales tripled between 1941 and 1945 (Mitenbuler 2015: 217)
and the Second World War directly stimulated an, albeit temporary, explosion of tequila
exports from Mexico to the United States and Europe, rising from 21,621 liters in 1940
to 4.5 million liters in 1944 (Gaytán 2014: 65). The creation of several vodka-based cock-
tails became a successful marketing tool to promote the liquor. John Martin, of Heublein
Spirits Co., famously traveled around the United States promoting the company’s Smirnoff
vodka. At the Cock n Bull, a British pub on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles owned by
Jack Morgan, Morgan and Heublein’s Martin together created a new fad. Morgan, ever
the promoter himself, was trying to foster demand for his ginger beer; Martin suggested
he mix it with Smirnoff and lime and, voilá, it became the Moscow Mule. Martin, trav-
eling from bar to bar, took two Polaroid pictures of each bartender making a Moscow
Mule. He would leave one with the bartender, and take the other one with him so that
he could show each bartender that “all the popular bars” were serving Moscow Mules
(Matus 2014: 33). With its own specifically designed copper mug, Heublein distributed
posters of the drink held by Hollywood favorites such as Woody Allen and Groucho Marx
(Ehmer et al. 2015: 38).
Vodka’s popularity in Hollywood led to its success across the country, as people strove
to identify with well-known celebrities by buying a little celebrity themselves. Furthering
vodka’s popularity, a perhaps apocryphal story circulated in 1947 that Joan Crawford had
thrown an exclusive Hollywood party, and served only vodka and champagne (Ehmer et
al. 2015: 36). Furthermore, it was rumored that actors preferred vodka on set because it
did not leave the breath smelling of alcohol. In somewhat of a play on words, one of the

successful marketing campaigns urged Americans to drink vodka, as “It leaves you breath-
less” (Matus 2014: 33). Advertising helped vodka increase its market share across the
United States. In 1950, 40,000 cases of vodka were sold and by 1956 that number had
risen to 4.4 million cases (Ehmer 2015: 40).
The wine industry followed a somewhat different path during the post-Prohibition years.
In the 1930s, the French wine industry was still suffering from the fallout of the phyllox-
era epidemic of the late nineteenth century, the shortages of the First World War, and the
depression. These events had led to unscrupulous wine traders pawning off either adul-
terated or cheap wine, or wine made from any of a number of things except grapes, as
fine wine. Wineries, especially those in regions known for fine wine, had been pressuring
the government for several years to regulate labeling, and there had been some changes,
like the appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) or “controlled designation of origin” which in
1908 had established the broad regions for Champagne, Cognac, Bordeaux, Banyuls, and
Armagnac (Phillips 2000: 292). Real change, though, did not come until 1935 with the crea-
tion of the Comité National des appellations d’origine (CNAO), a national committee made
up of government agents as well as representatives from the winegrowers, which set down
rules for the varieties of grapes that could be used in particular wines, the ratios of different
grapes in varieties, the minimum alcohol levels in wine, and the maximum yields of wine per
hectare of vines (Phillips 2014: 290).
US wines began their rise in the 1930s as well. While many vineyards had been planted
in the late nineteenth century, most wines had been sold in bulk, and California had not
earned a reputation for producing fine wine. Yet one winery, Beaulieu, owned by Georges
de Latour, set out to change the status of California wines. Although it sold in bulk, the
winery kept small batches of Cabernet Sauvignon back each year, and wanted to build on
those reserve vintages. To that end, the winery hired Russian emigre Andre Tchelistcheff as
winemaker in 1938. To produce fine wine, Tchelistcheff decided the winery should focus on
Cabernet, as well as make substantial changes in hygiene during the production process.
While Tchelistcheff strove to produce fine wines, he also wanted the entire Napa Valley to
become a region known for quality wine. In 1947, he started the Napa Valley Wine Technical
Group, which gave advice to over eighty wineries in the region, working to raise expertise in
every winery in the area (Clarke 2015: 1885, 1888).
Even with the improvements in France and the United States, wine continued to lose
consumers. Prohibition’s speakeasies had triggered a rise in the popularity of the cocktail.
Now, rather than wine carrying a mark of sophistication as it had in the nineteenth century,
cocktails were in vogue. In the 1930s, cocktail parties became fashionable, as well as the
before dinner drink, or the cocktail hour. Mixed drinks such as Daiquiris, White Ladies,
and especially Martinis became the drinks of choice in clubs, especially in response to
a customer base that for the first time included women. Many cocktails became known
as “ladies’ drinks” in the new drinking culture (Lukacs 2012: 197). While wine may have
languished, conversely, champagne solidified its own niche in the market. Carrying its image
from the nineteenth century, champagne continued to represent glamour. Hollywood stars
did their part to popularize champagne through their own extravagant displays. Marilyn
Monroe, for example, purportedly ordered 150 bottles at a time so she could bathe in it. She
claimed that she went to bed every night with Chanel No 5 behind each ear and woke up
every morning with a glass of Piper-Heidsieck champagne (Clarke 2015: 1602).
Commerce 107
Conclusion
The era known as the industrial age, lasting from the mid-nineteenth century to just past the
end of the Second World War, brought dramatic social, economic, and political upheavals
resulting from what was nothing less than an economic revolution. The alcohol industry
experienced the upheavals, but also embraced changes that modernized the industries in
dramatic ways. In the first era, innovation transformed all three trades as science came to
play a larger role in the alcohol production process in the nineteenth century. Technological
and transportation advancements allowed for wider markets for all three industries as
well. Later, in the First World War and 1920s period, war disrupted all the industries, and
although Prohibition was centered in the United States and parts of Canada, it certainly
affected the alcohol industries in other countries. The regular lines of export were closed
off, yet smuggling was alive and well, primarily for spirits, leaving some producers with
extraordinary profits. The post-Prohibition period was distinguished by the domination of
mass media, leading the alcohol industry to heavily rely on radio and then television to
advertise their products and grow their markets. The Second World War caused a blip in
this trend, but the post-war years quickly resumed the pattern of consolidation and the
centrality of advertising to business success. Throughout the entire hundred-year period,
some long-term trends carried over from period to period. The effects of scientific and
mechanical innovations, increasing consolidation of businesses, and increased depend-
ence upon advertising characterized all three markets. These trends continued into the
second half of the twentieth century and beyond.

5 MEDICINE AND HEALTH
SARAH W. TRACY
Introduction: No Neutral Spirit

Reflecting on the history of alcohol and its perceived effects, Berton Roueché, the
mid-twentieth-century medical writer for The New Yorker, observed that “The popular
mythology of alcohol is a vast and vehement book … As a compendium of ageless error,
of phantom fears and ghostlier reassurances, it probably has no equal. It is perhaps, the
classic text in the illiterature of medicine” (1960: 47). For Roueché, alcohol was a “neutral
spirit,” a tabula rasa on which “Wets” and “Drys,” or the friends and foes of ethanol, had
projected their cultural prejudices, personal preferences, religious aspirations, and ethical
concerns for millenia. No other beverage possessed such a diverse array of attributes—
most of them, to Roueché’s mind, pure rubbish. The situation was all the more baffling, he
added, because since the late nineteenth century, physiologists, biochemists, and physi-
cians had pretty well solved the puzzle of alcohol’s nature and its effects on human health.
It is unlikely that any century-long period experienced as much diversity of opinion about
alcohol as the years between 1850 and 1950, the age of industry, empire, and war. It
is equally difficult to imagine that any other one-hundred-year period witnessed as much
change in medical practice or in the Western world’s understanding of human health and
disease. Medical knowledge and knowledge about alcohol’s effects on human health
evolved simultaneously, affecting each other throughout the century. In 1860, a time when
hospitals such as Massachusetts General in Boston relied heavily on brandy and wine as
stimulating therapies, prominent Harvard physician and literary light Oliver Wendell Holmes
expressed his own doubts about doctors’ therapeutic arsenal. Holmes declared that with
the exception of “opium, which the Creator himself seems to prescribe,” and “wine, which
is a food, and the vapors which produce the miracle of anesthesia … I firmly believe that if
the whole material medica, as now used, (emphasis original) could be sunk to the bottom
of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind,—and all the worse for the fishes” (1861:
38–9). Yet as time marched on, fewer and fewer would agree with Holmes. Wonder drugs
such as aspirin (1899), insulin (1922), antibiotics (1942), and cortisone (1949) were added to
the modern pharmacopoeia, transforming the profession, its practices, and its public image.
These and other new and effective medicines helped remove alcohol from its position as a
therapeutic mainstay in the United States, Great Britain, Scandinavia, and Europe.
The relationship between alcohol and health also involved the problem of chronic drunk-
enness or intemperance, of course. And the cast of characters addressing the negative
effects of alcohol consumption hailed from many nations. Briton Thomas Trotter (1804) and
signer of the US Declaration of Independence Benjamin Rush (1784) were among the first
physicians to interpret habitual drunkenness as a disease at the dawn of the nineteenth
century, but Swedish physician Magnus Huss introduced the term “alcoholism” to the medi-
cal world in 1849 in his Alcoholismus Chronicus, or Chronic Alcoholic Illness. A Contribution
to the Study of Dyscrasias Based on My Personal Experience and the Experience of Others
(1849). The American Association for the Cure of Inebriates was established in New York
City in 1870. By the end of the nineteenth century, the disease concepts of alcoholic inebri-
ety, dipsomania, and alcoholism—in rough succession—had achieved currency across the
majority of the Western world and in both hemispheres.
The effects of chronic heavy drinking were well recognized as part of a larger constel-
lation of addictions—to opiates, tobacco, cocaine, even lettuce—that fell under the global
term “inebriety,” much like today’s “dopamine hypothesis” offers a unifying framework for
addiction. Homes, asylums, and hospitals—public and private—for the treatment of alco-
holic and drug inebriates opened across the United States, Europe, and Great Britain during
the second half of the nineteenth century and earliest decades of the twentieth. Patent
medicine cures also offered solace to those afflicted by drink. Leslie E. Keeley’s famed
Bi-Chloride of Gold cure and his proprietary institutes treated inebriates throughout North
America and across the world, extending into Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Australia during
the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. The original Keeley Institute in Dwight, Illinois, did not
close its doors until 1966 (Tracy 2005: 81–91, 114–21).
With the enactment of Prohibition in the United States in 1920, terms such as “inebriety”
and “dipsomania” were relegated to a diagnostic dustbin, only to re-emerge post-Repeal
in 1933 as the modern disease concept of alcoholism. The alcohol and brewing industries
did their best to sever the historic ties between ethanol in its many forms and the Prohibition
Era image of “Demon Rum.” And the medical profession—especially in North America and
Great Britain—played its part by developing an understanding of alcoholism as a disease
to which only certain individuals were susceptible, by dint of circumstance, personality, or
heredity. In short, between 1850 and 1950 popular knowledge about alcohol was trans-
formed to meet the needs of a range of competing parties, whether drinkers or teetotalers.
Temperance advocates, reform-minded physicians, politicians, and the imbibing masses
likewise viewed alcohol’s nature in response to social and technical change: the growth
of cities, the flow of beer swilling and whiskey drinking immigrants, medicine’s expanding
therapeutics, women’s suffrage, and the industrial and transportation revolutions all affected
the identity of alcohol and those who drank. Images of alcohol evolved, as did the perceived
utility and costs associated with it, within the modernizing Western world.
Alcohol Therapeutics: From Nourishment to Nihilism

Despite an active temperance movement in Britain and the United States—indeed, the
temperance movement constituted the largest social reform movement of nineteenth-
century North America—both nations relied greatly on alcohol to address the needs of the
sick. At mid-century medicinal alcohol’s popularity reached its height. Changes in phys-
iological thinking about disease—as an asthenic (weakened) rather than a sthenic (over
stimulated) state—meant that physicians began to rely on bolstering or stimulating treat-
ments. Gone were the days of dramatically depleting therapies such as bleeding, cupping,
and calomel, a mercury-based purgative. Instead, physicians turned to substances they
believed nourished and strengthened the constitution. “Alcohol most vividly embodied the

ethos of heroic stimulation,” observed historian John Harley Warner. Used in approximately
40 percent of cases at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the early 1850s, alcohol
continued to be administered by hospital physicians to a quarter of their patients as late as
the 1880s (1997: 144–5).
Prescribing alcohol was not new at mid-century; rather the frequency with which it was
used and the forms of alcohol employed changed from earlier in the century. In the 1820s
and 1830s, alcohol was administered mostly as wine whey, a milky mixture that resem-
bled custard and was low in alcohol content. As much food as drink, wine whey was what
Warner terms a “supportive nutrient,” but it was not a stimulating therapy (1997: 144–5).
By the 1850s, however, physicians had begun to prescribe whiskey, wine, and brandy by
themselves. At the Massachusetts General Hospital, patients with conditions such as pneu-
monia and typhoid fever received frequent and large doses, sometimes adding up to eight
or more ounces of pure alcohol per day; ethanol in several forms became a mainstay of
clinical therapeutics.
Nor was the situation much different in Britain and France, where in the “mid-nineteenth
century the idea that alcohol was a force-giving food, stimulant and necessary part of a
proper diet was firmly entrenched” (Warner 1980: 237). Irish-born physician Robert Bentley
Todd (1809–60) was likely the most zealous champion of alcoholic therapeutics. Todd
maintained that only natural processes healed the body of its ailments. Thus, supportive,
nourishing therapy to strengthen the body while it healed itself was valuable, and Todd
considered alcohol among the physician’s most precious therapeutic allies. Here Todd
drew on the work of the German physiologist Justus von Liebig, who considered alcohol’s
ability to fuel respiration and generate animal heat unsurpassed. Liebig recommended
alcohol to prevent the ailing body from converting its own healthy tissue into the nourish-
ment necessary for healing (Warner 1980: 241–2). Indeed, British physician, physiologist,
and temperance sympathizer Benjamin Ward Richardson laid blame for alcohol’s thera-
peutic popularity squarely on Todd’s shoulders, declaring “The teachings of Dr. Todd led
many practitioners to ‘rely,’ as they expressed it, on alcohol, to the exclusion, in some
instances, of all other active treatment” (1876: 6). For temperance enthusiasts, physicians’
dependence upon alcohol was at best misguided and at worst irresponsible and poten-
tially harmful.
More trouble arose in the Todd school of therapeutics when French physiologists
suggested that rather than being transformed through oxidation, alcohol exited the body
largely, if not exclusively unchanged. Its use as food or nourishment was called into ques-
tion. How could a substance that left the body without alteration have brought about any
therapeutic benefit? Yet, remarkably, if the rationale for employing alcohol fell short, its
routine use remained little changed. Instead, the European medical community came to
regard alcohol in the late 1860s and 1870s as a stimulant of the body’s own vital force,
moving away from its Toddian role as nourishment. Alcohol’s use marched on. By the
late 1860s, physiological studies had demonstrated that alcohol was both transformed in
the body and released intact from the body after ingestion. More interesting to clinicians,
however, the same researches revealed something brand new: ingesting alcohol lowered
the body’s temperature. Yet a new rationale for prescribing alcohol had been discovered:
to combat fevers. Its use as an antipyretic continued through the end of the nineteenth
century, when aspirin came on the scene as another means to battle fever and reduce
Medicine and Health 111

Figure 5.1 Gilbert and Parsons “Hygienic Whiskey for Medicinal Use,” advertisement, 1860.
Image by Buyenlarge via Getty Images.
pain. Robert Todd’s contributions to alcoholic therapeutics were memorialized within

popular culture as the “Hot Toddy,” part cocktail, part home remedy.
Europeans and Americans continued to use alcohol as a medicine in a variety of thera-
peutic contexts, however, even into the new century. Indeed, so popular was alcohol as a
stimulant within the German context that in 1896 Magdeburg physician Magnus Hirschfeld

faced criminal charges for maintaining his patient on what he called a “cold liquid diet,” that
involved no ethanol. Hirschfeld’s colleagues protested that a diet of the strongest wines
and most nourishing foods was the more responsible therapeutic course. In court, he
was charged with “acceleration of death, or homicide by negligence, in not using spirits
freely” (Journal of the American Medical Association 1896: 495). It is easy to speculate that
Hirschfeld, who was an advocate of naturopathy, and later became a renowned sexologist,
left general medical practice because of this lawsuit. Mustering testimony from the German
Medical Society and the medical council of Saxony, however, he proved beyond doubt that
medical opinion on alcohol therapeutics was changing. Observed Journal of the American
Medical Association editors, who reported on the case, “Evidently a great revolution of
theories concerning this drug [alcohol] has begun” (1896: 496). Such a therapeutic change
of heart may have begun in Germany as the nineteenth century came to a close, but in the
United States, physicians continued to use alcohol in several clinical contexts. Evolution
rather than revolution might more accurately describe alcohol’s decreasing therapeutic
importance.
The decline in alcoholic therapeutics was noted by temperance journalist Ernest
Cherrington in his 1925 Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem. There he observed
that the diminished medicinal alcohol use could be seen in British hospital budgets. The
seven largest London hospitals, for example, spent $38,560 on alcohol in 1862, but just
$6,190 in 1912 (1925a: 127).1 Outside of Britain, Cherrington claimed, reports from hospi-
tals in Prague, Vienna, and Krakow also indicated that “alcohol, even in the form of wine or
beer, was being discarded both from hospital dietaries and from therapeutics, except under
special circumstances” (1925b: 127). One may question Cherrington’s word because of
his temperance biases, yet physician Richard Cabot reported a similar trend stateside at
the Massachusetts General Hospital. Writing in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal
in 1909, Cabot reported that at Mass General per capita spending on alcohol (beer, ale,
wine, and spirits) had declined from $.46 in 1898 to $.13 in 1907, while expenditures on
non-alcoholic medicines had declined by about a third, from $1.68 per person to $.92 per
person. The price of neither alcohol nor other medicines had fallen disproportionately, he
added. Rather, it seems, doctors were simply prescribing less in general. Cabot attributed
the changes to both the medical profession’s realization that alcohol was not a stimulant
but a narcotic, and to his colleagues’ recognition that medicines could effectively treat only
about six diseases that physicians contended with on a routine basis. In line with these
observations, Cabot noted that hydrotherapeutics, massage, mechanical treatment, and
psychic therapy had all grown in popularity, while the number of surgeries had remained
constant (1909: 480–1).
In 1932, a year before the repeal of Prohibition, Columbia University physician and public
health leader Haven Emerson published Alcohol and Man—The Effects of Alcohol on Man
in Health and Disease, an edited volume intended to set the record straight on the role of
ethanol in medicine. Written for an educated lay audience of “school teachers, ministers
of the churches, editors and publicists,” Alcohol and Man eschewed any connection with
either wet or dry politics. In a chapter on the therapeutic use of alcohol, the authors, all
medical and scientific luminaries, considered the use of “whiskey, wine, beer, etc., as a
means of treatment,” rather than addressing alcohol’s use as an antiseptic or its common
role as a solvent in the preparation of many drugs. It was alcohol as beverage, after all, that

had a routine, if contested place in modern therapeutics (Emerson 1932: 153). Emerson
and his colleagues appreciated that physicians’ prescription of alcohol in these forms was
declining, but they deemed more at work than Prohibition-era restrictions. Certain infectious
diseases—especially tuberculosis—diabetes, conditions of old age, nephritis, heart disease,
and snakebite still warranted consideration of alcoholic therapeutics, but clinical data were
emerging that questioned even these indications.
In the case of diabetes, alcohol had figured prominently in the early semi-starvation,
carbohydrate-restricted diets for diabetes, particularly that of the early diabetologist
Frederick Allen. It offered a source of calories not readily metabolized into glucose. Indeed
Elliot Joslin had stated in the first edition of his The Treatment of Diabetes Mellitus, with
Observations Based upon 1000 Cases that in no disease was “the employment of alcohol
more useful or more justifiable” (1916: 226). For Joslin, it furnished a palatable form of food
in an often disagreeable diet, and allowed those with diabetes to digest fat more readily.
Still, the Boston physician rarely prescribed alcohol for his own patients, and in the second
edition of his textbook, Joslin observed that alcohol given in any chronic disease such as
diabetes ran the risk of habituation, although he felt that it was a small risk (1917: 282–3).
Insulin, available commercially by the mid-1920s, made dependence on alcohol as a food
unnecessary, while its use as an appetite stimulant or digestive was acceptable, if regarded
as inessential (Emerson 1932: 161).
By the early 1930s, mounting evidence suggested that alcohol’s simulating properties in
small doses were limited. Its actions as a neurological and muscular depressant in moder-
ate to large doses were well recognized, as were its dampening effects on resistance to
infection. For these reasons, alcohol became less popular in the treatment of infectious
disease. Instead, alcohol’s sedative effects were valued at bedtime, as a medication that
might facilitate sleep. Likewise, its vasodilating properties offered a cold patient, particularly
one coming in from the frigid outdoors, temporary comfort. And while alcohol was seen in
the mid-nineteenth century as a potent stimulant in cases of chronic tuberculosis, by the
early twentieth century physicians on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean recognized the role
of strong spirits, and absinthe especially, in the production of the disease in its many forms.
The extended nature of treatment for tuberculosis meant that prescribing alcohol in any
capacity could lead to dependence on the beverage.
The administration of alcohol in old age up through the 1930s was based on its pleas-
urable effects. Observed Harlow Brooks, a physician at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital,
“If it be desirable to add to old age, pleasure, geniality, conviviality, pleasant sensations
of whatever character, then the aged should have alcohol” (Emerson 1932: 164). For the
elderly, alcohol consumption comprised a convivial source of calories, as well as appetite
stimulation. It could induce sleep at a time of life when that proved difficult, and its diuretic
and diaphoretic properties meant that one’s urinary tract and sweat glands were stimulated
to work. But physicians were cautioned to use the same discretion they showed in adminis-
tering any other drug. Indeed, that was the point. By 1932, there were other effective drugs.
Alcoholic therapeutics were phased out within mainstream American and European medicine
by the early 1930s. The three decades between 1930 and 1960 are generally acknowledged
as American medicine’s “golden age,” and the development of effective medications to treat
a wide range of specific diseases helped propel medicine’s growing professional and cultural
authority, as well as its disassociation from alcohol (Burnham 1982: 1474–9).

Figure 5.2 Absinthe versus alcohol, c. 1900. French cartoon dramatizing the difference between
regular drunkenness, and intoxication with absinthe. Alcohol, as illustrated by the man on the left,
produces a gentle and somnolent sort of drunkenness. Absinthe, by contrast, produces a violent
and angry mood. Image by David Nathan-Maister, Science and Society Picture Library via Getty
Images.

A notable exception to this trend was the attitude of many French physicians, who, in
spite of their countrymen’s late nineteenth-century findings that alcohol entered and exited
the body virtually unchanged, remained steadfast in their support of French wine for its salu-
brious effects. Many doctors within the French pro-wine movement considered French wine
a healthy beverage (boisson hygienique). They distinguished it from industrially produced
distilled spirits, and promoted it as a badge of French national identity (Munholland 2006:
77–90).
During the early years of the Third Republic, a growing temperance campaign rooted
in the middle class emerged from concerns about the future of France, concerns arising
from ashes of defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the revolutionary acts of the Paris
Commune. Fears of national degeneration were tied to anxieties about rising alcohol
consumption in France. Distilled spirits, especially absinthe, were blamed for a range of
social and health-related problems, and many French doctors joined the crusade against
drink. Yet in parallel with medical support for temperance, a vocal group of physicians fought
to distinguish French wine from all other forms of alcohol, promoting it as naturally fermented
food that contributed to long life, protected one from cancer and tuberculosis, and above all
enhanced the French national character (Munholland 2006: 77–90).
French wine was given additional medical endorsement through the pinard, the wine
ration made popular as a fortifier of physical strength and courage during the First World
War. In 1933, the same year that Prohibition was repealed in the United States, a group of
French physicians formed the Médecins amis des vins de France (MAVF) to lobby on behalf
of wine. Their activities continued through the Second World War, emerging in the 1950s
as early champions of wine’s cardiovascular benefits, as well as its service in the name of
good digestion and longevity—anticipating by thirty years wine’s touted role in the “French
Paradox” (Munholland 2006: 77–90; Phillips 2014: 203–4).
Alcohol: Drug, Food, Poison

Part of the controversy over the identity of alcohol—drug, food, or poison—stemmed from
its ubiquity in the United States and Europe. It fulfilled all these roles and more between 1850
and 1950, without even considering its applications in industry: alcohol exerted powerful
and diverse effects on individual, social, and political bodies, and this fact was not lost on
physicians, dieticians, cookbook writers, captains of industry, pharmacists, saloon keepers,
or temperance reformers. Indeed as previously indicated, ethanol served multiple, changing
purposes within medicine. In no place was this more evident than the Pharmacopoeia of the
United States of America, first published in 1820.
The place of alcohol within the Pharmacopoeia reveals the widespread and diverse use
of alcohol as a drug. The 1870 Pharmacopoeia, for example, listed four forms of alcohol
for the compounding of drugs: “alcohol,” “amylic alcohol” or fusel oil, “diluted alcohol,” and
“stronger alcohol,” but alcohol in the forms of Spiritus Frumenti (whiskey), Spiritus Myrcia
(bay rum), Spiritus Vini Gallici (brandy) also appeared in the earliest iterations of the medic-
inal guide, revised every ten years from 1820 until the Second World War. Thereafter, new
editions began to appear every five years, a testimony to the increasingly rapid rate at which
new drugs were becoming available and replacing many of the older staples of physicians’
therapeutic arsenal.

Reflecting the vogue of alcohol-based therapeutics during the mid- to late nineteenth
century, the number of forms of spirits listed in the Pharmacopoeia rose from 16 in 1870, to
25 in 1890, and then fell precipitously to 15 by 1910. The twelfth revision (1940) listed only
eleven forms: aromatic spirit of ammonia, compound spirit of orange, and spirits of anise,
camphor, cinnamon, nitroglycerin, lavender, peppermint, and spearmint, along with whiskey
and brandy. Brandy and whiskey were removed from the ninth revision of 1910, along with
methyl alcohol, but returned with the tenth revision of 1920, which coincided with the ratifi-
cation of Prohibition in the United States. Indeed, medicinal alcohol offered one way in which
“patients” might legally imbibe during the dry years of “The Noble Experiment.”
Alcohol was also an important component in the preparation of aethers, extracts, spirits,
and tinctures, and a category of drug that sounds familiar to Francophiles, the medicinal
class, “wines.” Vinum Opii, or wine of opium, which was made from dried opium, cinnamon,
cloves, and “Sherry wine in sufficient quantity” was among a dozen or so dispensed at US
pharmacies during the nineteenth century (Pharmacopoeia 1873). Sherry came to be known
as “stronger white wine”—we would say “fortified” today—and was used in the preparation
of nearly all medicinal Vina until the seventh edition of the Pharmacopoeia (Pharmacopoeia
1882; Pharmacopoeia 1893). The advice given to readers for the use and preservation of
white and red wine, moreover, resembled what one might hear from a sommelier or wine
merchant:
When White Wine is prescribed without further specification, it is recommended that a

dry White Wine of domestic production (such as a California Riesling or Ohio Catawba,
etc.) should be employed. White wine should be preserved in well-closed casks filled
as full as possible, or in well-stoppered bottles, in a cool place. (Pharmacopoeia 1893:
448, 451)
The Pharmacopoeia likewise recommended dry red wines, expressing a preference for native
Clarets and Burgundies. Coca wine, a mixture of wine and cocaine, became popular through
the efforts of French chemist Angelo Mariani’s “Vin Mariani” in the 1860s, who marketed the
beverage as a kind of all-around tonic, or panacea. Vin Mariani appeared slightly later in the
United States, and with great fanfare for its champions included Alexander Dumas, Jules
Verne, Emile Zola, and Presidents William McKinley and Ulysses S. Grant. One domestically
prepared form of the beverage, Pemberton’s French coca wine, was the alcoholic prede-
cessor of Coca-Cola. Coca wine appeared for the first and last time in the 1900 edition of
the Pharmacopoeia. The ninth revision of the official formulary, which took place in 1910,
after the passing of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, dispensed with the category of wines
altogether. Instead, different strengths of pure alcohol were recommended in the preparation
of tinctures and spirits. Following the Second World War, spirits were eliminated as a class
of drugs, along with both whiskey and brandy.
If alcohol’s role as a medicine proved controversial—exiting, returning, and leaving once
more the Pharmacopoeia of between 1850 and 1950, its status as a food was equally
controversial. The pages of the British Medical Journal hosted an ongoing conversation
among physicians about ethanol’s identity between 1861 and 1899, assessing the merits
and demerits of considering alcohol as “food or physic” (1861: 557–9). Especially in the
1860s, much attention was paid to French theories of alcohol’s rapid and near complete
elimination from the body following its consumption. The editors of the BMJ and other

Figure 5.3 Vin Mariani: “The original French Coca Wine,” advertisement. From Harper’s Weekly,
1893. Image by Bettman via Getty Images.
physicians suggested that if alcohol were eliminated from the human body swiftly, it could
hardly be classified as nourishment or food. Rather, they posited, alcohol was “a foreign
agent, which the body gets rid of as soon as it can … something like chloroform, ether,
etc.—agents fraught with blessings to humanity, but yet admittedly rather tending to poison
than to feed the body of man” (1861: 558). By 1865, another editorial in the BMJ was much
in agreement, asking rhetorically “Why, then may not alcohol be, as drugs are, in themselves
poisons to the physiological [healthy] body, but correctives of the unnatural—the patholog-
ical—states of the civilized body of humanity?” Such a position allowed British physicians
to recommend alcohol for their patients, and even to enjoy a refreshing ale themselves with
their fellow “brain workers” as a cure for the exhaustion that came from “the wear and tear,
for example, of professional life—an unnatural state” (British Medical Journal 1865: 263). Yet
it kept them from recommending alcohol as an everyday tonic in the same way some French
physicians had extolled the virtues of wine: as a preserver of health.
A subsequent verdict rendered by the founder of the American Medical Association’s
(AMA) Section on State Health, physician Ezra Mundy Hunt, was more cautious. In his
1877 monograph Alcohol as Food and Medicine—A Paper from the Transactions of the
International Medical Congress, Hunt summarized the vast body of international literature
on alcohol as medicine and concluded that alcohol did not have any definite food value;
that its chief use was as “a cardiac stimulant,” for which there were other options; that it

was too dangerous for the public to self-administer it, and the medical profession was not
responsible for this widespread use; and finally, that commercial alcohols such as brandy,
white wine, and whiskey varied far too much in their alcohol content to be accurately
dosed—pure ethanol of different, finely calibrated strengths was a better option (137). This
last recommendation would wait nearly thirty years before it was gradually implemented in
the Pharmacopoeia.
Clearly, it was not just French physicians who clung to the medicinal value of some forms
of alcohol. Indeed, one Swiss physician L. Schnyder surveyed 1,200 members of Alpine
clubs in 1903, only to learn that 78 percent of climbers consumed alcohol regularly, while
72 percent of those responding carried alcohol of some kind with them “in case of need.”
Notably, the guides valued wine more than any other form of alcohol, regarding white wine
as “refreshing” and “thirst quenching,” but not as “restorative in fatigue” as red wine. Hot red
wine, the climbers noted, served as “a cure for nearly all the minor illnesses.” As one review
of the study observed, the tippling habits of the Swiss guides were not only a surprise to the
author, but likely “a continual source of wonderment to their patrons.” They further cautioned
the wise mountaineer to use extreme moderation, and to imbibe only when well-earned
fatigue cried out for relief (British Medical Journal 1910: 102–3).
The same year that Schnyder surveyed his climbers’ attitudes toward alcohol another
alpine nation, Italy, hosted its first national anti-alcohol congress in Venice. By 1907, several
provincial and national temperance groups had coalesced to form the Italian Anti-Alcohol
Federation (FAI) in Milan, under the leadership of a physician who was also a senator. The
group issued its first major study Is Alcohol a Danger for Italy in 1909, and launched its first
consolidated attack on wine, which the Italian medical profession, like French physicians
and Swiss alpinists, had formerly championed. The FAI’s volume gave voice to physicians
who refuted wine’s ability to revitalize the fatigued worker, help digestion, and offer warmth
to the chilled body. Likewise, wine was said to have no nutritional or medicinal value, a direct
contradiction of the Italian medical profession’s former consensus (Garfield 2006: 61–76).
Hoping to settle some of the controversy swirling around alcohol’s status as food, medi-
cine, or poison at the turn of the century, prominent Civil War surgeon, professor of hygiene,
and librarian of the United States Surgeon General’s Office John Shaw Billings chaired the
Committee of Fifty’s study of the liquor problem from a medical viewpoint. His findings were
published in Investigations Concerning the Physiological Aspects of the Liquor Problem, a
volume researched and written between 1893 and 1903 (Billings et al. 1903: vols. 1 and 2;
Billings et al. 1905: 1–42). A group of physicians, statesmen, businessmen, and scholars
irritated by the temperance movement’s wholesale condemnation of alcohol, the Committee
of Fifty wished to substitute the “exhortation and argument” that characterized the temper-
ance campaign with information on alcohol that was restricted “to the statement of what
appeared to be demonstrable facts and to the inferences which these facts appear to
dictate” (Billings et al. 1905: 7). This had been Ezra Hunt’s stated mission as well, of course,
yet he and his colleagues at the International Medical Congress were acting at the behest
of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and other temperance organizations
when investigating the nature of alcohol, and they were clearly sympathetic to the dry side.
Members of the physiological sub-committee of the Committee of Fifty by contrast were
particularly vexed by the WCTU’s successful campaign to ensure that “Scientific Temperance”
was taught in public schools using only WCTU-approved textbooks (Zimmerman 1992;

