A History of Drink and the English, 1500-2000

A History of Drink and the English, 1500-2000
Author: Paul Jennings
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2016-02-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317209176

A 2017 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title award winner *********************************************** This book is an introduction to the history of alcoholic drink in England from the end of the Middle Ages to the present day. Treating the subject thematically, it covers who drank, what they drank, how much, who produced and sold drink, the places where it was enjoyed and the meanings which drinking had for people. It also looks at the varied opposition to drinking and the ways in which it has been regulated and policed. As a social and cultural history, it examines the place of drink in society and how social developments have affected its history and what it meant to individuals and groups as a cultural practice. Covering an extended period in time, this book takes in the important changes brought about by the Reformation and the processes of industrialization and urbanization. This volume also focuses on drink in relation to class and gender and the importance of global developments, along with the significance of regional and local difference. Whilst a work of history, it draws upon the insights of a range of other disciplines which have together advanced our understanding of alcohol. The focus is England, but it acknowledges the importance of comparison with the experience of other countries in furthering our understanding of England’s particular experience. This book argues for the centrality of drink in English society throughout the period under consideration, whilst emphasizing the ways in which its use, abuse and how they have been experienced and perceived have changed at different historical moments. It is the first scholarly work which covers the history of drink in England in all its aspects over such an extended period of time. Written in a lively and approachable style, this book is suitable for those who study social and cultural history, as well as those with an interest in the history of drink in England.

A History of Drink and the English, 1500-2000

A History of Drink and the English, 1500-2000
Author: Paul Jennings
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2016-02-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317209168

A 2017 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title award winner *********************************************** This book is an introduction to the history of alcoholic drink in England from the end of the Middle Ages to the present day. Treating the subject thematically, it covers who drank, what they drank, how much, who produced and sold drink, the places where it was enjoyed and the meanings which drinking had for people. It also looks at the varied opposition to drinking and the ways in which it has been regulated and policed. As a social and cultural history, it examines the place of drink in society and how social developments have affected its history and what it meant to individuals and groups as a cultural practice. Covering an extended period in time, this book takes in the important changes brought about by the Reformation and the processes of industrialization and urbanization. This volume also focuses on drink in relation to class and gender and the importance of global developments, along with the significance of regional and local difference. Whilst a work of history, it draws upon the insights of a range of other disciplines which have together advanced our understanding of alcohol. The focus is England, but it acknowledges the importance of comparison with the experience of other countries in furthering our understanding of England’s particular experience. This book argues for the centrality of drink in English society throughout the period under consideration, whilst emphasizing the ways in which its use, abuse and how they have been experienced and perceived have changed at different historical moments. It is the first scholarly work which covers the history of drink in England in all its aspects over such an extended period of time. Written in a lively and approachable style, this book is suitable for those who study social and cultural history, as well as those with an interest in the history of drink in England.

Alcohol and Liver Cirrhosis in Twentieth-Century Britain

Alcohol and Liver Cirrhosis in Twentieth-Century Britain
Author: Ryosuke Yokoe
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2023-04-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 3031271076

The relationship between alcohol consumption and liver cirrhosis has long been contested by doctors and medical professionals, creating numerous implications for the public reputation of alcohol in Britain. Despite this, it was not until the 1970s that cirrhosis came to be understood as an ‘alcoholic disease’. This book contextualises developments in this debate through the twentieth century by examining the significant influence that medical expertise had on policy responses to alcohol misuse, as well as the social reputation of alcohol consumption. It demonstrates how the degree to which drinking was seen to be responsible for liver disease directly shaped how different groups, such as the temperance movement and the drinks industry, exaggerated or downplayed the destructive properties of alcohol. Covering a series of themes including the science of disease causation, the social standing of medical expertise, and alcohol and public health policy, this book argues that in order to properly understand the trajectory of debates around drinking we need to consider the twentieth-century ‘alcohol problem’ as primarily a medical issue. Contrary to the tendency by existing works to disassociate perceptions and responses to alcohol use from the objective knowledge of its effects on the body, this book shows that medical understandings of liver disease influenced how alcohol was conceptualised in relation to its harms. Offering a fresh perspective on the interaction between scientific knowledge and policy during the twentieth century, this book provides insights for those researching the social, political and cultural history of modern Britain, as well as historians of medicine and health.

Imperial Wine

Imperial Wine
Author: Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2024-04-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0520402162

A fascinating and approachable deep dive into the colonial roots of the global wine industry. Imperial Wine is a bold, rigorous history of Britain’s surprising role in creating the wine industries of Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. Here, historian Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre bridges the genres of global commodity history and imperial history, presenting provocative new research in an accessible narrative. This is the first book to argue that today’s global wine industry exists as a result of settler colonialism and that imperialism was central, not incidental, to viticulture in the British colonies. Wineries were established almost immediately after the colonization of South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand as part of a civilizing mission: tidy vines, heavy with fruit, were symbolic of Britain’s subordination of foreign lands. Economically and culturally, nineteenth-century settler winemakers saw the British market as paramount. However, British drinkers were apathetic towards what they pejoratively called "colonial wine." The tables only began to turn after the First World War, when colonial wines were marketed as cheap and patriotic and started to find their niche among middle- and working-class British drinkers. This trend, combined with social and cultural shifts after the Second World War, laid the foundation for the New World revolution in the 1980s, making Britain into a confirmed country of wine-drinkers and a massive market for New World wines. These New World producers may have only received critical acclaim in the late twentieth century, but Imperial Wine shows that they had spent centuries wooing, and indeed manufacturing, a British market for inexpensive colonial wines. This book is sure to satisfy any curious reader who savors the complex stories behind this commodity chain.

