Alcohol Flows Across Cultures: Drinking Cultures in Transnational and Comparative Perspective 9781138302051, 9780203732038

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Alcohol Flows Across Cultures

This book maps changing patterns of drinking. Emphasis is laid on the connected histories of different regions and populations across the globe regarding consumption patterns, government policies, economics and representations of alcohol and drinking. Its transnational perspective facilitates an understanding of the local and global factors that have had a bearing on alcohol consumption and legislation, especially on the emergence of particular styles of “drinking cultures”. The comparative approach helps to identify similarities, differences and crossovers between particular regions and pinpoint the parameters that shape alcohol consumption, policies, legal and illegal production, and popular perceptions. With a wide geographic range, the book explores plural drinking cultures within any one region, their association with specific social groups, and their continuities and changes in the wake of wider global, colonial and post-colonial economic, political and social constraints and exchanges. Waltraud Ernst is Emerita Professor in the History of Medicine, c. 1700–2000 at Oxford Brookes University, UK.

Routledge Studies in Modern History

Reforming Senates Upper Legislative Houses in North Atlantic Small Powers 1800-present Edited by Nikolaj Bijleveld, Colin Grittner, David E. Smith and Wybren Verstegen Unsettled 1968 in the Troubled Present Revisiting the 50 Years of Discussions from East and Central Europe Edited by Aleksandra Konarzewska, Anna Nakai and Michał Przeperski Marginalized Groups, Inequalities and the Post-War Welfare State Whose Welfare? Edited by Monika Baár and Paul van Trigt Union and Disunion in the Nineteenth Century Edited by James Gregory and Daniel J. R. Grey Intellectuals in the Latin Space during the Era of Fascism Crossing Borders Edited by Valeria Galimi and Annarita Gori The Co-opting of Education by Extremist Factions: Professing Hate Sarah Gendron Alcohol Flows Across Cultures: Drinking Cultures in Transnational and Comparative Perspective Edited by Waltraud Ernst Red Money for the Global South: East-South Economic Relations in the Cold War Max Trecker For a full list of titles, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/history/series/ MODHIST

Alcohol Flows Across Cultures Drinking Cultures in Transnational and Comparative Perspective

Edited by Waltraud Ernst

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Waltraud Ernst; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Waltraud Ernst to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-30205-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-73203-8 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK

Contents

List of figures Contributors Acknowledgements 1 Introduction: Alcohol flows across cultures: drinking cultures in transnational and comparative perspective

vii ix xii

1

WALTRAUD ERNST

2 The same drink? Wine and absinthe consumption and drinking cultures among French and Muslim groups in nineteenth-century Algeria

20

NINA SALOUÂ STUDER

3 Drinking and production patterns of wine in North Africa during French colonisation, c. 1830–1956

44

NESSIM ZNAIEN

4 Drinking dis-ease: Alcohol and colonialism in the international city of Tangier, c. 1912–1956

61

FRANCISCO JAVIER MARTÍNEZ

5 Between promotions and prohibitions: The shifting symbolisms and spaces of beer in modern Turkey

84

EMINE Ö. EVERED AND KYLE T. EVERED

6 Good hope for the pilsner: Commerce, culture and the consumption of the pilsner beer in British Southern Africa, c. 1870–1914 MALCOLM F. PURINTON

123

vi Contents 7 “A hotbed of sins” or “just like home”? Drinking cultures in colonial Qingdao (1897–1914)

139

SABINA GROENEVELD

8 Filched fungi? Bioprospecting and the circulation of “Chinese yeast”, c. 1892–1933

159

TRISTAN REVELLS

9 Gariahat Whisky: Bootlegged cosmopolitanism and the making of the nationalistic state, Calcutta c. 1923–1935

186

PROJIT BIHARI MUKHARJI

10 “Lurvenbrow”: Bavarian beer culture and barstool diplomacy in the global market, 1945–1964

204

ROBERT SHEA TERRELL

11 Twenty-first-century transnational neo-temperance

221

JULIE ROBERT

Index

241

Figures

2.1 3.1 3.2 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4

5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13

5.14

5.15

5.16 5.17

Alphonse Loustaunau, À l’Esplanade des Invalides Location of bars: plan of Casablanca (1956) Location of bars: Tunis (1956) – plan d’ensemble Example of rakı bottle label indicating the early monopoly

administration İnhisarlar İdaresi AOÇ brewery “Everybody, drink Ankara beer!” A 1930s AOÇ advertisement “Neşesine doyulmaz” (roughly, “You can never get enough

enjoyment”); a common print advertisement for AOÇ’s Ankara

Birası that again features a glamorous couple A “table-tent” beer mug with etiquette and lifestyle advice for

women – and especially for the devoted and modern housewife “Turkish beer industry and brand sales, 1969–1986” Advertisement: “an Efes Pilsen, please!” Advertisement: “the real beer you seek” Advertisement; “the six-pack’s first time in Turkey” Advertisement: “the real beer for the young” Advertisement; Efes Pilsen’s fourth birthday party An open letter: “Bira Olayındaki Gerçek” Relating the athletic organisation’s history, the Efes-/Anadolu­ sponsored basketball team Anadolu Efes Spor Kulübü note

details of its evolving names and logos, including those of 2011 Sold in June 2013 along İstiklal Caddesi – adjacent to Gezi

Park, the t-shirt with filled beer mugs boisterously proclaims

“Şerefine Tayyip!” as both a shout of unity for protestors and

ridicule for Erdoğan A typical corner, ground-level bakkal in Istanbul displays

its re-worked Efes-sponsored store placard complete with name,

telephone number, and TAPDK registration number all deleted Protesting online with nothing: Görmesek de biliriz Protesting without a label: Görmesek de biliriz

24

50

51

90

91

93

94

95

97

99

100

101

102

103

106

109

112

113

114

115

viii Figures 7.1 7.2 10.1 10.2

Postcard sent to Germany from Qingdao, 1898 Christmas celebrations in Qingdao, 1908 Advert, London Evening Standard, June 12, 1952 British youth waiting outside the Löwenbräu Beer Keller in

Manchester

142

150

205

212

Contributors

Waltraud Ernst is Emerita Professor in the Department of History, Philoso­ phy and Culture at Oxford Brookes University, UK. Her research focuses on the history of mental illness and alcohol in South Asia and her publi­ cations include Mad Tales from the Raj (1991; 2010), Colonialism and Transnational Psychiatry (2013) and Health and Medicine in the Indian Princely States (2018, with B. Pati and T.V. Sekher). She has edited a number of books, on Work, Psychiatry and Society (2016), Trans­ national Psychiatry (2010, with T. Mueller), Crossing Colonial Historio­ graphies (2010; with A. Digby and P.B. Mukharji), India’s Princely States (2007; with B. Pati), The Normal and the Abnormal (2006), Plural Medi­ cine, Tradition and Modernity (2002), and Race, Science and Medicine (1999; with B.J. Harris). Emine Ö. Evered is Associate Professor of History at Michigan State Uni­ versity. A scholar of late Ottoman and republican Turkey, her past work concerned histories of education and society–state relations. Current research includes histories of public health, sexuality, intoxicants, and a book project on Turkey’s rise and fall of prohibition. Kyle T. Evered is Associate Professor of Geography at Michigan State Uni­ versity. His publications include works on the cultural, historical and pol­ itical geographies and cultural ecologies of Turkey and neighbouring states. Recent research concerns geographies of the opium poppy, of health and wellbeing, and of identity-place constructs (e.g., nationalism– territoriality/–regionalism). Sabina Groeneveld is a Lecturer in the School of International Studies and Education at the University of Technology Sydney. Her current research focuses on the dynamics of everyday life within colonial contexts in rela­ tion to the construction of belonging and power relations. She is the author of Zweite Heimat Tsingtau: Qingdao, 1897–1914 (Röhrig Univer­ sity Press, 2019). Francisco Javier Martínez is FCT researcher at the CIDEHUS of the Univer­ sity of Évora, Portugal. He works on the history of medicine, public health

x

Contributors and humanitarianism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Morocco, espe­ cially in relation to European colonial interventions and local initiatives of modernisation. Recent publications include the special issue “The Pasteur Institutes in the Maghreb during the colonial period” (2016) in the journal Dynamis; and the collective volumes Mediterranean quarantines, 1750–1914: Space, identity and power (2018, with J. Chircop) and Entangled peripheries: New contributions to the history of Portugal and Morocco (2020).

Projit Bihari Mukharji is an Associate Professor at the University of Penn­ sylvania in the Department of History and Sociology of Science. His work focusses on the histories of traditions of knowledge making in modern and early modern South Asia. He is the author of two mono­ graphs, namely, Nationalizing the Body: The Medical Market, Print and Daktari Medicine (London, 2009) and Doctoring Traditions: Ayurveda, Small Technologies and Braided Sciences (Chicago, 2016), and currently serves as the Editor in Chief of History Compass and the Book Reviews Editor for Isis. Malcolm F. Purinton is a Lecturer of history at Northeastern University and Emerson College in Boston. His current book project, Globalization in a Glass, examines and explains how the world came to be dominated by a single style of beer, the pilsner, through histories of technology and science, environment, food and empire. He is also a beer journalist and public scholar on the histories of beer and brewing. Tristan Revells has completed his PhD in East Asian Languages and Cul­ tures at Columbia University with a focus on the history of science and technology in China, Vietnam and Japan. His dissertation, Mobilizing Microbes: Alcohol, Biotechnology, and China’s First Renewable Energy Industry (1890–1946), traced the history of the renewable energy industry in China via the Republican-era biofuel programme. His most recent research collaboration combines history and technology to digitally model the biofuel programme’s prototype “China Alcohol Factory”. Julie Robert is Associate Professor in the School of International Studies and Education at the University of Technology Sydney. She is the author of Curative Illnesses: Medico-National Allegory in Québécois Fiction (McGill­ Queen’s University Press 2016) and has published on popular cultural and legal approaches to promoting responsible drinking in both English and French speaking contexts. Her current research project focuses on the cul­ tivation of embodied examples in participatory public health campaigns. Nina Salouâ Studer is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Islamic Sciences and New Oriental Philology at the University of Berne, Switzer­ land. She is currently writing her habilitation thesis on the participation of women in different forms of protest movements in Mandate Syria and Lebanon. Her PhD was published as The Hidden Patients: North African

Contributors

xi

Women in French Colonial Psychiatry in 2016. After her PhD she looked at the medical history of several drinks (among them coffee, tea, absinthe and champagne) in the colonial Maghreb. Robert Shea Terrell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse Uni­ versity. His current book project, The People’s Drink: The Politics and Culture of Beer in Germany’s Twentieth Century, brings together the local, regional, national and global histories of German beer. Nessim Znaien is Junior Lecturer of history at Aix-Marseille University, France. His PhD dissertation concerned the history of alcohol in colonial Tunisia. He currently studies the history of bread in North Africa during the French colonial period.

Acknowledgements

Some of the contributions in this volume were presented at the Inter­ national Research Symposium on “Alcohol Flows Across Cultures: Drink­ ing cultures in transnational and comparative perspective”, which was held at St Anne’s College Oxford, from 29 to 30 June 2016. We acknowledge the financial support received from Oxford Brookes University, which helped make the event enjoyable and productive, and enabled us to make podcasts of the talks available on the academic and educational website pulse-project. org. We also greatly appreciate the valuable contributions to the conference and discussions by Charles Ambler, Martha Canfield, Jacqueline Leckie, Divya Narayanan and Deborah Toner. We thank the co-convenor, David Foxcroft, for his participation, as well as Tudor Georgescu and Simon Wilson for editing the podcasts, Jane Freebody for getting us organised so efficiently, and last but not least Jonathan Reinarz and Franca Beccaria for facilitating debate and critical reflection. Thanks are due to our publisher, Routledge, in particular Robert Langham and Tanushree Baijal, and to Colin Morgan and Jane Fieldsend for moving us so smoothly through the production process.

1

Introduction: Alcohol flows across cultures Drinking cultures in transnational and

comparative perspective

Waltraud Ernst Drink wine and look at the moon

and think of all the civilisations

the moon has seen passing by.

Attributed to Omar Khayyám,

Rubáiyát (11th/12th century CE)

Interest in alcohol research has grown steadily over the last decade or so. International and interdisciplinary conferences, such as those organised by the Alcohol and Drugs History Society and the Drinking Studies Network, for example, have attracted an ever-rising number of delegates from a wide range of disciplines, including health policy studies, sociology, anthropology, geography and history. Specialist journals and blogs on alcohol and drinking have become well-established academic publication outlets, testifying to the increasing attention being paid to alcohol in relation to more general concerns in the fields of health, medicine and substance use and abuse, on the one hand, and a newly emerging engagement with the historical, social and cultural roles and meanings of alcohol and drinking, on the other. The fact that the World Health Organization (WHO) has identified alcohol abuse as a global challenge to mental and physical health, and the concomitant increase in research funding for alcohol-related projects, has been instrumental in enhancing academic and popular attention to this subject area. Given current concerns about alcohol-related health issues and the ensuing monetary and social costs, drinking has become framed as a medical, social and economic problem that requires public health intervention and related state-supported initiatives. As the Director-General of the WHO put it in 2018: Far too many people, their families and communities suffer the conse­ quences of the harmful use of alcohol through violence, injuries, mental health problems and diseases like cancer and stroke. … It’s time to step up action to prevent this serious threat to the develop­ ment of healthy societies.1

2

Waltraud Ernst

However, despite evidence that alcohol is implicated in family violence and crime, and concerns that it wreaks havoc on nations’ health and welfare systems around the globe, the production and consumption of both commercially manufactured and home-made alcohol continues to flourish in many countries.2 What is more, drinking is a boon to many governments as they benefit from tax levies imposed on the production, import, export and consumption of legally produced alcoholic beverages.3 National and international capital, too, gains from and continues to be a big player in the global field of alcohol production and trade.4 Consumers on their part may or may not be aware of and concerned about the adverse fiscal impact of alcohol on national health, welfare and police budgets, or be fretting about national and international companies accumulating high profits from drinkers’ enjoyment of or addiction to beer, wine and strong liquor. However, they will most certainly be familiar with tropes depicting alcohol as a beneficial relaxant and enjoyable social stimulant, as well as imbibed age-old wisdom about drinking as a precursor of ill health, domestic upheaval, violence and crime. As in other cultures, in western countries, awareness of the manifold attributes of alcohol and of varied socially acceptable drinking etiquettes has been enshrined in ancient philosophy as well as in public lore. For example, Dionysos and Bacchus, the gods of wine and ecstasy in ancient Greek and Roman territories, were depicted both to venerate and caution against certain aspects of wine consumption, as is testified in a comic play attributed to the Athenian poet Eubulus (4th cent. BCE), who let his Dionysos deliberate: I mix three kraters only for those who are wise. One is for good health, which they drink first. The second is for love and pleasure. The third is for sleep, and when they have drunk it those who are wise wander homewards. The fourth is no longer ours, but belongs to arrogance. The fifth leads to shouting. The sixth to a drunken revel. The seventh to black eyes. The eighth to a summons. The ninth to bile. The tenth to madness, in that it makes people throw things.5 Alcohol is a substance that has been enjoyed, cursed and battled with in many cultures and, arguably, throughout history. However, as signalled by current WHO campaigns, only more recently has drinking been identified as a global problem seen to require more medical attention and concerted, global public health intervention. This is not to say that alcohol had not previously been seen as a medical and public health problem. Of course it had, within both orthodox and heterodox medical systems and lay beliefs about what is needed for a good

Introduction: Alcohol flows across cultures

3

and healthy life. As the recommendation for health complaints of porter, brandy and other alcoholic beverages during earlier centuries attests, alcohol was considered beneficial to well-being if it was prescribed by medical practitioners or self-medicated in quantities considered as moderate within any one cultural and historical context. The detrimental effects of over-consumption were well known and documented in relation to conditions such as the epidemic of gout that was seen to pain the higher orders of society in Georgian England, for example.6 Scientifically and medically founded pleas for “temperance” and policies of control and prohibition are certainly not new phenomena, but were common in many regions of the world, including areas colonised by western countries during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.7 Furthermore, periodic and permanent abstinence from alcohol has been part of religious, moral and medical injunctions in both western and non-western cultures. Neither medical ideas on healthy and excessive drinking, nor religion-fuelled demands for statesupported prohibition policies, are therefore novel. However, the elevation of alcohol to a number one global health hazard, that is seen to be equalled only by obesity and sugar consumption in rich countries, has located drinking firmly within the sphere of public health interventions and the socio-medical approaches that underpin them. It has also thrown into stark relief the current relevance attributed to individual and communal drinking behaviours. Alongside religious and moral commandments, medicine and public health have become dominant precepts. It is somewhat surprising that, despite the topicality of alcohol and the identification of problem-drinking as a global phenomenon, historical research has remained largely Euro- and Anglo-centric in its regional scope.8 There have been some notable exceptions to the Anglo-European gaze, such as the recent upsurge of studies on South America and South Asia.9 On the whole, however, there is a dearth of work on the history of alcohol and drinking cultures in non-western countries, and in Islamic cultures in particular. Western preconceptions about particular communities’ attitudes towards alcohol, as well as the continued post-colonial peripheralisation of major areas of the world in favour of regions defined as part of the “centre”, are arguably to blame for lack of engagement with the newly posed “alcohol question” on a truly globally informed scale. Persistent Orientalist misconceptions on the part of researchers based in western and recently westernised countries suggest that particular communities and areas of the world could be considered “dry” on account of their religion or cultural outlook.10 Religious discourses and official anti-alcohol policies espoused by the powers that be in Islamic countries, for example, can seem to justify and further solidify such views. Yet, there is a difference between religious and official discourses about alcohol, on the one hand, and private and particular communities’ narratives and experiences of drinking, on the other. As in the cases of prohibition policies fuelled by Christian fundamentalism in “dry” areas of the United States, and the Scandinavian “wet” Gothenburg model of a state alcohol retail monopoly, in countries ruled by Islamic clergy or royal houses, too, parts of the populace

4

Waltraud Ernst

resisted or ignored doctrines that interfered with their private or communal tastes. Home brewing, moonshining and illegal trade were and are widespread in all kinds of cultures and political systems. The moon in Omar Khayyam’s poem has not only seen civilisations pass by but has also glimpsed people engaged in illicit alcohol production and illegal drinking. It is important that histories of alcohol and drinking do not reify western essentialist-reductive assumptions about non-western communities, or regard religious dogma and national state policies as valid indicators of people’s actual beliefs and practices. In regard to Middle Eastern and North African countries, in particular, the lack of more nuanced studies dealing with official and religious discourse – as well as private practices among both elite groups and the urban and rural poor – is especially astounding in view of existing evidence of well-established drinking cultures before and since the rise of Islam from the seventh century CE. Wherever religious or state power exists, with its associated discourse of control, there is not only resistance (as Foucault has told us), but also a plethora of persistent private practices and of more or less openly exhibited lingering traditions and customs that evade, adapt or survive alongside the dictates of discursive hegemony. The injunctions against alcohol in the Quran and in its interpretations (tafsir) are testimony of dogmatic elucidation and plurality of exegesis, as well as the difficult task faced by clergy in their attempts to oust converts’ and prospective believers’ age-old traditions, ideas and practices of alcohol consumption. Furthermore, drinking was tolerated in some areas under Muslim rule in the Middle East, such as Persia [nowadays Iran], where the social and uplifting role of drinking was extolled at different periods of the Islamic Golden Age (c. eighth to fourteenth century CE). The poet, philosopher and mathematician Omar Khayyám (1048–1131 CE) eulogised wine in his Rubáiyát. In a series of verses Khayyám elegantly wed it with different shades of sentiment and meaning, identifying some of the core experiences of life as well as drinking. Drink wine. This is life eternal. This is all that youth will give you. It is the season for wine, roses and drunken friends. Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.11 Yet, he also evoked a sense that neither wine nor life were always palatable and pleasant. Today is the time of my youth I drink wine because it is my solace; Do not blame me, although it is bitter it is pleasant, It is bitter because it is my life.

