Tolerance: A History of Drink
Uncork the champagne! December 5th marked the 75th anniversary of Prohibition’s repeal, but was the ban on alcohol as bad as we remember? Does Prohibition really deserve its reputation as a failed experiment? In this hour, political historian Jim Morone gives us an introduction to the politics of sin. Then a modern-day moonshiner tells how the government watches closely as he makes corn whiskey in his grandfather’s still. Finally, a therapist from the Hazelden Center talks about the spiritual side of alcoholism.
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Show Highlights
- The Politics of Drink — Historian James Morone explains what nativism, racism, and women’s suffrage had to do with the temperance movement of the early 20th century. And he argues that Prohibition was not the abysmal failure it’s often made out to be.
Related Links
- The US Brewers Foundation gives a lesson in history
- Find out why a few college presidents would prefer a lower drinking age
- Imbibe the secret history of rum
- Slur your words with Benjamin Franklin’s complete Drinker’s Dictionary
- Visit Chuck and Jeanette Miller’s Belmont Farm Distillery in Culpeper, VA
- Read an excerpt of James Morone’s award-winning book, Hellfire Nation
- When whiskey was the king of drink
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“Tolerance”: Show Highlights | BackStory With The American History Guys :
[...] The following audio clips are excerpted from the BackStory episode “Tolerance: A History of Drink.” You can listen to the entire episode here. [...]
Quote -- September 30, 2010 @ 6:49 pm -
The Politics of Drink | BackStory with the American History Guys :
[...] The following audio clip is excerpted from the BackStory episode “Tolerance: A History of Drink.” You can listen to the entire episode here. [...]
Quote -- July 5, 2012 @ 7:20 am
I have often wondered what influenced differing cultural attitudes towards alcohol. My ancestors are from Ireland and Germany, two countries that have a reputation for spending time in bars or pubs drinking. Irish Whiskey and German Beer seem to be the preferences. The Irish are usually thought of as culture that has not managed their consumption very well. Whereas the Germans may consume just as much but are thought of as a bit more hardy. Both cultures partake of the substance for the sake of celebrating or comforting a loss.
French and Italian cultures seem to prefer wine and the alcohol is consumed as part of a meal with a maximum of one or two glasses. I would be curious to know what the panel’s opinion is on what has influenced different cultures attitudes towards alcohol.
Finally, I don’t think “higher tolerance” translates into better management of the substance. Rather the need for more of it in order to achieve the same effect.
QuoteYou’re probably familiar with the history of Rum by Ian Williams. I’m sure you’ll want to address the role of alcohol and the Rum trade in colonizing the Americas and shifting local economies from self-sufficiency to production for export, and the long-term effects of adopting such a model.
QuoteI think the show’s format is stupid. I just turned it off and now will play an audio archive from WBUR-Boston…
Please, WHRO, play something from another public radio station during this time slot.
Thanks!!
QuoteThis show was both enjoyable and informative. The idea that Prohibition was the real beginning of the growth in the size and scope of government was particularly insightful. I think a lot of Americans forget that, in the early part of the 20th century, evangelicals and progressives were much more likely to be allies than adversaries. (William Jennings Bryan, for instance, was not the blockheaded conservative anti-intellectual as he was portrayed in “Inherit the Wind.”)
I wish I had heard your program before I blogged about the anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition. (My focus was how Prohibition’s end was greeted in Milwaukee, a city built on beer and breweries: http://tinyurl.com/5h5msa ) I did add an update with a link to this episode of Backstory, and I hope people will click on it.
QuoteI am an architectural historian in Williamsburg VA. I have for a long time been writing a monograph on Anglo-American architect Peter Harrison (1716-1775). Harrison designed a cathedral for Archbishop Arthur Price at Cashel, Ireland in 1748, which is of course of interest to me. Four years later, Price was on his deathbed, so he called in his servants to give them a farewell present. His servants were all members of the Guinness family, and what he gave them was the top-secret family recipe for Porter or Stout, and a bundle of money from which they were able to open their famous brewery. This otherwise little-known archbishop was thus solely responsible for the Irish economy remaining afloat for the next 250 years!
