Britain’s Intoxicant Economy, 1550-1770
This paper is taken from a book I’m writing on Britain’s role in Europe’s ‘psychoactive revolution’ between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries: i.e. the commodification on a global scale of comestibles that are at once potentially addictive and known across cultures to induce altered states of consciousness. While this psychoactive revolution was a polyvalent and multi-dimensional process, the focus here is on the commercialization of both fermented and distilled alcohols and the introduction of strange, unfamiliar, or ‘luxurious’ intoxicants into popular diets. The paper traces the interconnecting ‘food systems’ underpinning these developments – in Britain, Europe, the Atlantic and Asia – and suggests in schematic terms some of their key characteristics. The cumulative result, the paper argues, was a British intoxicant economy at once markedly different from that of previous centuries and which was formative in terms of the provision and patterning of modern tastes and habits.
All welcome-this event is free to attend but booking is required.
This page was last updated on 8 October 2024