Introduction: Alcohol flows across cultures

5

Two centuries later, the poet and Sufi mystic Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207–1273 CE) echoed some of Khayyám’s contemplations Lo, in thy glass the crimson wine

With such a rosy glow doth shine

That, like a rose, ’tis time to pass

From hand to hand the wine-bright glass.12

Whether these poets’ views on wine are taken in a literal or metaphorical way, they attest to the varied meanings with which the drinking of wine was imbued at two different periods when Islam flourished in Persia. They may represent elite thinking or a minority’s particular view of the world; but even if this is so, they still demonstrate that a religion such as Islam and any particular official restrictions do not necessarily and always penetrate into, and fully subsume, a people’s imaginations and social practices. Alcohol and drinking are not only multifaceted social, economic and cultural phenomena but are also marked by plurality of views and practices, in their officially sanctioned as well as their illegal versions. Whilst a focus on less frequently researched regions of the world allows us to glean insights that expand our horizon beyond the Anglo-European world, it is also conducive to a more comprehensive understanding of the interconnections, crosscurrents and frictions between official policies and social traditions in western cultures. How do consumers at different times and places reconcile religious injunctions with personal predilections and wider social pressures? How do they circumvent official measures and resolve any potential cognitive dissonance between official mores and private practices? And, last but not least, how could insights derived from globally informed and culturally astute analyses of ideas and behaviours inform alcohol policies in specific countries across the world? The chapters in this book highlight areas of analysis and geographical locations that have not been well covered in existing literature, especially hitherto neglected geopolitical and cultural spaces, such as Islamic and post/colonial contexts. Of course, they cannot purport to be analytically and globally comprehensive, but the themes tackled have relevance beyond the boundaries of individual countries. Existing writing on alcohol and drinking has been largely inward looking and self-contained by a focus on particular nations. However, this book is not intended to provide a collection of writing on a wide range of countries that are explored separately alongside each other. The challenge is to look outwards and trace how colonies and European countries were intertwined, with metropolitan features of alcohol production, trade and consumption providing blueprints but also sitting more or less happily alongside previously established practices. Emphasis in each chapter is therefore on interconnections between metropoles and peripheries, or on the entwining of local alcohol production, trade and consumption patterns with other geopolitical and cultural spaces beyond the confines of specific nation states. The boundaries of alcohol

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Waltraud Ernst

flows are seen as permeable and fluid, rather than as clearly demarcated by national boundaries or by ascribed, or prevalent, cultural customs. The methodologies that lend themselves best to the mapping of global connections in the flow of alcohol across regions and cultural communities are based on frameworks such as transnational, or translocal, histories, and connected history, as well as on approaches that concern themselves with networks, flows and the circulation of ideas and practices.13 These kinds of methodological approaches allow a nuanced assessment of policies, substances, actors and behaviours as multiply determined and versatile in nature. For example, analysis of the changing dynamics of alcohol’s political, social and cultural importance in colonial and post-colonial situations may focus on one particular beverage (wine or beer) to show the interactions of local, regional and global structures, processes and peoples, and thus highlight the social history, or the “social life of things”, and the multiple agents connected with a specific substance.14 Furthermore, in contrast to many of the quantitative and epidemiological studies that have hitherto dominated academic studies of alcohol, both the concepts and the methodologies employed here are multi-disciplinary in outlook. Issues of representation underline, or are at least considered in, most contributions, highlighting the role of the media and the imaginary in the flow of ideas about alcohol and drinking, as well as their impact on the production and trade of particular beverages. Even so, the economics and production of alcohol and the policies and politics relating to them are not forgotten, even when the emphasis tends to be on consumption and representations. The relationship between the manufacture of alcohol and patterns of consumption (and the portrayal of alcohol in advertisements and films) is an important aspect of the rise of drinking and shifts in particular drinking behaviours. Therefore, analyses that foreground consumption and representations of alcohol still need to be interwoven with considerations of the wider economic and political factors, as well as with the technological developments that frame them. The links between these aspects become particularly salient in regard to the tension between imported beverages, on the one hand, and traditional, local drinks and home or illicit brewing on the other. There is no one single approach used by the contributors in their mapping of alcohol flows. However, they all aim to explore the crossovers between and plurality of local and translocal drinking cultures and the global connections in the flow of alcohol across regions.15 The preferred use of the term “culture” in relation to drinking patterns and behaviours indicates that authors also employ anthropological concepts and approaches.16 Culture denotes “big” civilisations or traditions, such as “Muslim” or “German”, as well as small intra-cultural communities, such as “adolescent European beer drinkers in urban Algeria”. As Ruth Benedict put it, “A culture, like an individual, is a more or less consistent pattern of thought and action.”17 However, an important caveat must be raised here. As has been shown particularly well by post-colonial and cultural studies scholars, neither individuals nor specific

Introduction: Alcohol flows across cultures

7

“cultures” are necessarily and consistently “consistent”; in fact, they may be consistently inconsistent. What is more, cultures can be understood as distinctive ways of life, but they are also subject to change, social stratification and heterogeneity. A focus on what is shared is as important as recognising and identifying the versatility of any individual wider or more narrowly articulated culture that also provides a home for plurality and difference. There is a danger of homogenising or “essentialising” particular cultures or communities, in order to discern consistency and unity of perceived characteristics for the sake of research, with the purpose of evidencing certain social preconceptions. Drinking cultures relate to communities in which individuals may share some – but not necessarily all – ideas, norms, behaviours and ambitions in regard to alcohol as well as other matters. It is as vital to identify what brings a particular community together in drinking as it is to show how the seemingly same drinking behaviours and meanings may be shared by very diversely motivated sub-groups and individuals. Culture is not only inherently plural but also subject to social construction and, therefore, to what Franz Boas called the skewed perspective of the Culturbrille (cultural lens or gaze): namely, the difficulty in seeing one’s own culture as clearly as outsiders may do.18 Freud acknowledged the latter when he suggested: “The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.” If employed carefully, the concept of culture is a useful heuristic device that enables us to locate certain characteristics in communities that may be – simultaneously – elusive, variably multi-vocal, open, permeable and closed. Rather than merely tracing how alcohol plentifully quenches the thirst and eases the niceties of social life in some cultures – while seeming to seep away and dry up in others – the ambition of the chapters in this book is to map how alcohol flows and circulates both within and across cultures. How does alcohol move unobstructed; how is it carefully channelled, or unhindered by, other factors such as trading monopolies, national/istic sentiments, racial and ethnic preconceptions, class and gender prejudices, medical and scientific discourses, colonialism and crime? In order to capture the dynamic and multivalent nature of drinking cultures – and of alcohol as a commodity and a substance – a close, critical reading and “thick description” of their specific characteristics has been employed in the individual chapters. Many of the themes dealt with in this book therefore facilitate a deeper understanding of the historical and cultural role of alcohol as a local actor and as a product with a global profile. Colonial and global history are important dimensions of all chapters, even those that focus on an in-depth assessment of one particular local culture. Several contributions trace how alcohol as a substance of economic value transgresses other, more intangible, value systems as it travels across the globe. However, alcohol is not just a commodity, but is imbued with a multitude of social meanings and cultural perceptions. As in the case of French wine, it may take on new meanings and become politicised as a symbol of upheaval or revolution, colonial oppression or of a glorified or detested modernity. A “national”

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Waltraud Ernst

beverage may become international when it travels across borders, yet may retain or even be ascribed a national or nationalist legacy when it is marketed as – and enjoyed on account of – actual or imagined features of its origin. New technologies and processes connected with alcohol manufacture may travel across national borders, become appropriated under licence or adopted illegally, and their original source be obscured purposely for reasons of national/ist pride and profit. In relation to drinking cultures, issues of ethnicity, gender and social class figure prominently, as the perceived propriety of consuming particular beverages is closely linked with these parameters. In a similar vein, depending on local context and the state of global politics, abstinence may be construed as a mark of civilisation (in Americans, for example) or lack thereof (among Muslims), as alcohol is part of wider, entangled discourses of race, religion and political governance. A focus on drinking cultures therefore sheds new light on the workings of particular social hierarchies and cultural identities, as well as on larger themes such as how nationalism, post/colonialism, authenticity, technology and health regulation affected and reflected various communities’ social and cultural practices. Similarly, the role of science and medicine in relation to the control of alcohol consumption, and its potential clash with vested economic interests and individual consumers’ inclinations, are of paramount importance in several of the chapters. In western and colonial countries, discourses of prohibition and of moral and national fitness and degeneration have long been intertwined with medical and scientific ideas, increasingly so from the period between the two world wars when “intemperance” came to be framed in terms of the medicalised narrative of “alcoholism”.19 Scientific and medical networks have given credence to and have been instrumental in the legitimation of a great variety of political agendas and cultural beliefs. Science and medicine have been just as important a drinking partner as religion. At times they were in opposition to – at times they complemented or coexisted alongside – drinking cultures and ideas about the danger or benefits of alcoholic beverages. As Studer shows in her chapter on wine and absinthe consumption in Frenchruled Algeria, francophone authors in both the colony and the metropole put forward highly diverse suggestions on Muslims’ drinking preferences. Still, in all of them, religion was a central point of reference: abstention from alcohol was attributed to Qur’anic proscriptions, while observations of occasional or widespread drinking were explained by physical, moral and unprincipled weakness attributed to Muslims. Foreigners struggled to reconcile their own preconceptions about the role of alcohol in Muslim cultures with the evidence before them, which pointed at the coexistence of abstinence and drinking cultures (both well-established and newly created) in the colony. Contrary to persistent conceptions of Muslim countries as “dry” on account of religious precepts, Studer maps the varied attitudes among French authors towards specific alcoholic substances and drinking practices. She shows how ideas on French metropolitans’, French settlers’ and indigenous Algerians’ drinking

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habits were intrinsically bound up with discourses of civilisation and primitivism, so that abstention became a signifier of Muslims’ backwardness, while the drinking of wine in particular was seen as a sign of refinement and progress characteristic of French culture. However, the bifurcation of the civilisationary status of colonisers and colonised on the basis of drinking habits raised certain explanatory dissonances. First, it made it more difficult to account for the prevalence of alcoholism and alcohol abuse among French settlers and their acknowledged detrimental effects on health and public order. Second, Muslim drinking could not be wholly considered an indicator of native Algerians’ successful colonial assimilation, especially if they consumed beverages (such as absinthe and indigenous liquors rather than wine) that were, in the colony, associated with “poor whites” and obdurate, child-like colonial subjects in need of positive role models. In relation to drinking, ideas of social class and patronising colonialism lent themselves to bridging the ruptures in the political discourse of civilisation. Wine was seen as the drink of choice for the French higher social classes. However, even though wine consumption became a signifier of civilisation, assimilation through this specific beverage did not per se turn Arabs into people of good character, nor lower-class settlers into members of respectable colonial society. The various drinking cultures prevalent in French Algeria articulated a range of discourses and preconceptions, which imbued particular drinks with diverse social and political meanings, enunciated ideas about national and culturally specific styles of drinking, and encapsulated issues of social class and gender in relation to different alcoholic substances. While Studer focuses on the plurality of drinking patterns and attitudes within one colony, Znaien brings to light similarities and differences in the production, trade and consumption of wine in three Muslim countries under French colonial regimes. Znaien’s analysis spans the period from the early (Algeria) and late (Tunisia and Morocco) nineteenth century to independence in the 1950s. In regard to alcohol consumption, he identifies a similar range of ideas prevalent in official records and literary sources on Muslim drinking as Studer has traced in French settlers’ and travellers’ accounts for Algeria: namely the idea that “natives” are unable to consume alcohol in moderation and that they cannot fully appreciate wine. Here, too, discourses of self-control and civilisation go hand in hand with ascribed drinking behaviours and specific substances. Importantly though, French colonialism was not a monolith and, depending on local circumstances, economic and political rationales, colonial policies towards alcohol production, trade and consumption varied considerably. The French Algerian model was by far the most liberal, encouraging the export of wine as well as local consumption, while in Tunisia, and particularly in Morocco, restrictions on the sale of alcohol were in place in Muslim areas. Intriguingly, French colonialists and indigenous nationalists concurred in

10 Waltraud Ernst their imaginary construction of an alcohol-free, pre-colonial Muslim past. Alcohol restrictions in certain Muslim areas are here discussed as a creation and consequence of the interplay between western colonialism and Arab nationalism. Znaien traces the divergent developments of production and trade in the three countries, mapping them onto an analysis of prohibition policies, restrictions of European–Arab interaction, and urban consumption patterns of wine. He finds that economic, ideological and incidental factors were implicated in the ways alcohol was allowed to flow more freely (Algeria) or was constricted (Morocco, Tunisia). Alcohol and the spaces allocated to its consumption were highly politicised, not least because drinking venues were also seen as secret meeting places for anti-colonial activities. The trope of alcohol inducing or accentuating weakness among the indigenous population sat alongside fears that bars would help to strengthen nationalist strife. In a similar vein, the French politique des egards – or policy of mutual respect on the part of both coloniser and colonised for each other’s cultural and social sensitivities (which, among other things, banned Europeans in some areas in Morocco and Tunisia from entering mosques and restricted the sale of alcohol to Muslims) – was instrumental in delineating the colonial communities from each other, accentuated supposedly cultural and religious divides between rulers and ruled, and reified the idea of abstention from alcohol as necessarily intrinsic to Muslim societies on account of Qur’anic injunctions – despite ample evidence to the contrary. Martinez focuses on one particular locality in Morocco from 1912 to independence in 1956: the country’s premier port city of Tangier. He analyses the ways in which alcohol and politics were entangled in a city that held a strategic position right at the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. On account of its special international status, Tangier remained outside the colonial regimes established by the French and Spanish in their Moroccan Protectorates in 1912. The city also retained its position as a gateway for the flow of alcohol into the country. Like Studer and Znaien, Martinez too argues that among some of the French colonials the intention was to ease colonisation by letting alcohol inveigle itself into weak native bodies and mindsets, thereby weakening the resistance of their body politic. However, in Tangier, fairly well-developed local alcohol production and widely entrenched alcohol consumption predated the arrival of European beverages, reducing the weakening (and, according to some, harmful) effects colonial officials had expected. Martinez shows that, although drinking became a well-known and even idiosyncratic feature of some of the city’s European as well as its Arab, Berber and Jewish inhabitants (as is eulogised in films and fiction), alcohol ultimately failed to become a tool of empire. The city’s communities were as resilient to alcohol consumption as they were to French colonial domination. Martinez argues that Tangier was located at the centre of the troubled relationship between alcohol and colonialism in Morocco. He sees the Moroccan case as “an example of the dialectic relationship between western

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and non-western drinking cultures”. The flow and consumption of alcohol was not unilaterally determined by Europeans; nor had Tangier been, as European accounts predominantly suggested, a “traditionally” “dry” region on account of religious custom. The chapter challenges accounts that have foregrounded western agency and emphasised the destructive effect of European alcohol on Moroccans. As Martinez puts it, “Tangier’s tolerance to alcohol came to symbolise the resilience of Morocco’s body politic against European imperialism”. Furthermore, from the 1930s onwards, perceptions of Tangier became less consistently negative as it came to be seen more as a place open to cultural, religious, social and sexual transgression, and inclusive of the mixture of various European and Moroccan drinking cultures united in excess or merry bonhomie. Emine and Kyle Evered’s chapter focuses on the production, marketing and consumption of beer in Turkey. It explores the varied ideas of national identity linked with this particular alcoholic beverage in contrast to other substances. Turkey has strong Islamic traditions; yet it witnessed the secularisation of the state with the establishment of a republic in 1923, along with the change from Ottoman Turkish to a Latin alphabet, which further accentuated its attempts at modernisation in the western style under its first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938). This “Kemalisation” of Turkey has ever since been strongly criticised by Islamic conservatives (such as, most recently, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan). Similarly, the identification of what is supposed to count as the “national drink” of Turkey has been contested. Evered and Evered show how different political communities have laid claim to various beverages as signifiers of Turkish identity. The strong unsweetened spirit rakı, which has been known since pre-Republican times, and the non-alcoholic yoghurt-based ayran, favoured by Islamists, have been at the centre of continued discussion. Although beer had been produced in the region during ancient times, it was re-imagined as a “European” beverage during the late Ottoman era, when a new fermentation method was used in its production by Swiss entrepreneurs Adolf (1863–1913) and Walter (?–1924) Bomonti. Both the Bomonti brewery, established in Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1890, and beer drinking survived the fall of the Ottoman Empire, as well as a short period of prohibition of alcohol during the early 1920s. In line with Atatürk’s westernising ambitions, the latter policy mirrored a similar, short-lived emphasis on the ban of alcohol during the inter-war period in many European and North American countries.20 Perhaps ironically, beer subsequently became a prized income generator for the state, when beer production – like that of other alcoholic beverages as well as tobacco – became consolidated under a state monopoly (TEKEL). As in many countries today, the state benefited from alcohol consumption, while advocating moderation in consumption. From the 1960s, the promotion of a steadily expanding free market helped beer to flow freely in Turkey, and beer continued to rival and at times surpass rakı in terms of scales of production, profits, consumption, availability, and even politicisation. However, it attracted less debate than rakı and ayran until it became a symbol

