Europe and America 1700–1800
Europe and America 1700–1800
Alcohol, Enlightenment, and Revolutions
This chapter discusses the history of alcohol in the eighteenth century. This period saw the emergence of clearly defined, class-based drinking cultures and a much starker differentiation between elite and popular drinking. Not only did the better-off drink beverages such as port, madeira, and brands of wine that carried social cachet, but they more explicitly and frequently distinguished their drinking cultures from those of the common people. In stressing not the volumes consumed but what was drunk and how it was drunk, the elites echoed the alcohol ideologies of the Greeks and Romans centuries before, as they condemned beer-drinking peoples as “barbarians.” Meanwhile, people in the lower echelons of society defended what they perceived as their rights to alcohol at a fair price.
Keywords: alcohol consumption, drinking culture, social class, elite, common people
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