Pauly 1996). Moreover, just two years before the founding of the Committee of Fifty, a s plinter
group from the AMA had established the American Medical Temperance Association (AMTA)
with one of the AMA founders, Nathan Smith Davis, as its chair. The physician members
of the AMTA enjoyed cordial relations with the WCTU and other temperance organizations,
and had as their remit to discover the true nature of alcohol and its appropriate use or
disuse in medicine. The membership promoted the use of substitutes for alcohol in clinical
therapeutics. Not surprisingly, each of the group’s members had taken a teetotal pledge, a
condition they deemed necessary to assess alcohol objectively (Crothers 1893: 8–9). The
physicians, scientists, and business leaders of the Committee of Fifty strenuously disagreed,
viewing such an act as compromising the AMTA’s intellectual integrity.
Ten years of reviewing the international literature on alcohol and its effects—especially
the research of committee member and Yale physiological chemist Russell H. Chittenden,
a leading investigator of the consequences of alcohol consumption on humans, led the
physiological sub-committee to very moderate assessments of the beverage. For most fully
grown adults, the consumption of one glass of wine or pint of beer per day with food rarely
caused any harm, asserted the scientists. They also observed that alcohol in moderate
quantities, like “the starches, sugars, and fats in ordinary food,” served as fuel and protected
the body from consuming itself, something it did in times of deep caloric deficit (Billings et
al. 1905: 21). The committee was quick to add, however, that alcohol did not contribute to
the building or repair of tissue and is not a complete food, that is to say it cannot alone
support life permanently, although in certain forms of disease a person may take rela-
tively large quantities of alcohol when he could not well tolerate any other kind of food,
and thus be able to survive a special time of stress. (Billings et al. 1905: 22. See also
Science 1899: 739–41)
According to the Committee of Fifty, then, alcohol was a “special” food, too expensive and
devoid of nutrition to serve as a staple, yet valuable in “rare and special cases.” The physi-
ological subcommittee added that consumption of the beverage also had a kind of tipping
point: it might be used as fuel in small to moderate quantities, but in large amounts, and
even for some people in smaller amounts, it acted as a poison (Billings et al. 1905: 22–3).
Perhaps fearing that they might play into the hands of temperance zealots, the group
of scientists noted that even the definition of the word “poison” was murky, and that the
conditions and circumstances of alcohol’s use must always be considered. If employed
in great quantities, many of the substances normally consumed—coffee, pepper, ginger,
salt—also could be considered poisons. Still, members of the physiological sub-committee
were certain that the excessive and chronic use of alcoholic drinks produced disease and
premature death. In these ways, heavy and habitual drinkers jeopardized their health (Billings
et al. 1905: 22–3).
Prohibitionists won their campaign against alcohol in the United States. However,
their strongest argument condemned the civil disorder, industrial waste, and domestic
violence resulting from the saloon, not the bodily or mental harms caused by alcohol.
Notably, the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcohol were banned by the Eighteenth
Amendment, but not its personal use. The American temperance campaign’s concerns
with the fate of an increasingly industrialized, modernized, and urbanized nation were
echoed in Germany, France, and Italy, and they especially condemned distilled beverages

with their higher alcohol content, capable of doing more harm faster than the more tradi-
tional fermented alcoholic drinks, beer and wine.
Similarly, Mexican concerns with alcohol addressed issues of modernity, national decay,
and nation-building during the Porfirian era (1876–1911), when positivist intellectuals
exerted a significant influence on the government. One significant difference between the
European and American contexts, however, lay in Mexican concerns about the alcoholic
drink “pulque,” a fermented beverage derived from the maguey plant, a drink with a millen-
nia-old history. Unique features of Mexican inebriety were attributed to pulque’s special
composition, distinct from beer or wine, and its popularity among the working classes. To be
sure, pulque had its defenders among Mexican intellectuals and physicians, many regarding
the fermented beverage as nutritionally valuable and a means of combating scurvy, nausea,
psoriasis, diabetes, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis. As with some of the champions of wine
in France, these individuals sometimes had direct ties to the pulque industry (Toner 2015a:
189, 205–11).
As the age of empire came to a close, Berton Rouché would voice many of the same
tensions that had been expressed in the preceding century in the debate over alcohol’s
status as drug, food, or poison. In The Neutral Spirit he noted that while alcohol could be
seen as a concentrated form of energy, equal in calories to many foods, he and his scientific
colleagues hesitated to give the substance “any real stature as a food.” They reasoned that
the calories were in a sense empty calories, and that the “caloric wealth” of alcohol was
more than offset by its lack of nutrients (Rouché 1960: 62–3). Of course, individuals who
consumed an excess of ethanol, with or without food, were also susceptible to a variety of
alcohol-related diseases, most notably alcoholism.
The Inebriety and Alcoholism Movements

Prior to 1850, several medical figures—Benjamin Rush and Samuel Woodward in the United
States, Thomas Trotter in Britain, and Magnus Huss in Sweden—had each considered some
forms of habitual drunkenness as diseased states (Rush 1784; Trotter 1804; Huss 1849).
Rush, Woodward, and Trotter referred to the diseases of drunkenness, intemperance, and
intoxication, respectively, while Huss was the first to employ the term alcoholism. Still, each
physician was concerned about both the chronicity of the problem and the mental and
physical symptoms affecting those who drank too much.
In addition, there were significant lay efforts to curb the mental, physical, and social prob-
lems associated with habitual drunkenness. These dated from the rise of the Washingtonian
mutual aid movement of the early 1840s, a grassroots, decentralized movement that saw
as many as 600,000 heavy drinkers signing pledges of sobriety and helping their fellow
former drinkers stay dry. Almost one hundred years later, in the wake of Prohibition,
another lay organization, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), would inaugurate the modern alco-
holism movement. AA relied on much the same mutual aid tradition that had begun with
the Washingtonians in the 1840s and extended through the fraternal temperance move-
ments of the 1850s and 1860s. Such lay efforts may have started in the United States and
Ireland (under Father Mathew in the early 1840s), but the largest were global in reach. The
Independent Order of Good Templars, established in Syracuse, New York, in 1852, spread
to Canada, England, Scotland, and Scandinavia in the last third of the nineteenth century,

changing its name to the International Order of Good Templars in 1887. The Blue Ribbon
Movement, an alliance of clubs of ex-drinkers who helped one another remain sober, like-
wise emerged in Maine in the 1870s, but quickly spread across the border to Canada and
took up residence in Great Britain with the founding of a Blue Ribbon mission in London in
the late 1870s (Lender and Martin 1987: 76–81; Blocker 1989: 30–60; White 1998: 14–20).
Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century campaigns to medicalize habitual drunk-
enness—campaigns that involved physicians and lay reformers alike—spread across the
globe to Britain and its empire, Europe, and both Central and North America, and they
achieved a remarkable level of organization and popularity. Indeed, the United States expe-
rienced not one, but two major medicalization efforts between 1850 and 1950, separated
by national Prohibition (1920–33). Each movement expanded beyond the confines of its
American base, and was echoed by global efforts to contain alcohol’s damage—individual
and social.
The first campaign to promote various, evolving disease concepts of drunkenness; to
change public policy regarding habitual drunkards; and to build new institutions for their
medical treatment, arose during the Gilded Age and persisted well into Progressive Era
America. In November 1870, psychiatrists, then called alienists, joined businessmen, politi-
cians, clergy, and reformers of many stripes to form the American Association for the Cure
of Inebriates. This was the first professional society in the world devoted to medico-moral
care for the heavy chronic drinker. The timing was auspicious for the church, the jail, and the
mental asylum had failed to assist the habitual drunkard and the social problems he, and
less often she, engendered. Against the backdrop of late nineteenth-century urbanization,
immigration, and industrialization, the poverty, disease, workplace injuries and inefficiency,
and social disorder accompanying the habitual drunkard appeared all the more pressing. At
the same time, in the United States, the medical profession was ascending to new levels of
cultural authority, and society increasingly turned to rational, scientific solutions in the name
of social, as well as industrial, and government, efficiency (Tracy 2005: 1–24, 63–91).
The AACI offered a new way of thinking about and acting on an old problem: specialized
professional care for a clinically complicated class of social deviants who were the bane
of jail keepers and asylum superintendents alike. Nor was the furor over “what to do with
the inebriate?” confined to the chiefs of these institutions. Problem drinkers were loathe to
associate with mentally ill patients for their problems would often disappear once they were
sober, while insane patients of the asylum held the inebriate in contempt. “I want you to
know,” declared one mentally ill patient in 1902 at the Mt. Pleasant (Iowa) State Hospital,
which had just begun to take inebriates on a special ward, “I’m no drunken sot; I’m here for
my health” (Cherokee (Iowa) Democrat 1902: 2). In the American context, Massachusetts
and Iowa built comprehensive systems to medically manage inebriates and tend in part to
their social and vocational rehabilitation (Tracy 2005: 147–225).
Most of the Western world watched the American experiment in inebriate care eagerly. In
Great Britain, the AACI’s counterpart, the Society for the Study of Inebriety, was founded in
1884. Canada, Britain, Australia, France, Denmark, and Switzerland each considered legis-
lation for the institutional treatment of habitual drunkenness, and in some cases, passed it to
state-supervised inebriate care. Great Britain established its first “Habitual Drunkards Act” in
1879, but compulsory treatment pertained only to non-criminal inebriates, who could pay for
it, while inebriate retreats were given the option to be state-licensed and inspected (Berridge

Figure 5.4 The New York State Inebriate Asylum, Binghamton. Image by Corbis Historical via
Getty Images.
1990: 993). At the dawn of the twentieth century, the largest demographic inhabiting British
institutions for inebriates was working-class women whose drinking had led to child neglect.
In the early 1870s, Australia erected at least two state-licensed and partially funded inebriate
asylums, the Northcote Retreat in Melbourne, and the Asylum for Inebriates in Adelaide.
Private asylums proliferated in the United States and elsewhere. Indeed, while the New
York State Inebriate Asylum, opened in 1864, claimed to be the world’s first treatment insti-
tution specifically for habitual drunkards, a private asylum that opened in West Prussia (now
Germany) in 1851 appears to be the first to have offered treatment exclusively to newly
released prisoners whose habits of intemperance had led to their incarceration. The wide
network of private institutions that prevailed in Germany is detailed by early alcohol historian
Ernst Cherrington (1926: 1318–20). In France, matters were slower to evolve. Psychiatrist
Paul-Maurice Legrain established the Union française antialcoolique, or French League
Against Alcohol, in 1895, to broadcast the ills associated with excess consumption, but
even then, there was little interest in treating the inebriate. Not until after the Second World
War did the French become concerned about offering medical treatment to those with
drinking problems.
Ironically, the so-called modern alcoholism movement was inaugurated by two organi-
zations that were largely lay-based: AA and the Research Council on Problems of Alcohol
(RCPA), two organizations established in the United States. The latter was a group that
began as a scientific enterprise but developed into a clearing house and public relations
center for information on alcoholism. Attempting to steer a neutral political course for “the
neutral spirit” in the wake of Prohibition, these organizations embraced both the position

that alcohol was not a universal poison, and the belief that an unfortunate minority of
individuals were susceptible to ethanol addiction.
Drawing upon the ideas of William Silkworth, a physician employed at the Charles
B. Towns Hospital in New York City, AA’s founders William “Bill W.” Wilson and Robert
“Dr. Bob” Smith referred to alcoholism as an allergy rather than stating explicitly that it was a
disease. Treatment, however, was not medical, but based on what came to be known as the
Twelve Steps, a set of principles for achieving sobriety and personal transformation through
self-reflection, mutual aid, good works, and surrender to a higher power, whether secular
(the AA membership) or religious (Kurtz 1979; White 1998: 127–98).
The RCPA, based at Yale University, was founded two years after AA, in 1937. The exist-
ence of this new clearinghouse for non-partisan information about alcohol was announced
in Science in fall 1938 with some fanfare by secretary of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS) F. R. Moulton, who also served as secretary for the new
RCPA. Commenting on the first meeting of the RCPA, Moulton observed that its program
ranked “in importance with the symposia sponsored by the association [AAAS] on such
problems of public health as cancer, tuberculosis, leprosy, syphilis and mental health” (White
1998: 330). The Research Council was dependent upon financial support from the liquor
industry and, perhaps to no one’s surprise, reinforced alcoholism’s identity as a disease
Figure 5.5 Man speaking at Alcoholics Anonymous, c. 1950. “After three months without a drink,
John finds himself an Alcoholics Anonymous crusader, helping the good work of saving others by
telling of his successful fight.” Photograph by Bettman via Getty Images.

to which only certain people were prone, much as they might be prone to diabetes or
tuberculosis. Ideas such as this were akin to older holistic medical notions of “diathesis”
or “constitutional susceptibility,” resurrected at a time when the medical profession was
focusing more narrowly and reductionistically on the specific external agents of disease
(bacteria, viruses, cigarette smoke) as well as specific pathological mechanisms. In truth,
these accounts of alcoholism’s origins bore a close resemblance to those promoted in the
earlier inebriety movement, particularly in the case of hereditary inebriety and dipsomania
(Tracy 2005: 276–91).
The Yale Center of Alcohol Studies, established in 1943, was a third party instrumental
in establishing the modern alcoholism paradigm. Under the direction of statistician E. M.
Jellinek and physician and physiologist Howard Haggard, the center employed four different
strategies to address the physiology, psychology, and social problems and history of habit-
ual drinking. First, Haggard and Jellinek hired a staff to pursue a multi-disciplinary research
program on alcohol and alcoholism. Second, they established in 1940 a research jour-
nal, Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, and the Yale Center staff published popular
pamphlets and books such as Jellinek and Haggard’s Alcohol Explored (1942). Third, they
created the Yale Summer School of Alcohol Studies, offering a four-week curriculum to
over a thousand teachers, physicians, social workers, ministers, and others between 1943
and 1950 that prepared them to counsel people with drinking problems and their families.
Finally, under the direction of physician Giorgio Lolli and educator Raymond McCarthy, the
Yale Center established the Yale Plan Clinics, pioneering a new outpatient counseling plan
for alcoholics, in coordination with the Connecticut State Prison Association, and promoting
the disease concept of alcoholism across the state. The National Committee for Education
on Alcoholism (NCEA), the brainchild of public relations woman and reformed alcoholic
Marty Mann, grew out of the Yale Center as well, and had as its core mission educating the
American public that alcoholism was a disease and should be treated as a public health
problem (Tracy 2005: 276–91).
An Evolving Diagnosis—From Intemperance to Alcoholism

Between 1850 and 1950, no fewer than four terms were used to describe habitual drunk-
enness as a disease: intemperance, dipsomania, inebriety, and alcoholism. Each of these
terms represented a specific constellation of cultural assumptions about gender, class,
ethnicity, heredity, and personal responsibility. Their use followed in rough chronological
order between 1850 and 1950.
Of the four terms, intemperance described the heavy chronic drinker’s condition with
the strongest moral valence. The word invoked the golden rule of moderation championed
by church and health evangelists alike. Champions of the disease concept of intemper-
ance implicated a variety of causal factors in the condition. For Philadelphia physician
Joseph Parrish (1818–91), however, one dominated all others: the frenetic pace of
American life following the Civil War. In his 1870 essay “Philosophy of Intemperance,”
Parrish observed that
the pressure upon the brain of children by a forcing system of education, the subsequent
tax upon the supreme nervous center, in the struggle for wealth, power or position; the

unhealthy rivalry for display, and all the excitements which produce the “wear and tear”
in our life, are so many means of exhausting nervous energy and producing a condition
that demands relief. (1870: 29).
Parrish’s rhetoric made clear the ways medical experts saw culture affecting one’s tendency
to intemperance, and later dipsomania, inebriety, and alcoholism. Intemperance affected all
social classes.
Dipsomania was the most popular term used to describe habitual drunkenness in the clos-
ing decades of the nineteenth century. It referred, literally, to a maniacal thirst for alcohol. A
form of monomania, or partial insanity, dipsomania was said to affect its victims periodically,
with the intervals between attacks growing shorter as the disease progressed. By stress-
ing the connections between habitual drinking and insanity, dipsomania offered physicians
a rhetorical strategy for promoting the disease concept and advancing medical authority
over drunkenness. Dipsomania was also said to affect the middle and upper classes more
frequently than working-class drinkers. Physicians such as George Miller Beard, who coined
the term neurasthenia, believed that the more “refined” nervous systems of society’s upper
tiers made them congenitally more susceptible to the stresses of modern life, and dipso-
mania (1876: 25–48). The dipsomaniac was the least responsible for his or her condition. It
is hardly surprising then, that in 1893, when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts opened
its first inebriate institution, it was titled the Massachusetts Hospital for Dipsomaniacs and
Inebriates. Dipsomania received top billing for its sufferers were believed to be the sickest,
most innocent, and most worthy of medical care.
Over time, American physicians determined that the population of dipsomaniacs was
actually quite small relative to the number of inebriates. The waning enthusiasm for this diag-
nosis may also have had something to do with the rise of the “new psychology” of the 1880s
and 1890s, and the popularity of psychodynamic psychiatry in the early twentieth century.
Changes in the intellectual foundation of psychiatry shifted physicians’ attentions away from
the role of defective heredity, so essential to the dipsomaniac’s identity. Although inebriety
and dipsomania had co-existed since the 1870s, the ascent of inebriety began in earnest in
the 1890s, and it possessed both a specific and a general meaning. It was by far the most
common term employed to describe chronic heavy drinking as a disease in the five decades
preceding American Prohibition. The same was true in Britain.
Psychiatrists and neurologists frequently applied the term “inebriety” to opium, cocaine,
heroin, tobacco—even lettuce—addictions (in large quantities lettuce was said to have
soothing properties akin to opium). In other words, inebriety was used in much the same
way that the term “chemical dependency” is used today: as a global term that encom-
passes addictions to a variety of psychoactive substances. As dipsomania fell out of
fashion, however, the terms “hereditary inebriate” and “periodic inebriate” took its place.
By contrast, “simple inebriate” was a diagnostic label applied to those who developed their
condition through environmental circumstance and repeated drinking to excess. Frequently,
the simple inebriate was seen to develop his or her disease in stages, the first of which did
not necessarily involve pathology, but mere drinking to excess.
Inebriety in women, or female inebriety, constituted a special case. Women with drink-
ing problems were less common and more stigmatized than their male counterparts. Both
temperance workers and physicians were aghast at women who violated their socially
prescribed roles as mothers and keepers of society’s morals by leaving the domestic

sphere and entering the manly homosocial world of drinking—not to reclaim their drunkard
husbands, but to indulge themselves. An inebriated woman was synonymous with loose
morals, sexual promiscuity, and ruined motherhood. “A debauched woman is always, every-
where, a more terrible object to behold than a brutish man,” declared Berkshire Medical
College professor of obstetrics, Horatio Storer in 1867 (Day 1867: 62). The female inebri-
ate threatened the health of her children in utero and at home. Pessimism surrounded the
treatment of the female inebriate, for her case appeared to deviate so far from the gendered
social norms of her day. Still, there were women-specific facilities for female inebriates in
the United States and in England, where women’s habitual drunkenness received far more
attention than men’s. In both nations, treatment was oriented around restoring housekeep-
ing skills. Some facilities such as the Farm Colony for Inebriate Women in Duxhurst went a
step further, introducing orphans to the institution to nurture maternal instincts in the recov-
ering women (Somerset 1912: 81–5).
The specificity of alcoholism mirrored the one germ/one disease paradigm that, by the
1910s, had come to dominate modern medicine. By 1890, laboratory scientists had isolated
the microorganisms responsible for typhoid fever (1880), leprosy (1880), malaria (1880),
tuberculosis (1882), cholera (1883), and diphtheria (1884). There was growing expecta-
tion within the medical community that scientists would find a specific cause or discrete
mechanism for each disease, as well as a specific treatment. Habitual drunkenness did not
fit this paradigm, but one could point to a single substance at fault in each case: alcohol.
Temperance reformers, meanwhile, clung to the conviction that without alcohol there would
be no alcoholism.
Indeed, the movement from process to substance was in keeping with temperance
rhetoric that portrayed alcohol as a uniformly corrupting substance—a poison. If intemper-
ance, dipsomania, and inebriety denoted a state of mind (intoxicated or insane), alcoholism
denoted poisoning by alcohol. The terms “morphinism” and “cocainism” indicated poison-
ing by other psychoactive substances. This conceptual transition fit well with anti-alcohol
groups such as the WCTU, the Anti-Saloon League, and the Prohibition Party in the United
States, organizations that succeeded in bringing about the ratification of the Eighteenth
Amendment in 1920, outlawing the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol. Still,
just south of the US border, Mexican physicians might mean many things when they referred
to alcoholism. In the Porfirian era, the term might signify “a disease itself, a mental condition,
or merely a physically harmful behavior” (Toner 2015a: 201). Clearly, between nations there
was diagnostic slippage.
For people with alcohol problems, American Prohibition, in the long run, was not a
success. Once again, the problem drinker was viewed as a moral weakling whose only
options were the jail cell, or if mentally impaired, the psychiatric hospital. Likewise, the
substantial knowledge base of medical experts on the nature and treatment of alcoholism
was discarded, dismissed, or forgotten by most of the researchers who investigated alco-
holism following Repeal in the United States. Pharmacologist Chauncey Leake was one of
the few to lament this loss, observing in 1957 that some of the nation’s best physiologists,
physicians, and pharmacologists—men such as John Shaw Billings, Russell Chittenden,
Yandell Henderson, and William Welch—had produced a considerable body of research
on alcohol and its effects. The previously discussed Physiological Aspects of the Liquor
Problem was a compendium of data on alcohol. Leake, in words reminiscent of medical

writer Berton Roueché, was astonished at “how little appreciation has been given to this
important work,” and how “amazing” it was that so little is known (Himwich 1957: foreword).
Making haste to distance themselves from wet versus dry politics of the previous gener-
ation, most alcohol researchers in the 1940s and 1950s dismissed the findings of their
predecessors. The proverbial wheel was invented once again. When medical experts
returned to a consideration of alcoholism post-Prohibition, the disease was deemed one
that affected only a certain predisposed minority of the population. Researchers stressed
that it was also a disease that took many forms. Leaders of the modern alcoholism move-
ment E. M. Jellinek and Howard Haggard, for example, warned in 1942 that
In dealing with this problem [alcoholism], no order can be expected until it is generally
recognized that it is not one of inebriety, but of inebrieties. This distinction is not only of
theoretical significance but of practical significance in the treatment and prevention of
inebriety. The prevalent failure to make distinctions among the categories of inebrieties
has obscured many phases of the research in this field.
(Haggard and Jellinek 1942: 144)
When Jellinek released his landmark The Disease Concept of Alcoholism in 1960, he was
careful to distinguish among different phases and types of alcoholism prevalent in different
drinkers and different cultures across the globe.
Institutions for Inebriates—Evolving Systems of Care

The diversity of terms used to describe problematic heavy drinking throughout the age of
empire reflected an increasingly sophisticated understanding of alcoholism’s etiology—one
that acknowledged heredity, environmental circumstance, and individual temperament. As
a result, treatment during this time took many forms. Inebriate homes, asylums, hospitals,
and farm colonies were established throughout the United States, and to a lesser extent in
the British Isles, Europe, and Scandinavia. Some were run by the state; others catered to
private, paying clientele; some legally confined their patients; others accepted only volun-
tary admissions. There were homes where Christianity and conversion dominated care,
and there were facilities that treated only women or men. In spite of these differences,
certain elements of care—physical rehabilitation, psychotherapy, an ethic of mutual assis-
tance, varied recreations, and occupational training and placement—were common to
most institutions. In theory and in practice, holism was the order of the day to treat this
sociomedical disease.
Yet, there were important exceptions. The most popular facilities for inebriates were the
Keeley Institutes, named after their founder, physician Leslie E. Keeley. Peddling a secret
or proprietary cure called “Bi-Chloride of Gold,” Keeley Institutes administered it in a regi-
mented daily fashion, while offering a supportive social setting where manly camaraderie
and patriotism set the tone; inebriates received injections of red, white, and blue drugs. It is
unclear whether the same color scheme obtained in Australia, England, Finland, Denmark,
Mexico, and Sweden, which were the farthest outposts of the so-called “Keeley Cure.”
Between 1880 and 1920, over 500,000 individuals were treated at the 118 Keeley Institutes,
which peppered the United States and Canada. Without a doubt, Leslie E. Keeley and his
Keeley franchises were instrumental in spreading the disease concept of inebriety.

Figure 5.6 “The Keeley Cure: For liquor and drug use,” advertisement, 1907. Image by Jay Paull,
Archive Photos via Getty Images.
Part of the appeal of the Keeley Cure and others like it was their adherence to an acute
model of alcoholism for which a specific cure was administered for a much shorter time
than the one- to three-month stays advocated by most medical institutions. This focus
paralleled the one-germ/one-disease model that was on the ascent in turn-of-the-cen-
tury Western medicine. Still, the secrecy, specificity, and proprietary nature of the Keeley
Cure and its numerous imitators were heresy to the AACI psychiatrists and neurologists
who promoted the disease concept within mainstream medicine. For them, such care
advanced a false model of alcoholism, which they saw as a chronic condition requiring
lifetime vigilance. Keeley’s hyperbolic claims of a 95 percent cure rate nurtured unrealistic
expectations that were dashed as inebriates relapsed following treatment. The recidivism
of Keeley patients led to both the decline of the Keeley treatment and a general skepticism
about the medical profession’s management of inebriety. By 1920, popular attitudes had
been shaped by this skepticism as much as they were molded by the anti-drunkard senti-
ment advanced by the WCTU.
Non-proprietary inebriate asylums and hospitals, which saw their goal as restoring an
individual’s health and social functioning, addressed the social, the medical, and the moral
aspects of the problem. This hybrid sociomedical approach guided the efforts of one of
the most respected inebriate hospitals in the country, the Massachusetts Hospital for
Dipsomaniacs and Inebriates (later called the Foxborough State Hospital and the Norfolk
State Hospital), which opened in 1893. At Foxborough, alcoholism was treated as a chronic
disease that demanded the reforming drinker’s ongoing attention, as well as inpatient and
aftercare relationships with medical staff. Treatment was designed to restore health as well
as participation in respectable community organizations such as the YMCA, and to train the
patient in a profitable trade, prefatory to him acquiring gainful employment. Indeed, securing
a job became a requirement for hospital release. The superintendent encouraged patients to
write him at least monthly, and to return to the hospital should they relapse or feel in danger
of falling off the wagon. “I feel quite sure that the unexpected and unanticipated relapse will
in reality react in your favor,” wrote Norfolk Superintendent Irwin Neff to one patient, “as it will
show you that at an unguarded moment your weakness may re-appear without any premo-
nition” (Neff 1915). The definition of what constituted therapeutic success evolved over time
at the Massachusetts hospital, moving from “total abstinence” to “material improvement”

even if individuals relapsed or drank occasionally. Between 1908 and 1920, approximately
45 percent of patients were classified as “materially improved” (Tracy 2007: 89).
The irony of the Massachusetts story is that the state closed the hospital with the arrival
of Prohibition, at the point at which it had developed a successful system of inpatient and
outpatient care for alcoholics. The same was true for the state of Iowa’s inebriate facilities
and for the many public and private homes and asylums across the United States and in
Europe, as funding the First World War took priority on both sides of the Atlantic. By the
1910s, physicians and their many allies in inebriate reform had gained a sophisticated soci-
omedical understanding of alcoholism and its treatment. Yet, with the Volstead Act passed,
and the wartime economy gaining momentum, jobs were plentiful. As young men left their
factory posts to fight in the war, employers were more willing to hire and retain employ-
ees with a history of drinking problems. Institutional censuses dwindled as enthusiasm for
Prohibition mounted and employers’ standards declined. In the end, the medical reform of
inebriates was a casualty of both the First World War and a Prohibition policy that reform-
ers hoped would eliminate alcohol across the land. In the United States, alcoholics were
sent once more to jail and to state hospitals to dry out. As the First World War became a
priority for nations across the globe, fewer and fewer devoted resources to caring for their
inebriates, often for many of the same reasons as in the United States, though not national
Prohibition. The first multi-national movement to medicalize habitual drunkenness and erect
new institutions to treat the disease of inebriety had come to an end by 1920.
In the United States, a handful of proprietary private hospitals for inebriates remained open
after 1920. The Charles B. Towns Hospital, where AA founder Bill Wilson received care, was
one of them. But Wilson and his co-founder Robert Smith championed a lay-based system of
mutual aid when they established AA, a Twelve-Step model that came to dominate alcoholism
treatment in the 1940s, 1950s, and beyond. The Yale Plan Clinics offered a model that others
imitated, blending social services with outpatient medical and psychosocial care in a way
that was reminiscent of Norfolk State Hospital. Employee assistance programs (EAPs) also
offered an entrée to special care for many problem drinkers; these programs were pioneered
in the 1940s by firms such as Eastman Kodak and the E. I. du Pont de Nemours Company.
Frequently using recovered alcoholic employees as spokespersons, EAPs won support for
heavy drinkers by stressing the expense to industry caused by absenteeism, inefficiency, and
on-the-job injuries. By the 1950s, medical groups such as the World Health Organization,
the American Medical Association Council on Science and Public Health, and the American
Hospital Association had issued statements addressing alcoholism’s status as a disease
or condition best served by general hospitals and mutual aid groups, namely, AA. By the
mid-twentieth century, then, a new groundswell of support for the disease concept of alcohol-
ism and its medical treatment, followed by ongoing social support for the alcoholic, had once
more become a part of Western medicine.
Conclusion
The years following the repeal of Prohibition in the United States are often labeled the “Age
of Ambivalence” toward alcohol. Following the rebirth of the alcoholic beverage industry
and the relaxation of prohibitions against drinking, Americans and Europeans alike devised
new and returned to old ways in managing the harms caused by ethanol. The ties between

alcohol consumption and traffic fatalities, sexual assault, birth defects, and a host of health
problems beyond alcoholism were in the public eye more than ever as researchers, caregiv-
ers, and policy makers faced the challenges of living in a society where ethanol flowed freely.
Reviewing the relationship between alcohol and health between 1850 and 1950 reaffirms
the ambivalence surrounding alcohol in relation to health and well-being. Yet it also suggests
that ambivalence toward alcohol, in both medical and social contexts, began much earlier
and extended across the globe. As we have seen, the appropriate place of alcohol in medi-
cal therapeutics; alcohol’s identity as food, drug, or poison; and the moral and medical
status of the problem drinker were all contested from the middle of the nineteenth century
onward. In other words, Berton Roueché’s words about alcohol’s controversial place in civil
society were as true in 1950 as they were in 1850, and as they are today. This is more testi-
mony to the many roles alcohol plays within Western culture than it is to what we actually
know about alcohol and alcoholism. And this is unlikely to change.