12 Waltraud Ernst of resistance to Government encroachment on Turkey’s secularism during the Gezi Park and related protests of 2013, attesting to the shifting allegiances of specific alcoholic beverages within changing political contexts. In Turkey, drinking has also been entwined with gender-specific issues and certain groups’ actual or perceived lifestyles and ideological outlooks. Turkish rakı and other strong liquors have been predominantly consumed by men, the rich and heavy drinkers. Beer, in contrast, became a universal drink for both women and men, and in particular for young people who enjoyed social drinking in public places, and for those who tended to identify and be identified with modern, western lifestyles. Such diversification in the clientele of particular alcoholic beverages lends itself to the politicisation of specific drinking cultures, and to social division in terms of gender and age cohort, as well as religion and secular or national/ist sentiment. Similarly, wider, global discourses, such as the WHO’s alcohol guidelines, may under certain political constellations feed into democratic and health-related local discourses, or, as in the case of present-day Turkey, nationalist Islamic agendas. While Studer, Znaien, Martinez, and Evered and Evered concern themselves with alcohol flows and drinking cultures in Islamic contexts, the emphasis of the remaining chapters is on colonial and global interconnections in other parts of the world. Purinton leads us to British southern Africa during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Like the preceding chapter, he looks at beer and in particular at the preference for particular styles of beer by British colonial settlers and local descendants of earlier Dutch settlers (Afrikaners, or “Boers”) respectively. He traces the shift from British ales, largely produced in Cape Town, to Continental varieties of lagers, especially pilsner, brewed in Johannesburg. Purinton assesses consumer tastes and the spread of golden lagers with regard to the impact of internal and external migration flows from the European Continent, especially France, Scandinavia and Germany during the late nineteenth century. German-style lagers tended to be imported for the benefit of diamond and gold miners from the 1860s and 1880s respectively, but soon local entrepreneurs saw their chance for local production, and by the 1890s imports of German beer from Bremen and Hamburg had decreased significantly. Locally brewed lager became the most popular style of beer among Europeans in southern Africa. Purinton shows that the quick transition from British ales to pilsners within just a decade was not merely due to a change in consumer tastes, but was enabled by the adoption of new brewing technologies and scientific approaches that drew on microbiology and chemistry developed in Continental countries, rather than on traditional brewing methods preferred by British “practical” brewers (who relied on their experience, observation and traditional expertise). New technology guaranteed consistent, high quality beer, in contrast to the unpredictable, idiosyncratic and, some would argue, more characterful styles of ales. Changes in the role of capital investment and market control, too, facilitated the local production of pilsner on an industrial scale, as companies in Europe (as much as in

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southern Africa) bought up smaller breweries and dominated the market through the tied-house system. And last but not least, the flow of international finance capital enabled the flow of pilsners, weakening British colonial settlers’ previous cultural loyalty to British porters, ales and even tickey beer (which was a popular local and lighter ale, seen to be similar to “low-class” beers in England). In the case of southern Africa, the preference for particular beers was not merely a question of taste, nor did it necessarily resonate with or express sentiments of national identity and cultural loyalty. Groeneveld shows a very different story in the German colony of Tsingtau (Qingdao). Here Germans sought to import or replicate with precision the beers of their homeland. The Germans occupied this small area in China’s eastern Shandong province from 1897 to 1914, during a period when the “alcohol question” was widely discussed in Germany as well as in the colonies. There was no consensus on whether alcohol facilitated or impeded acclimatisation to a new environment. German medical opinion tended to advise against alcohol consumption on account of its assumed “phlogistic” or stimulating effects. Nevertheless, German military and civil personnel and their spouses did in the main heed neither medical nor moral guidance, and instead consumed large quantities of alcohol, in particular beer and wine. As Groeneveld shows, Germans increased their alcohol intake in the colony, occasionally leading to a reverse kind of culture clash on return to their homeland. Drinking was a social and private activity that connected colonials to their Heimat (home), provided a sense of belonging, and eased social relations. It became a crucial part of the construction of colonial identities. Colonials’ shared their experience in the far away, alien land by means of visual and narrated descriptions of life in the colony as merry and sociable, and, invariably, alcohol fuelled, leading to somewhat carnivalesque or distorted representations of colonial power relations, such as drunken Chinese people in Mandarin costume, German Pickelhaube (spiked helmets) and goose-stepping; intoxicated Germans and lower-class Chinese people rolling drunkenly on the ground. Despite the suggestion that colonials and colonised were united – if not by the colonial situation, then at least by the allure of German drinks and inter-communal merriment – close public encounters between the different communities were rare. In Chinese culture, alcohol consumption among the higher classes was restricted by tight rules and public drunkenness was sanctioned; if they could afford it, lower-class Chinese people tended to prefer opium; German soldiers and civil servants did not mingle socially; and women did not join in with heavy drinking sprees in public. Still, this did not prevent Chinese and German entrepreneurs establishing simple taverns for soldiers and sailors, and wine bars and restaurants for German officers and civilians, respectively. Groeneveld argues that, despite the Bierfest atmosphere depicted on postcards and the association of beer and wine “from home” with a sense of belonging, colonial society as much as its drinking cultures

14 Waltraud Ernst was hierarchically organised and segregated by the dynamics of political power, social class, gender, and cultural differences. The chapter by Revells also covers western imperialist interactions with China. In his chapter on bioprospecting and the circulation of “Chinese Yeast”, Revells shows that “analyses of [industrial] alcohol in relationship to the histories of science and industrialisation are [as vital as histories of potable alcohol] to an understanding of the material, political and social roles of alcohol at both the local and global level”. Focusing on the period from 1890 to 1945, he looks at a particular method of ethanol production, which came to be known as the Amylo process, and which had been widely used in East and South East Asia (while being unknown in European brewing practice) until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The process relied on microorganisms, rather than malt, to convert starches such as grain, corn and sorghum into sugar, which was then turned into ethanol by means of jiuqu (yeast). While originally used to produce mainly potable alcohol, the rising global demand for the large-scale production of its industrial variety – due to the booming manufacture of fuel, munitions, artificial rubber and silk – increased the interest of the chemical industry in potentially cheaper Asian methods. Revells looks at how scientists of different nationalities and disciplines defined the Amylo process and determined its historical ancestries. He traces how both Chinese and western scientists differed considerably in how they framed the origins of the process, depending on their own cultural and political outlook at particular periods. In Chinese accounts, the Amylo method was variously conceived of as a foreign language term for a process pioneered in China, or as “discovered” by western science because of “shameful” neglect on the part of Chinese people to garner and appreciate the potential of traditional substances and techniques. Western sources, in contrast, tended to omit reference to the Chinese roots of the process, minimise Chinese contributions to its further development, and emphasise specific aspects of knowledge, in order to re-channel profits and construct a western-biased lineage of intellectual credit. Revells suggests that “French, English and Chinese accounts alike vary in their representation of [the Amylo method’s] pedigree as they parse and mobilise specific aspects of the process’ development to complement wider, frequently self-serving narratives of scientific innovation”. Ironically, the supposedly “new” technique of alcohol production was not only expropriated by western countries, but its industrial versions were also recirculated back to China. This re-importation of a traditional method, in forms that allowed large-scale industrial use, lent itself on a pragmatic level to applications such as power fuel used in the Chinese war effort against Japan (1937–1945), and facilitated connections between modern western science and traditional Chinese practices. Such connections in turn spawned concerns and even anxiety as well as national pride. Revells concludes that examining the tensions and conflicts in the rhetorical constructions of the

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Amylo process shows how knowledge concerning the value of the techniques and microorganisms associated with the Amylo process was “coproduced by a wide variety of participants, in a process in which biomatter and bioinformation flowed between China, French Indochina, Europe and the USA”. Mukharji’s chapter similarly explores the importance of technological innovation in the manufacture of bootlegged alcohol in Calcutta (Kolkata). However, in this case, the focus is on the local and global production and distribution networks that made “Gariahat whisky” a commercial success story during the 1920s and 1930s. The Gariahat affair was an international enterprise that sold its product as “Scottish” whisky throughout Asia and Europe. Mukharji’s aim is to show that the eventual collapse of the illegal operations and the prosecution of some of the main protagonists should not be read simply as a triumph of law over crime. The syndicate was made up of a wide array of people from very different religious and cultural backgrounds, who would usually have inhabited very distinctly delineated social and cultural worlds. They included an Ashkenazi Jew, born in Poland and naturalised in Canada, as business manager and conveyor of technical innovations and equipment from Europe and North America; a bankrupt, possibly Galician-Spanish wine merchant based in London who provided technical knowledge derived from north American bootlegging practices; Baghdadi Jewish Bengali families who provided the financial capital; Jewish and Armenian business contacts in British Burma (Myanmar); a high-caste Bengali Brahmin as manager of the distillery; lower-caste Bengalis to work in the distillery; a South Indian Telugu speaker from a middling caste to run the day to day affairs in the distillery; a south Indian, possibly Tamil, astrologer to advise on conspicuous days for certain commercial activities; a Bardai Brahmin from western India in Lahore; a Goanise Roman Catholic in Bombay (Mumbai); and contacts in Java in the Dutch East Indies for the supply of spirits. Mukharji notes that the combination of, and mutual trust and cooperation between, members of so many different communities during a period of heightened consciousness of communal differences in South Asia is particularly remarkable. Such transcommunal cooperation also shows that the conspirators were consistently thinking and acting beyond the local, so that the whole enterprise can best be described as “bootlegged cosmopolitanism”, which thrived despite growing ethnic divisions. Its demise occurred when the colonial state transformed into a nationalistic state that was set on enclosing economic operations within a strictly territorialised national boundary, confining also the flow of illicit alcohol across nation states. In his chapter on Bavarian (south German) beer culture and barstool diplomacy, Terrell focuses on how the shifting representations of a particular national culture’s beer and drinking customs are created and fuelled by the changing needs of local and global enterprise to improve its own market position and increase the profitability of certain products. He offers a transnational

16 Waltraud Ernst cultural and business history of Löwenbräu beer in the two decades after the Second World War. Terrell contends that in the process of economic growth and expansion, tastemakers in West Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom constructed and developed a marketable and exclusive sense of authenticity around Löwenbräu beer. The chapter demonstrates how brewers, lawyers, marketers, distributors and politicians across borders and cultures generated and regulated knowledge about a product. Selling the beer meant selling the rhetoric of the traditional, almost ahistorical, practices of production in Bavaria, the heart of German brewing. It also meant selling a particular mode of consumption, rooted in Bavaria, but communicated across borders as broadly German. More than simply selling a product, producers, marketers, distributors and legislators sold an idea of “authentic” German beer and what it meant to drink it like a “real” German. The representational packaging of the product and the drinking culture supposed to go with it were also politically sensitive. During the decades following the Second World War, global trade and business had to be rejuvenated and hence consumers had to be reminded that Germany signified more than Nazism. The flow of German beer across the British Channel and the Atlantic was encouraged, and “German beer cellars” and Oktoberfest-like celebrations proliferated for a while in Britain and the USA. German beer was presented as a cultural ambassador, an introduction to a new Germany. Terrell traces the flow of beer – as much as the information about a specific, invented beer drinking culture – and the changing meanings of its consumption, which took on larger significance for global re-imaginings of Germany as a nation in the wake of National Socialism and the shifting geopolitical and economic landscape of the Cold War. By the 1960s, the notion of West Germany as a merry nation of beer drinkers entered into a much larger re-conceptualisation of the country away from a wartime enemy and towards an unthreatening ally in the cold war-capitalist west. The final chapter takes us to the present and to the ways in which ageold concerns about the detrimental psychological and physical effects of alcohol consumption are expressed in the globalised sphere of the aptly named World Wide Web. Robert traces the ebbs and flows of alcohol abstention, focusing on the promulgation on social media of “temporary sobriety”, namely periods of abstaining from alcohol at specific periods such as during “Dry July” in the Antipodes and “Dry January” in Britain. Many of these initiatives serve multiple purposes, as concerns for personal health and wellbeing are evoked in aid of philanthropic fundraising for sponsored charities. Robert argues that the current fashion of channelling philanthropic engagement through the body (as in charity runs for example) is intertwined with broader public health concerns seeking to address perceived problematic drinking cultures (as in Australia, Britain and Finland for example). A combination of aspects, including charitable giving, responsibility for one’s personal health, and awareness of alcohol’s social

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effects, have made Temporary Sobriety Initiatives (TSI) attractive to variedly motivated followers. Like in the case of temperance initiatives in earlier centuries, the aims and emphases of particular groupings are multiple, albeit at times single­ mindedly so, in approach, and their appeal has crossed national boundaries. However, as Robert shows, TSI have tried to disconnect themselves from what is seen as the moralising reputation of earlier temperance campaigns. While rebranding and refashioning has helped TSI to fit in with current neoliberal concerns about personal and family health, productivity and purposeful philanthropy, they have incorporated some of the underlying premises and forms of their predecessors. Tracing the flow of initiatives across cultures of drinking and abstention afforded by the instant global connectivity of modern technology, Robert concludes that “TSI show themselves to be neo-temperance initiatives for the twenty-first century”. As shown in other chapters, technology, and the flow of alcohol, knowledge and ideas, go hand in glove. As the chapters show, alcohol and the drinking cultures connected with it are important topics in their own right, which bring into sharp focus the interconnection of the local and global dimensions of alcohol production, distribution and consumption. They also constitute lenses through which further insights can be gleaned of processes such as cultural, economic and political change in colonial and post-colonial situations; traditional and emerging identities and hierarchies within societies and particular communities in terms of gender, age, social class and ethnicity; and the role of representations, imaginings and social practice in the making of cultures, nations and products.

Notes 1 Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of World Health Organiza­ tion, WHO Forum on Drugs, Alcohol and Addictive Behaviours, 2018. www. who.int/substance_abuse/en/ Accessed 27 June 2019. 2 World Health Organization. Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health, 2018. www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/alcohol/en/ Accessed 27 June 2019. John Germov and Julie McIntyre, “A History of Global Production from 1950”. In Rod Phillips (ed.), Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol, London: Bloomsbury Aca­ demic, 2019; Jakob Manthey, Kevin D. Shield, Margaret Rylett, Omer S. M. Hasan, Charlotte Probst and Jürgen Rehm, “Global Alcohol Exposure between 1990 and 2017 and Forecasts until 2030: A Modelling Study”, The Lancet, 393, 2493 (2019); Kym Anderson and Vicente Pinilla, Wine Globalization: A New Comparative History, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 3 World Health Organization, Resource tool on alcohol taxation and pricing policies, 2017. www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/alcohol/en/ Accessed 27 June 2019. 4 Martin Quinn and João Oliveira (eds), Accounting for Alcohol: An Accounting History of Brewing, Distilling and Viniculture, London: Routledge, 2019; Chris­ tian Franz and Ilona Kickbusch, “The Capital-NCD-Nexus: The Commercial Determinants of Health and Global Capital Flows”, Eurohealth, 24, 3 (2018): 21–25.

18 Waltraud Ernst 5 Cited and discussed in C. H. Cook, H. Tarbet and D. Ball, “Classically Intoxi­ cated: Correlations between Quantity of Alcohol Consumed and Alcohol Related Problems in a Classical Greek Text”, British Medical Journal, 22, 335 (2007): 1302–1304. 6 Roy Porter and George Sebastian Rousseau, Gout: The Patrician Malady, New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1998. 7 Mark Lawrence Schrad, The Political Power of Bad Ideas: Networks, Institu­ tions, and the Global Prohibition Wave, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010; Robert A. Hohner, Prohibition and Politics, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999; Johan Edman, “Temperance and Modernity: Alcohol Con­ sumption as a Collective Problem 1885–1913”, Journal of Social History, 49 (2015): 20–52; Harry G. Levine, “The Alcohol Problem in America: From Tem­ perance to Alcoholism”, British Journal of Addiction, 79 (1984): 109–119. 8 This Eurocentric bias is also present in clinical research on ethnic minority groups within the UK. For example, see Rao’s critical assessment. Rahul Rao, “Alcohol Misuse and Ethnicity”, British Medical Journal, 332 (2006): 682. 9 Gretchen Pierce and Çurea Toxqui (eds), Alcohol in Latin America: A Social and Cultural History, Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 2014; Gina Hames, Alco­ hol in World History, London: Routledge, 2014; I. Cabras, D. Higgins and D. Preece (eds), Brewing, Beer and Pubs: A Global Perspective, London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016; Harald Fischer-Tine and Jana Tschurenev (eds), A History of Alcohol and Drugs in Modern South Asia: Intoxicating Affairs, London and New York: Routledge, 2014; Erica Wald, “Governing the Bottle: Alcohol, Race and Class in Nineteenth-Century India,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 46, 3 (2018): 397–417. 10 Robin Room, “The Formulation of State Alcohol Monopolies and Controls: Case Studies in Five Nations”, Contemporary Drug Problems, 12 (1985): 1–9. For critical assessments of the wet–dry typology, see R. Gordon, D. Heim and S. MacAskill, “Rethinking Drinking Cultures: A Review of Drinking Cultures and a Reconstructed Dimensional Approach”, Public Health, 126 (2012): 3–11; R. Room and K. Maekelae, “Typologies of the Cultural Position of Drinking”, Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 61 (2000): 229–237. 11 Edward Fitzgerald (transl.), The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, New York: Cosimo, 2005 [orig. Collier Books, 1859]. In his “In Praise of Wine”, too, Khayyám referred to wine in a mostly positive way, gently challenging those who strove all too hard for knowledge. See: I clasp the cup whose power

Yields more wisdom in an hour

Than whole years of study give,

Vainly seeking how to live.

Wine dispenses into air,

Selfish thoughts, and selfish care.

Nathan Haskell Dole (transl.), Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, Volume 2, p. 512. 12 Poem translated by Eliza Tashibi Ân bâdeh-e ghûl-rangh, chûnîn ranghî bast, Vaqt ást ke chôn ghûl beravad dast be dast. Annemarie Schimmel, “Mystical Poetry in Islam: The Case of Maulana Jalalad­ din Rumi”, Religion and Literature, 20 (1988): 67–80.

