Alcohol, Race and Ethnicity: The United States, Mexico and the Wider World, 1845-1940
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Leicester
Department Name: Sch of Historical Studies
Abstract
Stereotypes about "national" or "ethnic" drinking styles can be harmful, both by shaping drinking behaviours and by fostering racial prejudice. Racial stereotypes have shaped alcohol regulation, marketing practices and harm-reduction policies in the United States and Mexico, and in other parts of the world, since at least the nineteenth century. Some continue to do so to this day, with serious consequences for public health and race relations.
Understanding the history and development of these racial stereotypes is a critical step in reducing the harm that they do. This project examines how and why racial stereotypes about drinking developed in the United States and Mexico between 1845 and 1940, and how they interacted. Very little is known about the extent of dialogue between the multiple racial stereotypes about the drinking behaviours of different ethnic groups that formed in this time period. Nor do we know the extent and effects of transnational exchanges about alcohol and race.
The period from 1845 to 1940 was marked by increasing intercultural contact and conflict between the US and Mexico, and by racial ideologies underpinning the formation of ideas of national identity in both countries. Analysing the commonalities and interaction of different stereotypes within and across borders can therefore reveal the relationship between the racial stereotypes about drinking, debates about the state of the nation, and the increasingly unequal power relations between the US and Mexico. To achieve this, the research analyses points of heightened international exchange: the Mexican American War (1846-48), international exhibitions (1876-1929), international alcohol conferences (1885-1939) and temperance tours (1891-1940). To systematically examine a range of popular and official perspectives on alcohol, it studies a diverse range of historical material, including diaries, correspondence, newspapers, military field orders, exhibition catalogues, prize lists and commentaries, conference proceedings, government education and development records, and the papers of international temperance organisations.
This historical study of racial stereotypes in the US and Mexico will be disseminated as a book length monograph, journal articles and conference papers. It will also be the starting point for a collaborative investigation of the racialisation of drinking behaviours as a global phenomenon. I will convene two small workshops and a larger interdisciplinary conference to lead a collaborative research agenda on alcohol and race in a global context, resulting in the publication of an edited book. Throughout the project, blog posts and working papers will be published online, charting the development of the research, and publicised via social media. I convene a Drinking Studies Network, which issues a monthly newsletter with 275 academic and non-academic subscribers and has a twitter account with over 1,550 followers. This will ensure the project's ongoing research, events and outputs reach a wide audience. In turn, the fellowship will improve my capacity to lead the Network in new directions, consolidating its international reach and impact and providing a model for future collaborative research on a global scale.
To disseminate how this research can help to improve contemporary approaches to reducing alcohol-related harm, I will work with the Director of Research and Policy at Alcohol Research UK/Alcohol Concern, the UK's most important charity working to reduce alcohol-related harm. The Director will participate in all the project's events, act as a mentor in successfully mobilising historical research to inform contemporary policy, and assist me in cementing working relationships with other organisations in the UK and beyond. To build capacity in this area, I will convene a further workshop that trains arts and humanities scholars to engage with organisations seeking to address problem drinking.
Understanding the history and development of these racial stereotypes is a critical step in reducing the harm that they do. This project examines how and why racial stereotypes about drinking developed in the United States and Mexico between 1845 and 1940, and how they interacted. Very little is known about the extent of dialogue between the multiple racial stereotypes about the drinking behaviours of different ethnic groups that formed in this time period. Nor do we know the extent and effects of transnational exchanges about alcohol and race.
The period from 1845 to 1940 was marked by increasing intercultural contact and conflict between the US and Mexico, and by racial ideologies underpinning the formation of ideas of national identity in both countries. Analysing the commonalities and interaction of different stereotypes within and across borders can therefore reveal the relationship between the racial stereotypes about drinking, debates about the state of the nation, and the increasingly unequal power relations between the US and Mexico. To achieve this, the research analyses points of heightened international exchange: the Mexican American War (1846-48), international exhibitions (1876-1929), international alcohol conferences (1885-1939) and temperance tours (1891-1940). To systematically examine a range of popular and official perspectives on alcohol, it studies a diverse range of historical material, including diaries, correspondence, newspapers, military field orders, exhibition catalogues, prize lists and commentaries, conference proceedings, government education and development records, and the papers of international temperance organisations.