132
6 GENDER AND SEXUALITY
STELLA MOSS
“Rightly or wrongly, gender plays a major role in shaping the ways the world drinks.”
(Heath 2015: 72)
Introduction
Gender and sexuality have long played a central role in drinking practices, both shaping and
reflecting ideals and experiences of masculinity and femininity across different historical peri-
ods and geographical settings. Notwithstanding the significant biochemical, physiological,
and pharmacokinetic factors which influence individual responses to alcohol consumption,
drinking is also a cultural act, embedded in social codes, rules, and attitudes which are
shaped by gender, as well as class, ethnicity, age, and nationality, among other influences
(Chrzan 2013: 5). Historical and contemporary alcohol cultures have been molded by
cultural codes which in broad terms posit male drinking as normative and female drinking as
both comparatively less common and more socially problematic. In this framework, drinking
and drunkenness have been construed as manly behavior, often condoned and sometimes
valorized as evidence of individual masculinity. By contrast, women’s drinking has long been
interpreted in relation to deeply rooted cultural norms equating idealized femininity with
temperance and sobriety. In many social settings, female alcohol consumption has been
considered unfeminine and unrespectable, with drunkenness in particular associated with
physical degeneration and moral bankruptcy. While of course there are many examples of
gendered drinking practices which sit outside this binary framework, the cultural impact and
interpretive longevity of these archetypes should not be underestimated (Heath 2015: 72–6).
In considering gendered drinking much insightful multi- and inter-disciplinary research
into contemporary consumption patterns and cultures has emerged in recent years. As
rich literatures from diverse fields including anthropology, sociology, and psychology have
explored, in the context of drinking cultures gender is often a critical influence on the forma-
tion, expression, and contestation of identities and subjectivities (Gefou-Madianou 1992;
McDonald 1994; Plant 1997; de Garine and de Garine 2001; Chrzan 2013; Heath 2015).
Drawing partly on this fruitful scholarship, historians have begun to uncover the rich influence
of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality on drinking cultures in past societies. In terms of the
period c.1850–1950, a vibrant literature on women’s drinking has now emerged and contin-
ues to develop, featuring discussion of diverse countries including Britain, America, Canada,
and Australia. There has been notable discussion of the problematization of the woman
drinker, including about the moralized regulation of female intoxication (Hunt et al. 1989;
Waterson 2000). There has also been consideration of how women drinkers contested
and transgressed established cultural norms which militated against their presence in
public drinking venues through patronizing bars and pubs previously associated with male
consumers (Rotskoff 2002; Langhamer 2003). In a reflection of historical drinking cultures
themselves, in much of the scholarly literature, unless identified specifically as female, there
is a historiographic tendency to assume the drinker is male. Moreover, while many existing
studies focus primarily on male drinking cultures, specific exploration of cultural codes of
masculine consumption often remains implicit and under-analyzed. There has been some
discussion of the spatial contexts and material cultures which shaped male drinking habits
(Powers 1998; Moss 2015; Toner 2015a), but there remains scope for much further explo-
ration.1 In terms of sexuality, there has been some discussion of the cultural ties between
drinking cultures and courtship practices, and also of the links between bars and prosti-
tution, but again these issues tend to be more marginal themes within broader histories
of alcohol consumption and regulation (e.g., Harrison 1971). Overall, then, historiographic
interest in gendered drinking cultures in the period c.1850–1950 has developed in rewarding
directions in recent years, although there remains much scope for further research.
This chapter focuses on public drinking cultures. The significance of gender within drink-
ing venues, together with the richness of cultural histories of bars and other premises, opens
up productive opportunities to reflect on masculinity, femininity, and sexuality, each of which
is explored in turn. Particular attention is paid to social norms and codes of conduct, build-
ing on broader historiographic recognition that male and female subjectivity and behavior
cannot be reduced to essentialized biological givens. Instead, masculinity and femininity
can be conceived as relating to a spectrum of gendered behaviors or “performances” (Rose
2010). Such an approach can illuminate the ways in which drinkers both expressed and
sometimes contested dominant norms of masculinity and femininity, including in relation to
contrasting gendered norms around public drunkenness. While there was marked continu-
ity in some of the relationships between gender and alcohol in the period 1850–1950, new
gendered dynamics also emerged.
Masculinity and Drinking Cultures

Across the period c.1850–1950, public drinking was often perceived primarily as a male
social practice. With regards to mid-nineteenth-century English drinking cultures, for
instance, Harrison contended that the public house represented a “masculine republic”
(1973: 172). As is later explored, claims from both contemporaries and historians that
women did not participate in popular drinking practices have often been misplaced or exag-
gerated. Nonetheless, it is clear that in many settings male customers formed an irrefutable
majority. Spaces of homosocial recreation were often prized, not least owing to a perceived
differentiation from domestic and familial spheres. For many this distinction was predicated
at least partly on the absence of women. All-male settings were sometimes associated
with heavy drinking and habitual drunkenness. In many cultural contexts, inebriation was
normalized within social codes of manly public drinking. Heavy drinking was often sanc-
tioned and even encouraged at key moments across the social calendar, such as holidays
and festivities. The ability to maintain social status during and/or after episodes of acute
intoxication was often crucial to participation and acceptance within the drinking cultures
of a particular community. Access to, and participation in, the homosocial sociability of

drinking venues often constituted recognition of a certain manly status in a local commu-
nity. Regular p atronage of a bar would often connote the cultivation and expression of
group identity, while at the same time offering opportunities for the articulation and expres-
sion of manly competition and gendered hierarchies.
Diverse evidence reveals the prevalence of masculine drinking cultures across different
geographic and temporal contexts, including from nineteenth-century Mexican pulquería
bars (Toner 2015a), French cafés during the Belle Époque (c.1871–1914) (Haine 1996),
and Irish pubs in the 1930s (Kearns 1997). Though varied across borders, among different
peoples and communities, and during different time periods, masculine drinking cultures
were also inevitably shaped by key transnational social, cultural, political, and economic
forces. In a host of geographic settings, drinking cultures in this period were molded by
the forces of industrialization and urbanization, with male workers especially seeking out
drinking venues. In Ghana in the late nineteenth century, young male laborers migrat-
ing to work in railway construction or mining would seek out bars in local townships
(Akyeampong 1996b), while in early twentieth-century Russia, urban taverns were much
patronized by male factory workers (Phillips 2000). Wartime could foster an expansion of
cultural connections linking drink and masculinity. Despite critique from pro-temperance
campaigners, in France during the First World War, wine-drinking among troops was
often encouraged. Soldiers’ pinard (“plonk”) was thought to both inculcate and reveal
the patriotic expression of martial masculinity, with communal consumption cementing
bonds between men (Munholland 2006). Contrasting with experiences linked to the culti-
vation and expression of shared identity, masculine drinking cultures in this period were
also often fractured along deep fault-lines of differentiation, especially in the context of
imperial hierarchies. In colonial Kenya, for instance, the security concerns of white settlers
entwined African alcohol consumption with issues of law and order, and by extension
with the exercise of masculine authority, leading to new regulatory frameworks designed
to control consumption (Ambler 1991). Overall, then, while particular geographic and
temporal settings were characterized by specific gendered drinking cultures, there are
also notable continuities and similarities.
The archetype of the virile male drinker was not, of course, universal or uncontested.
Throughout the years c.1850–1950, powerful contrasting ideals of masculinity promoted
abstinence from alcohol as emblematic of manly self-control. Of central importance here
was the teetotaler, sometimes portrayed as a husband and father, who considered alcohol
as physically damaging and morally corrupting, and whose anti-drink beliefs were lauded as
a sign of masculine virtue. Iterations of these ideals were discernable in England (Harrison
1971) and America (Powers 1998), for example. Medicalized critiques of male drunkenness
(including on eugenic lines) were also a feature of temperance lobbying, as was witnessed
around the turn of the twentieth century in France (Prestwich 1988) and Belgium (Scholliers
2000). In diverse geographic and temporal contexts, male inebriation was also perceived
as a cause of social degeneracy and source of political and economic instability. In late
nineteenth-century Germany, the demands of industrialization meant that workers’ drinking
habits came under close scrutiny, with alcohol blamed for industrial inefficacies such as
absenteeism (Roberts 1981). In the attempt to control drinking and drunkenness among
indigenous populations, numerous colonial administrations implemented prohibition poli-
cies: for example, under French rule a temperance campaign was launched in Côte d’Ivoire
Gender and Sexuality 135

in the early twentieth century (White 2007). Across the period c.1850–1950, a variety of
alternate masculine ideals stood in marked contrast with the typology of the male drinker.
In exploring more fully the social codes and gendered performances associated with
public drinking, striking examples can be discerned in America in the period up to the
introduction of Prohibition in 1920 (Powers 1998). Shaped by the powerful forces of urban-
ization and mass migration, the saloon became a much-prized center of working men’s
sociability. For many it was a welcome refuge from the exigencies of poorly paid manual
labor and dire housing. Amid the often alienating anonymity of urban life, the saloon offered
opportunities to forge new social ties, including via the ritual free lunch served in many prem-
ises. Saloons were very popular at the end of working day, especially among many young,
unmarried men who, faced with the prospect of shabby boarding houses, sought out the
comparative comfort and camaraderie of the bar. Local premises could be a valuable place
to seek out information about nearby employment opportunities, thus further underlining
the connections linking drinking venues and work cultures. Indeed, in many towns and
cities saloon sociability was shaped partly by the associational culture of workers’ unions.
Participation in local branch meetings and social gatherings afforded men opportunities to
forge and consolidate their identities and status as wage-earners, as well as contribute to,
and benefit from, collective campaigning for improved pay and conditions. As such, the
saloon constituted a valued center of socio-political sociability, as well as associational
recreation (Powers 2006).
Men’s experiences of, and attitudes toward, saloon culture were also shaped by forces
of migration. The saloon offered opportunities to cultivate attachments to new communities
among both native- and foreign-born migrants alike. Across the mid-nineteenth century and
well into the twentieth, diverse ethnic and national groups sought out the saloon. These
included African Americans migrating from the impoverished rural south, as well as “Old”
and “New” wave migrants arriving from northern and western Europe and the British Isles,
and southern and eastern Europe respectively. Saloons flourished across urban America,
among them premises associated with African-American, Irish, Italian, and German commu-
nities. Although racialized slurs about ethnic intemperance were also common, saloons
were instrumental in providing familiar cultural settings for those newly arrived. Within a
congenial social setting, customers would converse in common languages and dialects,
share news from, and stories about, home, and exchange information about employment
opportunities and lodgings. In turn, proprietors (very often migrants themselves) would
cultivate patronage, including by serving drinks and food traditional to particular migrant
communities. Saloons offered opportunities for (re)connection with familiar cultural practices
during times of social dislocation, and this, coupled with the broader appeal of drink-fue-
led sociability and camaraderie, rendered the saloon a valued social space among many
migrant men (Powers 1998: 55–64).
Common to premises in different locations and with diverse clientele was a core saloon
culture of masculine sociability and mutuality. Codes of homosocial recreation predomi-
nated, with the bar recognized as an all-male space. For the individual, performance of
coded masculine practices would establish and consolidate manly identity. Simultaneously,
men would often compete for status, thus ensuring that at least some aspects of saloon
culture were rooted in public displays of machismo, including heavy drinking. Barroom lore
was predicated on a number of interlinking social practices. The ability to hold one’s liquor

was one key factor: those unable to match their companions glass for glass were open
to ridicule from fellow drinkers. This could lead to competitive drinking, and result in acute
intoxication, but for those involved, participation in these social rituals was emblematic of
their manly status among their peers (Powers 1998: 89–91).
Linked to these practices was the culture of treating. If treated to a drink, a saloon-goer
had to buy one in return for the purchaser or, less commonly, reciprocate with an accept-
able substitute. The ritual of treating entailed a social performance of reciprocity. Moreover,
in a cultural context where low wages were typical, a public demonstration of the drink-
er’s economic capacity for full participation in barroom practices conveyed a breadwinning,
manly status. With patrons purchasing drinks by turns in groups, drinking in “rounds” was
predicated on the equitable treatment of each individual consumer. Those who could not
afford to take their turn tended to avoid saloons, such were the expectations associated
with treating rituals. Those found cadging drinks and not paying their own way were subject
to public shame and censure, which in turn could have a damaging effect on a man’s local
reputation (Powers 1998: 93–118). Also important were the barroom games that consti-
tuted and reflected masculine performances of physical skill and mental acuity. Darts, dice,
and cards were all commonplace.
Betting on barroom games was common, as well as gambling on the outcome of local
and national sporting events, such as baseball matches and horse races. Those able to
Figure 6.1 Cowboys drink and play card games in a saloon, c. 1890. Photograph by American
Stock Archive via Getty Images.

demonstrate knowledge and aptitude in games and betting accrued the admiration of their
peers. Such jostling for social prestige among bar patrons was of course linked to wider
cultures of manly competition. Barroom culture was also rooted in a verbal lore, which not
only privileged cordial conversation, but also ritualized banter. The recounting of tales, both
everyday and exceptional, and the telling of (sometimes bawdy) jokes fostered homosocial
sociability and communal entertainment. Finally, of course, there was the appeal of liquor
itself. Beer and whisky were the predominant drinks, and while communal drunkenness
was a common sight, prevailing social codes dictated that a man should not be a “sloppy
drunk,” and in numerous settings there was a preference for more moderate consumption
(Powers 2006: 150). While intoxication was doubtless the chief goal for some, for many the
appeal of the saloon bar was the all-male sociability and the culturally embedded cultivation
of manly status.
The coming of Prohibition in 1920 saw the decline of these forms of manly drinking
within the American saloon (Powers 1998: 234–6). It is striking, however, that many of these
practices found close parallels in other locations and time periods. Though of course by
no means a precise cultural replication, many of the social norms which regulated manly
drinking in the saloon could also be found in the English public house in the 1920s and
1930s. Alternative commercial recreations like the cinema were by then available, proving
highly popular especially among the young as venues for both single-sex and mixed-gender
sociability. Nonetheless, the pub retained considerable cultural pull, particularly for middle-
aged men. Of central importance to pub culture was the emphasis on the main public bar
as an all-male space. Numerous social commentators pointed to the entrenched social
convention which militated against women drinkers. Linked to this was a range of important
cultural codes considered constitutive of manly drinking. Standing to drink—often known
among social surveyors as “perpendicular drinking”—was perceived as a sign of manliness,
and the bar’s limited seating often remained unused. As anti-drink campaigners had long
complained, compared with sitting standing to drink increased rates of consumption. Heavy
drinking was often commonplace (though not universal) and, especially at paydays and
weekends, led to socially accepted and culturally embedded intoxication. Notably, away
from the main bar in the adjacent taproom, other codes of gendered performance allowed
scope for alternate public displays of masculinity, including, in a striking parallel with the
American saloon, the playing of games. Cards, dominoes, and darts were all seen as consti-
tutive of manly status, with sitting accepted and expected (Moss 2015).
As in the American saloon, treating and drinking in rounds were key practices. With beer
the standard drink of choice, there was a notable emphasis on drinking from pint glasses.
Half-pint vessels were dismissed as emasculated and many would refuse them. In addi-
tion, the plain, sometimes shabby decoration in the bar was considered a visual cue as to
the manly cultures accommodated there. In these ways, the material culture of the public
bar was thought to contribute to, and reflect, the manly practices pursued there (Moss
2015). Those unable to patronize local bars and pubs, for instance through poverty and
unemployment, were sometimes met with sympathy or even scorn, such was the perceived
emasculation linked to absence from drinking cultures (Davies 1992).
Parallel with these American and English examples, public drinking in Australian pubs was
often closely tied to the cultivation and expression of manliness. While cultures of mascu-
line drinking continued to be much celebrated and mythologized in the era after 1950,

Figure 6.2 Gambling Den, c. 1875. Interior view of a saloon, where a group of men sit gambling at
a table and workers pose in the background. Photograph by Al Greene Archive via Getty Images.
certainly by the turn of the twentieth century pub bars were associated with strident mascu-
linity, which sometimes inclined toward competitive machismo. Alongside the practices of
perpendicular drinking, games-playing, gambling, and ritualized banter seen elsewhere, as
Kirkby has contended, drinking was linked to a “patriotic identification with being Australian”
(2006: 203).
Consumption habits were molded partly by influential cultural norms relating to beer
consumption. Habits were shaped to an extent by environmental context and something of
a mythologized preoccupation with slaking thirst in the antipodean heat, especially among
hard-working laborers. Moreover, licensing regulation also shaped consumption patterns,
including in unintended ways. During the Great War opening hours in licensed premises
were reduced, with early closing introduced in 1916. This ushered in the era of the notorious
“six o’clock swill,” which involved a communal rush at the bar at the end of the working day,
with men consuming as much as possible, as fast as possible, before closing time (Luckins
2008). Enmeshed in this public display was a competitive bravura which underscored the
importance of beer drinking as manly performance. Not surprisingly, this led to social norms
which, while not uncontested, broadly condoned intoxication within the cultural setting of
the pub (Kirkby 2006).
Cultures of treating were significant, with the “shout” as it was known, central to partic-
ipation in cultures of manly comradeship. As in other societies where treating prevailed,

for young men initiation and acceptance into this ritualized custom was a notable rite of
passage. Treating was a formative influence in the development of the cultures of egalitarian
comradeship that were especially privileged within Australian barroom culture. “Mateship”
and its attendant ritualized banter were widely perceived as integral to the cultivation and
expression of masculine identities (Kirkby 2006). Crucially, however, the legal exclusion of
Aboriginal men from licensed premises equated to a profound mitigation against common-
place assertions about the Australian barroom as a site of social equality. In short, the bar
was a white man’s space. It was not until the 1970s that Aboriginal people were permitted
to purchase alcohol from licensed vendors, marking a very significant racialized restric-
tion which had a deep impact on consumption practices, including in relation to gender
(Fitzgerald and Jordan 2009).
A range of commonalities can be discerned from these examples of American, English,
and Australian public bars, as indeed from many others. The cultural norms linked to
consumption habits, the fellowship and banter between men, and the use of space and
material culture are among the key ways in which men’s drinking cultures both contrib-
uted to and reflected the expression of masculinity. Overall, across the period c.1850–1950
men’s drinking cultures were often perceived, and indeed celebrated, as a means of forging
masculine identity. Camaraderie and communality co-existed alongside rivalrous competi-
tion in creating and sustaining a popular cultural setting where public displays of drinking
and indeed drunkenness would help secure a man’s place within his local community and
even, when among strangers, help generate symbolic status of manliness.
Femininity and Drinking Cultures

Male drinking was often conceptualized as normative, not least because in many social
settings men formed the majority of customers within drinking venues. However, any asser-
tion that women were wholly absent from drinking cultures was very often inaccurate and
misplaced. There is considerable evidence, for instance, about the popularity of cafés
with women customers in Paris in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with
many joining their husbands, as well as socializing with female friends and relatives. Haine
(1996: 199–201) has demonstrated that women felt comfortable in these venues, consum-
ing principally wine, brandy, beer, and absinthe in moderation, and participating actively in
café sociability. In numerous drinking venues, often women formed an important minor-
ity of customers, with many individuals valuing the social networks and companionship
they experienced. In broad terms, across the century up to 1950, in many—though by no
means all—social settings in numerous countries, women’s drinking came to be regarded
as increasingly acceptable, and was also seen more commonly in public. These significant
developments have attracted recent scholarly attention: taking the English case historians
including Langhamer (2003) and Gutzke (2013) have explored the expansion and growth of
women’s drinking cultures in the period up to 1950.
Yet even notwithstanding this overall trend toward more frequent incidence and greater
cultural acceptance of women’s public drinking, in the period up to the mid-twentieth
century (and indeed beyond in many cases) women’s drinking was often regarded as more
problematic than men’s. Not surprisingly, intoxication was considered especially trouble-
some. Critique of women’s drinking focused to a significant extent on public consumption,

although anxieties were also raised about domestic drinking in the home (Murdock 1998:
95–113). It is clear there were many contexts across different geographic and temporal
settings where women were discouraged (sometimes strenuously) from patronizing public
drinking venues. It was sometimes the case that male drinkers, and social commenta-
tors more broadly, often conceptualized women drinkers in masculinized terms. In 1930s
Dublin women market traders who frequented pubs were often portrayed by male custom-
ers in masculine terms, their alleged capacity for heavy drinking, swearing, and occasional
brawling differentiating them from “feminine” women who did not patronize pubs
(Kearns 1997: 41–2).
Fears were often raised that women consumers were more vulnerable to liquor’s intoxi-
cating effects. Although by no means restricted to the period 1850–1950, concerns related
to interlinking social, moral, and medical problems, including drink-fueled sexual immorality
and maternal drinking (Plant 1997). This problematization of the female drinker emerged
partly in concert with influential social codes prevalent especially in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries which linked morally upright femininity with temperance: indeed,
this had been a foundational premise for many women’s anti-drink campaign groups, includ-
ing the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (Tyrell 1991). The perceived contrast between
the morally honorable temperance reformer and the depraved and dissolute drinker invoked
an essentialized binary, but nevertheless remained a powerful cultural script which shaped
both attitudes toward, and experiences of, women’s drinking.
Yet cutting across these influences, it was often the case that while women’s public
drinking was broadly discouraged in given social settings, specific forms of female alcohol
Figure 6.3 Temperance Movement: “Ohio Whiskey War,” 1874. Sketch by S. B. Morton, The
ladies of Logan singing hymns in front of barrooms in aid of the temperance movement. Image by
Bettman via Getty Images.

consumption might be tolerated and even encouraged in particular contexts. In Dublin
between the world wars women often patronized pubs on the occasion of funerals and
wakes, the usual social norms which privileged the main drinking bars as male spaces
having been overturned (Kearns 1997: 43). Although discouraged from frequenting taverns,
women factory employees in early twentieth-century Russia would hold drinking parties to
celebrate the marriage of a fellow female worker (Phillips 2000: 100). In many cases, the
exceptional and infrequent nature of these occasions made the contrast with the norm all
the more striking.
Anxieties about women’s alcohol consumption often emerged during periods of height-
ened social turmoil, including during wartime. Alleged socio-moral harms linked to drink
were often associated with wider social dislocation. In England during the First World War
an alleged rise in female drunkenness was considered by some to be emblematic of broader
social and moral tumult at a time of national crisis. The years 1914–18 saw considerable
debate about the place of alcohol in English society, with new government restrictions intro-
duced to stem an alleged tide of insobriety among war workers which was considered a
threat to the war effort, and productivity in munitions factories in particular. The new state
body in charge of alcohol, the Central Control Board (Liquor Traffic), paid particular attention
to assertions about spiraling levels of alcohol consumption across the country (Duncan
2013). While concerns were raised about drunkenness more generally, including among
male munitions workers, particular disquiet was raised about women drinkers. Claims were
made about widespread drunkenness among the wives of servicemen, who were thought to
be spending improvident sums in pubs while neglecting their children and homes. Anxieties
were also raised about purported increases in drinking among young women. Temperance
campaigners asserted that many young women munition workers had developed pub-going
habits as a result of high wartime wages and the burgeoning social freedoms associated
with war work. Alarm was raised about these young women being at risk of descent into
drink-fueled immorality (Moss 2008).
In light of these allegations the Central Control Board formed a Women’s Advisory
Committee to explore the extent of women’s drinking since the outbreak of war. Following
expert evidence from a range of medical and welfare authorities, the Committee found that
many claims of female insobriety were greatly exaggerated. It noted that while numbers
of women patronizing pubs had increased since the outbreak of war, consumption by the
vast majority remained moderate. Claims of widespread drunkenness, especially among
servicemen’s wives, were considered not only inaccurate, but also an unjustified slur against
their respectability and patriotism. Overall, the moral opprobrium leveled at female drinkers
molded and mirrored wider social anxieties about women’s status during wartime, not least
in relation to the tensions between contributing to the war effort and maintaining family life.
Moreover, these debates also reflected social tensions about the public house as a chief site
of public drinking practices, especially among the working classes, and gendered tensions
about women’s purported encroachment on male social space. Crucially, discussion
during the Great War revealed much about the construction and contestation of femininity,
with varied and sometimes strongly contrasting views in circulation about whether drink-
ing, especially in public, was compatible with other norms of cultural respectability among
women (Moss 2008).

In considering attitudes toward, and experiences of women’s drinking, exploration of the
gendering of the social spaces of bars and pubs is critical. Taken in very broad terms, across
the period c.1850–1950, while many licensed premises featured more than one room, the
main bar would be occupied predominantly and sometimes wholly by men. Typically, restric-
tions against women’s presence were not framed via statutory regulation, but enforced by
entrenched and highly influential social conventions. Even in premises where women were
refused service, it was often the case that female employees could be found working behind
the bar. Often their presence was perceived as a deterrent against masculine rowdiness
and heavy drinking, and as such landladies, barmaids, and other women workers were
perceived as figures of authority who merited respect. Varied examples of such practices
can be found across a range of settings in this period: for example, as Malleck (2012) has
noted, in Ontario, Canada, in the 1930s women’s employment was encouraged by licensing
authorities as fostering moderate drinking and social respectability, at the very same time as
female drinking was perceived as socially problematic.
While the main bar in many venues was a male-only space, crucially many premises
did possess other drinking rooms where women’s patronage was accepted and indeed
encouraged. This was the case in pre-Prohibition American saloons where back rooms were
often notable spaces of female sociability (Powers 1998: 33–5). While some male patrons
and social commentators may have considered these spaces as inferior to all-male bars,
such dismissals downplayed the vibrant social networks that women often established in
these drinking spaces. Especially in the years after the Great War, English pubs featured
several rooms and bars where women would drink. As will later be explored, the lounge
was a site of mixed drinking, but it was also a place for all-female gatherings, its popularity
rooted partly in a comfortable salubriousness which connoted comparative respectability. In
addition, the snug, a small drinking room which could accommodate sometimes only two
or three drinkers, was much frequented by women. Hey (1986) considered these gendered
spatial configurations discriminatory to women and indicative of a prevailing misogyny
which was dismissive of women’s rights to leisure in the public house on the same terms
as men. Though not without weight, such an interpretation does downplay the importance
of the social bonds which women forged in these spaces. Moreover, time in the pub could
also represent precious respite from domestic burdens. Among the key drinks consumed
were beer and stout, usually in the form of Guinness, with a strong preference for half-
pint glasses, given the masculine associations of full pint vessels. Competitive drinking was
generally eschewed, and while drunkenness was not unknown, in general terms, consump-
tion tended to be more moderate. Of central appeal for many women was the sociable
camaraderie of the pub: patronage of the lounge and snug offered valued opportunities to
forge and consolidate affective bonds and social ties linking family, friends, and community
(Davies 1992: 66–7).
Shaped partly by imperial legacies and the cultural experiences of migrant communities,
the gendering of space was also integral within Australian pubs. Although more accepted
during the colonial period, by the early 1900s, women’s public drinking was increasingly
seen as disreputable. Particular anxiety was raised about all-women drinking groups and
unaccompanied females. Crucially, women were excluded from the main drinking bars.
Given the cultures of egalitarianism and mateship seen as all-pervasive within these spaces,

and identified as particularly Australian, this gendered restriction was all the more striking
(Kirkby 2006). Indeed, frustration with this double standard would lead Australian femi-
nists in the 1960s and 1970s to protest publically against sexual discrimination in the pub
(Fitzgerald and Jordan 2009).
Notwithstanding these spatial divisions, however, as in England, for many women pub
patronage could form a valued aspect of everyday life. Wright (2003) has explored evidence
of sociable gatherings in local pubs, where women would not only enjoy a drink or two, but
also complete domestic tasks like shelling beans, all the while looking after their children.
Moreover, that these activities often took place during the day, when men were typically at
work, signaled the ways in which women’s pub patronage might occupy different times to
men’s. While this could be interpreted as evidence of the dominance of normative cultures
of male consumption, it is important not to downplay the vitality and significance of women’s
drinking cultures as a means of sustaining networks of feminine sociability.
Mixed-Gender Drinking and Sexualities

While separate spaces for men’s and women’s drinking were common in many drinking
cultures across different geographic and temporal settings, mixed-gender drinking was also
widespread. Whether as couples or in groups, men and women drinking together could
provoke a range of reactions. Attitudes toward mixed company were molded to a significant
extent by the relationship between drinkers: middle-aged married couples invoked often
very different reactions to groups of young men and women previously unknown to each
other, but whose recreation inclined toward sexualized sociability. Thus, in many cultural
settings, attitudes toward mixed drinking were framed by prevailing norms of respectability
regarding sociability among established couples.
In England mixed drinking formed an important part of public house culture. Its chief
spatial setting was the lounge, commonly held to be the most salubrious room in the
pub. Especially in the years after the Great War, its material culture helped to create an
atmosphere of comparative refinement, with comfortable seating and decorative features
like plants and ornaments. In contrast with the main bar, sitting rather than standing was
the norm. Conversation was key, but in many lounges music and singing proved a popu-
lar draw, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. With many lounges possessed of a
piano, communal sing-songs helped create a convivial setting where affective ties would be
sustained and developed between couples and among wider social groups. For husband
and wife a trip to their local pub represented a chance for recreation away from the demands
of work and home life, and was often a much valued treat (Moss 2014. See also Powers
2006 for American parallels). In this context, codes of masculine conduct differed some-
times significantly from the emphasis on manly bravado that could shape the culture of the
main bar. There was a common expectation that when in female company a man’s drinking
would be more moderate. For women mixed drinking cultures were shaped by gendered
norms of feminine sociability. The presence of a male companion, especially a husband, was
often regarded as a legitimizing influence, rendering a woman’s patronage of licensed prem-
ises less transgressive than might otherwise be the case, and thus underscoring normative
codes of respectability. For both sexes, then, mixed drinking could reconfigure expectations
of behavior and reshape ideals of gendered conduct.

Figure 6.4 Patrons of The Crown public house, London, 1947. Patrons celebrate the wedding
of Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) and Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh,
November 20, 1947. From Picture Post, no. 4437, “The Crown Celebrates,” 1947. Photograph by
Bert Hardy/Stringer, Hulton Royals Collection via Getty Images.
Recognizing the appeal of lounge-based sociability, the interwar English drink trade
eveloped new kinds of public house where heterosocial drinking was more dominant.
d
Crucially, there was no distinct gendering of different bars, but rather an overall emphasis on
mixed sociability. New architectural styles emphasized the importance of comfortable bars
and rooms, often with table service, food, and musical entertainment. “Improved pubs,” as
they were known, helped to broaden the social respectability accorded to female public
drinking, with many women happy to enter new-style premises with their sweetheart or
husband, having previously avoided less salubrious premises, as typified by Victorian and
Edwardian urban pubs where women had been conventionally segregated away from the
main bar. There was an emphasis on family recreation, with many venues welcoming of
couples with children. In many cases, new venues helped broaden the appeal of the pub to
more affluent, middle-class consumers, who were often enticed by the ambiance of attractive
premises and the moderate drinking which prevailed (Gutzke 2005). These venues afforded
women drinkers opportunities to experience public drinking cultures which were broadly
considered not to compromise their respectability, but rather connected them in new ways
to the significant expansion of women’s recreational culture between the two world wars,
and offered both women and men new opportunities to share in companionate leisure.
Mixed drinking cultures in America flourished from the 1920s, having developed in impor-
tant directions during Prohibition, with illegal speakeasies becoming known as venues where
men and women could socialize together. While the term “speakeasy” could refer to prem-
ises including small, scruffy basement bars, it often connoted lounge bars featuring musical
entertainment and an emphatically “modern” atmosphere. Drawn partly by this fashionable

setting, as Phillips has maintained, “speakeasies attracted middle- and upper-class women
who would never have stepped into a saloon for fear of compromising their reputations”
(2014: 266). Even notwithstanding the illegality of the speakeasy itself, there was often little
impediment against mixed drinking; indeed, in many venues, the shared leisure between
men and women helped cultivate a sexualized atmosphere. In an age when new forms of
mass culture, such as the cinema, were often characterized by shared leisure between the
sexes, the speakeasy and the lounge bar were seen by many as stylish settings for mixed
sociability, markedly different to the nineteenth-century working-man’s saloon. It was not
surprising that in the era after Prohibition the culture of the speakeasy was set to expand
through the development of lounge bars.
It is notable that mixed social drinking became normalized as older cultural scripts from
the Prohibition era and earlier were subject to greater challenge. Gendered norms which
emphasized prevailing archetypes of feminine temperance and masculine drunken pathol-
ogy were contested by emergent cultures of heterosocial drinking. Cocktails became de
rigueur for both men and women, their popularity bolstered via glamorous depiction in
Hollywood movies. The private cocktail party became an important feature of domestic
entertaining in the 1920s, and helped to ensure the demand for commercialized (if illegal)
venues during Prohibition. With the addition of ingredients like sugar, soda water, fruit juice,
and garnishes, the cocktail did much to tame hard liquor, obviously in terms of taste, but
also with regards to social reputation. This could be especially important for women: many
who would never consume straight gin, for instance, would have no qualms about ordering
a dry martini. In the context of the lounge bar, emergent codes of femininity condoned and
encouraged alcohol consumption as indicative of social and sexual liberation, with engage-
ment with other cultural forms, such as the jazz music often played by bars’ resident bands,
lending further corroborative effect (Rotskoff 2002). In terms of gendered conduct, there was
a transgressive edge to cocktail culture, shaped partly by formative associations with the
speakeasy, but also as a result of the lounge bar’s reputation as a site of socially liberated
modernity. The presence of women was perceived not as an emasculating encroachment
on masculine drinking cultures, but often rather as opportunity for the expression of male
social and sexuality authority. Added to other manly ideals about the importance of holding
one’s liquor and engaging in conversation and banter, the lounge proved a popular social
setting with many men. Overall, these bars became influential sites of mixed drinking and
contributed notably to the development of gendered cultures of alcohol consumption in the
mid-twentieth century.
Mixed-gender drinking cultures have long been associated with sexuality, as histori-
ans, anthropologists, and sociologists have noted. Drinking practices have offered socially
normalized rituals for individuals to engage in flirtation with the hope of winning sexual atten-
tion, while alcohol itself has long been associated with aphrodisiac properties, at least in
smaller quantities (Heath 2003: 34). A general—though by no means uncontested—trend
toward greater acceptance of women drinkers in the early to mid-twentieth century ushered
in new social habits. In England, by the Second World War, some socially confident young
women began to seek out pubs in groups, sometimes with the hope of finding poten-
tial boyfriends. The development of these cultures helped to foster growing acceptance of
women drinkers in pubs, as Langhamer (2003) has noted. Though met with social critique
by those still concerned by female presence in licensed premises, for some young women