Introduction: Alcohol flows across cultures

19

13 See the classic publication on “connected history”: Sanjay Subrahmanyan, “Con­ nected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia”, Modern Asian Studies, 31, 3 (1997): 735–762. Akira Iriye, Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013; S. Khagram, J. V. Riker and Kathryn Sikkink, Restructuring World Politics: Trans­ national Social Movements, Networks, and Norms, Minneapolis: University of Min­ nesota Press, 2002; Ann Cvetkovich (ed.), Articulating the Global and the Local: Globalization and Cultural Studies, New York: Routledge, 1997; Waltraud Ernst and Thomas Mueller (eds), Transnational Psychiatries, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2010; Anne Digby, Waltraud Ernst and Projit B. Mukharji, Crossing Colonial Histor­ iographies: Histories of Colonial and Indigenous Medicines in Transnational Perspec­ tive, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2010; Clemens Greiner and Patrick Sakdapolrak, “Translocality: Concepts, Applications and Emerging Research Per­ spectives”, Geography Compass, 7/5 (2013): 373–384; G. Therborn, “Entangled Mod­ ernities”, European Journal of Social Theory, 6 (2003): 293–305; Z. Bauman, Liquid Modernity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000; Barry Crosby, “Networks of Empire. Linkage and Reciprocity in Nineteenth-century Irish and Indian history”, History Compass, 7, 3 (2009): 993–1007; Alan Lester, “Imperial Circuits and Networks”, Geographies of the British Empire, History Compass, 4, 1 (2006), 124–141. 14 Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Per­ spective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. 15 For literature on the concept of drinking cultures, see: Michael Savic et al., “Defining ‘Drinking Culture’: A Critical Review of Its Meaning and Connota­ tion in Social Research on Alcohol Problems”, Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy, 23, 4 (2016): 270–282; Thomas M. Wilson (ed.), Drinking Cultures: Alco­ hol and Identity, Oxford: Berg, 2005. 16 Mary Douglas, Constructive Drinking: Perspectives on Drink from Anthropology, London and New York: Routledge, 2003 [1987]; Michael W. Everett, Jack O. Waddell and Dwight B. Heath (eds), Cross-Cultural Approaches to the Study of Alcohol: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, The Hague: Mouton, 1976. On alcohol as a form of embodied material culture, historisation, and recent foci on practice, pol­ itics and gender, see: Michael Dietler, “Alcohol: Anthropological/Archaeological Perspectives”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 35 (2006): 229–249. 17 Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture, Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1934, p. 46. 18 Modernised spelling in German: Kulturbrille. “In no case is it more difficult to lay aside the ‘Culturbrille’ […] than in viewing our own culture”. Franz Boas, “The History of Anthropology”, Science, 20, 512 (1904): 513–523; 517. See, for a discussion of the two perspectives of the Kulturbrille (i.e. the Eurocentric nar­ rative of modernity and the preferential use of representation rather than experi­ ence or social practice): Andreas Ackermann, “Wider die ‘Culturbrille’”, Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift, 1 (2016): 32–38. 19 Levine, “The Alcohol Problem in America”. Edman, “Temperance and Modern­ ity”. Johan Edman, “Transnational Nationalism and Idealistic Science: The Alcohol Question between the Wars”, Social History of Medicine 29, 3 (2016): 590–610. 20 Edman, “Temperance and Modernity”.

2

The same drink? Wine and absinthe consumption and

drinking cultures among French and

Muslim groups in nineteenth-century

Algeria

Nina Salouâ Studer1

Drinking habits have long been viewed as markers of cultural difference, especially in colonial contexts, where what one drank was influenced by a variety of factors, among them availability, the weather and hygienic considerations, but also religion, ethnicity, class and gender. Consuming either absinthe or wine – or neither or both – in Algeria in the nineteenth century was consequently influenced by more than just a question of taste. This chapter focuses on alcohol consumption in colonial Algeria. It examines descriptions of absinthe and wine and of the different groups who consumed these drinks, as revealed in the accounts of French settlers in Algeria and Métropolitains travelling through the region. French publications that commented on Algerian Muslims’ alcohol consumption were written from three different colonial perspectives. One group of authors claimed to have witnessed only the strict adherence to the Qur’anic principle of abstinence. A second group gave anecdotal evidence of what they considered unexpected cases of Muslims breaking their religious proscriptions. Finally, a third group reported relatively widespread alcohol consumption among certain Algerian Muslims that they often described as excessive. This chapter is based on reports from the second and third groups. The first perspective on Muslims and alcohol was shared by many French soldiers, settlers and travellers in colonial Algeria during the nineteenth century. It was grounded in the homogenising assumption that all Muslims adhered to the prohibition of alcohol in the Qur’an. It was thought that they otherwise lost their status as Muslims in both their own view and that of the wider community. Algerian Muslims were seen to be deeply religious and were even routinely labelled as religious fanatics, just as Islam was often described as the religion of fanaticism. The French psychiatrist Louis Livet, for example, used the term “fanaticism” to describe Islam in the early twentieth century in his dissertation on “The Algerian Mad and Their Hospitalisation”. In a paragraph on the prohibition of alcohol, he implied that, while abstention from alcohol was, psychiatrically speaking, a healthy

The same drink? 21 proscription, religious fanaticism kept Muslims uncivilised: “In addition, this doctrine of fanaticism leads to the annihilation of the personality, impedes progress and the intellectual effort.”2 Authors such as Livet saw their knowledge reinforced in their everyday lives when observing Muslims around them abstaining from alcohol. For many French authors, this assumed and observed abstention was one of the foundations of the lived experience among Muslims and was consequently omnipresent in their analyses of colonial society. Daily routines, traditions and even the character traits of the colonised were explained through their adherence to Islam’s strict religious regulations. The second group of authors noted that they had expected abstinence but, to their consternation, had observed individual Muslims who consumed alcohol. Even though early accounts from the 1830s and 1840s described Algerian Muslims drinking alcohol, Muslims were expected to be fanatically abstemious and hence any reports to the contrary were received by later authors with surprise.3 In contrast, the third group of French writers suggested that alcohol was commonly imbibed by particular groups of Muslims. They depicted a plurality of styles and patterns of alcohol consumption among the colonised. However, some of these authors still professed themselves shocked at this unexpected finding. The frequent reference to being surprised or even shocked that Muslims either openly or privately consumed alcohol, and the consternation expressed regarding Muslims’ disregard of religious rules about alcohol, remained tropes in French reports throughout the nineteenth century and beyond. In 1889, the French anthropologist Lucien Bertholon, for example, described his response to his first encounter with Tunisian Muslims consuming alcohol: These unfortunate natives sometimes absorb considerable amounts [of absinthe]. Their reason disappears quickly because of it. I remember having seen with astonishment, in 1881, in the streets of Sousse, many drunken Muslims on the day of the feast of the Prophet. At that time I still believed in the sobriety of the natives.4 There was, however, a further dimension to this expression of shock: a vague feeling of guilt. It was generally assumed that alcohol had been largely unknown before France’s conquest of North West Africa and that its introduction by the French rapidly changed the basic rules of Muslim societies. By the end of the nineteenth century, many reports claimed that Algeria had been “corrupted” by the introduction of French alcohol. In 1897, for example, Marie-André-Victor Sisson expressed a feeling of regret about the consequences of France’s actions when relating his personal experiences in Algeria. He seemed deeply nostalgic about the diminishing religiosity of the Muslims he encountered:

22 Nina Salouâ Studer Few of the spahis [Algerian soldiers in the French army] perform the prayers or the prescribed ablutions; nobody ever enters a mosque; some of them eat pork; almost all drink absinthe or wine – assimilation by alcohol, alas! – and yet they all stay loyal to fasting, the observance of which is sometimes so hard.5 This narrative of “assimilation by alcohol” disregarded or was oblivious to the fact that there existed various local forms of alcohol that predated the military conquest of Algeria. There seem to have been diverse alcoholic drinks, such as fig and date liquors, palm wine and indigenous forms of anisettes.6 These were often produced by the Jewish population of the region for their own consumption, but in reality consumed by Jews and Muslims alike.7 While there were a number of French authors who noted both the flourishing pre-colonial import trade and local forms of alcohol, their observations were usually not taken up in later publications. The doctor Adolphe Armand was one of them. He disagreed in 1859 with the idea that alcohol had been introduced by the French and that the Muslim Algerians could, therefore, be corrupted through this form of “assimilation by alcohol”. He stated that the general assumption that Muslims in Algeria abstained from alcohol had been incorrect: and if not all [Muslims] drink wine, many abuse liquors. The most sober ones, by the way, find drinks other than those derived from the vine. In the Sahara, they drink el-aguemi, palm wine, a fermented and intoxicating drink that is obtained by incisions below the head of unproductive date palms.8 However, the French observers usually did not enjoy the taste of these local forms of alcohol and consequently did not consume them. This chapter will examine two alcoholic drinks that the French brought to Algeria, and the local French and Algerian drinking patterns linked with them. The main sources for this chapter are French colonial hygiene handbooks for settlers, but other published texts, such as travel accounts, contemporary journal articles, dissertations and conference reports have also been used. Arabic sources on the subject have been excluded from this analysis of colonial rhetoric but form an important part of my broader project. While a wide variety of medical sources have been analysed for this chapter, the focus will not be on the medicalisation of drinking habits. Although reports by colonial doctors and medical handbooks have been examined for descriptions of drinking habits, details related to diseases arising from the consumption of these drinks have been excluded.9 According to the source material, a large proportion of the French civilian settlers and soldiers drank both wine and absinthe on a daily basis. As there are no official statistics on this issue, it is impossible to determine

The same drink? 23 whether this was only the perception of the authors or whether it accurately described French everyday practices in Algeria. The same source material also depicted a steadily rising wine and absinthe consumption by Algerian Muslims, but the lack of statistical evidence again brings into question whether this rise was purely anecdotal or whether the sources actually depicted a historical reality. This chapter will present what colonial authors perceived as the drinking habits of the various groups who consumed absinthe and wine in colonial Algeria and will focus on the following questions: Was the consumption of the same drink described differently when consumed by different groups? Was there a shared drinking experience across religion, ethnicity, class and gender, or was there a plurality of drinking styles that was seen to result in different kinds of intoxication? In order to answer these questions, this chapter will examine perceptions of absinthe and wine consumption among Muslim and French settlers. This will be followed by an assessment of how Gallic drunkenness was contrasted with various communities’ excessive drinking. Finally, it will be considered how an analysis of the actually existing plurality of drinking cultures in colonial Algeria allows us to see beyond the dichotomy of coloniser/colonised.

Classes of absinthe The most famous alcoholic embodiment of nineteenth-century Algeria was absinthe. After the French military conquest of the Algerian coast in 1830, absinthe became “the drink of the country”.10 It was widely believed that more absinthe was drunk in Algeria alone than in the rest of the world.11 By the 1870s, absinthe was widely consumed there by settlers, soldiers and, allegedly, by the colonised Jews and Muslims.12 Indeed, it was often implied that the latter had an “innate” penchant for it, as will be discussed below. The French army allegedly decided to issue absinthe rations to the French soldiers during the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s,13 because they saw the drink either as a disinfectant or as a means to prevent medical issues such as fevers, malaria and dysentery.14 The French soldiers, however, swiftly developed a taste for the drink and continued to consume it long after the French army had stopped distributing it as “medicinal” and banned it from the military compounds in 1845.15 This predilection of the French soldiers for absinthe, developed in Algeria, had far-reaching consequences. The originally Swiss drink,16 which had not enjoyed high levels of consumption in France before 1830, was, allegedly, only embraced by the French masses once the soldiers returned from Algeria and could be observed sipping absinthe in the cafés and bistros of the Métropole, as shown in this lithograph by Alphonse Loustaunau, entitled “À l’Esplanade des Invalides” (Figure 2.1).17

24 Nina Salouâ Studer

Figure 2.1 Alphonse Loustaunau, À l’Esplanade des Invalides. © Delahaye, Musée de l’Absinthe, Auvers-sur-Oise

Absinthe was from the very beginning associated in colonial publications with the brutal military conquest of the region, celebrated in France as a glorious victory.18 For example, J.-M. Ferdinand Moreau reported in 1863 that absinthe gained its popularity in France because of its spread among the French army in Algeria: Its use soon became general: soldiers and officers devoted themselves to this drink; some, without measure, paid with their life for their alcoholic excesses, which, in another climate, would have been less dangerous.

The same drink? 25 Each regiment returning to France brought with it the taste for absinthe, which gradually became a daily habit for almost all classes of society. Particularly during the past ten years, the fashion for it became so frantic that what once was an exception is now the rule.19 Like wine, absinthe became so closely linked with Frenchness in Algeria that its spread was often used as a symbol for the colonisation of North Africa itself. In his book on Algeria, Ernest Fallot, for example, noted in 1887 that French settler villages were established around places that sold absinthe and added that, “this is what has made [people] jokingly say that absinthe colonised Algeria.”20 This symbol of colonisation through absinthe encouraged the conviction that the originally Swiss-turned-French absinthe was essentially an Algerian drink. Despite absinthe being widely consumed in the Métropole, Algeria became the absinthe nation per se in the French consciousness. A French settler, who called himself Jean de Blida, defended the absinthe habits of French settlers. In a letter to a local newspaper, published on 16 May 1894, he argued that “almost all Algerians”, by which he meant the French settlers and not the colonised Muslims and Jews, “appreciate” absinthe.21 While absinthe was connected with artists and even the bourgeoisie in the Métropole, in Algeria it was the French working classes who were seen to be the main consumers of this drink, leading them to be negligent of their work on account of the influence of the Green Fairy. The allegedly less civilised “poor whites” were understood to drink immoderate amounts, thus putting the French mission civilisatrice in peril by both their bad example and the ensuing lack of motivation to work. In his book I Become a Settler: Algerian Customs, Hugues Le Roux described in 1895 one of the villages in his neighbourhood as follows: The inhabitants have succumbed to fever, laziness, absinthe and debts. They live from the renting out of their land to native tenant farmers, or from the exploitation of the khammès [sharecropper]. Unhappy and embit­ tered, they have little scruple. They cheat on purchases and sales.22 Very few authors mentioned French women in Algeria. One who did, Marcailhou D’Aymeric, contended that women, “unpleasant thing to say”, consumed absinthe as well as other liquors.23 A French doctor, referred to only as Rouby, put the idea of absinthe as being effectively ubiquitous in Algeria in a nutshell, suggesting in a paper he presented at the 1895 Congress of French and Francophone Alienists and Neurologists on “Alcoholism in France and Algeria”: I believe I am not far from the truth in saying that a quarter of the [French settler] population suffers from dipsomania, under the influence of absinthe, of the Algerian anisette, of mastika and other liquors …;

26 Nina Salouâ Studer another quarter, without yet being dipsomaniac, drinks more than is reasonable. There remains, to save this situation, one half of the popula­ tion that uses absinthe, alcohol and wine moderately. It is among this half, I must say, that the people of the upper classes can be found, while the alcoholics are recruited from the lower classes of society; but there are many exceptions that have to be noted.24 In Rouby’s view, absinthe and other strong alcoholic drinks in Algeria were largely consumed by vaguely defined lower income communities, including both the working classes and the marginalised. His general claim that half of all French settlers in Algeria were “alcoholics” seems to include women and possibly children. Indeed, he mentions in another section of his paper that “the settlers all drink absinthe and alcohol”.25 Rouby’s description of drinking habits was apparently not gender- or age-based but dependent on class. This differentiation leads to the conclusion that, in Rouby’s narrative at least, none of the settlers abstained completely from drinking absinthe. Yet it was only the working classes and the marginalised that were defined by their – excessive – absinthe consumption. The perceived link of excessive absinthe consumption with the working classes and the marginalised can also be seen in the descriptions of Muslim absinthe drinkers.26 Those described as absinthe drinkers were often identified as belonging to the urban working classes or those in close proximity to the French.27 Charles de Galland, for example, gave a report on his personal experiences in Algeria at the conference of the French Association for the Advancement of Science in Algiers in 1881. He described being offered absinthe by “his Arab”, presumably a guide, assistant or servant, who was astonished at de Galland’s refusal.28 Furthermore, those Muslims who consumed absinthe were seen to drink for the sake of getting drunk rather than because they enjoyed the taste. In fact, almost all French references to Algerian Muslims drinking absinthe explicitly or implicitly state that their consumption was immoderate. Although absinthe consumption of French is women rarely discussed, there are some references in the colonial source material to marginalised Algerian Muslim women, mainly prostitutes and dancers.29 The French archaeologist and writer Ernest Feydeau, father of the French playwright Georges Feydeau, for example, argued in 1862 that female dancers drank excessive amounts of both absinthe and other strong liquors: One cannot get an idea of the quantity of liquor that a Moorish woman swallows without getting drunk. The glasses of rum and absinthe disappear into her throat with extraordinary ease, much to the great amazement of the Europeans, who have no strong stomach [for rum and absinthe].30 His assertion that Europeans had no stomach for rum and absinthe is surprising, especially in the context of Algeria, and must be taken as the

The same drink? 27 statement of somebody belonging to the upper classes writing about his own circle. It should be added here that it is not the consumption itself of rum and absinthe that Feydeau framed as outside of the habits of his circles – absinthe was, after all, the drink of choice of French artists for a while! – but the overconsumption described in this paragraph. Generally, the absinthe drinking of working-class and marginalised French settlers was depicted as morally questionable by French metropolitans because it violated their responsibility in France’s civilising project. In this argument, the Algerians, seen to be little more than children who are easily led astray, had taken to absinthe not because they liked the taste of it but on account of their inclination to imitate the behaviour of the French they encountered. In the colonial worldview, this had less to do with availability, low price and free choice, than with the uncivilised “poor whites” setting a regrettable example for the even more uncivilised Algerians. French accounts of Muslim drinking patterns in the colony were of course restricted to those – mainly urban – groups they were in contact with; this did not prevent them from generalising their observations.

Glasses of Frenchness The nineteenth century saw the increasing intertwining of the production and consumption of wine with notions of French national identity.31 The renowned Canadian historian Patricia Prestwich argues that in the midtwentieth century “anyone who did not drink [wine] was easily labelled unFrench (particularly by the wine industry)” and that this “association of wine with a distinctively French way of life” could already be observed at the end of the nineteenth century.32 Additionally, wine was seen to be essentially harmless and consequently its daily consumption was recommended during the time period analysed in this chapter.33 Louis Pasteur himself, for example, wrote in 1866 that, “wine can rightly be considered as the healthiest, the most hygienic of beverages”.34 Wine drinking was seen as an intrinsic part of the “French way of life”. There were also hygienic considerations and personal taste that led those who moved to Algeria after the conquest of the Algerian coast in 1830 to bring their drinking habits across the Mediterranean with them and to continue their Metropolitan ways. Wine was, therefore, from the very beginning of the military conquest, intrinsically connected to notions of French imperial power in Algeria. European settlers relied on imported wine since before the French conquest but this changed after the phylloxera crisis in France in the 1870s and 1880s when an insect infestation destroyed vast parts of the French vineyards.35 With desperate French wine consumers looking for alternatives, wine began to be cultivated in Algeria, and by the 1890s Algeria was an important international exporter of wine.36 The climate and soil of Algeria, which allowed the settlers to continue a habit many had known since childhood, i.e.

