In October, I was delighted to appear as a guest on Dan Snow’s History Hit podcast, discussing the relationship between alcohol and colonialism across time, which you can listen to below.
The title of the episode is a little misleading, as our discussion ranged beyond the British Empire, touching on how alcohol featured in economic, political and socio-cultural relations between Indigenous societies and different colonising powers around the world from the sixteenth century up to the twentieth century.
Some of the podcast explored different themes that are covered in more depth in my recently published book, Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire and War, 1850-1950, which Dan was beyond gracious to say had “blown his mind”. Wowsers, and thank you! It inspired me to put together a thread on twitter, in which I outlined the acknowledgements page that would have been in the book, if I had managed to notice that it wasn’t there through several copy-editing and proofing stages…
Doing the podcast was a really fun experience; Dan is a very engaging host and asks great questions. You can catch more episodes of History Hit, which are published on a close to daily basis, over on acast.