Alcohol – A History

Title: Alcohol – A History
Author: Rod Phillips
Publisher: Speaking Tiger, 2016 (First published 2014)
ISBN: 9789385755903
Pages: 370

Alcohol has a very long history of association with mankind, just like the taming of domestic animals or the invention of the wheel. The discovery of the fermentation of sugar in fruits into alcohol was definitely a landmark event in history as it probably provided humans the first opportunity to experience something 'out of the ordinary' - those who drink surely know what I am talking about! Over the ages, the drink went through several transformations, such as an intoxicating substance to a healthy beverage and nowadays back to an undesirable one. When the quality of water supply in European cities was abysmal, alcohol was the only liquid safe to drink. But when the health risks of unwholesome potable water were realized and extensive piping arrangements were provided to ensure safe drinking water to the masses, alcohol was dislodged from the lofty pedestal on which it had reigned for much of history. Then came non-alcoholic beverages such as tea and coffee that provided an acceptable alternative to alcohol as a stimulant. Temperance and prohibitionist movements took birth around this time and severe restrictions were placed on the distribution of alcohol. The US - of all the places - experimented with a total ban on alcohol for 13 years from 1920 to 1933. This book provides a good summary of alcohol from the ancient past to the twenty-first century. The drawback is that it focusses only on the West. Rod Phillips is professor of history at Carlton University and is the author of 'A Short History of Wine'.

Phillips provides a skeletal account of the discovery and development of alcohol from the hoary past. 9000 years ago, someone found that if the juice of fruit or berries were left for a short time in warm enough conditions, it began to bubble or froth. Once the bubbling subsided, the resultant beverage produced a pleasant feeling when consumed in small quantities. Even though alcohol was fermented in almost all of the ancient societies, North America is an anomaly where there is no evidence of native peoples making alcohol despite the availability of suitable raw materials. Ancient Greece and Rome drank only wine and avoided beer, thinking it unfit for civilized people. They exported the knowledge of vine cultivation and winemaking to all of the known world. The Middle Ages (1000 - 1500) saw the birth of the alcohol industry close on the heels of economic prosperity and urbanization. City dwellers were not able to produce their own food and drink. Improvements in recipes catapulted the industry to new heights. Ale was made with gruit which was not suitable for keeping for a long time. Replacement of gruit with hops for bittering ensured longer preservation and industry flourished in the Middle Ages. Alcohol was considered safe for consumption as sources of plain water in Europe and America were polluted. The fermentation process itself and the method of adding alcohol to water killed harmful bacteria.

This book clearly traces out the social background in which alcohol entered the diet of Europeans and how opposition built up against it, along with the reasons. By the end of 1500s, distilled spirits entered mainstream drinking culture instead of fermented beverages. The first form of spirits to be produced was brandy which is distilled from wine, similarly rum was distilled from molasses. The distilled alcohol was known as aquavitae (water of life) in Europe. They contained much higher alcohol content than fermented drinks. By the early modern period (1500-1700), alcohol became firmly entrenched in the daily diets of European populations. Resistance to alcohol came to the fore in the nineteenth century when biblical scholars were working in a cultural climate increasingly receptive to temperance and prohibitionist ideas. They reinterpreted the treatment of alcohol in the Bible and claimed that wherever the term was used in a positive sense, it in fact meant grape juice. When tea was first introduced, it was recognized as having stimulating effects somewhat similar to alcohol's. Writers argued that tea was preferable to wine, because it conveyed all the benefits of wine without the disadvantages of intoxication and hangover. In the nineteenth century, many governments provided safe drinking water to many urban populations. Though this was led by concerns for public health and ideas about personal and social hygiene, it provided one of the bases for radical anti-alcohol movements. This made possible a real shift in the attitudes for a future without alcohol.

Being sourced from antiquity itself, alcohol attached itself to religion as well. Christianity elevated wine to a position of centrality in its symbolism and rituals, while Islam rejected alcohol entirely and forbade its followers to drink alcoholic beverages. Perhaps the greatest sanctity for wine was accorded by Christianity through the concept of transubstantiation, that at the Eucharist the substance of the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The wine used for this purpose was especially blessed and not of the ordinary variety. The author claims that Christianity introduced Christ as resembling a wine god in the model of Dionysus of Rome, who was also born of a god and a human woman. He too performed the miracle of turning water into wine, although he converted only three jars, whereas Christ did six! The importance of wine for communion led the Christian church and its institutions to become significant sponsors of an extensive wine industry. Many vineyards were planted on monastic lands and monasteries became important commercial producers of wine, a major part of which was sold to secular society. Phillips also points out that though Islam banned alcohol, it granted access to it in paradise, which is depicted as flowing with rivers of delicious wine. When temperance movements arose in modern times, many of them were imbued with Christian virtues and the religion's inalienable link to wine became a sticking point. A way out came in the form of Louis Pasteur who found that heating up grape juice killed off the yeasts needed to turn its sugars into alcohol. This enabled the production of stable juice that was free from the risk of fermentation. This 'unfermented wine' was used in church services. The Catholic Church, however, continues to use wine.

This book examines the issue of the use of alcohol with people of other continents, but sadly leaves out Asia. Portuguese wine was used in the slave trade to pay for the slaves. The Europeans also introduced alcoholic beverages in their colonies. In Mexico, they couldn't displace the local variety known as pulque, to which the whites were addicted too. Missionaries opposed selling alcohol to Native Americans only because 'it made them more difficult to convert' (p. 149). The eighteenth century saw the emergence of clearly defined, class-based drinking cultures and a much starker differentiation between elite and popular drinking. Native Americans were prohibited from alcoholic beverages by peculiar laws preventing sale of liquor to them. These became redundant in 1920 when Prohibition was extended to all races. When it was repealed in 1933, the Native Americans continued to be under prohibition. This was lifted only in 1953.

The twentieth century was the most restraining ever on alcohol. World War I was a watershed in the history of alcohol. Under the pressure of extended military conflict, growing concerns about alcohol crystallized and many governments introduced regulations which were largely maintained and even intensified long after the conflict ended. The US prohibited alcohol for recreational consumption in 1920. For thirteen years, the people of America resorted to a slew of subterfuges to get hands on a bottle of it. Finally, convinced of its futility, the ban was lifted in 1933. This rethink was also due to the Depression because it made the state lose revenue on liquor sales and employment opportunities for the vast unemployed masses in the liquor industry. In Nazi Germany, thousands of individuals identified as alcoholics were sterilized because they believed that it will be passed on to descendants. This was the taste of eugenics vigorously followed by the Nazi party. However, with the failure of Prohibition everywhere, the moralistic approach to alcoholism was shunned and more practical organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous emerged in 1935.

Considering the subject matter, I had expected at least a part of the narrative in a lighter vein. This expectation was belied from the outset as Phillips vied for an academic thesis that may grant him a higher degree than to entertain the readers. This makes the text somewhat tedious. A lot of information is condensed into its pages that may be of better use to a student than a hobbyist reader. Leaving out Asia is an unpardonable lapse in a book of this nature. To compensate for this shortcoming in some measure, the author has included some very basic, fleeting references to China, but India is totally left out. As parts of history, quotes from books of the period are included, which adequately illustrates several aspects of the issue at hand. This book leaves out scientific matter altogether. One would be interested to know the mechanism of how alcohol affects the brain and nervous system, and also how the body finally disposes it off, thereby causing irreversible damage to the liver. The author should have devoted a chapter on this topic. As of now, readers sign off from the book with a feeling that consuming alcohol is a pleasurable experience and that's why puritans oppose it in every way they can. Its life-threatening aftereffects are not at all highlighted.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star