28 Nina Salouâ Studer the daily consumption of wine,37 independent from imports from the Métropole, was lauded by many. Alfred Jousset, for example, stated in 1884: “Our Algerian colony, evenly divided in respect to the production of this drink, provides the settler with a means of adorning his table, of supporting his constitution by continuing his old habits in the stomach.”38 The spread of French vineyards in Algeria was often taken as a symbol for colonisation and French civilisation taking root in an allegedly less civilised region. In 1890, for example, Raoul Bergot interpreted the proliferation of vineyards in Algeria as a clear triumph of French civilisation over “barbarism”. Bergot described three rooms promoting wine among the Algerian displays in the Exposition Universelle de Paris in 1889, which were, in his eyes, a magnificent proof of the modern conquest of this barbarian land, by French civilisation. … a long time of reflection was needed to guess that the three rooms of this bare exposition expressed in their simplicity a giant leap made by progress, thanks to the French race, on the other side of the Mediterranean.39 The claim that there had been an almost irreparable neglect of the region under the Arabs was often linked to the idea of North Africa being colonised through the vine. Sylvère Leroux, for example, wrote in 1894 a Treatise of Vine and Wine in Algeria and Tunisia, in which he stated: “The invasion of the Arabs has almost turned these countries, which once fed infinitely more inhabitants and which supported additionally an immense export trade, into a desert. Only France can now revive this former prosperity.”40 Leroux alluded here to the long history of vineyards in Algeria, which had been first planted when it was under Phoenician control and which had been greatly reduced after the Islamisation of the region. The Algerian vineyards surviving the Arab conquest in the seventh century were allegedly either used for the production of raisins41 or belonged to Algerian Jews, who produced wine, so it was assumed, for their own consumption.42 Leroux’s statement was essentially an ideological defence of French colonialism. It must also be seen in the wider context of French colonial authors viewing both the once affluent and influential region of North Africa, and the North Africans themselves, as being in a state of deep decay and degeneration.43 In 1890, for example, Raoul Bergot described the work of the French settlers in Algeria as follows: We must therefore judge the settlers from their work; the work of Alger­ ians, already so strong, will become great. Like an army, they spread across this earth, for ten centuries barbarian, uncultivated, covered in ruins, whose soil has been invaded by giant thistles and scrubs; they conquered this Africa, with the pick, with the plough. They are the

The same drink? 29 pioneers of civilisation and well deserving of their Fatherland; because, every field they clear, every tree they plant, is the soil of France which grows and gets richer.44 The aforementioned Rouby claimed in 1895 that the low price of wine encouraged the French population in Algeria, which he estimated at about 500,000, to consume wine that would have been enough for 30 million.45 While surely an exaggeration, it is indubitable that large quantities of wine were consumed by French settlers in Algeria. On this issue, the settlers had the support of most French doctors, who agreed that wine should be part of a healthy colonial diet in hot, dry weather. In 1873, for example, Marcailhou D’Aymeric described “good wine mixed with water” as the best daily drink for settlers in Algeria in his handbook, without giving any specifications of professions, classes or genders. He added cautiously that children should preferably consume “sweet wine”.46 It is likely that few settlers would have liked to risk being seen as un-French through abstention from wine drinking. Settlers were advised to avoid doing manual work “on an empty stomach” and it was recommended that a breakfast for workers could consist of, for example, coffee and bread, or simply of wine.47 Indeed, the handbooks for French settlers in Algeria recommended between 0.348 and one litre49 of wine, either red or white, per day for an adult working man. While the recommended amounts for women and children were omitted from these handbooks, it was usually implied that wine was, and should be, their habitual drink.50 There are comparatively few sources about Muslim wine consumption in the nineteenth century. Indeed, if wine drinking Muslims were mentioned, this was usually accompanied by the abovementioned sentiments of shock and consternation. In their explanations of this very un-French abstention from wine, French authors often pointed to the fact that wine was explicitly prohibited in the Qur’an.51 A variety of French authors even argued that the prohibition of wine was only mentioned in the Qur’an because Muslims had consumed so much of it prior to its ban. An 1883 general book on wine, for example, explained that “the Arabs pushed the vice of drunkenness so far that their prophet, Mahomet, had to ban the use of wine and turn this prohibition, in the Qur’an, into an article of faith”.52 Yet there were some French authors who wondered whether it would be possible to develop a more positive stance towards France through the spread of wine among the Muslim colonised. Dr Rouby, for example, examined this idea in 1895. He stated that he himself had tried to encourage the Muslim manual labourers under his command to drink wine: “I have offered them from it [his wine], asking them to drink from it, to please me, to not be rude to me; they always refused, categorical refusal, coming from a deep conviction: ‘God forbids it’.”53 Yet despite this un-French “categorical refusal” described by Rouby, many French authors living in and travelling through Algeria observed

30 Nina Salouâ Studer Muslims consuming wine and mentioned this fact in their accounts.54 Dr A.-E.-Victor Martin, for example, wrote a handbook for European settlers and stated in 1847: We know that wine is strictly forbidden in the Qur’an. That is not to say that some [Muslims] do not sometimes let themselves fall to the charm of the forbidden fruit. More than one bar in Algiers hides many infidelities to the wise prescriptions of the divine prophet.55 While Europeans consumed wine outside, sitting on the terraces, Muslims did not consume alcohol in open view. Many authors argued that wine consumption among Algerian Muslims was prompted by the daily example set by the French, the physical proximity to wine and the availability of European-style spaces in urban areas. The political sociologist Louis Vignon, for example, stated in 1893 that, in the large cities, where the Muslim population has necessarily been con­ fronted with bad examples [from Europeans] and has suffered the touch of adventurers of all nations, it is not uncommon to see natives drink wine, absinthe, to [see them] trample the precepts of their religion.56 As mentioned above, there is no statistical evidence on the actual alcohol consumption in Algeria in the nineteenth century. It is also difficult to guess how many Algerian Muslims might have consumed wine without French observers’ knowledge, be it because they had no contact with them or because they actively hid their drinking habits from prying eyes. We therefore do not know how many Algerian Muslims actually consumed wine and if wine really was connected to proximity with Europeans. But many of the French authors reporting on the situation in Algeria saw wine drinking as the habit of a minority and assumed, like Vignon, that only those in the coastal cities were in close enough contact with the French to be corrupted by the “bad examples” of wine-drinking European settlers. Most of the French sources described only lower income, urban workers, such as porters, port workers, former soldiers and prostitutes as partial to wine, i.e. those among the Muslims with whom they had everyday contact.57 However, while some French sources commented on groups, there was another class of Algerian Muslims that was occasionally mentioned as having made a certain type of wine – champagne – their drink of choice.58 Among the colonised, champagne drinking had become a habit among the rich, often shown in descriptions of them sharing expensive brands of champagne with European guests. In 1884 Alphonse Certeux and E.-Henry Carnoy, for example, referred to the unconditional prohibition of wine in the Qur’an and then stated: “Today many natives make an exception for white wine and particularly for Champagne.”59

The same drink? 31 Due to its price alone, it is clear that champagne drinking was the habit of a richer, educated, urban class and not of the usually mentioned workingclass Muslim alcohol consumers.60 The colonial sources therefore implied that while wine remained an almost exclusively French drink in Algeria it was nevertheless consumed, to a certain degree, by both the alcohol-drinking Muslim working classes, usually described as corrupted through French civilisation, and the colonised elites.61 It needs to be emphasised though that wine was only one of several alcoholic drinks that were attributed to the working classes. Wine was described as an ersatz alcohol for these groups and the colonial accounts more or less dismissed their wine consumption in favour of descriptions of the more salacious alcoholic drinks also consumed by them. Emir Faradj Khan, for example, a doctor of Persian origin, who studied at the University of Lyon, referred in his 1904 medical dissertation to information given to him by a certain Dr Ruotte. Ruotte had informed him that the Muslims in the Algerian countryside did not consume alcohol and added: It’s not the same for the Muslims of the [Algerian] cities, the villages, in short, those who live side by side with the Christians; in those, rather many consumers of alcohol are found, but, curious thing, very few con­ sumers of wine; it is eau-de-vie and, above all, absinthe, or rather the horrible brew which bears that name, and which is sold in large glasses, 10 cents a glass, which the Muslim, unscrupulous in religious matters, consumes with a certain pleasure.62 As a consequence of these class-specific drinking patterns, the gradual alcoholisation of some of the Muslim colonised through wine was seen to be almost positive, since it was, supposedly, exclusively consumed by the colonised elites, who were seen to be more civilised, more Western, than the rest of their compatriots.

Progress through Gallic drunkenness Muslim abstinence from alcohol was at times portrayed as healthy and hygienic, and sometimes even as worthy of being adopted by the French in Algeria’s dry, hot climate.63 However, it was also considered by some as deeply un-French and potentially harmful to the Muslim colonised as it implied missing out on the many benefits of wine. These benefits were interpreted as having a profound influence on the French national psyche with far-reaching social and economic consequences. The historian Patricia Prestwich suggested that, “Wine, that sunny product of French soil and source of considerable wealth, was sacrosanct and was encrusted with national myths about the glory and genius of the French race.”64 Wine and absinthe were seen to symbolise both France and progress, in the Métropole as well as in colonial contexts. This meant that their consumption

32 Nina Salouâ Studer was often portrayed in a positive light. Despite this, there was also a growing movement calling for reduced alcohol consumption65 or even for total abstinence in the colonies,66 which, from the 1870s onwards, latched on to the idea of absinthe being Algeria’s greatest scourge.67 Yet even absinthe, a drink apparently so appalling it was going to be prohibited in 1915, had initially been seen to have medically positive effects on its drinkers. Despite this generally positive view of alcohol, all French authors admitted that the Algerian colony had a problem with both Europeans and Algerian Muslims drinking too much. Even healthy, wholesome drinks could potentially become unhealthy if consumed without moderation. However, most French authors differentiated between the effects of “wine” and “alcohol” when discussing immoderate drinking, with drunkenness stemming from wine being seen as mostly benign. This sentiment about the essential harmlessness of wine can be found in many French sources. In his Treatise on Public and Private Hygiene, the naval doctor Jules Rochard described in 1897 the situation in France as follows, In the past, when [people] got drunk with wine and when it [the wine] was not adulterated as it is today, the health of the drinkers did not deteriorate so quickly and never altered very profoundly. They even reached very often an advanced age. Their drunkenness was inoffensive, gay and friendly; it was the Gallic drunkenness that all the poets have sung about and which differs from the frightening alcoholism of today, as the noble wines of Burgundy, Champagne and Bordeaux differ from the poison that is extracted from potato or beet.68 Prestwich summarised the notion of a “gay and friendly” version of “Gallic drunkenness” by observing that the wine drinker was seen to be “a characteristically French drunk – witty, vivacious and intelligent”, while the drinker of industrial alcohol was allegedly “dull, somnolent, and brutish, presumably unnatural traits in a Frenchman”.69 The excessive consumption of wine was, therefore, not framed as dangerous. Drinking wine was understood to lead to “drunkenness” not “alcoholism”. The excessive consumption of absinthe, however, came to be seen to be deeply problematic. As discussed above, absinthe consumption was often construed to be a class problem among French settlers and soldiers in Algeria and was perceived to indicate that they had lost a part of their superior French civilisation when crossing the Mediterranean. The separation between the jolly drunkenness of wine and the scandalous and dangerous equivalent resulting from absinthe and other liquors could also be sustained because French settlers who drank wine usually also consumed absinthe, which made it possible to blame absinthe exclusively for any problems caused by drunkenness. No reports of French settlers drunk specifically from wine could be found in the source material analysed for this chapter, while there were many descriptions of “absinthic” settlers.70 It has to be added, however, that

The same drink? 33 often the particular alcoholic drinks that were seen to have caused problems in Algeria were not specified. Th. Fortin d’Ivry, for example, wrote about the colonial project in Algeria, in which he stated in 1845, “Speaking generally, people [i.e. settlers] are not very sober in Algeria, and this defect ruins more constitutions than the sun.”71 People in the Métropole and European settlers themselves saw particular groups within pied-noir society as particularly prone to immoderation: the working classes, immigrants from Malta and Spain.72 Descriptions of settlers drinking absinthe focused on the negative characteristics that metropolitan authors associated with the settler society in Algeria, depicting them, through their choice of drink, as lazy, stupid, immoral and, most importantly, uncivilised. Absinthe drinking represented settler Algeria and embodied pied-noir culture, and all the worst qualities associated with it.73 In Algeria, the working classes and the marginalised among both the settlers and the colonised were seen to lack moderation. While most colonial authors claimed that all classes of settlers drank absinthe, there existed the notion that absinthe was only abused by the working classes.74 The same class-based distinction between moderate and immoderate drinking can also be found in descriptions of Muslim drinkers. Apart from the champagne-drinking elites, those who were described as drinking alcohol were seen to drink it to excess. Dr Émile-Louis Bertherand, for example, suggested in 1855 that those Algerians who consumed wine and liquors drank them immoderately, “Regarding Algeria, many Natives eagerly look for wine and alcoholic liquors and even abuse them in the most deplorable way.”75 This was part of a wider discussion of excess on all levels. Overconsumption was framed as one of the characteristics of the allegedly primitive North African societies. The founder of the psychiatric École d’Alger, Antoine Porot, for example, described this assumed innate disposition to excess as late as 1918 in relation to alcohol consumption of North African soldiers in the French army, “Alcoholism has caused much havoc on these virgin organisms and these men, who, for the most part, have never tasted fermented beverages and liquors before [military] service, sometimes indulged in it with that immoderation specific to the primitives.”76 The idea of an allegedly inherent immoderation among Algerian Muslims was coupled with what Porot described in 1918 as “virgin organisms”,77 i.e. an assumed hypersensitivity towards alcohol, based on the belief that alcohol had only been introduced during the French military conquest of the region. This facilitated the conclusion that the same drinks could have very different effects on Algerian Muslims and the French. The former were understood to be at a double disadvantage, so to speak, when it came to drinking alcohol. It was, on the one hand, supposed that Algerian Muslims did not know when to stop, while, on the other hand, the absence of generational acclimatisation to alcohol made them more susceptible to its adverse effects.

34 Nina Salouâ Studer The accepted and often-repeated colonial narrative of “primitive” excessiveness was given as the reason for Algerians both consuming too much of any given drink and choosing the strongest drink in the colonial arsenal, absinthe – or, after the ban of absinthe in 1915, anisettes.78 The absinthe consumption of the colonised Muslims was seen to make the already aggressive Algerian men even more aggressive, criminal and dangerous, which made any increase in consumption deeply undesirable for a settler society concerned with questions of security.79 The alcoholisation of the colonised Muslims through wine, on the other hand, was rhetorically – but not practically – encouraged, or at least not decried as a scourge that needed to be condemned and stopped, due to the fact that the excessive consumption of wine was perceived as rendering consumers jolly and not dangerous. Muslims drinking wine were also viewed in a less judgemental way because the French had had positive experiences with upper-class Muslim wine drinkers, whose consumption was never described as reaching levels of excess and drunkenness.

Drinking beyond dichotomies Both wine and absinthe were seen to embody French culture in the colonies, albeit in greatly different ways. The French authors analysed in this chapter interpreted drinking wine and absinthe as an act of confirmation of national identity for the French settlers, who found themselves on the other side of the Mediterranean, and as an act of proven assimilation for the colonised Muslims. As a result, choosing a beverage was often portrayed as having far-reaching consequences. The rhetoric surrounding these drinks was highly politicised, and questions of assimilation and class were seen to be negotiated through consumption of, or abstention from, these drinks. A study of the lived reality of alcohol consumption in nineteenth-century Algeria therefore shows complexities and nuances in the colonial society that the usual binary view of the colony, divided irreconcilably into coloniser and colonised, obstructs. Descriptions of the distribution of alcohol depict a plurality of drinking habits. This plurality contradicts the intrinsic correlation between drinking alcohol and civilisation on the one hand, and abstention and primitivism on the other, a correlation that was taken for granted by many of the French authors writing about nineteenth-century Algeria. These authors pitted “civilised”, alcohol-consuming French settlers and soldiers against the “primitive”, abstaining Muslim colonised, yet at the same time complained about the excessive drinking of “primitive” settlers, and chuckled when offered champagne under the guise of lemonade by “civilised” elite Muslim Algerians.80 An analysis of the consumption of wine and absinthe in nineteenth-century Algeria shows that interpretations of colonial societies cannot be simply reduced to a dichotomy of coloniser/colonised. Intersections with other dimensions, such as metropolitan/settler, working­

The same drink? 35 class/upper-class, soldier/civilian, urban/rural and, of course, men/women, must be included in order to provide a more rounded picture. Absinthe and wine consumption of non-marginalised French and Muslim women remains mostly hidden in the source material, and requires further study. The rhetoric on alcohol drinking in nineteenth-century Algeria clearly focused on consumption by men, with women more often described as victims of male drunkenness than as active drinkers. However, simultaneously, it was implied that French women consumed both wine and absinthe on a daily basis, and that marginalised Muslim women, such as dancers and prostitutes, drank both to excess. While this can serve as an example of yet another gap between the rhetoric on drinking and actual drinking habits, it seems that there was only very rarely an opportunity for a shared experience of consuming alcohol between French and Muslim Algerian women.81 This is not to say that the dichotomy of coloniser/colonised should be neglected. The narrative around alcohol in general, and wine and absinthe in particular, must be read in the context of two distinct groups involved in a violent colonial war in nineteenth-century Algeria. Indeed, sometimes it appears as if drinking habits were interpreted as another weapon in France’s arsenal. The aforementioned Dr Rouby, for example, stated bluntly in 1895 that the excessive absinthe consumption of working-class settlers could even lead to France’s eventual defeat in the colonial war: From the two elements, settlers, [and] Arabs, who are involved, one should disappear and leave the space to the other; the Arab water drinkers conserve all their physical strength, [and] are great breeders …, while the other element, the settlers, which should last, remain strong, [and] proliferate, poison themselves with absinthe and alcohol, degrade themselves, weaken, make degenerate children, and are extinguished in the third or fourth generation. If the one third of the population who do not drink excessively did not remain, to save the situation, and the incessant emigration from neighbouring countries, … Algeria could go back to its former masters without battles, the victors disappearing faster by alcoholism than if they were killed with gunshots.82 From Rouby’s point of view, absinthe was a more formidable enemy than the Algerians resisting France’s colonising project, a statement which served to emasculate Algerian men. Rouby seems to suggest that the growing absinthisation of the Muslim masses should not be understood as a sign of progress, or as an attempt at fraternisation, but as a weapon that France might use. Yet neither Rouby’s bizarre idea of annihilation by alcohol nor Sisson’s “assimilation by alcohol” mentioned in the introduction was ever attempted.83 In fact, the very idea of fraternisation over the glass between colonisers and colonised was ridiculed in the source material, as most

36 Nina Salouâ Studer authors did not believe that consuming the same drink or even socialising in the same spaces could achieve any social advance. In 1892, for example, Eugène Poiré lamented that France had been unable to change and assimilate the Algerians, who had not adopted any of France’s customs apart from the drinking habits of the settlers: “Those who remain [in the cities], are sadly prone to contracting above all our vices, [and] only fraternise with our settlers before [a glass of] absinthe.”84 Louis Vignon also discussed this issue in 1893. He stated that in major Algerian cities there were many Muslim men who boast that they never enter a mosque, that they never pray, that they drink absinthe. Perhaps some convinced “assimilationists”, still attached to their ideas, rejoice; they judge that an Arab who drinks absinthe, is an “assimilated man”. This opinion is not ours.85 It is actually very difficult idea that Arabs could be easier to find texts, such a stronger alcoholisation assimilation.

to find genuine accounts of settlers voicing the assimilated by making them drink. It is much as Vignon’s, attacking unnamed advocates of of Muslim Algerians as a form of cultural

Conclusion A plurality of views on alcohol consumption in Algeria has been identified in the writings of the French settlers and travellers from the Métropole analysed for this chapter. Authors, from various backgrounds and with different motivations, described a wide range of aspects seen to be characteristic of Muslim and French colonial drinking cultures and interpreted them in various ways. The same can also be said about the interpretation of the role alcohol played in the colonial project. The role ascribed to alcohol can be roughly divided into three different camps. For the first, alcohol was a marker of civilisation, as the alcohol habits of the Muslim colonised were seen to be a proof of assimilation through an adoption of French drinking cultures. For the second camp, alcohol was interpreted in a deeply negative way. Drunkenness caused by overconsumption was seen as both the price paid by the Arabs for rising levels of civilisation and progress and as a stain on the image of France as a civilising and civilised nation. Finally, a third group understood alcohol as a weapon of colonialism. By some it was seen to be a means of assimilating Algerian Muslims, turning them into Frenchmen, while others hoped to weaken the Algerian resistance by collectively turning them into drunkards. However, alcohol was also dreaded as a weapon against France’s own power, as working class and marginalised French settlers in Algeria succumbed to overconsumption and neglected their duties as colonisers.