Figure 6.5 Men and women drinking and dining in the cocktail lounge, 1944. Photograph by Ed
Clark/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images.
the pub became an important place to meet potential suitors. Typically, those most inclined
to this kind of pub-going were those who had experienced greater social and economic
freedoms in wartime, often as a result of war work and wage-earning, and there emerged an
increased willingness among young women to associate pub-going with socially acceptable
courtship practices akin, say, to patronizing dance halls and cinemas. In turn, and perhaps
not surprisingly, these greater numbers of women were welcomed by many male patrons,
leading to an expansion of masculine competition for female attention. More broadly this
greater sense of social liberation connected with drinking was witnessed in widely differing
social settings during this period: in Northeast China fashionable young women sometimes
celebrated intoxication as a fun experience linked to socializing with men (Smith 2012: 58).
At times, however, interaction between the sexes was contested, and while normal-
ized courtship practices were typically accepted and encouraged, casual sexualized
encounters often ignited moral anxiety. Anxious to discourage any hint of lewd immoral-
ity, in many instances regulatory authorities and bar owners promoted respectability and
sexual propriety, including through the control of spaces occupied by drinkers within prem-
ises. Writing on gendered drinking cultures in Canada in the 1930s, Malleck (2012) has
explored the wide-ranging debate about women’s drinking in post-Prohibition Vancouver,
including particular anxieties about lone female drinkers. Unaccompanied single women
were perceived by anti-drink commentators as a social and moral liability, prompting argu-
ments in favor of prohibiting women altogether from entry to licensed premises, or requiring
women drinkers to have a male companion. Concerns emerged that licensing authorities

must protect young women from the attentions of unscrupulous men, but perhaps still
more striking were the anxieties that young women were themselves prone to seducing
men. Disquiet was raised about socially emancipated young women, often characterized as
“flappers” whose propensity toward drinking, smoking, and sexual expression was thought
by numerous social commentators to be morally degenerate. Juxtaposed against these
fears, however, was a widespread demand that women should be permitted to consume
alcohol publicly. Faced with these contrasting arguments, the Liquor Board of Ontario
concluded that the interests of all concerned would be best met through the establishment
of ladies’ “beverage rooms” where male companions were permitted, but managers were
mandated to differentiate these spaces from the main drinking rooms associated with male
customers. Particular emphasis was placed on the role of staff: any hint of sexual impropri-
ety would be quashed by vigilant staff (including women), thus consolidating the norms of
morally upright femininity the Board wished to inculcate and promote (Malleck 2012).
Across varied locations and time periods, particular opprobrium was reserved for prosti-
tutes, whose engagement in commercialized transactions was widely seen as distinct from
other types of casualized sexual encounter sometimes found in bars. For many, especially
in the context of more anonymous urban premises, the relaxed atmosphere and relative
social freedoms of drinking venues afforded opportunities for prostitutes to find clients and
vice versa. Some proprietors were willing to turn a blind eye. Indeed, as Harrison has noted,
especially in impoverished urban communities in Victorian England, some licensees were
“as ready to cater for this local need as for any other” (1971: 50). By contrast, however, there
often existed strident resistance to the presence of known prostitutes, even if they entered
premises with the intention of purchasing drinks, rather than solicitation per se. In the
second half of the nineteenth century, temperance reformers aired moral critique about the
purported close ties between slum pubs and prostitution in the Scottish cities of Glasgow
and Edinburgh (Cooke 2015: 127). In many cases, prostitution aroused fears of social
contagion and moral breakdown, with blame directed typically toward prostitutes, rather
than their clients. Given the considerable stigma around prostitution, as well as the statutory
obligation to uphold relevant laws, many landlords were at pains to distance themselves
from even the faintest association with solicitation for fear of losing their license. Yet notwith-
standing these regulatory policies and although precise figures are impossible to obtain,
historians have argued that professional prostitution was significantly less common than
causal non-commercialized encounters. Historians have asserted that moral campaigners
often over-stated the extent of the problem: for instance, Harrison (1971: 50) asserted that
“temperance reformers often saw prostitution where none existed,” while Powers (1998:
34–5) has observed that the presence of prostitutes was typically a rare occurrence in most
nineteenth-century American saloons.
Alongside dominant norms linked to heterosexuality, homosexual drinking cultures were
a less prevalent, but certainly significant, cultural influence. In a range of ways, queer social
codes and practices contested, rejected, or reconfigured dominant norms of masculin-
ity and femininity, as well as sexuality. While cultures of all-male and, to a lesser extent,
all-female drinking were socially accepted, in the context of same-sex attraction, these
gendered habits could provoke acute moral and social consternation. In many countries,
male homosexuality was criminalized, while homosexuality among both genders often
stoked considerable disquiet. It followed that associations with liquor were potentially

perilous, especially when framed in the context of alcohol’s alleged aphrodisiac properties,
and its broader effects in lowering social inhibitions.
Legal restriction and cultural marginalization notwithstanding, queer venues could play a
notable role within the drinking culture of a particular town or city. For patrons, the appeal
of the bar was rooted partly in familiar factors: sociability forged by communal drinking
practices, the development of friendship and community networks, as well as the appeal
of alcohol itself. However, for many their choice of venue was dominated by the prevailing
social acceptance of homosexual identities and experiences. The existence of such venues
had a liberating and transformative impact on individuals who otherwise lacked spaces
where they might express their sexual identity. As Boyd has argued, the queer bar “legiti-
mized a space where it was not shameful or an insult to assume others were gay,” which
in turn “facilitated the development of a shared public culture, a new language and lexicon
of sexual meanings” (2003: 61). In the main, queer drinking cultures were associated with
urban recreation. Large cities in particular often had at least a handful of premises patron-
ized by queer men and women. Often venues catered to either men or women, although
this was not universal.
In exploring the history of queer bars and taverns in San Francisco in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, Boyd has pointed to the social significance of particular
bars known for their male homosexual clientele. Queer venues were located mainly in
Figure 6.6 Pacific Street, San Francisco, California, c. 1930s. View along Pacific Street, featuring
the Barbary Coast club, the unofficial flagship of the area that also featured numerous other clubs
and bars. Other famous nightspots visible on the strip are Bee & Ray Gorman’s Gay 90s, the
House of Blue Lights, and Pago Pago. Photograph by Frederic Lewis via Getty Images.

the infamous Barbary Coast district, where prostitution thrived alongside often salacious
vaudeville theaters and nightclubs, and as such they contributed to a transgressive local
culture. Though often marginalized, including as the object of temperance and social reform
critique, queer drinking cultures occupied a significant and much valued place in the every-
day lives of some San Francisco residents (Boyd 2003).
Writing on male homosexuality in the early to mid-twentieth century, Houlbrook (2005)
has considered the role of the London public house as a site for the development of queer
social networks. A small minority of pubs were known for their queer clientele, including
several in Soho, a district long associated with licentiousness. Particular venues in central
locations were known for a diverse range of patrons ranging from troops on leave and
laborers to clerks and professionals. Redolent of a certain cultural knowingness about the
navigation of the metropolitan landscape, awareness of the existence and location of these
venues could be highly prized among those for whom acknowledgment of their sexual iden-
tity would have been unconscionable in other social settings. In terms of attitudes among
proprietors, since male homosexuality remained criminalized until 1967 in England, it is
clear that some publicans were prepared to show a significant degree of toleration, even
though this meant risking their license. Licensees negotiated a “precarious balance between
the market and the state. Most took men’s money while seeking to minimize the dangers,
carefully policing their behavior in order to ensure their premises could never be deemed
‘disorderly’” (Houlbrook 2005: 81–2). Here questions emerged as to the extent to which
practices of open “cruising” for sex were tolerated: certainly in many cases, landlords were
more willing to accept less overt behavior from their customers.
While female homosexuality was not criminalized in many societies, it did provoke
considerable cultural anxiety, with same-sex attraction among women often seen as morally
degenerate. Within this context, the existence of lesbian bars and pubs was all the more
significant. Writing on early to mid-twentieth century American history, Faderman has
underlined the importance of such venues. Especially for young working-class lesbians,
who were often “without their own comfortable domiciles in which to receive their friends,”
bars became important sites of sociability and camaraderie (Faderman 1992: 161). Patrons
experienced queer bars as sites of social liberation, free from some of the cultural restric-
tions that regulated women’s experience of normative heterosexual drinking cultures: for
instance, customers would often arrive singly and purchase their own drinks, in a contrast
with androcentric cultures which often emphasized the importance of male companions.
The transgressive nature of lesbian bars forged cultures of social independence for women,
and as such their presence was much valued by many. By the early twentieth century, simi-
lar venues were established in England in major towns and cities. Jennings has argued that
while lesbian bar culture developed more fully in the era after the Second World War, it had
important roots reaching back earlier in the century. Though few in number, both London
and Manchester possessed lesbian pubs and bars. Among the most significant was the
Gateways Club, a private bar and club, which was to play a key role in forging London’s
lesbian cultural life in the mid-twentieth century, including through its vital role as a space
for women to forge social bonds and explore sexual identities and relationships (Rebecca
Jennings 2007: 113).
While dominant social codes of masculinity and femininity were crucial to the cultural
practices of “mainstream” bar and pub life, in those premises associated with queer and

lesbian communities, social norms afforded opportunities to experience social and sexual
cultures not readily visible in other social settings. A range of historians writing on queer and
lesbian bars in this period, but especially the early to mid-twentieth century, have pointed to
their crucial role in helping to forge and sustain community identity and solidarity—solidarity
which was central to the demands for gay and lesbian rights pursued later in the century
(Boyd 2003: 62). While caution against a teleological narrative of progressive social liberation
is appropriate, it is evident at least that for many men and women, patronage of bars and
pubs played an important role in their socio-sexual lives.
Conclusions
Participation in and indeed critique of drinking cultures were both constitutive and reflective
of masculinity and femininity. Drinking venues were influential social sites where gendered
and sexual identities could be formed and contested in a public arena. Experiences and
representations of gender formed part of an interlinked matrix of factors which shaped
drinking cultures, including class, race, age, income, generation, and geographical setting.
While gender cannot be singled out as an overriding influence, its significance should not
be underestimated, for masculinity and femininity were notable cultural forces in shaping
consumption habits. Throughout the period 1850–1950 attitudes toward, and experiences
of, gendered drinking cultures were both molded by and contributed to broader societal
developments. In an era of colossal change wrought by industrialization, imperialism, and
warfare, ideals of masculinity and femininity were characterized by both marked continuity
with entrenched norms and the emergence of new cultural discourses and practices.
Particularly in the context of commercialized public settings, drinking was often concep-
tualized as a normatively masculine practice. Men’s drinking often encompassed social
habits which fostered the cultivation and expression of masculinity, including friendly
competition between drinkers in the context of barroom lore, and the notable (though by no
means universal) social acceptance of male drunkenness as evidence of virile masculinity. In
contrast with men’s drinking, attitudes to women’s alcohol consumption in various counties
and across many social settings were subject to wider and more significant contestation
and change over the period 1850–1950. In broad terms, during the early to mid-twentieth
century, established ideals of temperate femininity were contrasted with a broadening
social acceptance of women’s public drinking. Predictably the increased presence of female
consumers in public drinking spaces had an impact on men’s drinking habits: in some
respects there was greater opportunity for interaction with the opposite sex, but there
remained an emphasis on homosocial drinking practices as an expression of masculinity.
Contrasting with normative cultural habits, within queer drinking cultures the bar became
much valued as a space for the expression of sexual identities often marginalized and in
many cases criminalized within “mainstream” cultures. It followed, then, that bars and pubs
were often important spaces where cultural practices could have significant wider social and
political impact.
As the second half of the twentieth century advanced, many of the gendered drinking
cultures prevalent prior to 1950 retained a notable degree of cultural resonance across
diverse geographical settings. In many ways, men’s drinking continued to be regarded as
less socially problematic than women’s, while critiques of female inebriation were often

articulated in terms that echoed and invoked the ideals of temperate femininity that had
prevailed in the nineteenth century. Alongside this, however, can be seen the ways in which
many of the social impediments against women’s presence in drinking venues still in force
after the Second World War have been eroded toward the end of the twentieth century
and into twentieth-first. In sum, gendered drinking has long been and remains a complex
and contested practice, both molded by, and contributing to, cultural codes of alcohol
consumption, and broader social norms of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality.

7 RELIGION AND IDEOLOGY
PAUL TOWNEND AND DEBORAH TONER
Introduction
Temperance movements have dominated scholarship examining the relationship between
alcohol, religion, and ideology in the age of industry, empire, and war, not only in the United
States, home to arguably the most powerful and successful temperance movement, but
also in Britain, parts of Europe, and the wider world. Various religious and secular ideol-
ogies shaped the emergence and development of temperance ideas, but temperance
itself became an influential ideological force in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Temperance matured from an eclectic set of reform ideas in the early nineteenth century into,
by mid-century, a coherent and effective ideology that generated and sustained a series of
interrelated, unprecedentedly successful social movements involving millions of participants,
particularly in the rapidly evolving English-speaking Atlantic World. Between 1850 and 1950,
nationally specific, aggressive, and assertive temperance movements, underpinned by a
widely shared critique of alcohol’s place in society, sought cultural transformation through
the radical curtailment of alcohol production and consumption. Temperance’s mobilizing
rhetoric of national and self-improvement was potent, and temperance ideology became
an ideal partner for broader causes that sought social transformations and realignments,
such as anti-slavery and the women’s movement in North America, nationalism in parts of
Europe, and international workers’ movements.
This chapter firstly outlines how various Christian and secular influences shaped
the emergence of the temperance movement in the early nineteenth century and its
development across different contexts throughout the period. Enlightenment and repub-
lican ideals about rationality intersected with Protestant evangelical ideas in the early
temperance movement and, although these remained dominant, non-Protestant religions
engaged with temperance to varying degrees as well. Secondly, the chapter examines in
more detail the composition and operation of temperance itself as an influential ideology
of the period. Despite differences of emphasis within and across temperance movements
in different national and international contexts, several core ideas were broadly shared.
These included the ideas that: alcohol was at the root of moral corruption in society;
the family was the key battleground in the war against alcohol and women especially
had key roles in temperance discourse and activism; alcohol consumption was a prob-
lem spiraling out of control especially in urbanizing, industrializing areas; and Christian
churches and organized political action were needed to redress the problems caused by
alcohol. Finally, we examine the intersections between temperance and broader ideolog-
ical trends of the age of industry, empire, and war, including socialism, nationalism, and
colonialism, and consider how some disenfranchised groups engaged with temperance
to advance their own interests within or against these broad ideological forces.
Christian and Secular Influences on the Development of Temperance

While early temperance reformers typically organized local societies, they imagined wider
reform and produced a body of widely shared and effectively networked propaganda while
working in concert, sharing ideas, strategies, and approaches. The ideology of temper-
ance evolved, moreover, in relation to rapid and disruptive social change across the Atlantic
World. These changes included rapid population growth, urbanization, and mass migration;
associated economic evolution; and the rapid development and integration of populations
into market economies. These developments transformed broad patterns of trade, produc-
tion, and consumption, none more dramatically than those related to alcohol, as outlined
elsewhere in this volume. The nineteenth century was marked by rapidly rising social anxiety
about alcohol consumption, widely associated with population increase, alongside a growth
in the number of the poor, and growing fear of public disorder, particularly in urban areas
that served as hubs for commerce and the production of a simultaneously bourgeoning print
culture (Phillips 2014: 155–91; Yeomans 2014: 35–48; Pilcher 2015: 157–63).
Early temperance ideology developed in dynamic and symbiotic relationship to these
transformations and the anxieties they engendered. Articulated with growing urgency by
a diverse group of influential advocates in the United States, especially American educator
Anthony Benezet, physician Benjamin Rush, and Congregationalist minister Lyman Beecher,
temperance had both Christian and secular influences (Bernard 1993: 9–31). This was a
pattern repeated beyond the United States, especially in Britain, Canada, and Scandinavia
(Tyrrell 1991: 16–17; Heron 2003: 52–6). Early influential advocates of temperance, such as
Rev. Justin Edwards in Massachusetts and Rev. John Edgar in Ulster, preached individual
transformation through association and pledging, in dramatic language decrying the over-
whelming and devastating social consequences of drink, and demanding public witness in
favor of temperance as a crucial means of influencing private behavior. Activists oriented
their discourse around a radically rational, medical, and/or Christian response to the percep-
tion of escalating production, destabilized patterns of consumption, disorder, and other
disruptive social consequences of change. Early temperance, directed primarily against
spirit-drinking but also public drunkenness and private intoxication, urged personal restraint
among drinkers, supported by voluntary association and public pledging. This widely shared
transatlantic public discourse and portable modular approach to the practice of a new form
of temperance fostered active attachment both to rule-based and loosely affiliated temper-
ance societies marked by public demonstrations of personal transformation (Heron 2003:
53–5; Allen 2011: 377; Yeomans 2014: 47–8).
The relationship of Christianity to developing temperance movements and the contri-
bution of Christian churches and doctrine to temperance ideology was complex. The early
articulation of temperance principles derived from a powerful fusion of Enlightenment-era
anxiety about the erosion of rationality many associated with rising spirit consumption, with
influential “New Light,” Wesleyan, and evangelical notions of the perfectibility of Christian
practice. Elements of Enlightenment philosophy defined civilization and progress by the
increasing domination of reason and rationality in politics, economics, society, and culture,

over irrationality, passion, and vice, the latter deriving from natural corporeal desires. The
rational being, and particularly the rational citizen in newly emerging republics, should
be able to control and overcome temptations to vice, including drunkenness, indolence,
gambling, and excess of various kinds. This ability distinguished the enlightened citizen
from “savages” living in a state of nature, unruly plebeians, and profligate aristocrats alike.
Eighteenth-century French philosophes, for instance, denounced the Carnival and other
popular festivals as “occasions of drunkenness, debauchery, and unrestrained impulses,”
while in nineteenth-century Britain popular recreations like fairs and wakes were denounced
as “superfluous and disorderly” and spending money on alcohol decried as irrational and
wasteful (Harrison 1994: 49; Baecque 1997: 247; Yeomans 2014: 52–3). In the United
States, Benjamin Rush cautioned that allowing drunkenness to go unchecked meant that
“intemperate and corrupted voters,” and not virtuous citizens, would choose the republic’s
leaders, culminating in demagoguery and political ruin (Lender and Martin 1987: 38). Even in
Mexico, without a formal temperance movement until the twentieth century, habitual drunk-
enness was cited as grounds for the suspension or permanent removal of citizenship rights
in constitutional documents of the mid-nineteenth century (Toner 2015a: 159–60).
Protestantism, particularly rapidly developing evangelicalism in a variety of manifestations,
including unconventional religious revivals and “awakenings,” likewise exerted powerful
influences over the early development of the temperance movement. Presbyterian, Calvinist,
Methodist, Congregationalist, Baptist, Anglican, and evangelical ministers led multifaceted
campaigns to spread the message of temperance in the north-eastern United States amidst
the Second Great Awakening in the early nineteenth century. Activities included sermonizing
about temperance, exhorting employers to cease offering liquor rations to their workers,
organizing public meetings and parades, printing and distributing temperance literature,
and barring alcohol from any church functions. In Britain and British North America, temper-
ance was also promoted by numerous non-conformist Protestant churches. These faiths
stressed the need for self-discipline, asceticism, and a strong work ethic, all of which were
deemed to deteriorate under the influence of drink (Lender and Martin 1987: 67–9; Heron
2003: 58–9; Allen 2011: 375; Yeomans 2014: 44, 52–3; Pilcher 2015: 169).
Evangelical beliefs offered fertile and enduring influences over anti-alcohol activi-
ties throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and throughout the world.
Evangelical support for the temperance cause in the US South increased after the abolition
of slavery, partly as a means of containing what many saw as the social threat posed by the
availability of alcohol to former slaves and the moral contagion this could engender amongst
the rest of the population (Pilcher 2015: 170). Individual salvation, evangelicals believed,
rested on one’s choice to accept God’s freely given grace; while conversion was first neces-
sary for a moral life to become possible, exposure to temptation and bad influence could
impede conversion and might even lead the righteous back to a life of sin. Such theological
ideas often combined with a range of medical and social arguments against alcohol, as was
common to the operation of temperance since its origins. As one North Carolina preacher
argued in 1905,
Alcohol undermines the health, enfeebles the will, makes the mind coarse and the
tongue vulgar, brings discord to the family, deprives children of their rights, lowers the
standards of morals, corrupts politics, fills prisons and asylums with human wrecks,
mocks religion and ruins immortal souls. (Lewis 2009: 44–5)
Religion and Ideology 155

Baptists and Methodists involved in running the Anti-Saloon League of Virginia in the early
1900s likewise viewed drunkenness as a “barrier to conversion” in and of itself, “because
the inebriated mind could not properly acknowledge the role of Christ as savior,” but also
as a cause of broader family and societal breakdown (Mathews 2009: 251–3). Since drunk-
enness was itself a sin, but could furthermore engender all manner of other moral crimes,
southern evangelicals pursued a series of measures that progressively removed alcohol
and drinkers from public space. These measures included laws against being drunk in, or
bringing liquor into, religious spaces; no-license areas for saloons up to five miles around
churches, schools, and civic spaces; liquor dispensaries to eliminate pleasurable sociability
from the sale of alcohol; and, by the early twentieth century, state-wide prohibition laws
(Lewis 2009: 46–53).
Evangelical beliefs about drunkenness being an obstacle to conversion also meant
that Protestant missionaries helped to spread temperance ideas around the world. In
Britain and across its developing global empire, missionary work was often supported by
temperance-oriented organizations such as the British and Foreign Temperance Society,
the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association, the Good Templars, and the Bands of Hope
(Thorne 2006: 144). Many members of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions, formed in 1811, were founding members of the American Temperance Society
a decade later (Tyrrell 1991: 12–13). Protestant missionaries helped the Woman’s Christian
Temperance Union establish branches in Australia, Japan, Italy, Sweden, and parts of Africa
by the end of the nineteenth century (Pilcher 2015: 170–1). As Ian Tyrrell has explored in
relation to the WCTU’s international activity, two main aspects of evangelical belief drove
international anti-alcohol work by Protestant missionaries and the WCTU. First, Christian
perfectionism held that while “justification by faith absolved believers of their sin; sanctifi-
cation was a second stage in the conversion process.” Sanctification required individuals
to pursue perfection by adhering to exemplary moral standards, eschewing alcohol and all
such other earthly temptations that would lead them back to sinful ways. Second, this quest
for perfectionism became particularly urgent in overseas missionary work when combined
with millennialism, the belief that Christ’s second coming would establish a thousand-year
kingdom on earth before the final judgment. Many involved in international temperance
believed that achieving “earthly purification” through moral and social reform was necessary
before Christ’s kingdom could be established. While the sought-after reforms encompassed
a wide variety of issues beyond the scope of temperance, alcohol was generally viewed as
“the central agent of evil” with “its capacity to loosen inhibitions and to encourage ‘immoral’
behavior” (Tyrrell 1991: 22–4. See also Marshall and Marshall 1976: 136, 148–66; Grimshaw
1998: 201–2; Allen 2011: 376).
Temperance was eventually taken up with enthusiasm by many but not all Christian evan-
gelicals across most Protestant denominations. In some ways, however, Christian doctrine
also restrained temperance activity and ideology by sustaining longstanding denominational
and scriptural traditions endorsing moderation and (often) sacramental use of wine. In its
most effective early populist forms after the 1830s—the Preston Temperance Society and
then teetotal Chartism in Britain; the Washingtonian Movement and affiliated societies in
the United States; and Father Theobald Mathew’s Cork Total Abstinence Society in Ireland,
which incorporated something approaching half the adult population by 1842—the temper-
ance movement rapidly became in practice “teetotal,” rejecting the use of alcohol in any form,

while occasionally still allowing a “sacramental exception” (Lender and Martin 1987: 70–7;
Heron 2003: 54; Yeomans 2014: 50–2). In other cases, some theological c ontortionism was
employed to square this circle. Some Christian teetotalers developed the “two-wine theory,”
for instance, to account for some positive biblical references to wine as the justification for
their own total rejection of alcohol. According to this theory, positive references to wine
drinking, such as at the wedding at Cana, really referred to unfermented grape juice, while
other stories detailing the deleterious effects of wine consumption, such as the incestuous
acts of Lot, referred to fermented wine. Some Methodist churches adopted the use of grape
juice in place of wine in the communion ceremony as a result of this line of argument (Phillips
2014: 213).
Despite widespread participation by members of many congregations and the adoption
of temperance principles by many Christian clergy, temperance could be divisive within
individual churches and across denominational traditions. After 1850 in many settings but
especially in the United States, temperance ideology hardened and sought social change
through sustained reform efforts designed to undercut the economic and political influence
of the “alcohol interest,” generating an escalating set of political demands for stricter or
prohibitive licensing laws for the purchase and sale of alcohol, such as the prohibitionist
“Maine Law” of 1851. This raised serious questions about the relationship between alcohol,
church, and state that divided Christian denominations, even as they ostensibly worked
together in support of the temperance cause. Mary Beth Mathews’ study of the Anti-Saloon
League of Virginia, for instance, shows that although Baptists and Methodists presented
a mostly united public front in support of this organization’s campaign for local-option and
state-wide prohibitions, this belied real divisions. Methodist clergy and lay members enthu-
siastically endorsed the ASLV’s campaigns, giving temperance sermons, making financial
donations, coordinating voters’ support, and drafting the enabling legislation for state-wide
prohibition. Baptists were uncomfortable with these coordinated, interventionist methods
that went against their beliefs about a stricter separation of church and state, the principle
devotion of a church to its local congregation, and the individual’s spiritual conversion and
moral reform. Methodists’ Arminian theological influences meant that they conceived of
social reform movements as helping to “propel the sinner closer to God … to help others
to help themselves towards salvation,” and thus legislation that effectively forced individuals
to avoid alcohol was not only compatible with their beliefs, but desirable and necessary.
Baptists, meanwhile, had a strong Calvinist influence that placed greater emphasis on
individual salvation through God’s grace, which meant that their support for social reform
movements like temperance allowed for encouraging “the individual to amend his or her
ways,” but forcing changes on the individual could be counterproductive (Mathews 2009:
253–5, 262, 272–3).
Notwithstanding such differences in approach, it is clear that the nineteenth century saw
a major alignment between temperance, typically in the radical form of total abstinence, and
evangelical, perfectionistically inclined Protestantism.1 Catholic theology offered considera-
bly less grounds for any complete rejection of alcohol, and with some notable exceptions
in Ireland and the Irish diaspora in the United States and Australia, temperance made
comparatively little headway in Catholic communities. Ireland’s most important temperance
campaign was led by the Capuchin Father Theobold Mathew, who became president of
the Cork Total Abstinence Society in 1838. In less than a year, he had attracted over 9,000

pledged members, compared to 2,000 in all the other local temperance organizations
(mostly of elitist and Protestant membership) combined. Conducting tours around the Irish
countryside, giving sermons, and administering teetotal pledges to new members—often
to tens of thousands in a matter of days—Father Mathew’s campaign became a mass
movement. It primarily attracted the “self-improving working classes,” and claimed to have
5 million members by mid-1841.
While these numbers are probably exaggerated, historians agree that Father Mathew
led a hugely popular movement amongst Irish Catholics, without comparable precedent or
successor. This is demonstrated not just by contemporary estimates of pledged members
numbering in the millions and accounting for up to half of Ireland’s adult population, but
also by dramatic reductions in whiskey sales, beer production, and spirits retailers between
1838 and 1840 (Quinn 2002: 57–78; Malcolm 2003: 323; Allen 2011: 380). While Father
Mathew’s movement petered out almost as dramatically as it had started, temperance did
not disappear from the Irish Catholic Church’s agenda. Indeed, in the 1890s a Jesuit Father
James Cullen established the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association of the Sacred Heart
in Dublin, which drew a closer link between total abstinence and Catholic theology than
the earlier movement. Influenced by the “Devotional Revolution” of Irish Catholicism, which
called for an “increasingly puritanical” approach to morality, stricter discipline, and “elabo-
rate devotions,” the Pioneers promoted abstinence as an expression of piety and penance,
and as a practice that might atone for the drink-inspired sins of others. It rapidly attracted
Figure 7.1 Total Abstinence Society pledge card, 1845. Engraving by The Very Reverend T.
Mathew, President, Robert T. Hallow. Image by The New York Historical Society via Getty Images.

a large membership, which continued to grow until the mid-twentieth century, reaching
a peak of half a million members by 1960, at a time when the Irish population was only
3 million and most temperance organizations internationally had ceased to exert meaningful
influence (Malcolm 2003: 323).
Elsewhere, Catholic temperance organizations owed their popularity to broader social
agendas, especially the assimilation of Irish immigrant populations, rather than to the
specifics of Catholic theology. In mid-nineteenth-century Australia, for instance, the St
Patrick’s Total Abstinence Society became the largest Catholic organization besides the
Church itself in the city of Sydney, and overshadowed Protestant temperance organiza-
tions there in terms of its membership and public activity, to the extent that Protestant
leaders feared its power. Influential Presbyterian minister John Dunmore Lang wrote in
1847 that the Catholic temperance movement had “become a mere device for exhibiting
the physical force of the Irish Roman Catholics of Sydney and Melbourne in ostentatious
and frequent processions,” in a pamphlet decrying the influence of “Popery in Australia.”
However, Matthew Allen has argued that for the Catholic leaders and members of this
organization, the SPTAS was principally a means of asserting the respectability of Irish
Catholics, rejecting negative stereotypes about drunken Irish criminality that had built up in
New South Wales in the 1830s, and demonstrating “allegiance to the dominant ideology of
moral enlightenment … with its concern for the improvement of man as an individual and
society as a whole” (2011: 376–7, 382–91).
Several scholars have also shown the central motivating principle of countering pejora-
tive stereotypes about Irish drunkenness within Catholic temperance organizations in the
United States. The first leader of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union, established in 1872,
stated its core aims were to “make all state and local societies ‘stronger and better’ and
… do ‘away with a multitude of aspersions upon’ Catholicism” (Quinn 1996: 629. See also
Walsh 1991: 70–1; Moloney 1998: 2–5; Phillips 2014: 195). The CTAU had approximately
90,000 members by the early twentieth century and more than 1,000 local branches,
concentrated in northeast and mid-west urban centers, in cities like Philadelphia and
Pittsburg. Father Mathew’s crusade in Ireland and his temperance tour of the United States
in the 1840s provided some inspiration for the CTAU, which organized public parades and
sober recreation activities and sponsored both the Father Mathew Chair in Psychology and
Father Mathew lecture series on temperance during the inaugural years of the Catholic
University of America in Washington, D.C. (Quinn 1996: 629, 632, 636–7; Moloney 1998:
5). Catholic temperance advocates did portray excessive drinking as a sin and sobriety
as a necessary defense against a perceived growing hedonism of industrial society, and
there was some Catholic support for prohibitionist legislation: for instance, Catholic Bishop
John Ireland, “co-founded and served as a vice president” of the Anti-Saloon League
from 1896 to 1901; Catholic clergy founded the Catholic Prohibition League of America;
and laymen founded the Association of Catholics Favoring Prohibition, both in support of
national prohibition (Walsh 1991: 70–1; Quinn 1996: 635, 638). However, the CTAU as
a whole generally emphasized moral suasion approaches over prohibitionist legislation
and actively sought to distance its image from what Irish Americans often viewed as the
Puritan, humorless, self-denying ethos of the Protestant temperance activists. Instead, the
CTAU framed temperance as a “self-help movement,” attended by sociable, fun-loving
men seeking to “attain economic self-sufficiency and improve … family life by abstaining

from alcohol” (Moloney 1998: 2, 5–6). This image was ultimately undermined by the intro-
duction of nationwide prohibition, which alienated many Irish Catholics, and the influence
of the CTAU was also undermined by an increasing lack of support from the Catholic
hierarchy in Rome, which viewed the organization’s liberal acceptance of American
democracy and the separation of church and state with suspicion. Together, these devel-
opments meant that Catholic temperance subsequently declined in the United States
after its revival in the late nineteenth century, unlike the Pioneer-led resurgence in Ireland
(Quinn 1996: 631–40).
In early twentieth-century Russia, there was some support for temperance both within
the Orthodox Church and from popular religious movements deemed un-Orthodox and
even subversive. Father A. V. Rozhdestvenskii led the Society for the Spread of Religious
and Moral Enlightenment in the Spirit of the Orthodox Church from the 1890s and estab-
lished the Alexander Nevskii Temperance Society. Since the 1860s, temperance had
formed part of the Church’s agenda of spreading the “inner mission,” which sought to
foster a deeper spiritual engagement of the people to matters of faith, based on the idea
that church-goers merely performed rituals out of habit or superstition rather than under-
standing their spiritual substance. Priests such as Rozhdestvenskii taught that drunkenness
was a “vice that separated the individual from God and opened the door for other sins.”
Although the Alexander Nevskii Temperance Society attracted over 70,000 members by
1906, most of the 1,800 temperance societies sponsored by the Orthodox Church by 1912
were very small with only ten to thirty members (McKee 1999: 223–5; Herlihy 2003: 75).
One obstacle to the further spread of temperance ideas within the Orthodox Church was a
widespread perception amongst both clergy and laypeople that sobriety and temperance
were the preserve of sectarians. This perception accounts for the hostile reaction of the
Orthodox Church toward some other temperance groups that did attract a mass following,
despite being in broad agreement about the need to reform Russian drinking habits. The
St Petersburg trezvenniki [sobrietarians], for instance, established by Ivan A. Churikov, a
peasant tradesman, in the 1890s, attracted approximately 100,000 followers by 1911.
The trezvenniki exhorted believers to take personal responsibility for the practice of faith
and the achievement of holiness through good behavior. After taking part in an induction
ritual committing themselves to sobriety, members discussed the experience as a sort of
conversion, dividing up the narrative of their lives into before and after the acceptance of
sobriety, which helped them to become more hard-working, virtuous, responsible family
men. However, Churikov and other leading figures were persistently persecuted by the
Orthodox Church hierarchy because of the challenge they posed to Church authority and
their perceived radicalism, with Churikov being excommunicated in 1914 (McKee 1999:
212–20; 225–8; Herlihy 2003: 79–88).
In a variety of contexts, then, Christianity played a major role in the development and
spread of organized anti-alcohol movements around the world. Evangelical Protestantism
had the most dominant and enduring relationship with temperance activism across the 1800
to 1950 period, but some non-Protestant denominations also sought to advance religious
and social reform through temperance ideas. Questions about the relationship between
alcohol, church, state, and the individual moved into the center of the social and political
landscape in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries across the Atlantic World and
beyond, with dramatic consequences for religious, political, and social institutions.