QuoteConsidering your show on the history of alcohol:
David Blume, in his book “Alcohol Can Be A Gas,” writes about alcohol’s history as a fuel and claims that in the early 1900s and before, alcohol was commonly used, particularly in the rural areas, as fuel. Many farm machines as well as the Modle T Ford were designed with dual- fuel motors that could run on either petrolium gas or alcohol.
Also, that John D. Rockefeller was a significant promoter of Prohibition to stifle alcohol’s competition with his Standard Oil Company.
His source is the Henry Ford Museum and Library in Dearborn, MI.
Any truth corroboration from you guys?
QuoteFrankly I was less than impressed with the early American history in the show. You joked that Americans in that era considered beer and hard cider safer than the water, but it was no joke. Colonial sewerage systems no doubt emptied directly into town water supplies. More seriously, you failed to note the distinction between beer (ale) and spirits – which all Americans, and in particular the anti-alcohol campaigners, understood. It was gin, and to a certain degree rum, that was seen to threaten the country’s morals. Gin in the late 18th and 19th centuries was like crack cocaine in the 1990s: they believed that it destroyed families, left children abandoned, etc. Beer – especially lager, introduced in the late 19th century – was seen as benign, wholesome and family-friendly. So the campaign against alcohol was not entirely merely an anti-immigrant stance, when everyone did drink some form of low-alcohol beverages.
For decades the anti-alcohol campaigners protested most vociferously against spirits. It was only right at the very end when congress got serious about passing a constitutional amendment did all alcohol get thrown into the mix.
QuoteWhat role did a lack of clean potable water have to do with increased alcohol consumption during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries?
Quote@JA–Quite a lot, actually, especially in the 18th Century. This theme kept cropping up while I was researching for the show. Here’s a gloss from the Colonial Williamsburg site:
“Americans thought alcohol was healthful. To their minds, drink kept people warm, aided digestion, and increased strength. Not only did alcohol prevent health problems, but it could cure or at least mitigate them. They took whiskey for colic and laryngitis. Hot brandy punch addressed cholera. Rum-soaked cherries helped with a cold. Pregnant women and women in labor received a shot to ease their discomfort.
Water, on the other hand, could make you sick. Though the New World had plenty of fresh, unspoiled water, incautious Americans sickened and sometimes died by drinking from polluted sources. Jamestown gentleman George Percy, relating the troubles of the settlement’s early days, wrote that the colonists’ drink was “cold water taken out of the River, which was at a floud verie salt, at a low tide full of slime and filth, which was the destruction of many of our men.” In some cases, even when it was safe to drink, river water had so much mud that a bucket of it needed to sit long enough to allow suspended material to settle.
In Europe, where polluted waterways were a bigger problem, people substituted alcohol. It was an easy example for the colonists to follow.” (http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/holiday07/drink.cfm)
Thanks for the query!
–Catherine, Assistant Producer
QuoteThank you for your answer.
I have three follow up questions related to that.
1. What percentage of alcohol would be needed in a beer or wine to make it safe to drink because of alcohol’s antiseptic properties?
Quote2. With modern beer at about 6%, modern wine at 8-23% and spirits at 35-50% alcohol, do you know how the historical varieties of these beverages compared?
3. How was the impact of alcohol drinking impacted when water quality started going up and water became safer to drink?
@JA — Sorry, I’m afraid your curiosity goes beyond my expertise! One of these books may quench your thirst:
* “Alcohol: A Social and Cultural History,” ed. Mack Holt
* “Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol,” Iain Gately
* “Uncorking the Past: The quest for wine, beer, and other alcoholic beverages,” Patrick McGovern
–Catherine
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