Gin and the English

Gin and the English
Author: Paul Jennings
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 124
Release: 2024-08-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1835537812

This book charts the history of gin from its arrival in England in the sixteenth century to the present day. In doing so it uses a range of perspectives: economic, social, cultural and political to give a rounded picture of how the spirit developed in the way it did over some 400 years. It looks at how gin’s popularity has ebbed and flowed over the centuries among different groups in society. It is therefore concerned with the drinkers of gin and why they chose it and at the meanings which they attached to its consumption. Gin was particularly popular with women and the spirit is often associated with them, in phrases like Mother’s Ruin. This also alerts us to the fact that gin has often had a bad press, never more so than in the infamous Gin Craze of the first half of the eighteenth century, so vividly depicted in Hogarth’s Gin Lane. The book attempts to tell something of the real history of gin beneath the frequent condemnation. It ends with the resurgence of gin’s popularity with the emergence of so-called designer gins in the twenty-first century.

The Local

The Local
Author: Paul Jennings
Publisher: The History Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2021-06-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0750997834

Paul Jennings traces the history of the British pub, and looks at how it evolved from the eighteenth century's coaching inns and humble alehouses, back-street beer houses and 'fine, flaring' gin palaces to the drinking establishments of the twenty-first century. Covering all aspects of pub life, this fascinating history looks at pubs in cities and rural areas, seaports and industrial towns. It identifies trends and discusses architectural and internal design, the brewing and distilling industries and the cultural significance of drink in society. Looking at everything from music and games to opening times and how they have affected anti-social behaviour, The Local is a must-read for every self-respecting pub-goer, from landlady to lager-lout.

The Politics of Drink in England, from Gladstone to Lloyd George

The Politics of Drink in England, from Gladstone to Lloyd George
Author: David M. Fahey
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2022-01-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1527578836

This book is about alcoholic drink, political parties, and pressure groups. From the 1870s into the 1920s, excessive drinking by urban workers frightened the major political parties. They all wanted to reduce the number of public houses. It was not easy to find a way that would satisfy temperance reformers, many of them prohibitionists, and the licensed drink trade. Brewers demanded compensation when pubs were closed, but temperance reformers were vehemently opposed to this. The book highlights a prolonged struggle of vested interests and ideologies in this regard, showing that a Royal Commission in 1899 helped break the stalemate. In a controversial deal, brewers got compensation, but they had to pay for closing some of their own pubs. Later, during the First World War, the government experimented with an alternative to closing public houses, disinterested or non-commercial management, and considered State Purchase of the entire drink trade.

Alcohol, Age, Generation and the Life Course

Alcohol, Age, Generation and the Life Course
Author: Thomas Thurnell-Read
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2022-08-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3031040171

This volume explores generational differences in alcohol consumption practices and examines the changing role of alcohol across the life course. It considers generational patterns in where, how and why people buy and consume alcohol and how these may interact with identity and belonging and considers how drinking alcohol in adolescence, adulthood, middle-age or later life takes on different functions, meanings and tensions. Alcohol is shown to play an important role in biographical transitions, such as in the coming of age rituals that mark the passage from adolescences to adulthood, whilst drinking alcohol in adulthood and in later life takes on new meanings, pleasures and risks in light of shifting roles and responsibilities relating to work, leisure and the family. The empirically-informed contributions draw on a range of diverse disciplinary backgrounds and a range of cultural contexts provides a nuanced examination of the role of alcohol at different life course stages and explores both continuity and change between generations.

The Mystique of Running the Public House in England

The Mystique of Running the Public House in England
Author: David W. Gutzke
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2024-05-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 104003330X

This book is the first scholarly study to explore economic relations between brewers and publicans in the brewing industry over a century. Based on overlooked historical evidence, this volume examines over 400 interviews with candidates for public houses, unpublished evidence of royal commissions heard in secrecy, representations of publicans in fiction and film and systematic reading of 15 licensed victuallers’ newspapers. The Mystique of Running the Public House in England situates licensed victualling among upper-working- and lower-middle-class occupations in England and abroad. This book explores why aspiring but untrained individuals sought public house tenancies, notwithstanding high levels of turnovers and numerous bankruptcies among licensed victuallers. Encapsulated in any newcomer’s appraisal was the captivating vision of El Dorado, a nirvana which promised unimaginable wealth, high social status, respectability and social mobility as rewards for those limited in income but not in ambition. Despite the allure of El Dorado, the likelihood of publicans realizing their aspirations was quite as remote as that of fish and chip proprietors, Blackpool landladies and French café proprietors. This volume will be of great value to students and scholars alike interested in British History, Economic History and Social and Cultural History.