Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire and War, 1850-1950

I’m delighted to announce the forthcoming publication of a book I have been working on in collaboration with a fabulous group of alcohol historians since early 2014: Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire and War, coming out with Bloomsbury Academic Press in summer 2021.

This book examines alcohol production, consumption, regulation, and commerce, alongside the gendered, medical, religious, ideological and cultural practices that surrounded alcohol from 1850 to 1950. Through analyzing major changes in alcohol’s place in society, the book’s stellar group of authors demonstrate the important connections between industrialization, empire-building, and the growth of the nation-state, and the diverse actors and communities that built, contested, and resisted those processes around the world. Here’s the table of contents and contributing authors:

1. Introduction: Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire and War, Deborah Toner (University of Leicester, UK)
2. Production, Andrew McMichael (Auburn University at Montgomery, USA)
3. Consumption, James Kneale (UCL, UK)
4. Regulation and Prohibition, Dan Malleck (Brock University, Canada)
5. Commerce, Gina Hames (Pacific Lutheran University, USA)
6. Medicine and Health, Sarah Tracy (University of Oklahoma, USA)
7. Gender and Sexuality, Stella Moss (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)
8. Religion and Ideology, Deborah Toner (University of Leicester, UK) and Paul Townend (University of North Carolina Wilmington, USA)
9. Cultural Representations, Deborah Toner (University of Leicester, UK)

Overall, this book 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. Alcohol regulations and public health discourses increasingly revealed the intent and reach of state power to monitor and police citizens, as well as the legitimization of that power through nationalism. Illustrated with over 50 (painstakingly chosen) images, we hope the book will be a valuable resource for students and researchers studying the history of alcohol, as well as the cultural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries more broadly.

We’ve passed the final proofs stage now, and we expect the book to be published in July!