Temperance Ideology
Even while regional and national temperance movements evolved, temperance ideology
had reached a mature state, at least in the Anglophone world, by the middle of the nine-
teenth century. The limited but sustained success of populist temperance movements and
anti-alcohol efforts at legal and social reform reinforced the effective, systematic, and holistic
promotion of anti-alcohol ideology. That core set of ideas changed little until the failure of
national prohibition in the United States and the reinvigoration of the medical/disease model
of alcohol addiction in the 1930s and 1940s, influenced by the research of Dwight Anderson
and others.
The dominant perspective of the 1850–1940 era was advanced initially by a host of well
positioned supporters, such as the British Baptist minister Dawson Burns, British journalist
Frederick Lees, American journalist and activist William Lloyd Garrison, physician Albert
Day, and journalist/Methodist minister Wesley Bailey, among many others. Temperance
tracts and dramatic platform rhetoric were richly supplemented, amplified, and popularized
over time by extended pamphlets, histories of the movement, and heroic biographies of
temperance activists. Pamphlets were produced by the hundreds, while advocates effec-
tively propagandized across all available media platforms and produced a wide range of
accompanying striking visualizations of the evils of drink, particularly in domestic settings.
Temperance movements and campaigns waxed and waned over the course of the second
half of the nineteenth century, but the movement’s decentralized and nimble local structures
benefitted enormously from a coherent set of widely shared core ideas and perspectives on
Figure 7.2 Plate II of George Cruikshank’s “The Bottle,” 1847. From a series of eight etchings
depicting the effects of alcoholism. The caption reads: “He Is Discharged from His Employment
for Drunkenness: They Pawn Their Clothes to Supply the Bottle.” Image by Hulton Archive via
Getty Images.

the alcohol problem that could be drawn upon to argue for social and legal change, be it
dramatic or incremental. Local-optionists, state-level prohibitionists, and more radical advo-
cates of national reformations alike could draw upon an accepted set of perspectives about
the urgent need for action, and the difficulties to be anticipated in affecting it. While reason
was often subordinated to emotional appeal in temperance propaganda, proponents of the
cause agreed broadly on a range of important points, a consensus emphasized across a
wide range of books, pamphlets, and tracts of varying degrees of sophistication.
First, they agreed that alcohol was a, if not the, primary font of all moral corruption, social
and individual. While some individuals were particularly susceptible or likely to be corrupted,
all were vulnerable and the consequences of alcohol use were bad for all, particularly
women and children. The family was the critical battlefield in the struggle against alcohol
and the struggle against it was legitimately framed in emotional and moral terms in temper-
ance movements around the world. Hugely popular temperance tales in the United States
often followed formulaic narratives about formerly virtuous young men descending into
destitution, violence, and death following their first temptation with alcohol (Reynolds and
Rosenthal 1997: 3–4). Many temperance publications focused in grisly detail on domestic
violence and the murders of wives by drunken husbands. Accounts of women being bludg-
eoned, stabbed, and shot frequently populated the pages of temperance newspapers,
short stories, and novels (Martin 2008: 40–53).
Themes of family destitution and moral breakdown also figured prominently in the slide
shows, cartoons, and film reels used to striking effect by the Band of Hope children’s society
Figure 7.3 Plate VI of George Cruikshank’s “The Bottle,” 1847. From a series of eight etchings
depicting the effects of alcoholism. The caption reads: “Fearful Quarrels, and Brutal Violence, Are
the Natural Consequences of the Frequent Use of the Bottle.” Image by Hulton Archive via Getty
Images.

in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (McAllister 2012: 5–10). Worker-
driven temperance organizations in France in the early twentieth century made use of the
cinema to screen anti-alcohol films depicting women suffering familial oppression at the
hands of drunken husbands, as well as workplace exploitation (Prestwich 1980: 48–51). The
South African Temperance Alliance, formed in 1893, coordinated the efforts of international
organizations as well as local churches, and advanced arguments about the detrimental
effects of alcohol on the family, domestic relationships, and child health (Nugent 2011: 351).
Moreover, because of their role in the family, women were essential advocates for neces-
sary social change around the alcohol issue. Women were deemed more vulnerable to
the essential degradations associated with alcohol use, both because female intoxication
was less “natural” and more socially harmful, and because women and children suffered in
particularly poignant (and propagandistically colorful!) ways from male degradation through
alcohol abuse by both sons and fathers. The Prohibition Party in the United States, for
instance, was the first political party to include women as party members and policy shap-
ers because of their special, gendered affinity for the temperance cause. Together with the
WCTU, with whom the Prohibition Party worked informally and formally in the 1880s, their
campaigns emphasized the moral and family-oriented nature of women as uniquely placed
to tackle what they saw as the deeply corrupt ties that joined together drinkers, saloons, and
mainstream party politics (Andersen 2013: 61–93).
Second, temperance advocates generally agreed that the consumption of alcohol was
growing, and the increasingly industrial and impersonal nature of alcohol’s production,
especially regarding spirits, was producing a pathological juncture of individual and market
interests that threatened the developing social order in fundamental ways as interested
parties exploited the alcohol trade and encouraged consumption. They argued that patterns
of consumption endemic to contemporary societies were corrupting of individuals and
offered a fundamental and nearly universal obstacle to both social and spiritual development.
Historical evidence from the period 1850 to 1950, as discussed by James Kneale in this
volume, shows that overall alcohol consumption rates actually decreased in many places, or
were lower than in previous eras, yet there was a universal trend across European and North
American temperance groups in perceiving alcohol abuse as an exponentially increasing
problem amongst the industrial working classes. The increasingly obvious and widespread
social difficulties associated with urbanization and industrialization were intimately bound up
with this perception of widespread use and abuse of alcohol. As Rod Phillips has observed
“Alcohol became the focal point of many anxieties, whether they concerned social and
economic changes or shifts in values and behavior. It was held responsible for sickening or
killing its consumers, for ruining families, and for causing behavior as varied as prostitution,
suicide, insanity, and criminality” (2014: 173). Distilled drinks were singled out for censure
in most places, being seen as particularly dangerous for their industrial, mass-produced, or
synthetic origins, in contrast to more “natural” drinks like wine and beer. The case for prohib-
iting absinthe in Switzerland and France, for instance, was given a boost by the criminal
case of Jean Lanfray, who murdered his pregnant wife and two daughters in 1905. His trial
focused on whether he had been driven to insanity and violence by absinthe consumption;
the fact that he also regularly consumed up to six bottles of wine a day was not considered
relevant, due to the still widely accepted view (at least in France) that wine was a natural, and
therefore harmless, beverage (Phillips 2014: 181).

Figure 7.4 “L’absinthe allegory,” 1883. An allegorical engraving on the dangers of absinthe, by M.
G. Darré. From Le Monde Illustré. Image by David Nathan-Maister, Science and Society Picture
Library via Getty Images.
Third, Christian churches and their congregants, as a matter of first importance to their
own mission, needed to be enlisted as the primary institutions to counter the juncture of
interest and human weakness that left alcohol, unchecked, at the center of social order.
Moreover, collective political action, not mere individual self-improvement or voluntary
association in “temperance societies,” was essential to reversing these developments.
Alcohol interests needed to be checked by popular and elite pressure on the state and from
the state; state power needed to be aligned with decreasing consumption. Increasingly,

temperance campaigns combining religious, secular, and political bodies lobbied for
state-led change regarding alcohol. The collection of state revenue from alcohol taxes and
licensing often became the focus of their attacks. The Minnesota Radical, a newspaper of
the United States’ Prohibition Party, in 1877 took issue with the Internal Revenue Act of
1862, governing the licensing of liquor sales, on these grounds. It argued the federal govern-
ment had “become partners in the infamous business of drunkard making by receiving into
the public treasury a portion of the blood money drawn from the pockets of the deluded and
insane victims of the accursed traffic” (Andersen 2013: 14). The Anti-Saloon League, much
more influential than the Prohibition Party, spread out from its base in grassroots Protestant
congregations to exert major pressure on electoral processes in support of politicians willing
to disavow the alcohol industry and support local, state, and, eventually, national prohibition
laws. Their millions of pamphlets attacked not only the moral and social evils, but also the
political corruption, they traced to the saloon (Lender and Martin 1987: 127–8). The United
Kingdom Alliance, which became Britain’s largest temperance society in the latter half of the
nineteenth century, likewise opposed the alcohol trade or as Samuel Pope, a prohibitionist
lawyer, termed it, the “legalized system of temptation,” lobbying Parliament and supporting
temperance politicians to undo the liberalization of the drinks trade that had occurred earlier
in the century (Yeomans 2014: 69).
The logic of these mutually reinforcing principles encouraged temperance activists
throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in a range of national settings
to forge cross-class organizations to tackle the alcohol problem, to support movements
leading to political rights for women, to attempt to move temperance concerns to matters
of first principle within religious denominations and individual congregations, and to
link their cause with broader democratic political movements and conversations about
national interest and well-being. Temperance attracted many utopian and social reform-
ers of the nineteenth century, particularly those with a Christian orientation, including
Owenites, Shakers, and Millerites. Some founded temperance communities such as the
towns of Harriman, Tennessee, Prohibition Park on Staten Island, and Harvey, Illinois,
where prospective homeowners had to sign deeds promising to neither sell, store, nor
consume alcohol on their property, in return for being able to live in virtuous, prosperous,
and orderly communities untainted by the problems associated with liquor (Andersen
2013: 152–70).
Temperance activists predominated among the early leadership of other Atlantic World
reform movements such as the abolitionist and early women’s movement. This is most
clearly evident in the reforming careers of activists such as Frances Power Cobbe (1822–
1904), William Lloyd Garrison (1805–79), Frederick Douglas (1818–95), Elizabeth Cady
Stanton (1815–1902), Lucy Stone (1818–93), Amelia Bloomer (1818–94), Susan B. Anthony
(1820–1906), and, perhaps in its most fully developed form, the “do everything” mantra of
WCTU leader Frances Willard (1839–98). But it can also be tracked in the development of a
full range of temperance organizations and in the smaller stories of effective advocates like
the Irish Quaker James Haughton (1795–1873) and in the long-lasting rhetoric connecting,
amongst other things, freedom from alcohol to liberty in general. John Russell, an American
activist writing in prohibitionist journal The National Freeman, for instance, made the case
for prohibition as a form of emancipation in 1881: “bad as African slavery was in its time, it
did not curse humanity so deeply as does the infinitely more degrading vice of bondage to

the demon of strong drink” (Andersen 2013: 24). Such activists championed temperance
in conjunction with a range of other reforming activities and found in temperance an ideal
companion ideology for other efforts to organize progressive social change. By fusing calls
for individual rationality, personal moral improvement, and progressive social reform through
voluntary association as well as legal and political mechanisms, temperance reinforced both
populist democratic reform efforts and elite paternalism.
While it achieved numerous political successes (state-level prohibition across much of
the United States by the early twentieth century, the success in parts of Britain of “local
option,” and of course the wartime and post-war high water marks of widespread prohibi-
tion in the United States, Canada, and Scandinavia), temperance ideology failed on its own
terms over the course of this century, despite repeated efforts by myriad organizations,
either to attain a dominant position within existing religious structures, or to achieve political
and social leverage sufficient to achieve comprehensive and lasting social transformation.
Temperance organizations as they developed were often marked by racial, regional, and
sectarian divisions. Temperance’s unifying power as an ideology was overestimated, and
confidence in temperance as a primary path to a progressive future remained limited. In its
evolving relationships to faith communities and theologies, other emergent ideologies, and
to the growing determination to organize, regulate, and rationally improve society, temper-
ance increasingly became a subordinate ideology, even though the systematic critique of
alcohol as a culminating and summative source of social and cultural dysfunction continued
to have strong and sustained appeal.
The relationship between temperance and organized religion across the west provides
the clearest and most consequential example of the powerful, but ultimately limited appeal
of temperance ideology. Because the ideology of temperance depended on effective
alliance between church(es) and states, this failure was central to the cause’s limited
success, on its own terms. Among Protestant denominations, in particular, temperance
made great progress and received substantial support from Presbyterian, Methodist, and
Baptist church organizations, leading over time to the formation of powerful advocacy
groups such as the Methodist Board of Temperance and Prohibition. But ambivalences
among members and ministers, and personal and regional divisions over sacramental
exceptions, over the proper boundaries of political activity, and over the centrality of teeto-
tal pledges to Christian discipleship eroded complete commitment to the cause across
most denominations to varying degrees. The tendency for support for temperance to
concentrate in traditions with weaker overarching organizational structures was marked,
and reinforced the need for officially non-denominational groups such as the Woman’s
Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League in the United States, and the
United Kingdom Alliance in Britain.
Temperance in an Ideological Age

Socialism
If there was an enduring, yet complex, mutual relationship between Protestantism and
temperance, there was an equally widespread, yet complicated, link between temperance
and socialism, broadly defined, in the age of industry, empire, and war. Temperance as an

ideology has often been associated with the ascent of middle-class values, and its close
focus on the adverse impact of drinking on both poverty and morality meant that temper-
ance ideas did often depend on a patronizing or paternalistic attitude toward the poor.
However, many workers’ movements took up the temperance cause just as enthusiasti-
cally as did Protestant churches. In the UK, the first wave of temperance activism in the
1830s was concentrated in northern industrial cities and driven by an ethos of working-class
self-improvement. Joseph Livesey, a cheese-maker, founded the Preston Temperance
Society, which was a working-class association and the first to advocate for teetotalism.
Working-class teetotalers viewed alcohol as a means of oppression: sobriety was essential
for the development of political consciousness and the temperance societies they estab-
lished often had strong links to the early labor movement (Phillips 2014: 198; Yeomans
2014: 48–50; Pilcher 2015: 169). The Washingtonians and Catholic Total Abstinence Union
in the United States and the St Patrick’s Total Abstinence Society in Sydney, Australia,
also appealed predominantly to working-class members with their ethos of self-help and
systems of mutual aid, practical and financial forms of assistance such as sick pay (Walsh
1991: 71–2; Allen 2011: 382; Pilcher 2015: 169).
There was a strong rationale for socialist support of temperance. Some leading socialist
advocates of temperance, such as Philip Snowden in Britain and Adolfo Zerboglio in France,
argued that alcohol was an “opiate of the masses,” contributing to workers’ exploitation in a
variety of ways. The profit motive of the alcohol trade encouraged excessive consumption,
exacerbating the material and physical impoverishment of its consumers, while drinking
itself made workers less likely to engage in organized labor movements and political activ-
ism. However, this was a far from universally accepted position amongst socialists, not least
because drinking usually played a key role in working-class (and especially male) sociability.
Other trade unionists campaigned for greater workers’ control over the brewing and distill-
ing industries or even their full nationalization (Walsh 1991: 71–2; Pilcher 2015: 170). As
Stephen Jones (1987) has highlighted, the British Labour Party in the early twentieth century
exemplified the divided position of socialists on the drink question. The Labour Campaign
for the Public Ownership and Control of the Liquor Trade, launched in 1919, represented
one common position, which argued for the nationalization of the drink trade to remove
the profit principle that incentivized excessive consumption. This campaign pointed to the
successes of the Carlisle Experiment, implemented during the First World War, where the
state took ownership of local breweries and licensed premises, restricted opening hours,
and pioneered a pub improvement project to make pubs more family-friendly and respect-
able, and less focused on drinking. A second position was adopted by libertarian socialists,
often with strong links to Working Men’s Clubs, who insisted that liberty for working people
meant the right to make their own decisions, uninhibited by state interference in personal
habits. Moreover, accepting that drinking beer, alongside other entertainments, was a just
reward for hard work, they resented overly strict licensing laws and inflated prices. Finally, a
third strand of the Labour Party was represented by the Trade Union and Labour Officials’
Temperance Fellowship between 1905 and the 1920s and the Workers’ Temperance
League in the 1930s. They argued that abstinence—even prohibition—was necessary for
the liberation of workers from poverty and exploitation, and for the development of political
consciousness. Alfred Salter, MP for West Bermondsey, exemplified this position in 1926,
writing (about his constituents) that

The beer is purchased at the expense of their milk, their boots, their well-being. A
poor home might have been made brighter, little bodies might have been a trifle better
nourished if the money had not gone in drink. Yes, and the minds of the parents might
have been keener, clearer, sturdier for the fight to abolish poverty and social injustice,
if that money had been spent on something less deadening and narcotic than alcohol.
(Jones 1987: 117–18)
French socialists were similarly divided on the alcohol question. Although the early
temperance movement in France was dominated by the political and intellectual elite
and did not reach a wide audience, at the turn of the twentieth century there was a
concerted effort to reach out to the working classes through labor movement associa-
tions, as well as various Catholic and Protestant organizations, and to ally the temperance
message with campaigns for better working conditions, housing, and education. Most
trade unions and a branch of the Socialist Party interpreted alcohol abuse as a product of
“industrial capitalism … a useful tool created by the industrial bourgeoisie to keep work-
ers docile, ignorant and poverty-stricken,” but tended to view temperance activism as a
distraction from their main cause of overthrowing the capitalist system. Arguing that alco-
holism “would disappear with the worker revolution,” they were reluctant to engage with
temperance organizations, concentrating instead on building up the militancy of the labor
movement. Others within French socialism criticized this stance as an excuse for inaction
and insisted that workers “brutalized by drink” would be incapable of effecting a revolu-
tion or meaningful social change. This interpretation was taken up by the Association des
travailleurs antialcooliques, established in 1909 and later known as the Fédération des
ouvriers antialcooliques. This organization stressed that drinkers were “unreliable in times
of strikes, were unfaithful union members, and would always settle for lower wages and
poor working conditions,” undermining the entire enterprise of socialist change (Prestwich
1980: 39–47).
In early twentieth-century Russia, socialist leaders, unions, and the press likewise sought
to promote a temperance-influenced ideal of “conscious” workers, committed to sobriety,
rationality, self-control, education, and activism as a means of improving workers’ condi-
tions and rights. After the 1917 Revolution, sobriety was incorporated into Soviet state
ideology as part of the construction of the socialist new man, dedicated to progress and
productivity, while propagandistic images of drinking and drunkenness were associated
with counter-revolutionary forces or enemies of the state. This ideological position drove
the implementation of stringent anti-alcohol laws between 1917 and 1921, which were
then gradually ameliorated in part due to widespread resistance from workers themselves
(Phillips 1997: 26–7, 32–3; Phillips 2014: 257–9).
In the pre-revolutionary years, organized workers had on key occasions used “sobri-
ety as a weapon against the tsarist state,” boycotting alcohol to deprive the state of the
revenue derived from its monopoly control of the alcohol trade. However, in the context of
Soviet anti-alcohol laws and propaganda that so viciously attacked drinking, which was an
integral part of working-class sociability, many laborers reacted by defending their right to
drink using the language of the revolution itself to insist that the workers’ revolution should
be celebrating, not denigrating, working-class culture (Phillips 1997: 30–41). Socialists in
Mexico also opposed alcohol for its association with the poverty and general “backward-
ness” of its lower-class population, as well as for its use as a form of pay in oppressive

Figure 7.5 Beat the enemy of the cultural revolution poster, 1930. From the Russian State Library,
Moscow. Image by Heritage Images via Getty Images.

systems of debt peonage. The populist socialist governor of Yucatan, Felipe Carrillo Puerto,
devoted part of his inaugural address in 1922 to this anti-alcohol message:
It is a great mistake to go to the cantinas and spend money that you worked hard to
earn, [leaving it] in the hands of the octopuses and spongers who never want the people
to progress and better themselves. I ask all of you to promise me with all of your hearts
that you will never go to the cantinas to get drunk, because if you keep doing it, the
working people will be held back forever. (Fallaw 2002: 48)
Although socialist ideas about temperance led to some state-level prohibition laws in Mexico,
and also garnered substantial grassroots support, the anti-alcohol position was undermined
by a widespread black market which had the involvement of prominent politicians and the
importance of alcohol to popular forms of sociability and political participation (Fallaw 2002;
Phillips 2014: 271–3).
Nationalism
In most places where temperance flourished, campaigns against alcohol took on height-
ened importance when connected to debates about the state of the nation and “fears about
national decline” (Pilcher 2015: 174). In France, the temperance movement only really took
hold after the 1870 defeat in the Franco-Prussian War: the defeat was partly attributed to the
increasing consumption of industrial spirits having weakened the population in moral, phys-
ical, and psychological terms. Degeneration theory and eugenicist thinking added further
urgency to the alcohol question’s implications for national strength in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. These theories suggested that people with inherited disabilities
and deviant tendencies—including alcoholism, variously defined—should be prevented from
reproducing in order to protect the national stock. The First World War increased the impact
of this kind of thinking, particularly in Europe, as did the emergence of fascism. During the
First World War, the French imposed rigorous restrictions on alcohol for both civil and military
populations, under the influence of vocal warnings of temperance groups about the perils of
spirits consumption for fertility, health, and strength that would undermine the war effort and
post-war recovery (Phillips 2014: 202–7, 240–1, 251–2). Similarly in Britain, defeat in the
Boer War in the late nineteenth century spurred much debate about “national efficiency and
racial degeneration,” leading to new approaches to dealing with the alcohol problem. These
included the Inebriates Act of 1898, which provided for the containment of habitual drunk-
ards in reform asylums, and increased rates of taxation on drink. In 1914, the wife of then
Chancellor, David Lloyd George, described alcohol as one of the “great evils which were
paralysing our national resources,” while the Chancellor himself famously declared a year
later, in the midst of the First World War, that “we are fighting three foes, Germany, Austria
and Drink: and as far as I can see the greatest of these deadly foes is Drink” (Yeomans 2014:
99–101). Emerging research into fascist Italy and Nazi Germany demonstrates heightened
state concerns about the relationship between alcohol, national strength, productivity, and
social order in the 1920s and 1930s. At the same time, the Nazis promoted wine-drinking
through rural festivals emphasizing the Roman roots of German culture in an attempt to
erode consciousness of class difference, and the Italian fascist regime planted informants in
bars to monitor potentially subversive behavior (Fabian 2018; Ferris 2018).

In the United States, too, Nativist forms of nationalism meant that anti-alcohol ideas and
policies gained greater support in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, since
rapidly rising immigrant populations—mostly from Catholic, southern and eastern European
backgrounds—were associated with drinking and its associated social problems. As national
prohibition legislation went before Congress in 1917, the heightened patriotism engendered
by America’s entrance into the First World War added further emotional weight to attacks on
German-American-owned breweries and appeals to national efficiency through abstinence
(Clark 1976: 124–9; Lender and Martin 1987: 125–30; McGirr 2016: 27–35). While the
patriotic climate intensified by the First World War has long been recognized by historians
as helping to ensure the rapid passage of national prohibition law in the United States,
as has the longer history of anti-immigrant sentiment shaping the temperance movement,
the heightened association between white Protestant nationalism and prohibitionism during
the Prohibition era itself (1920–33) has often been overlooked. As Lisa McGirr explains, the
revival and expansion of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, attracting up to 5 million members by
1925, owed much to the implementation of the prohibition law, and the depiction of violators
of the law as enemies of the nation. Klan activists believed that African Americans, Jews,
Catholics, and immigrants in general comprised a morally corrupt fifth column, undermining
the social order embodied by the anti-liquor legislation and the white Protestant nationalism
they violently upheld. Klansmen often worked with local police to conduct vigilante raids
searching for illegal liquor, targeting homes in Italian, Mexican, African American, and other
ethnic minority neighborhoods, as well as regularly publishing anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic
propaganda, demonizing their targets as orchestrators of the organized crime and moral
corruption centered on the illegal alcohol trade (McGirr 2016: 132–42).
Connections between more liberationist visions of nationalism and anti-alcohol ideas have
received somewhat greater scholarly attention. Under the influence of temperance ideol-
ogy, temperance and nationalism became closely intertwined at times in places as diverse
as Ireland, India, and Poland. In Ireland, Father Mathew’s movement, despite strenuously
emphasizing the non-political nature of his temperance organization, became associated
with Irish nationalism, particularly Daniel O’Connell’s campaign to repeal the Act of Union
which joined Britain and Ireland. Supporters of Father Mathew regarded “sobriety and polit-
ical consciousness as directly connected,” and blamed drinking for Irish political apathy,
military weakness, and vulnerability to English claims that they were unable to govern them-
selves (Allen 2011: 381. See also Moloney 1998: 9–10). Later in the nineteenth century, Irish
and Irish-American nationalists likewise viewed temperance as key to the success of the
Home Rule campaign to achieve Irish self-governance and the Land League movement to
tackle exploitative landlords. As one representative of the Land League stated at an 1885
convention of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union in Brooklyn:
The cause of Ireland had no hope of success unless Irishmen were temperate … It was
only necessary to spread temperance among the Irish and God Almighty might do the
rest. God had made the Irish naturally temperate, and if he kept from rum he would be
successful. (Moloney 1998: 10. See also Walsh 1991: 69–72)
In India, temperance also became linked to the nationalist cause in the early twenti-
eth century as a means of fostering political consciousness, but also in terms of throwing
off Western influence, which was blamed for changing alcohol consumption patterns.

Nationalists called for a return to traditional customs in which India’s various religious
traditions, from Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism to Sikhism, Jainism, and Zoroastrianism,
censured alcohol use to varying degrees. In the 1920s, Mahatma Gandhi led a campaign
picketing and boycotting liquor stores that drew on these principles as well as aiming to
reduce the income stream obtained from them by the British government (Tyrrell 2003:
308–10). In nineteenth-century Poland, strong connections were forged between temper-
ance, Catholicism, and ethnic nationalism, due to alcohol’s association with anti-Jewish
sentiment and Russian political dominance. As innkeeping was one of the few occupations
open to Jews, and serfs were more or less forced to spend their incomes in inns, anti-feudal
protests often targeted Jewish-run inns for destruction. Moreover, temperance societies
established by the Catholic Church were most widespread and popular in regions subject
to Russian partition, indicating that the strong association forged in temperance rhetoric
between freedom from alcohol and freedom from foreign rule afforded space for more prac-
tical organization for independence (Moskalewicz and Zieliński 1995: 225).
Colonialism
Temperance spread globally during this era alongside expanding European and American
influence in colonial territories, often in connection with missionary activity. The world oper-
ations of the WCTU, the International Order of the Good Templars, and the World League
Against Alcoholism were particularly active in spreading temperance ideas to settler colonial
societies, including Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, as well as colonies
in India, West Africa, and East Asia (Nugent 2011: 344–5). There was an ongoing tension
between European countries seeking to profit from the trade in alcohol to their colonies,
and the application of temperance ideology to colonial subjects, who were usually deemed
even more susceptible to alcohol-induced degeneration and moral corruption than the
poor at home because of their racial difference. Colonial ideology generally held that trade,
Christianity, and sobriety were all necessary to impart “civilization” to colonized peoples, so
the trade in alcohol—especially distilled spirits—and the tax revenue this afforded many colo-
nial governments were caught between different impulses (Phillips 2014: 216–22; Pilcher
2015: 171). But by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and with the estab-
lishment of temperance-led organizations like the United Committee for the Prevention of
the Demoralization of the Native Races by the Liquor Traffic in England, racialized concerns
about the vulnerability of non-white peoples to alcohol had led to stricter regulations in most
colonial territories, as outlined by Dan Malleck in this volume.
The temperance campaign led from 1908 by French Governor Gabriel Angoulvant in
Côte d’Ivoire provides a clear illustration of the synergy between colonial and temperance
ideologies. The French vision of colonialism in Africa had as a key component the develop-
ment of economic rationality amongst Africans, whom the French viewed as living in a state
of nature. Imposing direct taxation—a head tax—was justified in terms of giving Africans a
reason to engage in wage-earning labor. This was deeply connected to Angoulvant’s temper-
ance efforts in the colony because this approach to taxation meant the colonial government
would be less reliant on taxes from the liquor trade. Temperance campaigns concentrated
on stopping the practice of paying African laborers with distilled spirits, producing less palm
wine to protect profits in the palm oil trade, and increasing imports of French wine. Africans

were exhorted to consume French wine, which temperance activists understood to be
healthy and a means of transmitting French culture to Africans, and to avoid other alcohol
so as to increase their efficiency as laborers and taxpayers, resist their supposedly impul-
sive nature, and reduce moral degeneration and criminality. Anti-alcohol manuals instructed
Ivorians “instead to spend their money more wisely, on clothes or on furnishing their huts”
(White 2007: 668–70, 674–5).
While much temperance activity in colonial contexts rested on paternalistic, patronizing,
and racist attitudes toward colonized peoples, some temperance organizations acknowl-
edged their complicity with colonialist ideology and violence and sought to address this.
In their 1933, 1935, and 1939 conventions, the World WCTU branch in Australia adopted
resolutions in support of Aboriginal equality, rights, land ownership, and welfare (Grimshaw
1998: 211). A relatively underexplored aspect of temperance is its adoption and appeal at
times among the colonized and otherwise disenfranchised peoples. Africans in settings as
diverse as Ghana, Cape Colony, and Liberia fashioned their own temperance movements
with complex relationships to dominant temperance ideology, but with important conse-
quences for local social and political development. King Ghartey IV, for instance, established
a temperance society in the Gold Coast in 1862, after returning from travel to Britain, while
Nigerian leaders petitioned colonial authorities to stop the trade in alcohol (Phillips 2014:
218; Pilcher 2015: 172). In the United States, temperance ideas and practices achieved
considerable traction in a wide range of African American associations. Similarly to the Irish
immigrant communities seeking to dispel negative ethnic stereotypes in Australia and the
United States, African Americans engaged with temperance to counter racial stereotypes of
Black people being driven by passions and lacking self-restraint, as well as to enhance their
options for social uplift. In doing so, they drew on temperance rhetoric that had likened drink-
ing to a form of enslavement. William Wells Brown, for instance, an abolitionist, writer, and
temperance activist, advanced a broad concept of temperance as the “restraint of passions”
of all sorts, indicting slavery, economic exploitation, and drunkenness alike as forms of
incivility driven by the passions of greed and desire (Stewart 2011: 5–11). Temperance prin-
ciples were adapted and adopted among many Native American nations to serve cultural
revivalist and sovereignty agendas, most notably in the Six Nations Temperance League
that descended from Handsome Lake’s (1735–1815) movement among the Seneca but
continuing in many forms, including, for example, the Cherokee Temperance Society and
the temperance provisions of the Ghost Dance Movement of the 1890s (Abbott 1999: 40–2;
Ishii 2003: 671–2, 687–8).
Conclusion
Temperance was at the center of the relationship between alcohol, religion, and ideology,
exhibiting great power to direct and shape social change in the century from 1850 to 1950.
Contrary to some popular misconceptions, rooted in a caricatured representation of the
United States’ experience with national prohibition, temperance was not just the preserve of
middle-class Protestant evangelicals, nor was it fundamentally a top-down movement aimed
at tightening social control. Evangelical Protestantism had a close and enduring relationship
with the emergence and development of temperance activism to be sure, but non-Protes-
tant religions as well as secular workers’ organizations also took up the temperance cause

in a variety of contexts, and many social groups used temperance in conjunction with other
efforts to control and shape change. Moreover, as temperance developed into a mature
ideology itself it intersected with other ideologies of dominance and resistance in multiple
ways, and with broader movements of social reform. The logic of that ideology and its
principles led a diverse array of activists across the West and beyond to dedicate them-
selves to profound social and personal transformations. If the end results were not societies
freed from the destructive negative consequences and corruptions of alcohol, and the effec-
tive end of alcohol’s important role in the development of trade, capitalism, and the global
marketplace, the social, political, and cultural legacies of this period of intense activism were
astonishingly consequential. Temperance, progress, and political activism became closely
intertwined throughout the northern Atlantic world and the world they influenced.

