Intoxicants and Early Modernity: England c.1580-c.1740

There is every indication that the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw a significant increase in the production, traffic, and consumption of intoxicants: substances understood at the time to be 'poisoning, or envenoming' and 'tuddling or making drunk', and which today are recognized as having an often detrimental impact on the body's physiological and mental processes, especially if consumed in excess. This includes 'old world' alcohols like ale, beer, wine, and spirits; and 'colonial groceries' like tobacco and opium. Utilising a range of archival materials, this project will do three things. It will trace the increase in intoxicants between c. 1580 and c. 1740 as empirically and systematically as possible. It will look to explain the increase, paying particular attention to the role of local, national, and international markets on the one hand and the formation of 'civil society' on the other. And it will explore some of the key corollaries of these developments: in particular the formation of the early-modern state and developments in printed media and discourses. The key objectives are twofold: to examine the hypothesis that intoxicants were integral to the set of processes, transitions, and conflicts known by social and economic historians as 'early modernity', and that it was in the early modern era that the salient features of our modern culture and economy of intoxication emerged; and to show how the early modern history of intoxicants constructively illuminates and enhances our understanding of present issues, problems, and practices.

Such an investigation is timely. Intoxicants are a contemporary obsession. Now more than ever they are deeply implicated in most aspects of modern life: this is as true for government, the press, and various kind of medical 'expert' as it is for producers, traffickers, and everyday users (both illicit and licit). Understanding the complicated and multidimensional history of this obsession can only enrich current debates and policies. Likewise there is burgeoning historiographical interest in the subject. Economic and social historians have long been interested in particular kinds of intoxicant and their socio-economic ramifications. More recent analytical developments - in historical anthropology, material culture, the history of consumption, gender history - have only served to accentuate and enrich this interest.

There nevertheless remain huge gaps in our empricial knowledge as well as problems of conceptualization and interpretation. Because historians have treated intoxicants as individual commodities rather than as comestibles with shared intoxicating characteristics, their historical significance is elided. This also encourages a misleading chronological discontinuity. Old world alcoholic beverages before 1650 are not only much less studied than colonial groceries after 1650; they are treated as entirely different phenomena. As a result, crucial continuities regarding commodities, markets, sociability, consumption, policing, and discourse are obscured. Orthodox accounts of social change compound the problem by styling the consumption of intoxicants, in particular alcohol, as 'pre-modern' or even 'anti-modern'. Yet what empirical evidence we have suggests the opposite: that intoxicants (including alcohol) were normative features of early modern experience.

Exploring this paradox therefore problematizes some of our most cherished sociological shibboleths. To this end the project considers the inter-connected economy and culture of intoxicants. It treats the period 1580-1740 - between the European introduction of tobacco and the onset of the 'gin craze' - as a single era of huge significance for modern attitudes and practices. And rather than have its findings pre-determined by historical-sociological orthodoxies, it looks to challenge and where necessary replace those orthodoxies on the basis of new empirical research.

From debates over binge drinking to arguments over licensing and pricing; from their prominence in cultural life to their lubrication of all manner of sociability; from their importance to public revenues to their centrality to global capitalism; as the markers of social identities or the focus of moral panics: in all these respects intoxicants play a central role in modern societies. A fundamental premise of this project is that these political, economic, social, cultural roles can be traced to early modernity, and that historical data and analysis can enrich contemporary debates and understanding.
A number of constituencies will accordingly utilise the data and analysis. They include:
a) Public Advisors and Policy Makers: The PI and Co-I have a good record of working with policy makers and strategists, reporting to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Health on the history of public drinking in 2008 and organizing a workshop with the Cambridge Socio-Legal Group and Wellcome in 2011. This project allows these discussions and initiatives to be taken forward. A workshop on 'Intoxication and Society' will be held under the auspices of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin in 2013. The research team will develop close links with the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group at the University of Sheffield, running workshops on long-term/short-term patterns of consumption. The data collected through the project will also serve as a basis for participation in meetings of the European Commission's 'Addictions and Lifestyles in Contemporary Europe: Reframing Addictions Project' (ALICE RAP) in 2014 and 2015, which has direct policy implications. The conference in year 3 of the project to consider the policy implications of the research and the findings will be outlined on the 'History and Policy' website based at the University of Cambridge.
b) Civic and Business Groups: A key aim of the project will be to bring historical data and analysis to the attention of civic and business groups. To this end links will be developed with civic and regulatory bodies such as Drinkaware and the National Organization of Residents Association as well as business associations like the British Beer and Pub Association, the Society of Independent Brewers, the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, the Association of Small Direct Wine Merchants, and the Tobacco Manufacturers Association. The aim will be to speak directly to these groups by way of lectures and invited talks and to run a workshop for civic and business representatives in year 3 of the project. Another important constituency for the project is school teachers. The web resource is conceived as a pedagogic as well as research aid, and a conference for teachers in year 3 will introduce them to the resource and also issues relating to social history more generally.
c) Media Agencies: Intoxicants are a subject of perennial public interest and ESRC research by the PI has already attracted media attention. Thus after delivering a public lecture on intoxication at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas in 2011, the PI was interviewed for follow-up articles in The Economist, The German Financial Times, The New Zealand Herald, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, and the Times Higher Education. He also appeared on BBC Radio Cambridge and Irish Radio. Another useful outlet is the BBC History Magazine. While these contacts will be utilized by the project, the PI will also look to have a programme based on the data and analysis commissioned by TV and/or Radio.
d) The Wider Public. The project will be able to exploit the unique place of the V&A in British public life by contributing to a new permanent exhibition gallery to be opened in December 2014 on 'Drinking' alongside a programme of public lectures (six already scheduled, one per month starting in December 2014). A website and network (intoxesrc.co.uk) will insure the public presence of the project and the database will be online and free.