The same drink? 37 The drinking habits of colonisers and colonised observed by the French in nineteenth-century Algeria seem, at first glance, to differ considerably. The French settlers’ identity was considered to be constructed through their consumption of wine, while the Muslims were thought to strictly follow the abstention from alcohol proscribed in the Qur’an. However, when looking at the issue from a class-based perspective, it becomes clear that the consumption of the same drinks was described as having similar effects on the Muslim colonised and those among the French colonisers, who were seen to fail in their duty in the civilising mission. The Algerian elites and the French settlers both drank the respectable drink of wine – with the Algerian elites preferring champagne – with no serious consequences, while the working classes and the marginalised among the settlers and the colonised Muslims were seen to overconsume the objectionable and scandalous absinthe. An analysis of the consumption of wine and absinthe in nineteenthcentury Algeria shows a complex picture of colonial society. Instead of simply reinforcing the dichotomy of coloniser/colonised, a study of drinking habits shows different layers within both of these groups, with, for example, the descriptions of drinking customs of equivalent classes across different ethnic groups displaying more similarities than those of the different classes within one particular group.

Notes 1 Research for this chapter was undertaken while I was a visiting research fellow at the University of Marburg, Germany. I would like to sincerely thank the Research Network Reconfigurations at the Centre for Near and Middle East Studies for their support. 2 Louis Livet, “Les aliénés algériens et leur hospitalisation.” Med. Thesis, University of Algiers, 1911, 65. All English translations are by the author. 3 See, for example: Armand Pignel, Conducteur ou guide du voyageur et du colon de Paris à Alger et dans l’Algérie. Paris: Debécourt, 1836, 159f.; A.-E.-Victor Martin, Manuel d’hygiène: A l’usage des Européens qui viennent s’établir en Algérie. Algiers: Dubos frères et Marest, 1847, 92. 4 Lucien Bertholon, “Esquisse de l’anthropologie criminelle des Tunisiens musulmans.”

Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle et des Sciences Pénales 4 (1889), 389–439, 414.

5 Marie-André-Victor Sisson (under the pseudonym of Micchel Antar), En

Smaala. Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie, 1897, 213. 6 See, for example: Charles Carteron, Voyage en Algérie: Tous les usages des Arabes, leur vie intime et extérieure, ainsi que celle des Européens dans la colonie. Paris: J. Hetzel, 1866, 80f.; Pignel, Conducteur, 159f.; L. Raynaud, “Alcool et alcoolisme au Maroc.” Annales d’Hygiène Publique et de Médecine Légale 497, No. 3 (1902): 211–23, 211, 214; Corneille Trumelet, Les français dans le désert: Journal historique, militaire et descriptif d’une expédition aux limites du Sahara algérien. Paris: Challamel aîné, 1885, 216. 7 While it is important to include the Jewish population in any in-depth historical analysis of drinking habits of this time and region, this chapter focuses only on the consumption by Muslims and the French. This decision is based on the clear bias of the source material, as most of the time the colonial authors did not explicitly describe the drinking habits of the Jewish population.

38 Nina Salouâ Studer 8 Adolphe Armand, Médecine et hygiène des pays chauds et spécialement de l’Algérie et des colonies. Paris: Challamel Ainé, 1859, 475f. See also: Raynaud, “Alcool,” 223. 9 This medicalisation of drinking in nineteenth century Algeria will be discussed in a chapter with the working title “The Fear of the Immoderate Muslim: France’s Mission Civilisatrice and Alcoholism in Algeria, c. 1930–1962”, which will be part of the forthcoming Manchester University Book on “Alcohol, Mental Health and Society”. 10 This quote is from one of the French settlers in Algeria, who wrote in 1895 about misconceptions about themselves in the Métropole for a local newspaper. W. Nick, “Le colon algérien.” Le Petit Bouira: Journal Républicain 3rd Year, No. 60 (09.02.1895): 1, 1. 11 Jean-Gabriel Cappot, for example, wrote in 1856: “On its own, Algeria has consumed more of it [absinthe] than all the other parts of the world combined.” Jean-Gabriel Cappot, Algérie Française. Paris: Henri Plon, 1856, 38f. 12 See, for example: Charles de Galland, “Excursion dans la petite Kabylie.” Asso­ ciation Française pour l’Avancement des Sciences (1882): 9–23, 15. On the absinthe consumption of the Muslim colonised, see also: Nina Studer, “The Green Fairy in the Maghreb: Absinthe, Guilt and Cultural Assimilation in French Colonial Medicine.” The Maghreb Review 40, No. 4 (2015): 493–508. 13 It is actually the popular secondary literature that insists on absinthe having been given to the French soldiers as official rations, while this cannot be found in the source material. For mentions of rations in the secondary literature, see, for example: Jad Adams, Hideous Absinthe: A History of the Devil in a Bottle. London: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2008, 19f.; Phil Baker, The Dedalus Book of Absinthe. Sawtry: Dedalus Ltd, 2001, 106f.; Ian Hutton, “Myth, Reality and Absinthe.” Current Drug Discovery (Sept. 2002): 62–4, 63. 14 Adams, Hideous Absinthe, 4; Barnaby Conrad III, Absinthe: History in a Bottle. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1988, 6, 90; Marie-Claude Delahaye, L’absinthe: Les affiches. Auvers-sur-Oise: Musée de l’absinthe Auvers, 2002, 72; Dirk W., David Nathan-Maister Lachenmeier, Theodore A. Breaux, Jean-Pierre Luauté and Joa­ chim Emmert. “Absinthe, Absinthism and Thujone: New Insight into the Spirit’s Impact on Public Health.” The Open Addiction Journal 3 (2010): 32–8, 33; Benoît Noël, Nouvelles confidences sur l’absinthe. Yens sur Morges: Cabedita, 2003, 113. 15 See, for example: Jacques-François-Rémy-Stanislas Rossignol, Traité élémentaire d’hygiène militaire. Paris: Alexandre Johanneau, 1857, 373. For mentions of the various bans on absinthe in the French army in the 1840s to 1870s, see also: E. Quetin, Guide du voyageur en Algérie: Itinéraire du savant, de l’artiste, de l’homme du monde et du colon. Paris/Algiers: L. Maison/Dubos frères et Marest, 1848, 249f, FN 1; Rossignol, Traité élémentaire, 373; Louis Figuier, “Sur les effets pernicieux de la liqueur d’absinthe.” L’Année Scientifique et Industrielle 6 (1862), 336–46, 338; Pierre-Augustin Didiot, Code des officiers de santé de l’armée de terre ou traité de droit administratif, d’hygiène et de médecine légale militaires. Paris: Victor Rozier, 1863, 525. 16 Absinthe was first distilled in the Val-de-Travers in Switzerland towards the end of the eighteenth century. See for example: Baker, Dedalus Book of Absinthe, 7f.; Luc Bihl-Willette, Des tavernes aux bistrots: Une histoire des cafés. Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1997, 197; Conrad, Absinthe, 6; Lachenmeier et al., “Absinthe,” 33. 17 See, for example: Victor Anselmier, De L’empoisonnement par l’absinthe. Paris: Imprimerie de J. Claye, 1862, 25f.; V.-S. Lucienne, Leçons d’anti-alcoolisme: Rédigées conformément au programme des écoles publiques. Lille: Camille Robbe, 1899, 44. Image: Alphonse Loustaunau, À l’Esplanade des Invalides, © Delahaye-Musée de l’Absinthe-Auvers-sur-Oise.

The same drink? 39 18 However, there has been no historiographical research analysing the actual connection between the spread of absinthe and the conquest of Algeria, so this claim cannot be proven or disproven at this point. 19 Jules-Michel-Ferdinand Moreau, De la liqueur d’absinthe et de ses effets. Paris: F. Savy, 1863, 13. 20 Ernest Fallot, Par-delà la Méditerranée: Kabylie, Aurès, Kroumirie. Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie, 1887, 29. 21 Jean de Blida, “La Verte.” La Tafna. Journal de l’Arrondissement de Tlemcen, 12th Year, No. 567 (16.05.1894): 1. 22 Hugues Le Roux, Je deviens colon: Mœurs algériennes. Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1895, 155. 23 Alphonse Marcailhou D’Aymeric, Manuel hygiénique du colon algérien. Algiers: Juillet Saint-Lager, 1873, 17. 24 Rouby, “De l’alcoolisme en France et en Algérie.” Paper presented at the Congrès des Médecins Aliénistes et Neurologistes de France et des Pays de Langue Française, Clermont Ferrand, August 6–11, 1895: 237–50, 240f. 25 Rouby, “Alcoolisme,” 239. 26 In the secondary literature on absinthe, one can sometimes find the notion that in none of the French colonies was absinthe consumed by the colonised. See, for example: Delahaye, Absinthe: L’histoire, 57. 27 Rouby, “Alcoolisme,” 242. 28 Galland, “Excursion,” 15. 29 See, for example: Bernard. L’Algérie qui s’en va. Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie, 1887, 289; Édouard-Adolphe Duchesne, De la prostitution dans la ville d’Alger depuis la conquête. Paris: J.-B. Baillière, 1853, 89f. 30 Ernest Feydeau, Alger: Étude. Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1862, 124. 31 On the process of wine becoming tangled with French national identity, see: Kolleen M. Guy, “Wine, Champagne and the Making of French Identity in the Belle Époque.” In Food, Drink and Identity: Cooking, Eating and Drinking in Europe since the Middle Ages, edited by Peter Scholliers, 163–78. Oxford: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2001, 36. 32 Patricia Prestwich, Drink and the Politics of Social Reform: Anti-Alcoholism in France since 1870. Palo Alto: Society for the Promotion of Science and Scholar­ ship, 1988, 20. 33 See, for example, Kolleen M. Guy, “Rituals of Pleasure in the Land of Treas­ ures: Wine Consumption and the Making of French Identity in the Late Nine­ teenth Century.” In Food Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Societies, edited by Warren Belasco and Philip Scranton, 34–47. New York: Routledge, 2002, 37f.; Patricia E. Prestwich, “Temperance in France: The Curious Case of Absinth.” Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 6, No. 2 (1979): 301–19, 304. 34 Louis Pasteur, Études sur le vin: Ses maladies, causes qui les provoquent, procédés nouveaux pour le conserver et pour le vieillir. Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1866, 56. 35 Meloni and Swinnen stated in their 2014 article that wine production in France declined by 70% in this time period. Giulia Meloni and Johan Swinnen. “The Rise and Fall of the World’s Largest Wine Exporter – and its Institutional Legacy.” Journal of Wine Economics 9 (2014): 3–33, 8. 36 Keith Sutton described in a 1988 article that Algerian vineyards grew from 16,688 hectares of vines in 1872 to 110,042 hectares in 1890. Keith Sutton, “Algeria’s Vine­ yards: A Problem of Decolonisation.” Méditerranée 65, No. 3 (1988): 55–66, 56. Meloni and Swinnen stated that by 1900, “Algeria had become the number one exporter to France”. Meloni and Swinnen. “Rise and Fall”, 12. 37 See, for example: Marcailhou D’Aymeric, Manuel hygiénique, 16.

40 Nina Salouâ Studer 38 Alfred Jousset, Traité de l’acclimatement et de l’acclimatation. Paris: Octave Doin, 1884, 381. 39 Raoul Bergot, L’Algérie telle qu’elle est. Paris: Albert Savine, 1890, 1f. 40 Sylvère Leroux, Traité de la vigne et le vin en Algérie et en Tunisie. 2 Vol. Blida: A. Maugin, 1894, Vol. 1, 9. See also: Émile-Louis Bertherand, Médecine et hygiène des arabes: Études sur l’exercice de la médecine et de la chirurgie chez les musulmans de l’Algérie, leurs connaissances en anatomie, histoire naturelle, pharmacie, médecine légale, etc., leurs conditions climatériques générales, leurs pratiques hygiéniques publiques et privées, leurs maladies, leurs traitements les plus usités. Paris: Germer Baillière, 1855,285. 41 See, for example: Jean-Joseph Marit, Hygiène de l’Algérie: Exposé des moyens de con­ server la santé et de se préserver des maladies dans les pays chauds et spécialement en Algérie. Paris: J.-B. Baillière et fils, 1862, 360. 42 On the issue of the formerly prosperous vineyards of Algeria, see: Susanna Barrows, “Alcohol, France and Algeria: A Case Study in the International Liquor Trade.” Contemporary Drug Problems 11 (1982): 525–43, 527; Rudi Matthee, “Alcohol in the Islamic Middle East: Ambivalence and Ambiguity.” Past and Present Supplement 9 (2014): 100–25,106. 43 It remains unclear what this heyday of North Africa was that the colonial sources indirectly alluded to when describing contemporary Algeria as in decay. It could be either the Roman period, when it was known as the “granary” of Rome, or the Middle Ages, when Arabic, but not necessarily North African, scholars translated and transmitted Greek texts. 44 Bergot, Algérie, 2f. 45 Rouby, “Alcoolisme,” 242. 46 Marcailhou D’Aymeric, Manuel hygiénique, 16, 29. 47 See, for example, Bertherand, Hygiène du colon, 19. The French army often gave a wine ration to its soldiers stationed in Algeria. Alphonse Laveran, Traité d’hygiène militaire. Paris: G. Masson, 1896, 288; Jules Eugène Rochard, Traité d’hygiène publique et privée. Paris: Octave Doin, 1897, 897; CharlesMarie-Jules Viry, Manuel d’hygiène militaire: Suivi d’un précis des premiers secours à donner en attendant l’arrivée du médecin. Paris: A. Delahaye et É. Lecrosnier, 1886, 173. 48 Witold Lemanski, Hygiène du colon, ou vade-mecum de l’européen aux colonies. Paris: G. Steinheil, 1902, 80. 49 Gustave-Adolphe Reynaud, Hygiène coloniale, Hygiène des colons. Paris: J.-B. Baillière et Fils, 1903, 266f. 50 Doctor Witold Lemanski, for example, recommended in 1902 water for children under eight in Algeria and water mixed with wine for children over that age. Lemanski, Hygiène du colon, 81. 51 See, for example: Marit, Hygiène de l’Algérie, 360. 52 A. Guillot, Le vin. Toulon: A. Isnard et Cie, 1883, 5f. See also: Germain Marty, Contribution à l’étude de l’alcoolisme. Paris: Adrien Delahaye, 1873, 72; Lucien Picqué, Notions pratiques d’hygiène populaire: Leçons professées à l’association polytechnique. Paris: J. Dejey et Cie, 1877, 18; Victor Vétault, Étude médico­ légale sur l’alcoolisme: Des conditions de la responsabilité au point de vue pénal chez les alcoolisés. Paris: J.-B. Baillière et fils, 1887, 27. 53 Rouby, “Alcoolisme,” 240. 54 See, for example: Émile-Louis Bertherand, Médecine et hygiène des arabes: Études sur l’exercice de la médecine et de la chirurgie chez les musulmans de l’Al­ gérie, leurs connaissances en anatomie, histoire naturelle, pharmacie, médecine légale, etc., leurs conditions climatériques générales, leurs pratiques hygiéniques publiques et privées, leurs maladies, leurs traitements les plus usités. Paris: Germer