8 CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS
DEBORAH TONER
Introduction
Cultural representations of alcohol between 1850 and 1950 fall into three major strands.
First, temperance and prohibition were depicted as solutions to various social problems
that alcohol was perceived to cause. Second, alcoholism was increasingly examined as a
medical condition in its own right, and as symbolic of individual and social pathologies. And,
third, drunken consciousness was seriously explored in terms of its relationship to artistic
perception and individual subjectivities in both positive and negative ways.1 The period was
marked by considerable variation in the relative dominance of these types of representation
and their relationship to the social position of alcohol. The moral certainties of early temper-
ance narratives in the mid-nineteenth century gave way to much greater ambivalence in the
depiction of alcohol by the early twentieth century, when prohibitionism was in its heyday.
The development of medical and psychological ideas about alcohol addiction also helped to
produce artistic explorations of various alcoholic pathologies. However, cultural representa-
tions of alcohol did not simply replace moral with medical frameworks for understanding
alcohol’s effects on individuals and society, but became more complex, multi-layered, and
ambivalent in their treatment of alcohol.
Temperance and Prohibition

Temperance Narratives
Although emerging in the first half of the nineteenth century, temperance narratives remained
widespread in visual culture, literature, and the performing arts throughout the century, espe-
cially in England and the United States, where temperance plays were often sell-outs and
temperance stories were printed in high circulation daily newspapers. A classic feature of
these moralistic works is the descent of a, usually male, central character down the slippery
slope of drinking, whose alcohol consumption often begins in an innocuous and innocent
manner but quickly spirals toward moral, physical, economic, and social ruin for him and his
family (Lander 2003: 64; Cordell 2008: 4).2 Numerous scholars have highlighted the typically
gendered, melodramatic, and formulaic nature of these narratives, in which the destructive
male drinker can be redeemed through the moral purity and intervention of a long-suffering
female character—a wife or daughter—whose terrible suffering at the hands of the drinker
is structurally necessary for his return to sobriety (Warner 1997b: 180–8; Frick 2003: 200;
Lander 2003: 71; Cordell 2008: 5–7). In other cases, the pains inflicted on the wives and
daughters go unrewarded, with the drinker following a “linear path to destruction” after his
first taste of alcohol (Frick 2003: 200–1). Punishing the drinker rather than allowing for his
narrative redemption was more common in British temperance plays than early American
ones, although as American temperance literature became more sensationalist, graphically
violent, and lurid by the 1840s and 1850s, the emphasis on the drinker’s potential to reform
was less pronounced (Reynolds 1997: 23–7; Frick 2003: 200–1).
Timothy Shay Arthur’s Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There (1854) exem-
plifies many of these features. It was “the most popular temperance novel ever published
in America,” selling over 400,000 copies, and was later adapted successfully for both the
stage and the silver screen. Featuring three murders, scenes of graphic violence, and
frightening hallucinations, Arthur’s work dwells in dark detail on the destruction wrought by
alcohol consumption and numerous characters are helpless to resist its power. The most
memorable story-line focuses on the sober redemption of Joe Morgan, who promises his
young daughter Mary that he will never drink again after she is fatally wounded by a glass
thrown at Joe in his regular tavern. Joe is therefore saved through the selfless suffering of
his daughter, but through the terrible fates of other drinking characters, the novel presents
an overall picture of individuals and society being overwhelmed by the influence of alcohol.
Consequently, it makes an explicit argument in favor of prohibitionist legislation as the only
solution to the problem of alcohol, arguing that “The young, the weak, and the innocent
can no more resist its assaults, than the lamb can resist the wolf. They are helpless if you
abandon them to the powers of evil” (Qtd in Reynolds 1997: 31. See also Frick 2003: 202).
While classic temperance plays and stories became less popular in the later nineteenth
century, an early generation of American films dealing with alcohol and drinking in the
1920s replicated many of their characteristic narrative devices. In films such as The Enemy
Sex (1924) and Daring Love (1924), the drinking problems of central male characters are
intertwined with melodramatic love stories that reinforce traditional gender roles. As in
many temperance tales, the corrupting stimulus for male drinking is often external to his
own essentially good character, although these forces tend to be linked to the changing
social environment of the 1920s. For instance, in The Curse of Drink (1922), Bill Sanford
is driven to drink by bootleggers who harass him, while male protagonists in The Foolish
Matrons (1921) and Tin Gods (1926) are driven to drink by “selfish” or “overly ambitious”
career women. The redemption of male drinkers is also commonly effected by a devoted,
self-sacrificing wife, in the classic temperance tradition, or a sympathetic woman drawn
as more fun-loving, less complicated, and of lower social status than the stereotypical
Victorian housewife. Female characters who refuse to help the male drinker, meanwhile, are
“often made to suffer” in narrative terms, and those male drinkers who fail to resolve their
alcohol problems are usually minor characters whose inability to return to sobriety is cast
as evidence of their moral inferiority to the male hero who can overcome alcohol’s curse
(Herd 1986: 220–6).
Temperance and Race

Alongside the anti-slavery movement and women’s rights movement, temperance was a
major pillar of antebellum reform in the United States and its language and ideas were
intimately bound up with those other reform movements. It was not uncommon for alco-
hol consumption to be represented as a form or condition of enslavement, and the heavy

emphasis on women’s moral purity and vulnerability to drunken men within temperance
literature raised pressing issues for the women’s movement.
DoVeanna Fulton has noted that “mainstream temperance literature and propaganda
either ignored African Americans or caricatured them in stereotypical fashion,” depicting
African Americans in northern saloons as engaging in a culture of excess (2007: 209). Such
stock racist characters were mobilized in anti-abolition fiction, in which escaped slaves and
free African Americans regularly became inveterate drunkards, with the same violence, desti-
tution, and depravity that drunkards typically wrought in temperance literature. Furthering
the anti-abolition argument, such fiction suggested that the institution of slavery protected
African Americans from a descent into drunken ruin. D. W. Griffith’s 1915 film Birth of a
Nation similarly associated alcohol use with racist stereotypes of African American crimi-
nality and loss of control, and conveyed implicit support for prohibition (Drowne 2005: 20;
Cordell 2008: 10).
African American temperance writers generally used white or racially ambiguous charac-
ters to avoid reinforcing such stereotypes, and employed images of alcohol use to challenge
other racialized assumptions (Rosenthal 1997: 156; Fulton 2007: 210–11). Frank Webb’s
The Garies and Their Friends (1857), for instance, contrasts a temperate, respectable
African American community in Philadelphia, with intemperate white characters to coun-
teract stereotypes about African American passivity and irrational violence. In doing so, it
interrogates the anti-miscegenation impetus of recent race riots and shows the value of
building African American communities around the values of temperance, restraint, and
hard work. Two characters in particular—George Stevens, the wealthy white neighbor of
the Garie family, and McCloskey, his Irish working-class lackey—victimize the Garies and
other African American characters. Stevens’s and McCloskey’s actions are fundamentally
motivated by their intemperate nature: this is manifested first as economic greed and later
as excessive consumption of alcohol, which in turn helps to fuel increasingly extreme acts
of violence and malice against the African American community (Levine 1994: 356–66).
William Wells Brown’s Clotel (1853) adopts a similar narrative strategy to critique slav-
ery itself, inverting the anti-abolition argument that slavery protected African Americans
from the evils of drunkenness, by depicting slavery as a “patriarchal institution that stim-
ulates, rather than restrains, the intemperate desires of white male masters,” whose
intoxication through “drink, power, and sexual gratification” drives much of the novel’s plot
(Levine 1997: 95–9).
America’s most famous anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher
Stowe, can also be read as a temperance novel. Alcohol is demonized throughout, even
though some characters who drink, such as Cassy and Prue, are treated sympathetically
because their recourse to alcohol is driven by the desperate circumstances in which they
live due to slavery. Ryan Cordell has argued that the novel adopts the conventional fall and
redemption narrative structure of many temperance tales, fusing alcohol and slavery as
corrupting forces that must be overcome. Tom is cast as the staple temperance figure of
the long-suffering dependent of the drunkard, in turn represented by the successive slave
owners to whom Tom is bound. Tom’s circumstances become progressively worse as he
is sold from one slave owner to the next, each of whom drinks more and is crueler than the
last. At the nadir—Tom’s death following a violent beating—the novel facilitates a redemp-
tion. The abhorrent drunkard Simon Legree, who is responsible for Tom’s death, appears to
Cultural Representations 177

die from the effects of alcohol, shortly after George Shelby, the son of Tom’s original owner,
arrives at Legree’s plantation to buy Tom back. Upon witnessing Tom’s death, George, who
is a paragon of temperate virtue, pledges to take up the cause of abolition and frees his
remaining slaves. This thorough alignment of the anti-alcohol and anti-slavery narratives is
not incidental: Cordell suggests that Stowe used the “familiar radicalism” of temperance
language and ideas to encourage her primarily white, middle-class audience to support the
“unfamiliar” radicalism of abolition (2008: 14–21. See also Warner 1997a: 143).
Critiquing Temperance and Prohibition

While broadly pro-temperance sentiments can be found in much American and British liter-
ature of the nineteenth century, proponents of sober virtue were also mocked. In the early
twentieth century, America’s national prohibition law was subject to more overt criticism
within fiction, theatre, and film, supported by some explicitly positive depictions of drinking.
Drinking was also employed in Ireland’s literary revival and in new genres of fiction, such as
the hard-boiled detective genre, to articulate alternative codes of morality to the Victorian
values of temperance.
In the early to mid-nineteenth century, Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s contri-
butions to the American Renaissance pointed to the hypocrisy of temperance reformers,
through depictions of characters who were publicly and vocally in favor of temperance but
who got drunk in secret. They also juxtaposed jovial drinking scenes with scenes showing
the negative consequences of drinking (Reynolds 1997: 35–43). Even writers who explicitly
supported temperance values gently mocked or critiqued temperance advocates. Louisa May
Alcott’s Little Women (1868–9), for instance, sees numerous characters deliberately voicing
their avoidance of alcohol because of its threat to morality, responsibility, and prosperity. But
her later fiction contained humorous references to drinking that “implied positive values of
‘conviviality’ and ‘jollity’,” and poked fun at a rigid and pompous adherence to total abstinence
(Berman 2008: 170, 176). Similarly, George Eliot paid considerable attention to the dangers of
drinking in works such as Mr Gilfil’s Love Story (1857), Janet’s Repentance (1857), and Silas
Marner (1861). However, in both Silas Marner and Felix Holt (1866), traditional English public
houses act as symbols of joviality, rural customs, and community, which the novels suggest
are being eroded by the advance of industrialization and the values of sober virtue underpin-
ning that process (Earnshaw 2000: 209–15. See also McCormack 2000: 2–4). This nostalgic
trend of depicting English public houses as bastions of “simpler and more humanist values
of a past era” continued into the twentieth century. George Orwell’s 1946 essay “The Moon
Under Water”—in which Orwell wistfully outlines the convivial, familiar, community-orientated,
Victorian-style characteristics of his ideal pub—is still influential in shaping debates about
what constitutes the “perfect” pub (Rountree and Ackroyd 2015: 102–3).
Misleading stereotypes about American prohibitionists being austere fanatics that
continue to feature in popular cultural representations of the prohibition era took firm shape
in the cultural production of 1920s America, even as temperance melodramas maintained
a strong presence in cinema. Bootleggers, rumrunners, crooked cops, speakeasies, crime
bosses, silent partners, and moonshiners all became stock features of popular literature,
plays, and films during the 1920s. Many of these narratives took no overt position on the

rights and wrongs of drinking, but casualized the violation of prohibition in the background of
such films, stories, and plays, and therefore at least implied a critique of temperance values
(Drowne 2005: 5, 31; Clark 2009: 144). Some stage productions explicitly critiqued both
the imposition and implementation of prohibition in a largely comic manner, depicting the
toothlessness of law enforcement against wealthy, fun-loving young drinkers, the struggles
of ordinary, decent fellows in circumventing the law to obtain a drink, the priggish attitudes
of prohibition supporters, and the sense of loss for male camaraderie in nostalgic remem-
brances of the saloons of old (Clark 2009: 129–33).3
One of the most iconic novels of America’s prohibition era, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun
Also Rises (1926), explicitly skewers prohibitionism and the broader social values with which
it had become associated. In a pivotal scene, the American expatriates Bill and Jake travel
through the Basque countryside, where they are invigorated by the openness, sociability,
and vitality of the local culture, which is expressed primarily through scenes of communal
drinking. The “vital social function” that drinking is shown to play in this uplifting environment
is contrasted against the “rigid restrictiveness” of contemporary American culture, exem-
plified by prohibition, as Jake and Bill talk during a break in their fishing trip. Their playful
conversation includes savagely satirical allusions to several prominent American political
and social figures—such as Anti-Saloon League leader Wayne B. Wheeler—who collec-
tively represent the puritanical worldview that produced prohibition. Their banter concludes
with Bill declaring “the saloon must go, and I will take it with me,” which, together with the
nearly constant drinking and conversations about drinking throughout the novel, symboli-
cally aligns these characters with a defiant rejection of, and escape from, the repressive,
insular, and hostile values they attribute to prohibition-era America (Schwarz 2001: 180–90.
See also Crowley 1994: 45–6; Nicholls 2000b: 88–90).
The representation of alternative moralities of drinking was also a characteristic feature of
Ireland’s literary revival in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Works within this
period were not celebratory about drinking, since many writers were concerned with reject-
ing racialized stereotypes of Irish drunkenness. However, they do tend to adopt a less black
and white moral framework regarding alcohol consumption than typical temperance narra-
tives, and this contributes to their overall critique of the Catholic church and the English state
as oppressive forces in Irish society. Playwrights such as John Synge and Sean O’Casey
created characters whose social wisdom, resilience, and vitality derived from their immer-
sion in drinking culture and the pub environment. Such characters were contrasted against
pious, self-flagellating, sober characters whose temperate values and behavior left them
no better off than their drinking counterparts (Dwyer 1986: 276–81; Lilienfield 1999: 93).
Various critiques have also commented on the ambivalent, contradictory nature of James
Joyce’s treatment of drinking: by turns he showcases the vibrancy and distinctiveness of
Irish pub culture and castigates it for perpetuating social, economic, and political problems
in Irish society. As Joe Brooker has noted, Ulysses (1922) is “testament to this double
attitude, a book so deeply immersed in booze whose central character is nonetheless
‘disgustingly sober’.” Leonard Bloom’s near teetotalism and lack of affinity for Dublin’s pub
culture are contrasted, sometimes comically, sometimes dramatically, against “the youthful
extravagance of Stephen Dedalus,” which acts as “a revolt against the bourgeois norms
which Leopold Bloom partially embodies.” However, Bloom’s sobriety and detachment from

Dedalus’s world of alcohol-fueled irreverence are also, at least in part, what enable him to
critically assess Irish nationalism and the Catholic church (Brooker 2000: 120. See also
Dwyer 1986: 282; Lilienfield 1999: 93).
The illegality of drinking during America’s prohibition era made alcohol a symbolic
vehicle for conveying the moral ambiguity of a newly forming character and genre: hard-
boiled detective fiction. Dashiel Hammett’s convention setting novels, such as The Maltese
Falcon (1930) (see Figure 8.1) and The Thin Man (1934), all feature heavy drinking central
protagonists who, while broadly working for good and just ends, are generally willing to
use nefarious methods to achieve those ends. The alcohol consumption of such iconic
characters as Sam Spade and Nick Charles is repeatedly associated with the darker side
of their work. The willingness of the detectives to drink signals their familiarity with the illegal
underworld of bootleggers and speakeasies and their uneasy relationship with law-abiding
society. At the same time, it gives them an insider access to criminals and criminal activity
that enables them to achieve results that more respectable law enforcement officers could
not. Although the legal status of alcohol in the post-prohibition period removed this symbolic
potential, heavy drinking remained central to the morally ambiguous identity of detectives in
this genre. The symbolic function of alcohol in later works shifted to mark some pathology
within the detective’s character, and helped to popularize the developing view of alcoholism
as an ambiguous combination of an individual’s moral, physiological, and psychological
pathologies by the mid-twentieth century (Filloy 1986: 254–8, 262–8).4
Figure 8.1 Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, Warner Bros, 1941. Image by Archive
Photos/Stringer via Getty Images.

Alcoholism, Deviance, and Pathologies of Drinking
While alcoholism as a concept only began to solidify in popular consciousness by the middle
decades of the twentieth century, artists and writers around the world had been explor-
ing alcohol addiction in diverse ways since at least the mid- to late nineteenth century.
Temperance narratives placed a heavy emphasis on the moral, social, and economic prob-
lems caused to individuals, families, and society by habitual drinking, but they increasingly
introduced depictions of physiological and psychological symptoms of prolonged, exces-
sive alcohol use, which also featured regularly in other fictional portraits of drinking. Realist
novels, like Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers (1836), depicted habitual drunkenness
leading to disease, hallucinations, and death, albeit without the terminology of alcoholism
(Earnshaw 2000: 196). As the concept of addiction took greater hold, alcoholic characters
frequently exhibited a standard repertoire of symptoms and behaviors, including delirium
tremens, withdrawal, trembling hands, blackouts, progressive compulsive drinking, secre-
tive drinking, self-loathing, depression, liver disease, jaundice, nervous disorders, insanity,
and physical dishevelment. This is evident, to different degrees and to name just a few exam-
ples, in texts as diverse as Émile Zola’s L’Assommoir (1877) in France, Thomas Hardy’s The
Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), and Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1945) in Britain,
Ángel de Campo’s La Rumba (1890–1) and Federico Gamboa’s Santa (1901) in Mexico,
and William Faulkner’s Pylon (1935) and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night (1934) in
the United States (Huertas García-Alejo 1985: 223–9; Gilmore 1987: 38–9; Dardis 1990:
63, 123–4; Earnshaw 2000: 218–20; Nicholls 2000a: 17; Baker 2001: 124–8; Toner 2015a:
229–43). Beyond simply expanding representations of heavy drinkers to include physiolog-
ical and psychological symptoms of alcohol abuse that were simultaneously being codified
and studied in the medical sphere, writers and artists used alcoholic characterization to
explore broader themes and issues, including degeneration, deviance, and modernity, as
well as the condition of addiction itself and the process of recovery.
Alcoholism and Degeneration

The association between alcoholism and societal degeneration was prominent in French,
Spanish, and Latin American literatures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-
ries, particularly in works concerned with the conditions of urban, working-class life.
Degeneration theory, most notably expounded in the influential work of French psychiatrists
Valentin Magnan and Benedict Morel, posited that the “physical and moral unhealthiness of
one generation led to physical, intellectual, and social decay in subsequent generations,”
and was used “to explain the widespread poverty, crime, prostitution, disease, and general
malaise that appeared as the dark side of industrial modernity.” Alcoholism was thought to
be both a major cause and consequence of this process of degeneration, with implications
for public health, national productivity, and social order (Toner 2015a: 214. See also Bynum
1984: 59–70; Sournia 1990: 98–108).
Zola’s L’Assommoir, the seventh novel in his Rougon-Macquart cycle, is probably the
most well-known literary representation of alcoholism and degeneration. The devastating
collapse of Gervaise and Coupeau into alcoholism and death is explicitly triggered by the
precariousness and hardships of working-class life, starting in earnest when Coupeau is

left unable to work as a roofer following a serious fall. The novel depicts the working-class
neighborhood in which they live as a squalid, demoralizing, and oppressive environment
that conditions their drinking behavior. There are, however, an underlying fatalism and deter-
minism that drive their relatively sudden recourse to heavy drinking in the face of mounting
personal problems. Steven Earnshaw has highlighted that “both characters consciously
choose to drink at the expense of all else,” with a will to drink that is essentially existential
in nature (2015: 205–6). That their response to both existential crises and the hardships of
their social environment is to drink compulsively, however, is also attributable to hereditary
factors. Gervaise is first described in La fortune des Rougon (1871), the first novel in the
cycle, as having been “conceived in drunkenness,” her parents both being violent drunk-
ards, and she had also inherited a physical deformity, which was commonly attributed
to the process of degeneration. Meanwhile, the accident that triggers Coupeau’s habitual
drinking recalls the death of his father, who had died from head injuries after falling from
a roofing job while drunk. Although it is the memory of this that had previously stopped
Coupeau from drinking strong liquor, suffering the same accident as his father seems to
awaken the same will to drink that it is implicitly suggested his father had once had (Huertas
García-Alejo 1985: 222).
One of Spain’s foremost literary figures of the nineteenth century, Benito Pérez Galdós,
incorporated the framework of degeneration theory into portraits of working-class
Figure 8.2 L’Assommoir theatrical poster, 1877. Poster for Theatre de l’Ambigu-Comique, with
drawings by Alfred le Petit (1841–1909), for the theatrical performance of the novel by Emile Zola
(1840–1902). Paris, Hôtel Carnavalet (Art Museum). Image by DEA/M. Seemuller, DeAgostini via
Getty Images.

drunkenness and alcoholism, at the same time as implicitly critiquing some assumptions
that underpinned degenerationist thinking. Fortunata y Jacinta (1886–7) and Angel Guerra
(1890–1), realist novels exploring working-class life and conditions in an urbanizing, industri-
alizing Spain, reproduce numerous associations that degeneration theory posited between
alcohol abuse and criminality, social deviancy, filth, insanity, laziness, and disease. The
Babel sons in Angel Guerra, for instance, are described as “parasitic and incapable of work,
living a criminal and dissolute life involving forgery, theft, gambling, smoking and drinking,”
and exhibit characteristics and conditions commonly attributed to degeneration, includ-
ing imbecility, hysteria, and epilepsy. Similarly, Mauricia’s drinking in Fortunata y Jacinta is
linked to powerful imagery of dirt, contagion, and social pathology in a pivotal scene where
Mauricia, whom the reader already knows is a prostitute, an unfit mother, and suffering from
hysteria, sits drunkenly atop a heap of manure in the grounds of a convent causing a scene
(Peris Fuentes 2003: 106–7, 111–15). However, Pérez Galdós also undermines degener-
ation theory’s insistence on the hereditary transference of immoral, unhealthy, and criminal
tendencies as an explanation for the prevalence of poverty, disease, and crime amongst
the urban working classes. By highlighting the hypocrisy of several middle-class characters
who observe the terrible conditions in which many working-class characters live, Pérez
Galdós actually points to poverty itself as the root cause of the social problems explored in
the novel, even as they are depicted in the language of social pathologies. In addition, the
heavy, compulsive drinking of several characters is driven by their experience of complex
psychological traumas inflicted by prevailing social values. Mauricia’s drinking, for instance,
is the result of her anguish at being forced to give up her daughter and join the convent
because she was judged to be sexually transgressive (Peris Fuentes 2003: 101–3, 107–8).
Mexican literature around the turn of the twentieth century similarly employed the
language of degeneration theory in its depiction of alcoholism, and reproduced many of its
key tenets, at the same time as using such representations to make broader social critiques.
Federico Gamboa’s Santa (1903) traces the progressive decline of the eponymous central
character into alcoholism, social deviancy, and death when she is shunned by her family
after falling pregnant. At a pivotal point in the novel, and at the tipping point of Santa’s
demise, a striking, extended metaphor depicts alcoholism as “a relentless war machine,
atavistically transforming the drinker from a man to a beastly animal” and associates alcohol
abuse with the conditions of working-class life in a threatening modern urban environment.
After this point in the narrative, Santa is increasingly powerless to change her fate, “falls
deeper into drunken oblivion,” and dies in a state of destitution. The inevitability of her alco-
hol-fueled demise provides an implicit critique of the prevalent social values that had driven
Santa to this precipice. At earlier stages of the narrative, Santa seeks forgiveness from,
and refuge within, her family and the Catholic Church but is unceremoniously rejected by
both. As a broadly conservative Catholic author, Gamboa is hardly attacking the family and
the Church as social institutions, but they are criticized on this point and Santa is treated
quite sympathetically throughout the novel. Instead, Gamboa seems to be suggesting that
abandoning fallen women to the dangers of the modern urban environment would further
exacerbate the cycle of moral and social degeneration that seemed visible therein; as pillars
of social order, the family and the Church ought to “prove themselves as the guardians of
the very people that the modern urban environment put most at risk” (Toner 2015a: 236–44.
See also Toner 2015b: 166–71).

Alcoholism and Modernity
All these representations of alcoholism and degeneration are set in urbanizing, industrial-
izing environments, with which the working poor struggle to cope, or through which they
are actively corrupted. In this sense, alcoholism is depicted simultaneously as a by-product
of modernity and as an obstacle to further social progress. Other literary works from the
late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, especially in Britain and the United States,
figuratively tied alcoholism and modernity together in a different manner, largely without the
pejorative class dynamics of the degeneration framework.
Several scholars have highlighted how modernist writers represent the heavy drinking
of, usually male, characters as part of their “liberation from bourgeois conventionality” and
figure addiction as a sign of modern excess and decadence, defined against older Victorian
values of restraint (Crowley 1994: 95. See also Dardis 1990: 4, 11; Crowley 1997: 166;
Nicholls 2000a: 18; Baker 2001: 19). John Crowley and Thomas Gilmore have taken the
analysis further to argue that modernist writers examined alcoholism as a disease asso-
ciated with the condition of being modern, or as a determined response to the troubling
alienation of modern existence (Gilmore 1987: 170; Crowley 1997: 167–73). Jack London’s
John Barleycorn (1913) and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night (1934) draw explicit
distinctions between alcoholics and other kinds of habitual, heavy drinkers, depicting alco-
holism as a disease of modernity that is willfully pursued as both a confrontation of, and
attempted escape from, despair at the bleak condition of modern humanity (Crowley 1994:
32–4; Crowley 1997: 167–73).
Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano (1947) is one of the most remarkable novels that
treats alcoholism in this way. The distorted narrative voice of the central alcoholic character
Geoffrey Firmin is marked by alcohol-induced hallucinations, which are depicted in such a
way as to magnify his personal struggles into an allegory for the war, death, and destruc-
tion wrought throughout the world in the mid-twentieth century. The hallucinations through
which Firmin experiences the disintegration of his marriage and his persecution in Mexico are
routinely associated with the demonic imagic landscape of Hell, evoking Dante’s Inferno and
positioning Firmin as an Everyman who embodies a universal condition of human despair.
His distorted alcoholic perception is at once conflated with, and contrasted against, other
characters’ desires to alleviate human suffering in various guises—from helping a dying
stranger in Mexico to fighting the forces of fascism in Europe—thereby suggesting the futility
of such action. As such, the novel as a whole posits that “imagination, insanity, or halluci-
nation offer a surer route to more important truths than does reason or sanity,” with Firmin’s
alcoholic self-destruction becoming a kind of noble response to the nightmare of modern
humanity (Gilmore 1987: 22–32).
The representation of alcoholism as a despairing response to modernity was also
gendered in interesting ways. Crowley has argued that alcoholism was usually gendered
as male in American modernist literature, partly as a reaction against the perceived “femi-
nization” of American society in the early twentieth century, partly as an expression of
nostalgia for the waning homosocial sociability of the saloon, and partly as a demonstration
of masculine physicality in withstanding or enduring the ill-effects of prolonged and heavy
alcohol consumption (1994: 32–4. See also Nicholls 2000a: 18). However, this gendering
of alcoholism as a manly response to modernity is challenged in some modernist literature,

Figure 8.3 Errol Flynn, Ava Gardner, José Ferrer, Tyrone Power, and Eddie Albert acting in The
Sun Also Rises, Twentieth Century Fox, 1957. Image by Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images.
such as Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926), where drinking helps to express
a moral hierarchy of characters. While it is in some ways problematic to read any of the
characters’ drinking behaviors as alcoholism, alcohol is central to the way in which almost
all characters respond to the modern condition and how their responses are morally coded.
The conflict at the heart of the novel relates to Jake’s struggle with threats to his masculine
identity and authority, produced by a genital injury sustained in the First World War and by
his tortured relationship with the sexually licentious Brett. As Crowley has highlighted, Jake’s
drinking to cope with these traumas is never short of prodigious, but he only very rarely loses
control under the influence of alcohol, in contrast to both Brett and Mike, whose drinking is
consistently associated with their excessive, uncontrolled natures. In Hemingway’s portrait,
drinking is certainly a masculine activity, but drunkenness is associated “with the threat of
gender uncertainty” and alcoholism with the loss of control and becoming “unmanned”
(1994: 47–62).
Alcoholism, Denial, and Recovery

While many temperance and other literary narratives depicted alcohol addiction, it was
not until the late nineteenth century, and increasingly in the twentieth century, that the
subjective perspectives and experiences of the alcoholic, and the psychology of alcoholism

as some kind of medical condition, were given serious literary and cinematic attention.
Nicholas Warner argues that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s fiction evolved away from classic
temperance perspectives to incorporate a more medicalized understanding of alcoholism
by the 1870s. In My Wife and I (1871) and its sequel, We and Our Neighbors (1875), the
character of Bolton is not only treated more sympathetically than temperance narratives
typically treated their habitual drunkards, but his motivation, “inner perspective,” and quest
for “self-determination” are also given primary attention (Warner 1997a: 136–7). Instead
of an omniscient narrator or another character observing Bolton’s descent into habitual
drunkenness, Bolton describes the process himself as a “loss of control,” a battle with
alcohol that he gradually loses. In addition, the novels posit that alcoholism is an “inherent
trait rather than a deliberately chosen path of sin” and that Bolton can only begin to win the
battle with alcohol by recognizing the power that it holds over him (Warner 1997a: 144–6.
See also Warner 1997b: 192–5).
By the mid-twentieth century, the idea that alcoholism was a medical and/or psycho-
logical condition was much more widespread, and narratives focusing on the workings
of an alcoholic’s mind were more common. Charles Jackson’s The Lost Weekend (1944)
follows Don Birnam through a prolonged drinking binge that the novel suggests he goes
through in a progressive, worsening pattern. During his drinking binge, Birnam’s percep-
tion is strikingly altered, as minor problems become mountainous obstacles, he wallows in
self-pity, and he imagines grandiose reasons for his failures as a writer. In sober moments,
Birnam chastises himself for such thoughts and behavior, and John Crowley has argued
that this is meant to point readers to an understanding of how drinking transforms the
mind of an alcoholic. Furthermore, the “stark realism” of the text, in representing the
effects of drinking on Birnam’s body and mind, and Birnam’s own awareness of his
drunken pretentions to grandeur serve to mock the modernist writers who had romanti-
cized “alcoholic despair” as the “inevitable response of the sensitive consciousness to the
nightmarish human condition” (Crowley 1997: 174–5. See also Crowley 1994: 140–55).
Steven Earnshaw has argued, however, that Crowley is too quick to take sides with
Birnam’s sober self in reaching this conclusion and that the interplay between Birnam’s
sober and drunken selves depicts an unresolved existential crisis of identity and purpose
(2015: 213–15, 221).
Denial and self-deception have been portrayed as central to the psychology of alcohol-
ism in a variety of literary works. Eugene O’Neill’s play The Iceman Cometh (1939) vividly
depicts the power of denial in the character of Theodore Hickman, who returns to the bar
where he used to engage in extreme, periodic drinking binges claiming to be fully sober.
He insists that his sobriety has lent him an “unshakeable peace and serenity” and that he
wants to pass his secret on to the other drinkers in the bar. As the play unfolds, it becomes
clear that he has constructed an “elaborate network of projection, denial, self-justification,
and self-deception” regarding his drinking and its consequences: it is revealed that he has
recently murdered his wife to “release” her from the pain of his recurrent drinking binges
and infidelity. He thinks of this as a merciful act, but it is also a form of revenge because he
blames his wife’s repeated forgiveness for enabling his drunken acts of betrayal (Gilmore
1987: 48–52). Long Day’s Journey into Night (1956), which was held back from publication
and performance until after O’Neill’s death because of its partly autobiographical nature,
explores the psychology of addiction within a family. Denial is a central motif, with each of

the characters refusing to accept that they have a problem with drinking or other drugs,
and that their addictions are causing the family serious difficulties. Even following apparent
breakthroughs in their relationships with one another, they revert to the same antagonis-
tic behaviors, usually after drinking (Dardis 1990: 249–50). Jane Lilienfield has suggested
that James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) has as a central structural
and narrative principle familial denial of the father’s alcoholism. Key breaks in, and textual
diversions from, Stephen Dedalus’s consciousness and narration occur repeatedly at points
where his father’s alcoholism produces financial, social, and emotional distress for the family
or where his alcoholism is about to become obvious. The deliberate evasions and elisions
in the text where alcoholic behavior and its consequences would have appeared constitute
a literary state of denial (Lilienfield 1999: 103–32).5 Similarly, F. Scott Fitzgerald effectively
hides the effects of Dick Divers’s drinking problem until the final third of Tender Is the Night
(1934) by concentrating the negative behaviors associated with heavy drinking—violence,
loss of self-control, anger, slovenliness—in a separate character, Abe North, for most of the
novel (Crowley 1994: 72–81. See also Gilmore 1987: 102–3).
By the middle of the twentieth century, a new direction in representations of alcohol-
ism—the recovery narrative—began to emerge, mobilizing the definition of alcoholism as
a disease advocated by groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), and positioning AA
as the most appropriate treatment for recovery. Films of the late 1940s and 1950s asso-
ciated alcoholism with psychological conflicts and personality problems, with Billy Wilder’s
1945 adaptation of The Lost Weekend making a big impact on audiences and attracting
critical acclaim. Days of Wine and Roses (1962) reveals the significant influence of AA in
shaping representations of alcoholism, with attendance at AA meetings being depicted as
fundamental to the process of recovery. It also signals the more common representation of
female as well as male alcoholics, and a recurrent association of alcoholism with dysfunc-
tional marriages, the frustrations of domesticity, and psychological repression (Herd 1986:
231–40; Crowley 1994: 156; Laberge 2003: 236–7; Cornes 2006: 124–36, 206–19).
Drunken Consciousness
Delving into the subjectivities and psychologies of explicitly alcoholic characters was only one
of the ways that writers, artists, and filmmakers used alcohol to explore the boundaries of
consciousness, perception, and identity. Intoxication, as an altered state of consciousness
or being, was frequently associated, either literally or metaphorically, with freedom, tran-
scendence, hedonism, inspiration, creative vision, or artistic detachment. Particular drinking
behaviors, specific drinks and drinking places, and experiences of drunkenness—some-
times overlapping with representations of the condition of alcoholism, but often not—were
also built into various fictional characters’ search for meaning, selfhood, and a sense of
belonging.
Metaphorical Intoxication, Being, and Perception

Some French and American literature of the middle-to-late nineteenth century associated
metaphorical images of intoxication with artistic inspiration and an authentic state of being,
contrasted against codes of sobriety and restraint as inhibitive of true self-knowledge. This

was broadly in keeping with the earlier British Romantics’ use of Bacchic images of intoxica-
tion and wine as a means of exploring the limits of artistic perception and the divided self.6
Charles Baudelaire’s prose poem “Drink!” (1869), for instance, expounded on the necessity
to “get drunk unceasingly! With wine, or poetry, or virtue, as you prefer.” This emphasizes
the importance of occupying an altered state of perception, as an act of will in the pursuit of
truth, while downplaying the act of drinking itself (Baker 2001: 63–4).
Three poems by Emily Dickinson similarly used images of intoxication, without actually
advocating drinking, to articulate a more liberated and authentic state of being than overt
self-discipline and self-denial. In “I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed” (1861), “We—Bee and I—
Live by the Quaffing” (1861, but published posthumously), and “A Drunkard Cannot Meet
a Cork” (1884, but also published posthumously), Dickinson depicts images of indulgence,
quaffing, and drunkenness to subtly critique contemporary American codes of virtue that
emphasized “restraint, discipline, self-control.” In these poems, bees feature recurrently as
symbols of intoxicating nature, defying restrictive social conventions of sobriety, embodying
exuberance, pleasure, and freedom, and subverting the more typical poetic use of bees as
symbols of industry and social convention (Mitchell 2006: 102–6). Reynolds has argued that
this places Dickinson within the “transcendental version of temperance,” alongside Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. Their work broadly approved
of the temperance goals of self-improvement and self-reliance, but viewed the methods
of mainstream temperance organizations as overly repressive and negative. Instead, they
tended to emphasize the intoxicating effect—for body, mind, and spirit—of nature, and
ordinary, everyday things, when perceived in the right way (Reynolds 1997: 43–55; Warner
1997b: 17–23, 33–65).
Intoxication and Artistic Perception