This historical study of racial stereotypes in the US and Mexico will be disseminated as a book length monograph, journal articles and conference papers. It will also be the starting point for a collaborative investigation of the racialisation of drinking behaviours as a global phenomenon. I will convene two small workshops and a larger interdisciplinary conference to lead a collaborative research agenda on alcohol and race in a global context, resulting in the publication of an edited book. Throughout the project, blog posts and working papers will be published online, charting the development of the research, and publicised via social media. I convene a Drinking Studies Network, which issues a monthly newsletter with 275 academic and non-academic subscribers and has a twitter account with over 1,550 followers. This will ensure the project's ongoing research, events and outputs reach a wide audience. In turn, the fellowship will improve my capacity to lead the Network in new directions, consolidating its international reach and impact and providing a model for future collaborative research on a global scale.
To disseminate how this research can help to improve contemporary approaches to reducing alcohol-related harm, I will work with the Director of Research and Policy at Alcohol Research UK/Alcohol Concern, the UK's most important charity working to reduce alcohol-related harm. The Director will participate in all the project's events, act as a mentor in successfully mobilising historical research to inform contemporary policy, and assist me in cementing working relationships with other organisations in the UK and beyond. To build capacity in this area, I will convene a further workshop that trains arts and humanities scholars to engage with organisations seeking to address problem drinking.
Planned Impact
Who will benefit?
The main non-academic beneficiaries of the research will be public sector and third sector organisations engaged in initiatives to reduce alcohol-related harm. These include national alcohol charities such as Alcohol Research UK/Alcohol Concern; industry-funded charities such as Drinkaware; and policy-shaping bodies such as the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Alcohol Harm and the Department of Health and Social Care's policy group on Harmful Drinking. Impact activities will be focused on working with UK-based bodies initially, to capitalise on the existing relationships I have developed with these organisations through the Drinking Studies Network. Historical work deconstructing stereotypes about drinking are of interest to these bodies as stereotypes about British, Scottish and Irish drinking cultures have shaped recent policy discussions about alcohol regulation and harm reduction. As the project progresses and beyond its lifecycle, I aim to further engage with similar bodies in the US and Mexico, where specifically racial stereotypes about drinking have had even greater impact. The fellowship will increase my capacity and that of the Drinking Studies Network I convene to reach and work with such international beneficiaries.
Secondary beneficiaries could include the drinks industry, the media and the wider public all of whom have a role to play in challenging the prevalence of stereotypes about drinking behaviour.
How will they benefit?
1. Reducing alcohol-related harm
The project aims to improve the ability of organisations seeking to reduce alcohol-related harm to engage with and mobilise historical knowledge in their harm-reduction initiatives. By raising awareness of how stereotypes about drinking behaviour have developed historically, how they have changed over time, and how they are produced by specific power relations, stereotypes that remain powerful in contemporary discourse about alcohol can be more effectively challenged.
This builds on a recent collaboration between Alcohol Research UK/Alcohol Concern and the Drinking Studies Network I coordinate. "Changing Drinking Cultures" (2016-18), brought together scholars from history, literature, geography, social sciences, and education, with public health professionals, industry representatives and journalists. This concluded that historians and other humanities scholars have a key role in improving knowledge of the multiple, complex factors that go into forming, entrenching or changing attitudes and behaviours surrounding alcohol, and that recognising this complexity is a necessary precondition for any effective campaign to reduce alcohol-related harm.
2. Reducing use and circulation of racial and other stereotypes about drinking behaviour
The project will raise awareness of the historically contingent ways in which racial and national stereotypes about alcohol have developed, and the damaging effects that these can and have had. This could encourage the drinks industry to avoid any marketing campaigns that inadvertently reproduce such stereotypes in their imagery or rhetoric. It could also encourage media coverage of issues around alcohol to be more critical of a wide range of stereotypes and received wisdoms about the drinking behaviours of different social groups. Finally, it could encourage the wider public to reflect on and challenge any stereotypical assumptions about their own or others' drinking behaviours they may have internalised.
The main non-academic beneficiaries of the research will be public sector and third sector organisations engaged in initiatives to reduce alcohol-related harm. These include national alcohol charities such as Alcohol Research UK/Alcohol Concern; industry-funded charities such as Drinkaware; and policy-shaping bodies such as the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Alcohol Harm and the Department of Health and Social Care's policy group on Harmful Drinking. Impact activities will be focused on working with UK-based bodies initially, to capitalise on the existing relationships I have developed with these organisations through the Drinking Studies Network. Historical work deconstructing stereotypes about drinking are of interest to these bodies as stereotypes about British, Scottish and Irish drinking cultures have shaped recent policy discussions about alcohol regulation and harm reduction. As the project progresses and beyond its lifecycle, I aim to further engage with similar bodies in the US and Mexico, where specifically racial stereotypes about drinking have had even greater impact. The fellowship will increase my capacity and that of the Drinking Studies Network I convene to reach and work with such international beneficiaries.