The same drink? 41

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67

68

Baillière, 1855, 284; Duchesne, Prostitution, 80; Galland, “Excursion,” 14; Jean Le Roy, Deux ans de séjour en petite Kabilie: Un peuple de barbares en territoire français. Paris: Augustin Challamel, 1911, 58. Martin, Manuel d’hygiène, 92. Louis Vignon, La France en Algérie. Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1893, 410. See, for example: Bertherand, Médecine et hygiène, 284; Duchesne, Prostitution, 89; Amédée Maurin, La saison d’hiver en Algérie. Paris: G. Masson, 1873, 317; Morache, Georges. La responsabilité: Étude de socio-biologie et de médecine légale. Paris: J.-B. Baillière et fils, 1906, 97. On the issue of alcohol being con­ sumed mainly by those Muslims having most contact with the French in the Maghreb, see also: Lynn Pan, Alcohol in Colonial Africa. Helsinki: The Scandi­ navian Institute of African Studies, 1975, 105. Louis de Baudicour, for example, claimed in 1853 that these Algerians had “taken the habit of drinking Champagne”, because it was “less compromising than others [i.e.: other forms of alcohol] for their Muslim conscience”. Louis de Baudicour, La guerre et le gouvernement de l’Algérie. Paris: Sagnier et Bray, 1853, 574. Alphonse Certeux and E.-H. Carnoy. Contributions au folk-lore des Arabes: L’Algérie traditionnelle. Légendes, contes, chansons, musique. Paris: Maisonneuve et Leclerc, 1884, 179. The price of champagne seems to have remained high during the nineteenth century and to not have decreased in the twentieth century either. In 1933, Pierre Pinaud stated that “Champagne is also greatly appreciated, especially among the rich classes, given its high price.” Pierre-Alfred-Hippolyte-AndréRené Pinaud, “L’alcoolisme chez les Arabes en Algérie.” Med. Thesis, University of Bordeaux, 1933, 21. On the high costs of champagne drinking in Algeria, see also: Baudicour, Guerre, 574. The aforementioned Rouby claimed that in 1895 a litre of wine only cost one “sou”, i.e. five cents. At that price, it might have been affordable to workingclass Algerians. Rouby, “Alcoolisme,” 242. Emir Faradj Khan, “Hygiène et islamisme.” Med. Thesis, University of Lyon, 1904, 42. See, for example: Rouby, “Alcoolisme,” 241f. Prestwich, “Temperance in France,” 304. See, for example: Bertherand, Hygiène du colon, 24; Pierre-Frédéric Bainier, La géographie appliquée à la marine, au commerce, à l’agriculture, à l’industrie et à la statistique: Afrique. Paris: Librairie Classique d’Eugène Belin, 1878, 283. See, for example: Georges Treille, Principes d’hygiène coloniale. Paris: Georges Carré et C. Naud, 1899, 159; Alexandre Etienne Rouquié, “Étude coloniale sur Tunis: Hygiène et maladies locales.” Med. Thesis, University of Toulouse, 1901, 104; Lemanski, Hygiène du colon, 100. On absinthe as a scourge or plague, see, for example: Anselmier, Empoisonne­ ment, 27f.; François Charvériat, Huit jours en Kabylie: A travers la Kabylie et les questions Kabyles. Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie, 1889, 201f., FN 1; Casimir Fré­ gier, L’absinthisme en face de la loi. Algiers: Études Législatives & Judiciaires sur l’Algérie, 1863, 3f., 5; Moreau, Liqueur d’absinthe, 35f.; Camille Viré, En Algérie: Une excursion dans le département d’Alger. Paris: Charles Bayle, 1888, 89f.; Viry, Manuel d’hygiène militaire, 176. Rochard, Traité d’hygiène, 716. The same differentiation between “wine” and “alcohol” can also be found in Eugène-François Ravenez’s 1889 book on the “Life of the Soldier”: “The drunkenness caused by wine is less harmful than that caused by alcohol. In wine countries the professional drunkards walk slower towards physical and moral degeneration than in the countries where

42 Nina Salouâ Studer

69 70

71 72 73

74 75

76 77 78

79

80

81

they drink only eau-de-vie.” Eugène-François Ravenez, La vie du soldat au point de vue de l’hygiène. Paris: J.-B. Baillière et fils, 1889, 178. Prestwich, Drink, 54. See, for example: Louis de Baudicour, La colonisation de l’Algérie: Ses éléments. Paris: Jacques Lecoffre, 1856, 138; Charles Thierry-Mieg, Six semaines en Afrique: Souvenirs de voyage. Paris: Michel-Lévy Frères, 1861, 294, FN 1; Figuier, “Effets pernicieux,” 336; A. Villacrose, Vingt ans en Algérie: Ou tribula­ tions d’un colon racontées par lui-même: la colonisation en 1874, le régime militaire et l’administration civile, mœurs, coutumes, institutions des indigènes, ce qui est fait, ce qui est à faire. Paris: Challamel Aîné, 1875, 353. Th. Fortin d’Ivry, L’Algérie: Son importance, sa colonisation, son avenir. Paris: Imprimerie de Rignoux, 1845, 41. See, for example: Henri Lierre, La question de l’absinthe. Paris: Imprimerie Vallée, 1867, 62; Bernard, Algérie, 79; Jean-Antoine-Étienne Lahache, Les indus­ tries chimiques en Algérie. Alger-Mustapha: Imprimerie Giralt, 1900, 22f. Negative descriptions of the settler society can be found in many publications. See, for example: Jules Rémy, Lettres d’un voyageur à M. L.G.-G. Châlons: Imprimerie de T. Martin, 1858, 5; Pierre Marbaud, Coup d’œil sur l’Algérie pendant la crise de 1859–1860 et réflexions sur le décret relatif de la vente des terres domaniales. Constantine: Imprimerie de Ve Guende, 1860, 23. See, for example, Rouby, “Alcoolisme,” 240f. Émile-Louis Bertherand, Médecine et hygiène des arabes: Études sur l’exercice de la médecine et de la chirurgie chez les musulmans de l’Algérie, leurs connaissances en anatomie, histoire naturelle, pharmacie, médecine légale, etc., leurs conditions climatériques générales, leurs pratiques hygiéniques publiques et privées, leurs maladies, leurs traitements les plus usités. Paris: Germer Baillière, 1855, 284. Antoine Porot, “Notes de psychiatrie musulmane.” Annales Médico-Psychologiques 9, 74th Year (1918): 377–84, 383f. Emphasis in the original. Porot, “Notes de psychiatrie musulmane,” 383f. In 1932, for example, Antoine Porot and his student Don Côme Arrii lamented the wide consumption of anisettes among Algerian Muslims. They also called anisettes “this Algerian scourge”, an epithet that had before 1915 been reserved for absinthe. Antoine Porot and Don Côme Arrii. “L’impulsivité criminelle chez l’indigène algérien. Ses facteurs.” In: Annales Médico-Psychologiques. 14th Series, Vol. 2, 90th Year (1932). 588–611, 599f. On the consumption of Algerian Mus­ lims of anisettes after 1915, see also: Pinaud, “Alcoolisme,” 25. I have discussed the prominence of issues of settler security in the colonial Maghreb in my book on colonial psychiatry. See: Nina Studer, The Hidden Patients, North African Women in French Colonial Psychiatry. Wien/Köln/ Weimar: Böhlau, 2015, 72ff.; 235–9. It was often reported in the French colonial publications that North African Muslims either confused, or at least claimed to confuse, champagne with lemon­ ade. The French colonial descriptions of champagne drinking in the Maghreb form part of a yet unpublished research project of mine. On the champagne con­ sumption of Algerian Muslims, see also, for example: Ch. Marcotte de Quivières, Deux ans en Afrique. Paris: Librairie nouvelle, 1855, 15, 126; Trumelet, Français dans le désert, 216, FN 2. This is due to two reasons. On the one hand, “respectable” French women did not discuss encounters with marginalised North African Muslim women in the source material. On the other hand, the alcohol consumption of non­ marginalised North African Muslim women seems to have taken place outside of the view of French men and women, and was practically never mentioned. An exception to this is a doctor P. Remlinger, who mentioned in a paper he gave on

The same drink? 43

82 83 84 85

“The Progress of Alcoholism in Morocco” at the meeting of the Society of Exotic Pathology in Paris that “Jewish and Muslim, the women drink Cham­ pagne and Manzanilla (highly alcoholic Spanish wine) and even more cognac, Whiskey and gin.” P. Remlinger, “Les progrès de l’alcoolisme au Maroc.” Bulletin de la Société de Pathologie Exotique 5 (1912), 747–52, 749. Rouby, “Alcoolisme, 241f.” Sisson, En Smaala, 213. Eugène Poiré, La Tunisie française. Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie, 1892, 39. Vignon, France en Algérie, 410. In another section of his book, Vignon repeated this claim by disdainfully stating that some French settlers in Algeria believed that: “developing irreligiosity among Muslims, making them drink wine and absinthe, is the surest means to ‘assimilate’ them.” Ibid., 481.

3

Drinking and production patterns of wine in North Africa during French colonisation, c. 1830–1956 Nessim Znaien

This chapter focuses on alcohol in the French empire in North Africa. Particular emphasis is on the production, trade and consumption of wine from the early nineteenth to the mid twentieth century. Administrative, judicial and hospital sources are assessed and newspapers and novels from three different countries examined. It is important to point out that the sources tend to tell us more about urban alcohol consumption and in particular about wine. Rural consumption patterns and the role of beer, distilled liquors and palm wine figure less prominently. It appears that administrators were more concerned with urban drinking patterns and with economic issues relating to wine.

Different colonialisms and French perspectives on alcohol Tunisia and Morocco were colonised by France in 1881 and 1912 respectively. Algeria was different in several respects. First of all it was colonised much earlier, in 1830, and it had a much larger number of Europeans. Algeria’s legislation was fashioned on the French pattern, while Tunisia and Morocco were French Protectorates and their laws and policies were not necessarily in line with those prevalent in France. The French adapted their alcohol policies and interventions to the circumstances they found in the different dependencies. So, while the nature of the colonial state in Algeria was different from both Tunisia and Morocco, there were also differences between the latter. France’s hegemony over Tunisia preceded its hold over Morocco by 31 years, leading to different kinds of colonial organisation and economic frameworks for the alcohol trade. Despite the very different colonial settings, the official French rhetoric on and literary representations of indigenous people’s alcohol consumption were quite similar in regard to Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. The main dictum contended that North Africans were unable to appreciate the taste of wine and incapable of moderating their consumption of any alcoholic drink, including wine. For example, novelists such as Octave Charpentier, portrayed Tunisian characters as alcoholics. In his Mabrouka femme arabe, he assumed that Smaïl became a drunkard, possessed by the devil, by drinking wine.1 In Marcelle Labelle’s novel, Sadok, the protagonist, was not able to control himself after

Wine in French colonial North Africa 45 drinking alcohol, causing the breakup of his family; he finally died due to the revenge of a camel that he had tortured.2 Marcel Labelle did not specify the type of alcohol that Sadok consumed. Labelle’s intention was to highlight that a Tunisian peasant newly arrived from the countryside could easily lose his moral compass in the capital, Tunis. Intellectuals and medical doctors considered strong alcohol far more dangerous to health than wine during the first half of the twentieth century. Doctors attributed the social disintegration of indigenous societies to distilled liquors. Dr Pierre Pinaud, for example, reasoned that this connection was not only a valid explanation but also provided a justification for colonisation.3 In a similar vein, medical discourses on alcohol were linked to ideas that the increased level of tea consumption in Arab societies had a bad effect on the populace. “Teaisme”, like alcoholism, was seen as a weakness among North Africans who failed to resist occidental temptations. In 1930, an article was published in the newspaper Les annales coloniales on théisme, where the author wrote: No-one can ignore what is going on here, the destruction produced by theism amongst the Muslim population of the Regency. The evil that it causes is especially visible in the countryside where it weakens the race, literally intoxicating people and diminishing them morally and physically.4 The view that Muslims were unable to drink strong liquor, wine and tea in moderation prevailed throughout the colonial period. However, in contrast to alcohol, tea consumption among Muslims was largely accepted by French authorities, probably for tax reasons and because in the view of the French this beverage was more agreeable with Muslim culture. Only one decree, just before the Second World War forbade the sale of tea to Muslims in Tunisian cafes.5 However, it does not appear to have been implemented and is not mentioned in the French authorities’ archives later on.6 From 1914 until the end of the war, distilled alcohol was forbidden to Europeans and Muslims across all North African countries, while the sale of wine had been prohibited for Muslims from 1914 in Morocco and Tunisia.7 Tea was never covered by the numerous measures taken against alcohol during the two world wars.

Colonial politics and alcohol policies In North Africa, the question of alcohol was deeply connected with political issues. Control of drinking venues and of public alcohol consumption was considered vital. For example, officials required bar owners to inform the authorities of any political meetings that occurred on their premises. A local administrator of Tabarka for example suggested in 1950 withdrawing the licence of bar owners who did not collaborate with the police.8 The same

46 Nessim Znaien policies were applied in other Tunisian cities during a time when nationalism was on the rise. North African nationalists on their part engaged critically with the French impact on drinking behaviours in its colonies. Ferhat Abbas in Algeria for example wrote that increased alcohol consumption among the colonised was a pertinent symbol of the negative influence of France on North Africa.9 In Tunisia, Abdelaziz Thaalbi, known as the first Tunisian nationalist, wrote in the Tunisie martyr, that Europeans, and above all the French army, were responsible for the collapse of Tunisian identity and character.10 In Habib Bourguiba’s view, France introduced alcohol, and especially wine, in Tunisia to divide and weaken Muslim society: What of the ruined fathers who lose their families forever, what of the for­ tunes gobbled up in these bistros; the children of these alcoholics, affected by all kinds of neuroses, will join criminals sentenced to hard labour or end up in the sanatoria, if indeed there still are any for the poor.11 He even accused the French government of authorising wine drinking for Muslims in order to create a new market for French wine growers in Tunisia: Unless it is a sort of intentional, premeditated tolerance, destined to alleviate the shortcomings of the quota system and to guarantee another significant outlet for Tunisian wines. This idea, as ingenious as it is criminal, has been issued repeatedly by a certain newspaper.12 As Boujarra has shown, colonial as well as nationalist discourse portrayed pre-colonial North Africa in positive terms, namely as societies where Islamic religious injunctions against alcohol were followed, despite evidence that consumption of alcohol had been widespread even then.13

Colonial control of alcohol trade and consumption among North Africans Segregation between Europeans and the indigenous population was characteristic of Algerian, Tunisian and Moroccan colonial society. This was reflected in both nationalists’ and French endeavours to selectively restrict indigenous alcohol consumption. Tunisia’s government made the sale of alcohol to indigenous inhabitants illegal in its 1913 Penal Code, and further restrictive laws were enacted at the beginning of the First World War.14 Morocco took similar measures a week after Tunisia, in September 1914.15 The policies in Tunisia and Morocco were part of the wider context of the French “politique des égards” (policy of respect or consideration), which applied to its protectorates. This dictum was based on the notion of mutual respect on the part of both coloniser and colonised for each other’s cultural and social sensitivities. One of the most prominent representatives of this policy was Hubert Lyautey, who attempted to assure Muslim elites that the French had

Wine in French colonial North Africa 47 due respect for Islamic culture. He had restrictive measures introduced in regard to alcohol in Morocco by a dahir (decree), in June 1916.16 Among other things, this quid pro quo entailed that the sale of alcohol to Muslims was forbidden and Europeans were not allowed to enter mosques. The politique des égards prevailed until the end of the Tunisian Protectorate in 1956.17 Further policies relating to the establishment and control of premises on which alcohol was consumed were enforced in 1937.18 The 1930s were characterised by nationalist protests, and the control of public spaces and meeting places was part of the French endeavour to ensure order. In addition to the enactment of national alcohol policies, local authorities, especially in urban areas, introduced further restrictions on alcohol consumption. In Morocco, Salé and Rabat made the sale of any type of alcohol to Muslims illegal in 1927 and 1932 respectively.19 Casablanca and Tangier, both of which had a large European presence, were much less concerned about regulation of alcohol consumption. In Tunisia, local decrees dealt only with opening and closing hours of bars, and were withdrawn around the time of the First World War. From this point, only the central government implemented policies concerning alcohol.20 This shows that Tunisia was subject to more centralised control by the government during the colonial period. Policies in Algeria differed from those enforced in Tunisia and Morocco. Algeria was the only country in French North Africa where the sale of alcohol to the indigenous population was not prohibited. Liquors such as absinth were forbidden at the beginning of the First World War,21 like in mainland France.22 But Algerian legislation remained more liberal than in the two other French colonies in North Africa. There are two main reasons for this. First, in the early twentieth century, Algeria’s laws were supposed to apply equally to all citizens. Only between 1940 and 1943 was the sale of alcohol restricted. This was the period when the Vichy government was in place, controlling civil administration in both France and French Algeria.23 Secondly, alcohol played a very important role in Algeria’s economy. Large quantities of wine were produced.24 Many Europeans made a living from vineyards.25 More than 30,000 were employed in viticulture in Algeria after the Second World War, in contrast to only 3,000 in Tunisia. Most of the workers were indigenous people, especially in Algeria. Wine growing needed a large workforce, and native workers were particularly appreciated because of the low labour costs.26 Restrictions on alcohol production, trade and consumption would have had detrimental effects on Algeria’s economy. Cultural considerations such as those advanced by Lyautey in Morocco clearly fell prey to the economics of colonisation in the case of Algeria.