By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, heavy alcohol (and drug) use had
become much more literally entwined with artistic personae, both in terms of writers’ and
artists’ personal consumption habits and in terms of their work (Logan 1974: 93–4; Dardis
1990: 3–5). This seems to have been the case across literary scenes as diverse as England,
France, America, Russia, and Mexico, particularly amongst writers and artists engaged in
examining or critiquing modernity in its different guises. As James Nicholls has suggested,
from Baudelaire onwards, intoxication was regularly associated with “transcendence” in
modernist art and literature, but in more multifaceted and complex ways than in earlier works
and with a greater emphasis on the material act of alcohol consumption: “drink appeared
in the work of writers and artists from Manet to Picasso and Rimbaud to Apollinaire as
metynomy of, metaphor for, escape from, reaction to, engagement with, and everyday,
mundane fact of modern life” (2000a: 19).
French poet Arthur Rimbaud perhaps best exemplifies the idea that intoxication was
a fundamental facet of artistic identity and practice. He viewed the poet as a kind of
“medium” for the transmission of ideas and truths, with a responsibility to push the
limits of perception through intoxication and thus become a more open, expansive, and
exceptional transmitter: “The poet must make himself a seer by a long, immense, and
reasoned derangement of all the senses” (Baker 2001: 74–5). The Russian symbolist

poet Alexander Blok similarly depicted intoxication as a means of stimulating artistic
vision and pointing to the unknowable line between dreams and reality. In “The Unknown
Woman” (1906), Blok’s narrator is drinking and surrounded by drinkers in a scene of
decadence and debauchery. This “atmosphere of drunkenness” is used to imbue the
poem with a “purposeful lack of clarity”: in describing the woman of his vision—a pros-
titute—the narrator himself seems unsure whether she is “real or only part of a drunken
dream” (Pratt 1986: 295–7).
Absinthe was the drink of choice for turn-of-the-century intellectuals seeking to push the
boundaries of perception. By the late nineteenth century, absinthe had acquired a sinister
reputation in western Europe as a particularly intoxicating and dangerous drink, a reputa-
tion that numerous writers and artists famed for drinking it helped to foster. Absinthe and
absinthe drinkers were the subject of several paintings by Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas,
and Pablo Picasso—amongst others—conveying a sense of isolation, alienation from soci-
ety, despair, and depression (Barrows 1987: 15; Baker 2001: 119–20, 132–3; Harrington
2003: 61–2). In “Absinthe: The Green Goddess” (1918), Aleister Crowley claimed absinthe
produced a distinct kind of intoxication that, although burdening its “victims” with “a ghastly
aureole all their own,” could “cleanse, fortify and perfume the human soul” and help the
artist separate his perception from his physical self (Baker 2001: 14). In similarly ominous
yet admiring tones, Oscar Wilde described how absinthe led its drinkers through layers of
perception to a confrontation with the stark reality of existence: “After the first glass, you see
things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you
see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world” (Baker 2001:
31). The terrible revelatory power of absinthe is conveyed memorably in Ernest Dowson’s
prose poem “Absintha Taetra” (1899), where drinking absinthe takes the drinker through a
journey of experience by turns magnificent, frightening, and humiliating, at the same time
as leading him nowhere, with the repetitive refrains “He drank opaline” and “nothing was
changed” (Baker 2001: 52–3).7
Other writers built alcohol’s role in establishing the artistic persona through altered percep-
tion into their narrative structures and linguistic forms. Rubén Campos, a Mexican writer
who was part of a Spanish American literary movement known as modernismo—distinct
from European and North American modernisms—depicted Mexico’s turn-of-the-century
literary scene in his fictionalized memoir El bar (1935). The bohemian lifestyle of Mexico’s
poets, novelists, and artists is depicted as centering on the “bar” (or cantina), and drinking
heavily is associated with their spirit of “artistic inspiration and intellectual discovery.” The
ups and downs of various intellectuals’ drinking careers, many of which result in prema-
ture death, are structurally intertwined with the narrative’s exploration of major political
and cultural changes brought by the 1910 Revolution in Mexico. While the alcohol-fueled
atmosphere of the “bar” is the birthplace of this literary generation of the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, it also directly leads to its death, as various protagonists
die as the Revolution begins to break out and a new cultural movement replaces the old
(Toner 2015b: 172–7). James Joyce’s modernist masterpiece Ulysses (1922), meanwhile,
integrates the idea of alcohol facilitating artistic creativity into the novel’s linguistic tech-
niques. Brooker has highlighted that the novel’s key formal principle is mimicking through
language—both dialogue and narration—of the settings and experiences that are being

Figure 8.4 “The Absinthe Drinker,” by Edgar Degas, 1876. Paris, Musée D’Orsay (Art Gallery).
Image by DEA/G. Dagli Orti, DeAgostini via Getty Images.
described or performed. So, as the protagonists move through a “series of drinking places”
in the second half of the novel, their words and deeds are expressed with increasing verbal
extravagance, “as though the narrative voice is becoming gradually more tipsy along with
Dublin itself” (Brooker 200: 108–9).

The Drunken Self and Drinking Psychologies
Earnshaw has argued that the drunken self became the subject of “serious artistic atten-
tion” in Europe and America from the second half of the nineteenth century, especially in
the figure of the “Existential drinker … who seeks to define an authentic self in the process
of being repeatedly or continuously drunk” (2015: 204–7). Vincent Van Gogh’s “Night Café
at Arles” (1888) depicts a melancholy scene of several individuals in a lower-end café, or
grog-shop, that positions drinking as a means of breaking down, destroying, and potentially
re-making the self, which is available only to those who consciously choose to abandon
social and moral conventions through their “will to drink.” Jack London’s John Barleycorn:
Alcoholic Memoirs (1913) similarly attributes to alcohol the power to expose the bleak truths
at the heart of existence and, thus, to create an authentic self that exists in and through
the knowledge of life’s meaninglessness (Earnshaw 2015: 206, 209–12. See also Crowley
1994: 19–21).
In Ernest Hemingway’s work, meanwhile, drinking and drunkenness serve both to
explore the inner constitution of individual selves and to restore to those selves some social
purpose. Nicholls has noted that the ubiquity of drinking in many of Hemingway’s works is
neither incidental nor merely indicative of the author’s relationship to alcohol as others have
suggested, but is always involved in the working out of “existential identifications” within
characters’ psyches and of “social relations” between characters. Moreover, these two
Figure 8.5 “The Night Café at Arles,” by Vincent Van Gogh, 1888. New Haven, Yale University Art
Gallery. Image by Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images.

processes are often textually intertwined through drinking scenes and drunken conversa-
tions (2000b: 86–8). A pivotal scene in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) sees Robert Jordan,
an American college professor working with a group of Republican guerrillas in the Spanish
Civil War, usurp the authority of Pablo, the guerrillas’ leader, through a “ritualized drinking
contest.” While the two men discuss the viability of Robert’s plan to blow up a strategically
important bridge, Pablo pointedly refuses to offer Robert a cup of wine, and Robert then
takes out a hipflask of absinthe, mixes it with water, and tells Pablo there isn’t enough left
for him, before Pablo claims to dislike absinthe anyway. Drawing on the symbolic weight
of absinthe as a drink of terrible power, embraced only by those fearless or determined
enough to accept the dark revelations it can afford, this scene helps to establish Robert’s
credentials as a man of true insight, leadership, and action (Nicholls 2000b: 90–7. See also
Baker 2001: 145–6).
Destructive patterns of alcohol use have also acted as the outward manifestations
of inner psychological conflicts experienced by various literary characters. On the one
hand, Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) could be read as a fairly stand-
ard pro-temperance narrative, with Michael Henchard’s fall from a position of social and
economic success being instigated by drinking. Swearing off alcohol for twenty-one years,
following the drunken sale of his wife and child at a country fair, enables Henchard’s rise
to prosperity, but his terrible mistake casts a long shadow. The complicated relationships
that develop upon his wife and child’s return to Casterbridge lead to Henchard’s ruin, and
exactly twenty-one years after swearing an oath of sobriety, Henchard starts drinking again.
His decline into ill-health and social exile is swift, and he dies destitute and alone. Jane
Lilienfield, however, has interpreted Henchard’s character and his drinking as being rooted
in the psychology of dependency. Since Henchard’s need for human love appears to have
been denied in childhood, he becomes dependent on alcohol to assuage feelings of inad-
equacy and self-loathing in a self-destructive cycle that culminates in the sale of his wife.
Once he stops drinking, Henchard’s sense of validation is found instead in a succession of
other things: hard work, economic success, his friendship with Farfrae, his relationship with
his returned daughter. In their absence, at the end, Henchard returns to drink, signaling that
the core psychological conflict in his character has not been resolved and his self-destruc-
tive pattern of behavior ends, this time, in death (Lilienfield 1999: 39–47).
In John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra (1934), the central character Julian uses alco-
hol as a sublimated form of attack against his wife, his friends, and, ultimately, himself in
a similarly self-destructive pattern that ends in suicide. The inner conflict driving Julian’s
behavior is based in a feeling of emasculation and his drinking is closely intertwined with his
attempts to assert sexual and social power over his wife Caroline. Knowing that his drinking
causes her great social embarrassment, since he often flirts with other women, insults their
friends, and even becomes violent under the influence of alcohol, Julian threatens to drink
heavily at an upcoming party to manipulate Caroline into fulfilling a sexual fantasy in which
she is extremely passive. When this manipulation goes awry, Julian fulfills his threat, behaves
appallingly while drunk, and subsequently kills himself in a state of depression. While the
text also suggests that Julian’s self-destructive behavior is fueled by a typically modernist
“heightened sense of life’s futility,” the positioning of the marital sexual relationship as the
trigger for Julian’s final drinking bout points to an ironic conflict at his core. Julian’s strongest

desire is for power and control, central to his vision of masculinity, yet his response to feel-
ing his power threatened—drinking—leads to a total loss of control over his own b ehavior
(Crowley 1994: 102–13).
Denise Herd sees such a focus on unresolved psychological issues as a recurrent feature
of cinematic representations of alcohol in 1950s melodrama. Central characters’ destruc-
tive patterns of drinking are indicative of “repressed and interiorized” personality conflicts
that come to the surface during marital relationships and crises. Like Julian in Appointment
in Samarra, male drinkers in these films are depicted as impotent in either literal or figu-
rative senses. Consequently, they use alcohol to cover up such feelings or to create a
rationalization for lashing out against those they feel are responsible for their lack of social,
sexual, economic, or other prowess. Female drinkers, meanwhile, were typically depicted
as neurotic, having immature or dependent personalities, and being unable to face reality.
Again, they tend to use alcohol as a means of both masking these problems from themselves
and of releasing frustrations about them (Herd 1986: 229–45; Cornes 2006: 191–220).
Conclusion
As James Nicholls has observed, many scholarly studies on cultural representations of
alcohol in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have concentrated on “the rela-
tionship between literary representation and alcohol as a source of addiction or on the role
of particular narrative patterns in the process of recovery from addiction” (2000a: 12–13).
In some respects, this has led to an under-appreciation of the complexities and ambiguities
in the ways that various artists and writers examined alcohol and incorporated drinking
into their work. There is an underlying assumption in some scholarship that all depictions
of drinking were primarily making some comment about addiction. Some scholars use the
term “alcoholism” rather loosely, attributing a condition of alcohol addiction to any literary
scenes of drunkenness, and even mere drinking (see, for example, Warhol 2002: 105;
Berman 2008: 175), while others apply specific models of alcoholism, or knowledge about
authors’ drinking habits, to define various literary characters’ drinking behavior as addic-
tion, where other interpretations are quite possible (see, for example, Gilmore 1987; Dardis
1990; Djos 2010).
While alcoholism and addiction were certainly important, and new, subjects of artistic
exploration in this time period, drink featured in a multitude of other ways. Alcohol had
many “functions within fictions” in terms of narrative structure, linguistic technique, charac-
terization, and underlying symbolic, philosophical principles (Nicholls 2000a: 12). Novels,
poetry, plays, films, and art also depicted drinking itself from a variety of different perspec-
tives, including—but not only—the perspectives of temperance and addiction, revealing that
cultural representations of alcohol from 1850 to 1950 were remarkably complex.

Notes
Introduction
1 In international marketing at this time, the name “tequila” was not widely used; instead terms like
“Mexican Whiskey” or “Mezcal Brandy” were more common to make the product more familiar
to international judges. Tequila is one type of mezcal, spirits produced from the cooked hearts
of agave plants, which is commonly produced across Mexico. Tequila is the name of a town and
district in the state of Jalisco, which was (and is) a major production center. In this time period,
increasing efforts to distinguish mezcal from Tequila as a distinctive product known as tequila
were under way. Legal protections meaning that the name tequila can only be applied to mezcal
from several states in western Mexico and produced from a specific type of agave (blue agave)
in specific ways were introduced in the second half of the twentieth century (Gaytán 2014: 10,
39–40).
2 As Rebecca Earle (2014) has shown, such ideas were commonplace across Spanish America
in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and had deep roots in Spanish thinking about
Indigenous peoples of the Americas since the sixteenth century.
Chapter 4
1 As a general rule, whiskey made in the United States and Ireland is spelled with an –ey, while
whisky made in Scotland and Canada is spelled with a –y, although exceptions do exist.
Chapter 5
1 The hospitals in question were reported by Victor Horsley, physician, surgeon, and temperance
reformer: they were St. Bartholomew’s, Guy’s, Middlesex, St. George’s, St. Mary’s, University
College, and Westminster.
Chapter 6
1 In part of course these trends reflect much wider historiographic developments. Building from
the important foundations of women’s history, gender history has produced much insight into
histories of femininity, but also more recently into histories of masculinity. For further discussion,
see Rose (2010).
Chapter 7
1 There is some evidence to suggest that this relationship has had an enduring legacy in the United
States, affecting the alcohol consumption rates amongst different religious denominations. In a
study conducted around the turn of the twenty-first century, US states with higher proportions of
evangelical Protestants exhibited markedly lower overall alcohol consumption rates than states
with higher proportions of Catholics. See Holt et al. (2006: 253–42).
Chapter 8
1 The marketing strategies increasingly employed by beer, wine, and distilled drinks industries
unsurprisingly offered more unambiguously positive and celebratory images of alcohol from the
late nineteenth century onwards. See Hames (this volume) for a summary of these advertising
trends.
2 Susanna Barrows notes that nineteenth-century visual culture in France, especially paintings and
advertisements, had a similarly dominant focus on the evils of drink (1987: 13).
3 The nostalgic idealization of past forms of alcohol-fueled male sociability was also a character-
istic of Mexico’s Golden Age of cinema. Films from the late 1930s through to the 1950s often
featured romanticized charro, or cowboy, protagonists, who regularly drank tequila as a release
from the “turmoil of heartbreak or the constraints of daily life” (Gaytán 2014: 64–9).
4 The context of Prohibition was also fundamental to the development of the gangster movie genre.
Although not commonly depicted as big drinkers themselves, the central gangster protagonist
was similarly cast in a morally ambiguous and/or pathological light as the hard-boiled detective
through his immersion in the criminal underworld of bootlegging, and his often meteoric rise
through its ranks (Cornes 2006: 50–68).
5 In a similar, but less convincing, reading of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866),
Catherine MacGregor analyses familial responses to alcoholic fathers within the narrative. She
argues that Raskolnikov’s ultimately self-destructive actions can be read as being driven by the
desire to “rescue” alcoholic characters and those adversely affected by their alcoholism, having
internalized a sense of guilt and responsibility for the alcoholic’s behavior, and that his redemp-
tion only starts when he has accepted he is not responsible for, nor is he able to, control others’
behavior (1994: 26–33).
6 On this aspect of British Romanticism, see Taylor (1999) and Earnshaw (2000: 163–8).
7 Other writers poked fun at such portentous depictions of absinthe drinking and artistic percep-
tion. Robert Hichens’s The Green Carnation (1894), for instance, featured a memorable scene of
two ladies drinking Bovril in secret after attending the opera and discussing its vice-like properties
(Baker 2001: 36).
Notes 195
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Contributors
Editor
Deborah Toner is an associate professor of History at the University of Leicester. She is a
social and cultural historian of alcohol, food, and identity in the Americas. She has published
on drinking places, gender, medical discourse, and literary representations of alcohol in
modern Mexico. Her current research examines the development and interaction of racial
stereotypes about drinking in the United States and Mexico, and the history of substance
use disorders in Guyana. She has been co-convenor of the Drinking Studies Network since
2010, an interdisciplinary research network connecting researchers of drink and drinking
cultures across different societies and time periods.
Contributors
Gina Hames is an associate professor of History at Pacific Lutheran University. Her research
is focused on the historic role of how alcohol shapes identity from a comparative perspective
across the globe, including Africa, China, Japan, India, Latin America, Western and Eastern
Europe, Australia, the Middle East, and the United States. She is the author of Alcohol in
World History (2012) and is currently researching the history of breweries in Belgium and
champagne houses in France.
James Kneale is a cultural and historical geographer with broad interests in nineteenth-
and twentieth-century drink and temperance, as well as in geographies of literature. He
has published on historical geographies of both drinking places and ordinary temperance,
focusing largely on the Anglophone world. His current research concerns the governmental
and material networks of Anglophone life assurance companies and the way they brought
together drink, temperance, statistical knowledge, and medicine between 1840 and 1940
in an attempt to govern “moderate drinking.”
Dan Malleck is an associate professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Brock

University and the director of Brock Centre for Canadian Studies. He is a medical historian
specializing in drug and alcohol regulation and policy, and his books include Try to Control
Yourself: The Regulation of Public Drinking in Post-Prohibition Ontario (2012) and When
Good Drugs Go Bad: Opium, Medicine, and the Origins of Canada’s Drug Laws (2015). He
is also the editor of a four-volume primary source collection Drugs, Alcohol, and Addiction in
the Long Nineteenth Century (2020).
Andrew McMichael is a professor of History and the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and
Social Sciences at Auburn University at Montgomery. He is an historian of Revolutionary-era
America and the Atlantic World, with a focus on the history of British colonial North America
and its connections with Latin America and the Caribbean. He is currently researching the
history of food and drink in the Americas, and around the world, particularly focusing on the
history of alcohol consumption and commerce.
Stella Moss is a historian of modern Britain at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her
main research interests center on the history of popular culture and consumption in modern
Britain, particularly the history of drinking cultures in the twentieth century. Her research
examines the complex relationships linking consumption and identity within and across
popular cultures, especially in terms of the influence of gender and age on recreational
cultures, the creation and negotiation of social spaces, and contested attitudes toward
respectability.
Paul A. Townend is Professor of British and Irish History at UNC Wilmington, where he also
serves as the Dean of Undergraduate Studies. He has published on aspects of Irish temper-
ance history and the early history of temperance in the Atlantic World, including Father
Mathew, Temperance and Irish Identity (2002), which won the James S. Donnelly prize in
2003 and “Mathewite Temperance in Atlantic Perspective,” in The Irish in the Atlantic World,
edited by David Gleeson (2010). His recent work includes articles in Past and Present, Eire/
Ireland, a co-edited essay collection Ireland in an Imperial World: Citizenship, Opportunism
and Subversion, edited by Tim McMahon, Michael DeNie, and Paul A. Townend (2017), and
The Road To Home Rule: Anti-Imperialism and the Irish National Movement (2016), and has
focused on populism and anti-imperialism.
Sarah W. Tracy is Edith Kinney Gaylord Presidential Professor and Associate Professor of
the History of Medicine and Food Studies at the University of Oklahoma Honors College.
She is author of Alcoholism in America from Reconstruction to Prohibition (2007) and
co-editor with Caroline Jean Acker of Altering American Consciousness: The History of
Alcohol and Drugs in the United States, 1800–2000 (2004). Her work has appeared in the
New England Journal of Medicine, the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Isis, Academic
Medicine, and International History Review. Tracy directs the OU Medical Humanities
Program. She is completing a book on nutritional physiologist, epidemiologist, and cham-
pion of the Mediterranean Diet, Ancel Keys.
220 Contributors
Index
abkari system 12 alcoholism 1, 2, 7, 8, 10, 13, 14, 18–20, 50,