Secondary beneficiaries could include the drinks industry, the media and the wider public all of whom have a role to play in challenging the prevalence of stereotypes about drinking behaviour.
How will they benefit?
1. Reducing alcohol-related harm
The project aims to improve the ability of organisations seeking to reduce alcohol-related harm to engage with and mobilise historical knowledge in their harm-reduction initiatives. By raising awareness of how stereotypes about drinking behaviour have developed historically, how they have changed over time, and how they are produced by specific power relations, stereotypes that remain powerful in contemporary discourse about alcohol can be more effectively challenged.
This builds on a recent collaboration between Alcohol Research UK/Alcohol Concern and the Drinking Studies Network I coordinate. "Changing Drinking Cultures" (2016-18), brought together scholars from history, literature, geography, social sciences, and education, with public health professionals, industry representatives and journalists. This concluded that historians and other humanities scholars have a key role in improving knowledge of the multiple, complex factors that go into forming, entrenching or changing attitudes and behaviours surrounding alcohol, and that recognising this complexity is a necessary precondition for any effective campaign to reduce alcohol-related harm.
2. Reducing use and circulation of racial and other stereotypes about drinking behaviour
The project will raise awareness of the historically contingent ways in which racial and national stereotypes about alcohol have developed, and the damaging effects that these can and have had. This could encourage the drinks industry to avoid any marketing campaigns that inadvertently reproduce such stereotypes in their imagery or rhetoric. It could also encourage media coverage of issues around alcohol to be more critical of a wide range of stereotypes and received wisdoms about the drinking behaviours of different social groups. Finally, it could encourage the wider public to reflect on and challenge any stereotypical assumptions about their own or others' drinking behaviours they may have internalised.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Deborah Toner (Principal Investigator / Fellow) |
| Description | All of the historical primary source material underpinning the research has been collected, including 1. letters, diaries and other writings describing experiences of drinking and attitudes towards alcohol of participants in the Mexican American war; 2. Catalogues, promotional materials and various ephemera of International Exhibitions from both US and Mexican national archives; 3. Newsletters, conference proceedings, and other documents relating to International Anti-Alcohol Congresses and International Temperance campaigns; 4. Archival records relating to Mexican National Society of Temperance and other anti-alcohol campaigns and organisations in Mexico Analysis of these materials is ongoing, but preliminary findings include the global circulation of ideas about alcohol and race were deeply linked to colonialism, the imperial projects of multiple European countries, the settler colonial expansion of the United States, and the post-colonial tensions within Mexico. |
| Exploitation Route | The project had initially planned to engage with harm reduction organisations in the UK and beyond to dispel racial stereotypes about drinking, but in the context of COVID-19, which has had huge implications for these organisations and the work they do, this has proven difficult, as explained above. But it could still be used in this way. In scholarly terms, the research models collaborative, comparative and global research about the history of alcohol, which has generally been dominated by research on the US and UK, and studies with a predominantly national focus. |
| Sectors | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Communities and Social Services/Policy,Healthcare,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Description | How Alcohol Built the British Empire Podcast |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Podcast Interview on Dan Snow's History Hit, which averages 3 million listeners every month. Episode synopsis: During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the British Empire expanded across the globe an almost ubiquitous but often underappreciated commodity went with it; alcohol. The distillation, sale and drinking of booze played an essential role in trade, seafaring and colonial societies. But for many indigenous communities this came at a terrible price as, previously unfamiliar, distilled spirits wreaked havoc on their communities and reinforced the racial ideologies that legitimised imperialism. It is a more complicated story than this though and for some indigenous communities, alcohol was not ruinous instead becoming a vital source of income that enabled them to survive and in some instances flourish. For this episode, Dan is joined by Dr Deborah Toner Associate Professor of History at the University of Leicester and author of Alcohol in the Age of Industry, Empire, and War to uncover the central role that alcohol played in creating the British Empire. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://access.historyhit.com/videos/how-alcohol-built-the-british-empire#:~:text=During%20the%20eig... |
| Description | Project blog and website |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | The PI and research associate established a website and blog to document the project research process and emergent research findings. While significantly fewer blog posts have been published than originally anticipated by this point in the project, they have reached a broad academic and student audience as well as leading to a potentially new pathway to impact. In terms of the latter, we are in the process of establishing a collaboration with Petroglyph Studios, a Canada-based graphic design and comic book company, to translate some of the project findings into a graphic novel. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020,2021 |
| URL | https://alcoholhistory.le.ac.uk/ |