Aboriginal peoples (Canada, Australia, New 77, 81, 83, 110, 121–31, 161, 162,
Zealand) 12, 52, 65, 85, 140 168, 170, 172, 175, 180–7, 193
Absintha Taetra (Dowson) 189 and degeneration 181–3
absinthe 6, 11, 14, 20, 57, 68, 69, 77, and modernity 184–5
114–16, 140, 163, 164, 189, 190, alcohol policy 12, 13, 63, 65, 74
192, 195 n.7 alcohol revenue system 73
absinthism 11 Alcott, L. M. 178
Acme Beer 102 ale 88, 113, 118
addiction 2, 18, 110, 124, 126, 161, 175, Alexander III, C. 94
181, 184–7, 193 Alexander III, T. 73
Adolph Coors Brewing Company 97 Alexander II, T. 73
advertising 4, 38, 41, 87, 89–92, 94, 95, Alexander Nevskii Temperance Society 160
100, 102, 104, 106–8 Allen, F. 114
Africa 12, 13, 35–7, 44, 52, 85, 94 American alcohol production 26–9, 33–4
African Americans 52, 136, 171, 173, 177 American Association for the Advancement
African Bordeaux 36 of Science (AAAS) 124
aguardiente 13, 26 American Association for the Cure of Inebri-
akpeteshie 59 ates, The (AACI) 110, 122, 129
Alabama 80 American Can Co. 100
alcohol abuse 7, 8, 15, 38, 163, 168, 181, American Civil War 28
183 American Medical Association (AMA) 118,
Alcohol and Man-The Effects of Alcohol on 120
Man in Health and Disease (Emerson) American Medical Temperance Association
113 (AMTA) 120
Alcohol as Food and Medicine-A Paper American Renaissance (literature) 178
from the Transactions of the Inter- American Spirits Manufacturing Company 91
national Medical Congress (Hunt) ancillary industries 29, 40
118 Angel Guerra (1890–91) 183
Alcohol by Weight (ABW) 80 Angoulvant, G. 172
alcohol consumption 1–2, 5, 7–8, 11, Anheuser-Busch 32, 88, 89, 102
13–14, 18–19, 35, 40, 43–8, 53, 63, Anti-Alcohol Federation (FAI) 119
65, 73, 109, 114, 116, 120, 131, anti-alcohol movements 1–3, 5–10, 12, 14,
133–5, 142, 146, 151–4, 163, 171, 19, 20, 40, 77, 81, 83, 119, 127,
175–6, 179–80, 184, 188, 195 n.1. 155, 156, 160, 161, 163, 168, 170,
see also consumption 171, 173, 178
alcoholics 14, 15, 125, 130, 184, 187 Anti-Saloon League (ASL) 6, 8, 72, 79, 127,
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) 2, 18, 121, 123, 156, 157, 159, 165, 166, 179
124, 187 anxieties 1, 116, 141, 142, 147, 148, 154,
alcohol interest 157, 164 163
aperitif 38, 53 market 88
aphrodisiac (alcohol as) 146, 149 parlours 52, 61
Apollinaire, G. 188 production 4–5, 17, 28, 29, 31, 32, 34,
appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) 4, 107 35, 37, 40, 41, 100, 158
Appointment in Samarra (1934) 192, 193 Sweden 84
aquavit 84 war 59
architecture 145 Beer Act, 1830 (UK) 66
Argentina 4, 6, 23, 94 beerhouses 56
Armagnac 4, 107 beershops 50, 55
art 26, 99, 188, 193 Belgium 47, 55, 68, 96, 135
Arthur, T. S. 176 Belle Époque 56, 135
artificial fermentation 24 betel 44
artificial refrigeration 3, 22, 29 beverage rooms 80, 148
Asquith, H. 66 Bi-Chloride of Gold (Keeley) 110, 128
assommoir 55 Bierkrieg, 1909 53
asylum 18, 110, 122, 123, 128–30, 155, Big Four 105
170 Billings, J. S. 119, 127
Australia 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 22, 48, 50, 52, binge 52, 186
54, 85, 94, 110, 122, 123, 128, 133, Birnam, D. 186
138–40, 143, 144, 156, 157, 159, Birth of a Nation (1915) 177
167, 172, 173 blended whiskey 28, 90, 91, 105
Austria 47, 75, 170 Blind Pigs 62
authenticity 4, 28 Blok, A. 189
Auto City Brewing 102 Blue Monday 53
Blue Ribbon Movement 122
Bacardi 106 Board of License Commissioners (Ontario)
Bacchus 188 70
Baltimore 89 Boer War 14, 170
Banyuls 4, 107 Bogart, H. 180
barley 24, 97 bohemia 68, 189
barmaids 66, 143 Bolsheviks 46, 81, 97
Baron, S. 22, 26 Bolton (England) 53–5, 186
barrels 22, 27–9, 31, 32, 88, 90, 104 Booth, C. 56
barroom games 137–8 bootlegging 74, 79, 98, 195 n.4
barroom lore 136, 151 Bordeaux 4, 32, 36, 95, 99, 107
bars 5–6, 11, 16, 53, 56, 59, 80, 106, Boston 28, 59, 62, 104, 109, 114
134–5, 138–40, 142–3, 145–6, Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 1909
148–51, 170 113
batch-distilling 22 Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897 28
Baudelaire, C. 188 Bottle, The (Cruikshank) 161, 162
Bavaria 4, 24, 88 bottle washing 29
Bavarian-styled beer 4, 88 bottling 3, 29, 88
Beam, J. 105 bourbon 27, 28, 105
Beard, G. M. 126 branding 19, 89
Beaulieu winery 107 brandy 22, 23, 57, 91, 109, 111, 116, 117,
Beecher Stowe, H. 177, 186 119, 140
beer Bratt, I. 84
advertising 103, 104 Bratt system 84
Bavarian-styled 4, 24, 88 breweries 3, 16, 17, 22, 28–33, 56, 75, 80,
beerhalls 11, 58, 59, 61, 62 83, 86–90, 96, 97, 100, 102, 104,
beerhouse 56 167, 171
high-quality 29–30 Brewer’s Union No. 1 (later Brewer’s, Beer
industry 4, 88, 90, 94, 100, 102 Drivers, and Maltsters Union) 89
222 Index
Brewer’s Warehouse Corporation (Canada) Central America 44, 59
80 Central Control Board (CCB) 17, 39, 57, 61,
brewing 3, 4, 21–6, 28, 32, 35, 39, 40, 44, 75, 76, 142
62, 81, 87, 88, 96, 97, 100, 102, champagne (beverage) 95, 96, 99, 106,
104, 110, 167 107
Brewing Corporation of Canada (later, Ca- Champagne (region) 4, 38, 95, 96, 99, 107
nadian Breweries Ltd) 100 charros 195 n.3
Brideshead Revisited (1945) 181 chateau 95
Britain 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 14–17, 19, 32, 34, 35, chemicals 33
37, 38, 41, 43, 44, 47, 48, 50, 55, chemical war 33
57, 60–2, 74–9, 82, 83, 85, 86, 100, Cherrington, E. 113, 123
109–11, 113, 121, 122, 126, 133, Chicago 5, 22, 24, 28, 29, 53, 59, 62, 97,
153, 154–6, 163–7, 170, 171, 173, 98, 104
181, 184 China 147
British Caribbean 10, 26 Chippewa Falls 29
British Columbia 46, 70, 80 Chittenden, R. H. 120
British Medical Journal 117–18 Christian 8, 51, 153
British North America Act (1867) 68, 70 and secular influences 154–66
Brussels Conference, 1890 10, 36, 85, 86 Christianity 10, 128, 154, 160, 172
Buchanan, J. 90 Christian Moerlein Brewing Company 97
Budweiser 102 church 7–9, 52, 68, 83, 122, 125, 155, 157,
Buenos Aires 4, 6 159, 160, 166, 172, 179, 180, 183
Buganda 58 cider 68, 77–9
Bulgaria 7, 9 Cincinnati 97, 98
Burgundy 38, 99 cinema (as leisure pursuit) 5, 19
Burton brewing 4 cinema (representations of alcohol in) 193
Claret 117
Cabernet Sauvignon 107 Clotel (1853) 177
cafés 6, 55, 56, 60, 67, 79, 135, 140 Club and Institute Union (Britain) 61
Cairo 52 Clubs 61
California 27, 94, 96, 99, 102, 107, 117 cocainism 127
Campo, Á. de 181 cocktails 98, 105–7, 112, 146, 147
Campos, R. 189 Coffey, A. 22–3, 90
Canada 9–11, 15, 16, 18, 28, 45, 52, 61, Coffey still 23
68–70, 72, 74, 78–83, 85, 87, 89, Cognac 4, 107
91, 96, 97, 100, 108, 110, 121, 122, cold liquid diet 113
128, 133, 143, 147, 154, 166, 172 colonialism 9–14, 172–3
Canada Temperance Act, 1878 70 column stills 22, 23, 27, 90, 91, 105
Canadian Club whiskey 105 Combrune, M. 23, 24
canning 100, 101 Comité National des appellations d’origine
Cape of Good Hope 48 (CNAO) 107
Capone, Al 98 commerce 87, 108
capping 21 1850–1914 87–96
Caribbean 10, 21, 23, 26, 27 1914–33 96–9
Carling Brewery 89 1933–50 100–7
Carling’s Imperial Club Lager 89 Commissariat for the Struggle against Alco-
Carlsberg 26, 83, 84 holism and Gambling 81
Catherine the Great 73 Committee of Fifty 119, 120
Catholicism 158, 159, 172 competitive drinking 137, 143
Catholic temperance 159, 160 compression refrigeration 22
Catholic Total Abstinence Union (CTAU) consciousness 56, 89, 167, 170, 171, 175,
159, 160, 167, 171 181, 186–93
CCB. see Central Control Board (CCB) Conservative Licensing Act, 1904 66
Index 223
consumption 43–5 Dewars distillery 90
drinkers 48–52 diabetes 19, 114, 121, 125
drinking and 52–62 Dickens, C. 181
habits 3, 47, 52, 104, 139, 140, 151, Dickinson, E. 188
188 dipsomania 125–7, 129
rates 45–8 disease 2, 4, 8, 18, 20, 21, 33, 109, 110,
continuous still 87 113, 114, 120–2, 124–30, 161, 181,
controlled designation of origin. see appella- 183, 184, 187
tion d’origine contrôlée (AOC) Disease Concept of Alcoholism, The (Jell-
Coors Brewing 40, 97 inek) 128
cork 21, 102 disinterested management 11, 17, 61, 65,
Côte d’Ivoire 36, 94, 135, 172 66, 72, 75, 76, 84. see also Gothen-
courtship 134, 147 burg system
Coward, N. 98 dispensary system 72
Crawford, J. 106 distillation 3, 44, 73, 81, 83–4
crime, alcohol-related 6, 8, 11, 16, 45, 98, distilled spirits 10, 12, 13, 16, 28, 38, 44,
156, 171, 178, 181, 183 63, 73, 77, 84, 94, 96, 105, 116, 172
Crime and Punishment (1866) 195 n.5 Distilled Spirits Institute 105
Crooks Act 70 distilleries 5, 17, 22, 26, 27, 33, 39–41, 48,
Crowley, A. 189 80, 87, 90, 91, 98, 104–6
Crown Royal Canadian whiskey 105 Distillers’ and Cattle Feed Trust 90
Cruikshank, G. 161, 162 Distillers Company, Ltd (DCL) 17, 22,
Cuba 26 39–41, 90, 91, 97, 105
cultural representations 175, 193 distilling 3, 17, 24, 27, 35, 81, 84, 87, 97,
alcoholism and degeneration 181–3 104, 105, 167
alcoholism and modernity 184–5 distribution 21, 23, 26, 28, 29, 33, 65, 72,
alcoholism, denial, and recovery 185–7 120
drunken consciousness 187–93 diversification 17, 40
temperance and prohibition 175–80 domesticity 187
Curse of Drink, The (1922) 176 Dominion Licensing Act 70
Cuyo (Argentina) 23 Dominion of Canada 68
dopamine hypothesis 110
Dar es Salaam 61 Dostoyevsky, F. 195 n.5
Daring Love (1924) 176 Dow, N. 71
Davis, N. S. 120 Dowson, E. 189
Days of Wine and Roses (1962) 187 dram shops 55
débits de boissons 57, 58 drinkers 48–52
decadence 184, 189 drinking and consumption 52–62
decor (bars) 138, 144 drinking cultures 133–4, 151–2
Dedalus, S. 179, 180, 187 femininity and 140–4
Degas, E. 189, 190 masculinity and 134–40
degeneration 1, 2, 7, 11, 14, 15, 18, 19, 83, mixed-gender drinking and sexualities
116, 133, 170, 172, 173, 181–4 144–51
delirium tremens 181 drinking psychologies 191–3
Dempsey, J. 98 drunken consciousness 56, 89, 167, 170,
denial 186–7 171, 175, 181, 186–93
Denmark 15, 18, 83–4, 86, 122, 128 drunkenness (female) 142
dependency 9, 73, 126, 192 drunkenness (habitual) 2, 109, 121, 122,
depression 37, 40, 46, 47, 96, 98, 107, 125–7, 130, 134, 155, 181, 186
181, 189, 192 drunkenness (male) 135, 142, 151
Detroit 89, 102, 104 drunken self 191–3
deviance 181 Dublin 57, 141, 142, 158, 179, 190
Dewar, J. 91–3 Duckworth, G. H. 56
224 Index
Duma 73, 74 festivals 9, 19, 38, 52, 96, 155, 170
Duminy & Co. champagne advertisement 95 Fields, A. 8
Dunkin Act 68, 70 film 16, 18, 162, 163, 176–9, 187, 193
Dunlop, J. 53 Finland 15, 46, 84, 128
Duoro (Portugal) 32 First World War 3, 14, 16–18, 27–9, 31, 32,
Durban 61 37, 38, 40, 46, 47, 57, 59, 61, 65,
67, 68, 70, 73, 74, 78, 84, 86, 87,
ebirabo 58 96, 97, 99, 100, 104, 107, 108, 116,
Edinburgh 145, 148 130, 135, 142, 167, 170, 171, 185
Ehret Brewery 29, 31 Fitzgerald, F. S. 98, 181, 184, 187
Ehret, G. 31 flappers 148
Eighteenth Amendment 78, 96, 98, 120, 127 Foolish Matrons, The (1921) 176
Eisteddfods 43 Forel, A. 7
El bar (1935) 189 fortified wine 27
elections 19, 52 Fortunata y Jacinta (1886–87) 183
electrification 88 For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) 18, 192
Eliot, G. 178 France 4–7, 10, 14–15, 18, 26, 32–5, 37–8,
Emerson, H. 113, 114 49–50, 53, 55, 57, 63, 67–8, 74,
Emerson, R. W. 188 77–8, 83, 94–6, 99, 107, 111, 116,
empire 9–14 120–3, 135, 163, 167–8, 170, 181,
employee assistance programs (EAPs) 130 188, 195 n.2
Enemy Sex, The (1924) 176 Franco-Prussian War 14, 67, 116, 170
England 10, 21, 22–5, 27, 44, 50, 51, 53, free licensing 66
56, 65–8, 75, 91, 104, 121, 127, 128, French Caribbean 10, 26
135, 142, 144, 146, 148, 150, 172, French Martinique 26
175, 188 French wine 11, 34, 38, 41, 99, 107, 116,
Europe 15, 16, 20, 21, 23–7, 32–8, 40, 41, 172, 173
43, 46, 47, 87, 88, 90, 91, 94, 96–8, friendship 11, 50, 149, 192
102, 106, 109, 110, 116, 122, 128, funerals 19, 52, 142
130, 136, 153, 170, 184, 189, 191
European imperialism 94 Gallant, B. 98
evangelical beliefs 10, 155, 156 gambling 81, 137, 139, 155, 183
existentialism 182, 186 Gamboa, F. 181, 183
gangster movie genre 16, 195 n.4
factories 4, 21, 28, 36, 39, 41, 50, 53, 61, Garies and their Friends, The (1857) 177
75, 81, 101, 130, 135, 142 gentlemen’s clubs 61–2
family 19, 27, 32, 52, 55, 58, 84, 97, 105, Georgia (US) 80
142, 143, 145, 153, 155, 156, 159, German-American 55, 171
160, 162, 163, 167, 175, 177, 183, German immigration 88, 94
186, 187 Germany 10, 14, 16, 18, 36, 47, 49, 53, 55,
fatalism 182 57, 75, 96, 99, 113, 120, 123, 135,
Faulkner, W. 181 170
Federal Alcohol Administration (US) 102 Gershwin, G. 98
Felix Holt (1866) 178 Ghana 13, 135, 173
fellowship 140 Ghartey IV, King 173
female Gilbert and Parsons Hygienic Whiskey for
drinkers 142, 147, 193 Medicinal Use, advertisement 112
drinking 133, 143, 148 gin 17, 36, 44, 59, 91, 146
inebriety 126 gin palace 56, 57
femininity 133, 134, 146, 148, 150–2 Gladstone, W. 66
and drinking cultures 140–4 Glasgow 56, 148
fermentation 3, 22–6, 35, 88, 94, 157 Goebel Brewery 104
fertilization 24 Gold Coast 13, 52, 59, 94, 173
Index 225
Gothenburg system 66, 84 Huss, M. 110, 121
grain 15–17, 23, 35–7, 40, 41, 73, 81, 88, hydrometer 88, 90
96, 102 hygiene 18, 107, 119
Grant, U. S. 117 hygienic drinks 68
grapes 32, 37, 38, 91, 96, 99, 107, 157 hysteria 18, 107, 119
Great Britain 32, 34, 35, 37, 38, 41, 109,
110, 122 ice 22, 29, 88, 100
Great Fire of 1871 (Chicago) 22, 28 Iceland 15, 84
Great War 139, 142–4 Iceman Cometh, The (1939) 186
Green Carnation, The (1894) 195 n.7 identity 3, 11, 19, 32, 38, 73, 89, 110, 116,
Green Crescent Temperance Society, The 8 117, 124, 126, 131, 135, 136, 140,
Griffith, D. W. 177 149–51, 180, 185–8
Guardianship of Public Sobriety, The 73 Illinois 72, 90, 110, 165
Guatemala 13, 51 immigration 6, 88, 94, 122
Guinness 17, 24, 88, 96, 97, 102, 104, 143 imperialism 9, 11, 12, 20, 63, 84, 85, 94,
Guinness, B. L. 89 151
improved houses (improved pubs) 8, 17–18,
Habitual Drunkards Act 122 56, 61, 76, 145
habitual drunkenness 2, 109, 121, 122, Independent Order of Good Templars 121
125–7, 130, 134, 155, 181, 186 India 2, 4, 7, 9–12, 20, 53, 171, 172
Haggard, H. 125, 128 industrial alcohol 6, 14, 17, 35, 37, 53, 57,
Haigs distillery 90 77, 83, 104, 105
hallucinations 176, 181, 184 industrialization 3–9
Hammett, D. 180 industry trends 26–35
Hamm’s brewery 29, 102 inebriety movement 110, 121, 122, 125–30
Handsome Lake 173 infidelity 186
hard-boiled detective 178, 195 n.4 innovation 3, 14, 34, 41, 71, 72, 87, 88, 94,
Hardy, T. 181, 192 101, 105, 108
Hawthorne, N. 178 inns 172
Heaven Hill distillery 105 inspiration (artistic) 189
hedonism 159, 187 intemperance 55, 109, 121, 123, 125–8,
Heileman brewery 29 136
Hell Gate Brewery 31 intoxication 43, 61, 121, 133, 134, 137–40,
Hemingway, E. 18, 98, 179, 185, 191 147, 154, 163, 177, 187–9
hereditary inebriate 126 Investigations Concerning the Physiolog-
heterosexuality 148–9 ical Aspects of the Liquor Problem
heterosociality 145, 146 (Billings) 119, 127
Heublein Spirits Co. 106 Iran 51
Hichens, R. 195 n.7 Ireland 6, 7, 18, 44, 62, 88, 89, 96, 102,
high license 59, 62, 65, 71 121, 156–60, 171, 178, 179
Hiram Walker distillery 98, 105 Irish Americans 159, 171
Hirschfeld, M. 112–13 Irish literary revival 179
Hobson, R. P. 15 Irish whiskey distilleries 91
Hollywood 106, 107, 146 Is Alcohol a Danger for Italy, 1909 119
Holy Monday 53 Islam 7, 8, 51, 172
home brewing 62 Italy 4, 5, 32, 33, 48, 94, 119
homemade wine 96 Ivan the Terrible 73
homosexuality 148–50
homosociality 61 Jackson, C. 186
hops 3–4 Jamaica 10, 27
Horseshoe & Wheatsheaf public house 57 Janet’s Repentance (1857) 178
hotels 16, 50, 79, 80 Japan 4, 18, 156
Hunt, E. M. 118–19 Jellinek, E. M. 125, 128
226 Index
jerries 62 licensing 6, 12, 15, 16, 19, 54, 56, 57, 59,
Joe Beef 59 61, 62, 65–76, 80, 83, 85, 86, 139,
Johannesburg 61 143, 147, 157, 165, 167
John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs (1913) Licensing Act, 1872 (Britain) 66
184, 191 Licensing Act, 1876 (Ontario, aka Crooks
John Dewar and Sons distillery 91 Act) 70
Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company 33 Licensing Act, 1921 (Britain) 75
Joslin, E. 114 Licensing Bill, 1908 66
Journal of the American Medical Associa- Liebig, J. von 111
tion. 1896 113 Ligue nationale contre l’alcooholisme 68
Joyce, J. 179, 187, 189 Liquor Control Board of Ontario 80
liquor control systems 80
Kabaks 73 liquor policy 74, 81, 82, 86
Kansas 29, 72, 80 Little Women (1868–69) 178
kava 44 liver disease 181
Keeley Cure 128, 129 Liverpool 56
Keeley, L. E. 110, 128, 129 Lloyd George, D. 75, 170
keg lined cans 100 local option 66, 68, 70, 72, 74, 76, 77, 80,
kegs 21, 29, 88 84, 157, 162, 166
Kentucky 27, 40, 90, 91, 105 logos 89
Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Co. 91 London 24, 25, 49, 56, 57, 61, 75, 100,
Kenya 58, 135 113, 122, 145, 150
King, W. L. M. 82 London, J. 184, 191
Ku Klux Klan 171 Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956) 186
Los Angeles 106
labour 35 Lost Weekend, The (1944, novel) 186
Labour Campaign for the Public Ownership Lost Weekend, The (1945, film) 187
and Control of the Liquor Trade, The Loubére, L. 37
167 lounge 56, 143–7
L’absinthe allegory, 1883 164 Lowry, M. 18, 184
La fortune des Rougon (1871) 182
lager 4, 22, 55, 88 machismo 102, 136, 139
Lagos 36, 37 Mackies distillery (White Horse) 90
laissez-faire 59, 65, 66, 68, 86 Magnan, V. 181
Lang, J. D. 159 Maine 71, 72, 122
Languedoc 99 Maine Law, 1851 157
La Rumba (1890–91) 181 male
L’Assommoir (1877) 181–2 drinkers 141, 176, 193
Latin America 2–4, 13, 14, 20, 181 drinking 133, 134, 140, 151, 176
Latour, G. de 107 Maltese Falcon, The (1930) 180
law enforcement 179, 180 malting 24
Leake, C. 127 Maltsters 21, 89
Leeuwenhoek, A. van 23 Manchester 56, 150
Legrain, P. -M. 123 Manet, É. 189
Leicester 62 Manitoba 70
Leinekugel brewery 29–30 Maori 85
Les débits de boissons au Champ-de-Mars, Mariani, A. 117
Paris, 1879 58 marriage 142, 184, 187
Lewis, S. 98 Martinique 10, 26
liberalism 11, 17, 24, 43, 47, 57, 59, 62, 66, Martin, John 106
80–3, 146, 147, 149–51, 160, 165, masculinity 3, 6, 91, 133–5, 138–40, 148,
167, 171, 184 150–2, 193
Licensed Victuallers Defence League 66 and drinking 134–40
Index 227
mash 21, 22 Mowat, O. 68, 86
Massachusetts 71, 109, 111, 113, 122, Mr Gilfil’s Love Story (1857) 178
126, 129, 130, 154 mortality, alcohol-related 50
Massachusetts General Hospital 109, 111, munitions 17, 39, 75, 142
113 music 59, 61, 96, 102, 144–6
Mass-Observation 54–5 muslims 7, 11, 36, 37, 51, 52
material culture 48, 134, 138, 140, 144 My Wife and I (1871) 186
maternal drinking 141
Mathew, Father 121, 156–9, 171 Nairobi 61
Mayor of Casterbridge, The (1886) 181, 192 Napa Valley Wine Technical Group 107
mechanical refrigeration 22, 87, 88 Narragansett Brewery 104
mechanization 37, 88 narratives, temperance 175–6
Médecins amis des vins de France (MAVF) National Committee for Education on Alco-
116 holism (NCEA) 18, 125
medicinal drinking 40, 98, 110, 113, 116, National Committee for the Struggle Against
117, 119 Alcoholism 8
melodrama 175, 176, 178, 193 National Distillers 105
Melville, H. 178 nationalism 3, 33, 153, 170–2, 180
mental illness 8, 14 nationalization 39, 167
merchants 28, 36, 106, 117 National Licensing Commission 76
Mexican revolution 8, 9, 189 national Patent 70
Mexican Temperance Society 8 Native Americans 10, 52, 173
Mexico 4–5, 7–9, 14, 15, 18, 53, 59–61, natural fermentation 24
106, 110, 121, 128, 155, 168, 170, near beer 97
181, 184, 188, 189 Neff, I. 129
microorganisms 23, 24, 127 Netherlands 47
middle class 6, 40, 50, 56, 60, 87, 95, 102, neurasthenia 126
116, 145, 167, 173, 178, 183 neuroticism 193
milling 21 Neutral Spirit, The (Rouché) 121
Milwaukee 22, 28, 29, 33, 102, 104 Newark 89
Minnesota 11, 12, 81, 102 New Brunswick 70
Mississippi 80 New Economic Policy (NEP) 81
mixed drinking 55, 143–6 New Orleans 21
mixed-gender drinking and sexualities New South Wales (Australia) 10, 48, 54, 85,
144–51 159
moderationism 65, 83, 86 newspapers 15, 162, 165, 175
modern alcoholism movement 121, 123–5, New York 22, 27–9, 71, 80, 81, 89, 98,
128 104, 110, 114, 121, 123, 124
modernism 189 New York State Inebriate Asylum 123
modernismo (Spanish America) 189 New Zealand 48, 54, 85, 172
modernity 2, 4, 7, 18–20, 43, 51, 121, 146, Nicholas II, T. 73, 74
181, 184, 188 Nigeria 12, 13, 35–7, 52, 94
Molson brewery 97 “Night Café at Arles” (Van Gogh) 191
Mombasa 58, 61 nightclubs 36, 98, 150
Monroe, M. 107 Nkrumah, K. 13
moonshine 178 North America 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 24, 37, 43,
Moon Under Water, The (1946) 178 61, 78, 85, 105, 110, 122, 153,
Morel, B. 14, 181 155, 163
Morgan, J. 106, 176 North Carolina 80, 155
morphinism 127 North Dakota 80, 81
Moscow 46, 106 Norway 15, 16, 46, 84
Moulton, F. R. 124 nostalgia 4, 184
Mount Vernon (rye whiskey) 105 Nova Scotia 70
228 Index
OBSA. see Society for the Struggle against Philadelphia 28, 89, 94, 125, 159, 177
Alcoholism, The (OBSA) Philadelphia, 1876 Centennial Exhibition 94
O’Casey, S. 179 Phillip Best Brewing Company 22
October Revolution (Russia), 1905 73 Philosophy of Intemperance (Parrish) 125–6
off-licenses 75 phylloxera 4, 33, 34, 38, 41, 87, 91, 94, 96,
O’Hara, J. 192 107
Ohio 27, 72, 97, 117, 141 Picasso, P. 188, 189
Oklahoma 80 Pickwick Papers, The (1836) 181
Old Crow (bourbon) 105 pinard 116, 135
Oldenburg, R. 44, 55 Piper-Heidsieck champagne 107
Old Overholt (rye whiskey) 105 pleasure 114, 188
Old Taylor (bourbon) 105 port 32, 52, 99
O’Neill, E. 186 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
Ontario 51, 68, 70, 78, 80, 86, 89, 100, 187
143, 148 Portugal 32, 33, 99
opening times (drinking establishments)/reg- pot still 22, 23
ulation of 8, 36, 62, 73, 98, 148, 172 poverty 6, 11, 122, 138, 167, 168, 181,
organized crime 16, 98, 171 183
Orwell, G. 178 preservation 3, 22, 117
Ottawa 51, 100 Prince Edward Island 70
Ottoman empire 7, 8, 51, 55 prison 16, 155
overproduction 77, 78, 91 production 21, 41
Africa 35–7
Pabst 22, 29, 30, 104 industry trends 26–35
packaging 3, 21, 100, 102 scientific advances 23–6
palm wine 35, 36, 52, 172 technological changes 21–3
palm wine “gin” 36 war effort 37–41
Papua New Guinea 44 professionalization 24
Paris 49, 53, 56, 62, 98, 116, 140 progressivism (US, Canada) 1, 8, 15, 27,
Parrish, J. 125–6 40, 70, 96, 151, 156, 166, 177, 181,
Partition of Africa 35 183, 186
pasteurization 21, 27, 29, 87, 88, 94 Prohibition 195 n.4
Pasteur, L. 21, 24–6, 94 Prohibition (New Zealand) 85
Patent or Proprietary Medicines Act, 1908 Prohibition (Africa) 13, 86
(Canada) 70 Prohibition (Canada) 61, 78–81, 97, 108
patent still 22, 23 Prohibition (Finland) 15
pathology 126, 146, 180, 183 Prohibition (Norway) 16
patriotism 17, 40, 54, 102, 128, 142, 171 Prohibition (Russia) 74, 81–2, 97
patrons 50, 54, 59, 61, 76, 94, 119, 137, Prohibition (Sweden) 84
138, 143, 145, 147, 149, 150 Prohibition (US) 2, 14, 16, 78–81, 87, 97,
Pearl Harbor 41, 105 98, 108, 110, 117, 127, 130, 161,
Pennsylvania 72 166, 171
Peoria 105 Prohibition Party 72, 127, 163, 165
Pérez Galdós, B. 182, 183 Proprietary Medicines Act 70
performativity 5, 6, 134, 136–9, 160, 175, prostitution 11, 134, 148, 150, 163, 181
186, 190 Protestantism 155, 157, 160, 166, 173
performing arts 175 psychiatry 126
periodic inebriate 126 psychology 125, 126, 133, 159, 185, 186,
Permissive Prohibition Bill 66 192
perpendicular drinking 56, 138, 139 pub 17–19, 50, 54–7, 61, 75, 76, 106, 138,
pH 24, 90 139, 142–5, 147, 150, 167, 178, 179
Pharmacopoeia of the United States of public houses 49, 51, 57, 75, 134, 138,
America 116–19 142–5, 150, 178
Index 229
public policy 122 Rush, B. 109, 121, 154, 155
pulque 59–60, 121 Russell, J. 165
pulquerías 53, 59, 60 Russia 7, 15, 19, 43, 46, 49–53, 55, 62,
Pure Food and Drug Act, 1906 28, 117 73–4, 81–2, 86, 94, 97, 135, 142,
Pylon (1935) 181 160, 168, 188
Russian Revolution 81
Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol 125 Russo-Japanese war 14, 73
Quebec 68, 70, 78–80 rye 28, 105
Queensland 54
queer venues 149 sacramental exception 157, 166
saint-lundi 53
race 2, 7, 13, 48, 52, 85, 151, 177 Saint Monday 50, 53, 54
temperance and 176–8 St. Louis 28, 88, 89
racialized stereotypes (of drinking) 179 St Petersburg 46, 160
radio 9, 18, 100, 102, 104, 108 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre 98
railroad 3, 5, 21, 23, 26, 28, 29, 32, 41, 88, saloons 5, 6, 11, 12, 29, 30, 36, 50, 53–6,
90 59, 61, 62, 72, 83, 104, 116, 120,
raki 51, 52 127, 136–9, 143, 146, 148, 156, 163,
realism 186 165, 177, 179, 184
recreation 1, 5, 52, 128, 134, 136, 138, sanctification 156
144, 145, 149, 155, 159 Sanderson, W. (VAT69) 90
rectifiers 27, 28 San Francisco 149, 150
Redfern Inn, The 76 sanitization 24
red wine 99, 117, 119 Santa (1901) 181, 183
refrigeration 3, 22, 24, 26, 27, 29, 41, 87, Scandinavia 6, 46, 61, 63, 83–4, 86, 109,
88 121, 128, 154, 166
regime des boissons 67–8, 77 Schandein 22
Remus, G. 98 Schenley Distillers Corporation 40, 105
repression 55, 187 Schivelbusch, W. 44
Research Council on Problems of Alcohol Schlitz Beer advertisement 103
(RCPA) 123–5 Schlitz Brewing 102
respectability 142, 143–5, 147, 159 Schlitz, J. 32, 33, 102, 103
restaurants 16, 59, 74, 84 Schnyder, L. 119
retailers 28, 45, 67, 158 scientific advances 23–6
Rhode Island 104 scientification 24
Rhodes, C. 52 Scientific Temperance 119
Richardson, B. W. 111 scientists 8, 24, 26, 33, 120, 127
riesling 99 Scotch whisky 39, 90, 91, 93
Rimbaud, A. 188 Scotland 18, 39, 62, 66, 76, 91, 121
rites of passage 19, 43, 52, 53 Scottish whiskey 22, 23
ritual 19, 52, 53, 98, 136–40, 146, 160, 192 Scramble for Africa 35
romanticism 4, 27, 91, 186 Seagram, J. 98, 105
Rosensteil, L. 105 Seagram’s distillery 105
Rosenthal, L. 40 Second World War 6, 15–18, 37–41, 47,
Ross, W. 90 74, 82–3, 87, 100, 102, 104–6, 108,
Rouché, B. 121, 128 116, 117, 123, 146, 150, 152
Roueché, B. 109, 131 self-control 10, 11, 135, 168, 187
rounds 50, 137, 138 self-deception 186
Royal Blend whisky advertisement 92 self-destruction 184
Royal Commission on Licensing, 1897 66 self-help movement 159
Rozhdestvenskii, A. V. 160 selfhood 187
rum 9, 10, 21, 23, 26, 27, 35, 36, 106, 110, self-pity 186
116, 171 service des alcools 77
230 Index
Seven Crown American blended whiskey mark) 80, 84
105 State Vodka Monopoly 14, 73, 74
sexuality 133, 134, 146, 148 steam engine 26, 90
mixed-gender drinking and 144–51 steam-powered mills 3–5, 21
Shah, Nasir al-Din 51 Stevens, G. 177
Sharp v Wakefield 66 stills 22, 23, 27, 39
shebeens 62 Stitzel, F. 90
sherry 99 Stockholm 84
shipping 3, 29, 32, 34, 39, 88, 90, 102 storage 3, 21, 22, 24, 90
Sigsworth, E. M. 24, 25 Storer, H. 127
Silas Marner (1861) 178 stout 143
Silkworth, W. 124 Stroh’s brewery 29
simple inebriate 126 sugar 10, 21, 24, 26–7, 146
slavery 2, 10, 155, 173, 177 sugarcane 13
S. Liebmann’s Sons Brewing Company 22 suicide 163, 192
Smirnoff vodka 106 Sultan Abdulmecid 51
Smirnov, P. 94, 97 Sun Also Rises, The (1922) 18, 179, 185
Smith, R. 130 supportive nutrient 111
smuggling 11, 62, 78, 79, 108 Sweden 18, 65, 83, 84, 121, 128, 156
sobriety 6, 10, 18, 53, 73, 121, 124, 133, Swedish Temperance Society 84
159, 160, 167, 168, 172, 175, 176, Switzerland 18, 68, 69, 122, 163
179, 186–8, 192 symbolism 17, 18, 51, 55, 91, 140, 175,
sociability 3, 5, 11, 12, 44, 61, 134–6, 138, 178–80, 188–9, 192, 193
140, 143–6, 149, 150, 156, 167, 168, Synge, J. 179
170, 179, 184, 195 n.3
socialism 66, 81, 153, 166–70 Tangiers 11
Society for the Struggle against Alcoholism, tariffs 13, 34, 36–9, 99
The (OBSA) 81 Tasmania 54
Soho 150 taverns 10, 52–5, 57–9, 70, 73, 75, 79, 84,
soldiers 12, 17, 38, 77, 91, 96, 99 94, 98, 135, 142, 149, 176
South Carolina Dispensary 72 taxation 8, 9, 12, 19, 27, 32, 45, 46, 73,
Southern Nigeria 12–13, 37, 94 82–4, 170, 172
Southern Rhodesia 61 tax farming 73
Soviet Union 81 Tchelistcheff, A. 107
Spain 4, 7, 14, 32, 33, 94, 99, 182, 183 technological changes 21–3
Spanish Caribbean 26 technology 21–3, 26, 29, 32, 40, 41, 88
Spanish Civil War 18, 192 teetotalism 167, 179
speakeasies 98, 107, 145–6, 178, 180 television 100, 102, 104, 108
special legislation 70 temperance
spirits 3, 5, 10, 12, 13, 16, 17, 22, 26–8, Africa 85–6
32, 34, 36–8, 40, 44, 46, 47, 49, 52, Australia 110, 122, 123, 128
53, 57, 60, 62, 63, 66, 75, 77–9, 81, Britain 109–11, 113, 121, 122, 126, 165
84, 87, 90, 94, 96, 98, 100, 104, British Empire 4, 12
106, 108, 113, 114, 116, 117, 158, Canada 70, 110, 121, 122, 128
163, 170, 172 Caribbean 23, 26, 27
spoilage 35 Christian and secular influences 154–66
sports 96, 102, 104 colonialism 172–3
SPTAS 159 Denmark 122, 128
Standard Distilling and Distributing Compa- ideology 161–6
ny 91 movements 2, 6, 7, 9, 18, 37, 39, 66,
Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Prob- 81, 83–6, 110, 119, 121, 141, 153–6,
lem (Cherrington) 113 159, 161, 162, 168, 170, 171, 173
Star (workers’ cooperative brewery, Den- narratives 175–6
Index 231
nationalism 170–2 Union française antialcoolique 123
New Zealand 172 Union of Brewery Workmen (UBW) 89
and prohibition 178–80 United Committee for the Prevention of the
and race 176–8 Demoralization of the Native Races by
Russia 123 the Liquor Trade 85, 172
Scandinavia 109, 121, 128 United States 2–4, 6, 9–11, 14–18, 21–3,
socialism 166–70 26–30, 32–5, 37, 40, 41, 45, 50–2,
Sweden 84 59, 62, 70–4, 78–82, 84, 85, 87, 88,
tales 162, 176, 177 90, 91, 94, 96, 97–100, 104–10, 113,
US 117, 127, 155 116, 117, 119–23, 127, 128, 130,
temperature control 22, 24, 30, 90, 111 153–7, 159–63, 165–7, 171, 173,
Tender is the Night (1934) 181, 184, 187 175, 176, 181, 184
Tennessee 80, 165 Unknown Woman, The (Blok) 189
Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw upper class 91, 126, 146
There (1854) 176 urbanization 1–3, 6, 7, 9, 20, 59, 62, 120,
tequila 4, 5, 17, 106, 194 n.1 122, 135, 136, 153, 154, 163, 183,
terroir 38 184
theater 150 US Bottled in Bond Act 35
Theory and Practice of Brewing, The (Com-
brune) 23 Vancouver 147
therapeutics 1, 109–17, 120, 129, 131 Van Gogh, V. 191
Thermometers 87, 88 van Leeuwenhoek, A. 23
Thin Man, The (1934) 180 vats 32
third places 44, 45, 55 Veblen, T. 50
Thoreau, H. D. 188 vertical integration 3, 88
tied house system 29 Victoria (Australia) 48, 54
Tillman, B. 72 Vienna 47, 113
Tin Gods (1926) 176 vinaterías 60
Todd, R. B. 111, 112 vines 33, 34, 87, 91, 99, 107
tourism 78 vineyards 34, 37, 38, 96, 99, 107
trade unionism 167 Vin Mariani (Mariani) 117, 118
traditional drinking 20, 43, 44, 62 vintners 22, 24, 26, 95
traktirs 62 violence 11, 43, 98, 120, 162, 163, 173,
transcendence 187, 188 176, 177, 187
transportation 23, 29, 32, 34, 84, 85, 87, visual culture 175, 195 n.2
88, 108, 110, 127 viticulture 26, 32, 33, 41
treating 18, 19, 50, 75, 123, 137–40 vodka 46, 52, 58, 62, 73, 74, 81, 82, 94,
treatment 18, 19, 110, 111, 113, 114, 97, 106–7
122–4, 127–30, 137, 175, 179, 187 Volstead Act 78, 80, 130
Treatment of Diabetes Mellitus, with Obser-
vations Based upon 1000 Cases, The wages 17, 47, 49, 50, 75, 137, 142, 168
(Joslin) 114 Wales 22, 44, 50–2, 56, 62, 75
trezvenniki 160 Walker, H. 98, 105
Trotter, T. 109, 121 Walkers distillery 90
tuberculosis 19, 114, 116, 121, 124, 125, 127 war 14–19
Tuborg 83, 84 effort 37–41
Turkey 7–9, 52 warehouses 22, 40, 80, 90, 98
War Production Board (US) 105
Uganda Liquor Ordinance, 1917 58 Wartime Trade and Pricing Commission
UK 17, 26–8, 33, 38–41, 167 (Canada) 82
Ulysses (1922) 179, 189 wash 22
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) 177 Washingtonians 121, 156, 167
Under the Volcano (1947) 18, 184 Waugh, E. 181
232 Index
We and Our Neighbors (1875) 186 red 99, 117, 119
Webb, F. 177 white 117, 119
Webb-Kenyon Act 72 Wine and Beerhouse Act, 1869 (UK) 66
weddings 19, 52, 145, 157 winemaking 32, 87, 96
Wells Brown, W. 173, 177 wineries 23, 32, 80, 94–6, 99, 107
Western Australia 48, 54 Wisconsin 33, 72, 81, 104
Wheeler, W. B. 79, 179 withdrawal 181
whisky/whiskey 17, 22, 23, 27, 28, 39, 40, Women’s Advisory Committee 142
45, 90–4, 98, 104–6, 110–13, 116, Women’s Christian Temperance Union
117, 119, 138, 158 (WCTU) 8, 32, 119–20, 127, 129,
American 90 141, 156, 163, 165, 172, 173
blended 28, 90, 91, 105 Woodward, S. 121
bourbon 27, 28, 105 Woolton, L. 82
Irish 91, 106, 177 working class 1, 3, 5–7, 11, 27, 46, 48, 49,
rye 28, 105 55–7, 59, 61, 62, 65, 74, 121, 123,
Scottish 22, 23 126, 142, 150, 158, 163, 167, 168,
Whitbread brewery 25 177, 181–3
white wine 117, 119 work parties 52
Whitman, W. 188 Worktown (Bolton) drinking 54
Wilde, O. 189 World League Against Alcoholism, The 8
Wilder, B. 187 World’s Fairs 5, 59
Willamette Valley 29 World Woman’s Christian Temperance
Willard, F. 6, 165 Union (WWCTU) 8
Wilson, B. 130 wort 21, 22
wine
coca 117, 118 Yale Center for Alcohol Studies 18, 125
French 11, 34, 38, 41, 99, 107, 116, Yale Plan Clinics 125, 130
172, 173 yeast 21, 22, 24, 26, 87, 88, 94, 105
industry 3, 4, 17, 23, 36, 77, 87, 94, 96, YMCA 129
99, 107 youth culture 179
palm 35, 36, 52, 172 Yukon Territory 80
production 4, 21, 27, 32–5, 37, 38, 41,
48, 67, 94, 99 Zola, É. 117, 181, 182
Index 233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240

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Toner, Deborah. "Introduction." Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War. Ed.

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2 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

4 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

6 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

8 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

Empire and Colonialism

10 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

12 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

14 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

16 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

18 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

20 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

1.2 Malthouse superintendent checking temperature at Pabst brewery, c. 1944 30

1.3 George Ehret’s Hell Gate Brewery 31

1.4 Brewery Joseph Schlitz, 1900 33

1.5 Submersion of vineyards to fight against the phylloxera, France, 1939 34

1.6 Whisky in Scotland, c. 1940 39

2.2 Drinkers in the public bar of an English public house, 1938 51

2.3 “Saint Monday in the Prater wine tavern,” 1818 54

2.5 “Les débits de boissons au Champ-de-Mars,” Paris, 1879 58

2.6 “Mexico: Scenes before a Pulquería in the City of Mexico” 60

3.2 The prohibition of absinthe in Switzerland 69

3.3 Neal Dow, the Mayor of Portland, Maine, c. 1851 71

3.4 The Redfern Inn, Etterbury, Carlisle 76

3.5 Wayne Bidwell Wheeler, Anti-Saloon League, 1883 79

3.6 Customers at the counter in a liquor store in Moscow, Russia, c. 1950 82

4.2 Royal Blend whisky advertisement 92

4.3 Scotch whisky “White Label” John Dewar advertisement 93

4.4 Duminy & Co. champagne advertisement 95

4.5 Canning process at the Acton factory, 1937 101

4.6 Schlitz beer advertisement, 1904 103

5.2 Absinthe versus alcohol, c. 1900 115

5.4 The New York State Inebriate Asylum, Binghamton 123

5.5 Man speaking at Alcoholics Anonymous. c. 1950 124

6.2 Gambling Den, c. 1875 139

6.3 Temperance movement: “Ohio whiskey war,” 1874 141

6.4 Patrons of The Crown public house, London, 1947 145

6.6 Pacific Street, San Francisco, California, c. 1930s 149

7.2 Plate II of George Cruikshank’s “The Bottle,” 1847 161

7.3 Plate VI of George Cruikshank’s “The Bottle,” 1847 162

7.4 “L’absinthe allegory,” 1883 164

8.2 L’Assommoir theatrical poster, 1877 182

8.4 “The Absinthe Drinker,” by Edgar Degas, 1876 190

22 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

24 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

Industry Trends in the Americas, Europe, and the UK

26 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

28 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

30 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

32 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

The expansion of rail-based distribution represented a double-edged sword in the

34 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

36 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

The War Years

38 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

40 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War

44 Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War