Wine production, export and consumption patterns Considerable differences in wine production, export volume and consumption levels can be identified in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. While North Africa as a whole represented around 20 per cent of the French Empire’s production

48 Nessim Znaien in the 1930s, considerable differences existed in the three countries.27 Algeria’s share amounted to about 17 per cent, while Tunisia contributed only two per cent and Morocco one per cent.28 Before the 1930s, most of the wine was exported, i.e. 90 per cent and 70 per cent in the case of Algeria and Tunisia respectively.29 This still left a significant volume of wine for the local marked, especially in Algeria and Tunisia, where wine production was higher and of longer standing. After the First World War, vineyards were established in Morocco. The country had 5,000 hectares of vineyards in 1925, reaching 25,000 ha ten years later,30 mostly concentrated in the area around Casablanca.31 During this period, Morocco had only just begun to export its wine, while Algeria’s export trade dated back to the 1890s.32 The economic crisis of the 1930s and the return of the phylloxera disease slowed down viticulture in the three countries.33 Morocco’s production remained low until the end of the colonial period.34 Apart from the global effects of the Great Depression, alcohol production in Morocco remained constricted also for ideological reasons. First, colonial officials such as Lyautey were not in favour of the cultivation of wine, as it was associated with European culture and hence did not fit in with a colonial discourse that promulgated respect for indigenous culture and religious precepts. Second, Morocco was colonised by France at a time when French wine production was very high and still competitive.35 Third, Morocco was the last of the three countries to be colonised and missed out on a crucial phase in the history of wine cultivation. When France assumed power in Tunisia at the end of the nineteenth century, French viticulture had just been damaged by a disease, phylloxera, and many French winegrowers decided to emigrate to Tunisia and Algeria to establish new vineyards.36 There was a new demand in France for wine from abroad37 and wine production in Tunisia was encouraged, especially in order to produce strong red wine, from the same vines as in France.38 By the time part of Morocco became a French Protectorate, Tunisian and Algerian exports to France had decreased on account of an overproduction crisis of wine in the south of France in 1905/ 1906.39 Still, viticulture was there to stay in Tunisia, as many wine growers were set on making their living in the Protectorate, having developed social and economic networks and political interest groups such as trade unions. For example, the “Syndicat général des viticulteurs de Tunisie” was created in 1889 and tried to promote Tunisian wine abroad, especially when the phylloxera crisis reached Tunisia in 1906 and there was the danger that the reputation of Tunisian wines could be tarnished.40 Despite the considerable differences between the three countries, French North Africa had a special position in relation to other colonies in the French Empire, as this was the only region where wine could be produced. This was due to a climate favourable to viticulture and proximity to France, which facilitated the wine trade, in particular at the end of the nineteenth century during the French phylloxera crisis when French growers migrated

Wine in French colonial North Africa 49 to North Africa to introduce wine production resulting in different levels of wine consumption in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. At the international conferences on alcohol in Brussels in 1890 and 1899, North Africa was reported to have been unconcerned about alcohol tax rises throughout Africa. This was seen to have been due to pressure on the part of the French government in order to facilitate the wine trade in this region.41 Data on wine consumption per capita can be obtained from statistical breakdowns for Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria.42 Unfortunately, the figures do not tell us anything about community-specific trends or consumption among Europeans and Muslims. The only way to glean information about European and Muslim drinking patterns involves analysis of the locations of drinking places (as discussed below; see Figures 3.1 and 3.2). Consumption of wine began to increase in Algeria at the end of the nineteenth century, and in Tunisia and Morocco after the First World War. In Morocco it rose considerably in the second half of the 1920s, reaching an average of 10 litres per year and person (European and indigenous) in 1932.43 In Tunisia, wine consumption reached 10 litres per person around 1910, then remained more or less the same between 1920 and 1956, namely between 12 and 14 litres per person.44 Due to the presence of a larger number of Europeans in Algeria, namely one million,45 (compared with Tunisia’s 255,000 and Morocco’s 535,00046) during the 1950s, wine consumption was considerably higher than in the two other countries, reaching 50 litres of wine per inhabitant during the 1920s and 80 litres during the 1950s.47 Despite the global economic crisis of the 1930s, wine production and consumption in the three countries did not collapse during this period. The Second World War had a more profound effect, especially in Morocco where the war led to a 50 per cent decrease in wine consumption.48 In the 1950s, levels of wine consumption differed considerably in Algeria on the one hand and in Tunisia and Morocco on the other. Consumption among Europeans and indigenous people in Algeria was five times more than in Tunisia by the 1950s.49 Despite the overall importance of the export sector in the three North African countries, local wine consumption was mainly fed by local crops.50 In contrast to Tunisia and Algeria, Morocco’s wine production was in fact aimed at local consumers, particularly Europeans, and did not constitute a large part of the export market.51 In 1934, only 25,000 hectares of vineyards were cultivated in Morocco, which amounted to about half the area allocated to viticulture in Tunisia.52 In Algeria, wine represented around 30 per cent of the agricultural income just before the First World War.53 Wine was less important for the Tunisian economy but still accounted for about 20 per cent of agricultural exports before the First World War.54 But progressively, the constitution of a local market due to the immigration of Europeans to North Africa led to a decrease of the export sector and to lower prices. The rise of wine consumption during the first half of the twentieth century in North Africa was closely linked to the collapse of the price of wine, in a similar pattern as had happened in mainland France at the end of the nineteenth

Figure 3.1 Location of bars: plan of Casablanca (1956)

Figure 3.2 Location of bars: Tunis (1956) – plan d’ensemble

52 Nessim Znaien century.55 In Algeria, for example, the price of wine fell by half between 1927 and 1935 due to over-production.56 In Tunisia, the same phenomenon occurred during the first half of the twentieth century. According to the leading local newspaper La Dépêche tunisienne, the comparison between the price of wine and the income profiles of occupational groups such as farm workers,57 miners58 and employees of the national railway company59 showed a democratisation of the access to alcohol for these social groups. In 1935, a bottle of wine cost half the price compared to 1905, making this commodity more affordable for those employed in the farming, mining and railway sectors. Data are missing for Morocco, but we can assume that the wine prices followed a similar pattern, especially from the 1920s, when government loans for agricultural investment were made available, leading to the expansion of viticulture.60

Beer, spirits and the control of drinking behaviours Wine was not the only European-style alcohol circulating in North Africa during the colonial period. The brewery industry expanded considerably in Morocco and Tunisia during the 1920s when beer was considered by doctors, politicians and anti-alcohol leagues as less detrimental to health than other beverages.61 For example, the Société frigorifique des brasseries de Tunisie was created in 1925 and produced around 50,000 hectolitres per year during the 1920s.62 The company owned three factories, in Tunis, Sfax and Bizerte.63 The Moroccan Société des brasseries du Maroc, was not quite as developed, but still produced 18,000 hectolitres of beer every year during the same period.64 While in Morocco the average beer consumption by inhabitant was not higher than 2 litres during the 1930s,65 it reached about 3 or 4 litres per year in Tunisia in the 1920s and 1930s.66 The fact that breweries existed shows that local demand was large enough to sustain these industrial enterprises. The price of making beer was lower than the production of wine and predominantly aimed at the local market. Unlike wine, beers brewed in Tunisia and Morocco were not exported to Europe. Strong liquor, too, was produced, especially in Tunisia, where the Distillerie des frères Bokobsa and the Distillerie Licari were the most prominent companies.67 The colonial period and especially the 1920s witnessed the creation of alcohol industries. Alcohol became important, not only for the export trade but also for local consumption. Very little information is available on the social profile of beer, wine and spirits drinkers. Newspapers, such as the famous La Dépêche tunisienne suggested that the majority of alcohol consumers in Tunisia, namely 68 per cent, were men in the 20–30 year age group. Twenty-nine per cent were men between 31 and 45 years of age.68 Only 5 per cent of drinkers were women and less than 10 per cent Europeans (particularly of Italian, Maltese and English extraction).69 The women described as drinkers were considered to have been prostitutes.70 It is worth noting that the articles in

Wine in French colonial North Africa 53 the La Dépêche tunisienne were written by French journalists very close to the French administration; they tended to suggest that the French colonisers respected cultural and religious prohibitions and that they were therefore not responsible for the spread of alcohol consumption among Tunisians. There was a focus on Jewish consumption, but Berbers’ drinking was rarely referred to.71 Police sources also mentioned alcohol consumption among Tunisian men and noted low figures among women.72 The proportion of younger men is higher in the police archives, with 87 per cent of people arrested for being drunk in public being reported as belonging to the under 30 age group.73 In Morocco, it became an offence to run a bar and to sell alcohol to minors (i.e. people below 21 years according to the legislation of that period) in 1924 and 1940 respectively.74 In Tunisia similar regulations concerning minors were created in 1937.75 However, in both Morocco and Tunisia the majority of laws concerning minors were published during the Second World War.76 Official sources commented on the uncommonness of alcohol consumption in Morocco and Tunisia during particular periods. For example, in Morocco a government official noted in 1937 that drinking of alcohol was considerably lower during the month of Ramadan.77 Similarly, the number of arrests reported in Tunisia for drunkenness in public was very low during this month.78 To have been found drunk during this month by the police was seen by the local administrators as an aggravating circumstance. The caïd (Muslim commander or leader) of the Djerid area in south western Tunisia reported to the first minister of the behaviour of one Mohamed Ali Ben Taieb Ennafti that, “he had been found drunk several times during the month of Ramadan”.79 This suggests that while periodic religious restraints temporarily led to lower than usual drinking, alcohol consumption was far from uncommon at other periods. Opening hours for drinking places in Tunisia were very long. They were authorised to open, depending on the season, from 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning to 11 or 12 o’clock at night during the 1930s.80 In the larger cities in Morocco, such as Casablanca, opening hours were somewhat shorter. Bars were open from 5 o’clock in the morning to 9 o’clock in the evening.81 However, thanks to reports by the food trade union of Casablanca, we know that some Moroccan grocers sold wine in their shops after the official closing hours.82 It is difficult to ascertain whether more alcohol was consumed on public premises or in the privacy of homes.

Drinking places The number of registered bars in Algeria was three times higher than in Morocco and almost twice as high as in Tunisia.83 Official sources for 1956 listed nine drinking places per 10,000 inhabitants for the ten largest cities in Algeria, and six and 3.5 per 10,000 inhabitants for Tunisia and Morocco

54 Nessim Znaien respectively.84 These differences are due to the higher number of Europeans present in the largest cities of Algeria, in contrast to Tunisia and Morocco, namely around 70 per cent Europeans of the total population of Oran and Algiers in the 1930s, compared to 50 per cent for the Moroccan city of Casablanca and 40 per cent in Tunis.85 The number of bars was higher in the larger cities, where many Europeans lived, and in ports, such as Bizerte in Tunisia and Port-Lyautey in Morocco.86 In these two cities, there were two or three official drinking places per 10,000 inhabitants during the 1930s, which was much higher than the national average in Morocco and Tunisia, but lower than in France. The national average for Morocco and Tunisia was around 0.5 and 1 per 10,000 inhabitants respectively, while it reached 120 in France during the 1930s.87 In contrast to port cities and large conurbations, some cities, such as Fès in Morocco or Kairouan in Tunis, were devoid of bars.88 These places were renowned for their traditional Arabic outlook, and few Europeans lived here. Local regulations aimed at preserving these cities from some of the influences of European colonisation. In Morocco, Fès for example was the only city where alcohol was totally forbidden by a decree in 1934 for native inhabitants and Europeans in the medina or old Arab quarter. In other cities such as Meknes, Port-Lyautey and Salé, alcohol was forbidden in the medina for natives but not for Europeans.89 In regard to the control and licensing of bars, the colonial model differed from mainland France. From 1901, a quota on officially licensed drinking premises was enforced in Algeria,90 followed by Tunisia in 190791 and by Morocco after the First World War, in 1924.92 In Tunisia, in 1920, it was also forbidden for drinking premises to be established in areas where “Muslims were in the majority”, which was vague enough to allow for diverse interpretations.93 Later, in 1937, it became illegal to open a bar less than 100 metres from a mosque, a troop headquarter or a graveyard.94 The same laws were enacted in Morocco in 1933. Official maps showing the distribution of bars indicate that they were concentrated in the European areas and on main streets. In Tunis they were located on the boundaries of the medina and at main arteries such as the “Avenue de Paris” and “Avenue Jules Ferry”.95 In Casablanca, “Boulevard de Paris”, “Boulevard de la Gare” and “Avenue de Marseille” were the main locations.96 The map of the bars in Tunis and Casablanca at the end of the Protectorate period provide good examples of the spatial distribution of drinking. In both Tunis and Casablanca, the lack of bars in the medina indicates the divide between the “wet” European and the “dry” areas. This division was accentuated by the numerous bars located on the boundary line between these two parts of the city, like a symbolic encirclement of the medina by Europeans. In addition to the main avenues, bars were also concentrated in one particular area in the two cities: the red light districts. The numerous bars in the Bousbir area, next to the “Place de France” of

Wine in French colonial North Africa 55 Casablanca, and in the Zarkoun quarter, located at the north-east of the

Tunis medina, indicate the strong connections between prostitution and

alcohol in the city. There also existed unregistered bars in the indigenous areas. In Tunisia the number of scandals concerning these establishments increased considerably in the 1920s, with local officials noting that native parts of cities were bustling with illegal bars.97 For example, in 1924 the superintendent of police in Monastir observed that there were three licensed bars and about six or seven illegal ones.98 It is difficult to identify the owners of both licensed and unlicensed bars. Lists of drinking premises were published in directories.99 In Tunisia the majority of owners appear to have been French, who were seen to be closer to the colonial authorities than Italians and other Europeans.100 In contrast, the majority of wine and liquor traders seem to have been Italians and Tunisian Jews.101 In fact, twice as many Jews than French people controlled the production of liquor.102 The Bokobsa brothers, for example, were prominent in Tunisia from the 1880s.103 They were of Jewish extraction and produced a kosher fig eau de vie that is still available today and advertised as suitable for Passover celebrations. Among winegrowers, there were twice as many Italians as French vineyard owners in Tunisia between 1881 and the Second World War.104 It appears that wine produced by Italians was sent to Italian traders in Tunisia, while wine originating from French-owned vineyards, tended to be exported tax free to France, especially after 1933, when 500,000 hectolitres per year reached French consumers in the colonial motherland.105

Conclusion The politics of viticulture in Northern Africa, in particular in Algeria, favoured the export of wine to mainland France. This led to the drop of the price of wine in the colonial motherland. However, this did not prevent the increase of alcohol consumption in the French North African Empire. The number of bars in the main cities where wine was sold also rose significantly during the colonial period. The demand for and the local production of wine was largely driven by the arrival of increasing numbers of Europeans, but an increase in wine consumption was noted also among indigenous people. As a part of the Politique des égards, the sale of alcohol to Muslims in Morocco and Tunisia became restricted, constituting a tool to delineate the colonial communities from each other and accentuating supposedly cultural and religious divides between rulers and ruled. Europeans were allowed to consume wine and other alcohol in public, with bars located at strategic places in the main cities signposting the spaces of European colonial modernity. On their part, members of native elites, such as Habib Bourguiba in Tunisia and Ferhat Abbas in Algeria, used the greater availability and visibility of alcohol as ways to illustrate the negative effects of the French presence in North Africa.

56 Nessim Znaien

Notes 1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16

17 18

19 20 21 22

Octave Charpentier, Mabrouka femme arabe, Paris, Marpon, 1921, p. 179. Marcelle Labelle, “Le pèlerin dans l’Oasis”. Carthage. La Kahena, 1931, p. 29. Pierre Pinaud, L’alcoolisme chez les arabes en Algérie. Bordeaux, 1933. Les annales coloniales, 1 April 1930. Translated from French to English by Dr Jane Freebody. Nessim Znaien, “Synthèse sur la diffusion du thé en Tunisie à l’époque contemporaine”. Du terroir au garde-manger planétaire. Gilles Fumey (ed.). Paris. Editions du CTHS, 2016, pp. 101–109; Nina S. Studer, “‘Was trinkt der zivilisierte Mensch?’ – Teekonsum und morbide Normalitaet im kolonialen Maghreb.” Schweizerische Revue 64, 3, 2014, pp. 406–424. Ibid., p. 109. For Morocco, see Centre des Archives Diplomatiques de Nantes (CADN), Protectorat Maroc, 1Ma100, 241. For Tunisia, see CADN, Protectorat Tunisie, Supplément au premier versement, carton n°20, Alcoolisme. CADN, Protectorat Tunisie, Deuxième versement, contrôle civil, carton n°1077, questions économiques, Lettre du contrôleur civil de Kasserine à M. l’inspecteur général des contrôles civils, fermeture d’un débit de boissons à Thala; Kasserine, 26 août 1952. Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, Aix en Provence (ANOM), Colonie algéri­ enne, 81F1622, Note secrétariat général à l’intérieur, 1946. Abdelaziz Thaalbi, La Tunisie martyre, ses revendications, Paris, Jouve, 1920, p. 151. National Library of Tunisia, Tunis: Habib Bourguiba, L’action tunisienne, samedi 11 mars 1935. Translated from French to English by Dr Jane Freebody. Ibid. Hacine Boujarra, “L’alcoolisme et son évolution dans la Régence de Tunis”, in Les Cahiers de Tunisie, n°41–42, 1990 [in arabic]. Tunisian Penal Code, 1913, art. 317, Section IV, relative à la moralité publique: “Sont passibles des mêmes peines [quinze jours d’emprisonnement et de vingt francs d’amende]: ceux qui servent des boissons alcooliques à des musulmans ou à des personnes en état d’ivresse.” CADN, Protectorat Maroc, Direction des affaires indigènes, Carton 331B, Procès verbal chambre de commerce et d’industrie de Casablanca, séance du 16 mars 1938. On Hubert Lyautey, see Daniel Rivet’s PhD dissertation. See Rivet, Daniel, Lyautey et l’institution du Protectorat français au Maroc, 1912–1925, Paris, L’Harmattan, collection “Histoire et perspectives méditerranéennes”, 1988, 3 vols. More recently see Ferragu, Gilles, Lyautey, Paris, Belin, 2014. On the politique des égards, See for example, Rivet, Daniel, Histoire du Maroc, Paris, Fayard, 2012, pp. 306–310. CADN, Protectorat Maroc, Carton 2MA1140, Arrêté du 5 mai 1937, portant sur réglementation des débits de boissons. National Archives of Tunisia, Tunis (FPC), E, 550, 37, circulaire à propos du décret du 11 février 1937, le 25 février 1937. See the file “Lettre du directeur des affaires politiques au Résident général, 7 mai 1938”, CADN, Protectorat Maroc, carton n°1MA200 677. See Nessim Znaien, Les raisins de la domination. Histoire sociale de l’alcool en Tunisie sous le Protectorat, Paris, Thèse de l’Université Paris I, 2017, pp. 160–172. See Bulletin municipal d’Alger, 22 août 1914. On the prohibition politics in mainland France during the war, see Thierry Fillaut, Le pinards des poilus, Paris, Le manuscrit, 2014.

Wine in French colonial North Africa 57 23 See for example ANOM-Fonds de l’Algérie colonial, 912 55, Lutte contre l’alcoolisme, 1941. 24 About 20 million hectolitres at the climax of Algerian production, during the 1930s. See Giulia Meloni and Johan Swinnen, “The Rise and Fall of the World’s Largest Wine Exporter – and Its institutional Legacy”, Journal of Wine Economics, 9, 1, 2014, pp. 3–23. 25 Especially after the 1930s. About 10,000 workers were employed in Algerian vineyards at the end of the 1930s; more than 20,000 around 1935, and over 30,000 after the Second World War. Meloni and Swinnen, “The Rise and Fall”, p. 11. 26 For Algeria, see Hildebert Isnard, “Vignes et colonisation en Algérie”, in Annales de Géographie, 58, 311, 1949, p. 218. 27 Huetz de Lemp, Alain, Boissons et civilisation en Afrique, Bordeaux, Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2001, pp. 317, 328. 28 Francis Peyronnet, Le vignoble nord-africain, Paris, Peyronnet et Compagnie, 1950, p. 94. 29 90 per cent in Algeria before the 1930s. See Alain Huetz de Lemp, Boissons et civilisation en Afrique, Paris, 2001, p. 314. About 70 per cent in Tunisia at the same period. See Znaien, Les raisins, pp. 111–123. 30 Huetz de Lemp, Boissons et civilisation, p. 326. 31 According to administrative sources, in 1928, 2,018 hectares of around 5,000 were concentrated in the region of Casablanca. See CADN, Protectorat Maroc, C245, Lettres du chef du cabinet diplomatique au resident général, 27 avril 1928. 32 Meloni and Swinnen, “The Rise and Fall”, pp. 11–13. 33 Giulia Meloni and Johan Swinnen, “Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia”, in Ander­ son Kym and Vicente Pinilla (eds), Wine Globalization: A New Comparative History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 447–450. 34 Meloni and Swinnen, “Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia”, pp. 449–450. 35 On a global view on that question, see Jean-Michel Chevet, Eva Fernandez, Eric Giraud-Héraud and Vicente Pinilla, “France”, in Anderson and Pinilla (eds), Wine globalization, pp. 71–73; Frédéric Moustier, Les mutations du vigno­ ble provençal au XXe siècle, Thèse de l’Université d’Aix-Marseille, 2018. 36 On Phylloxera, see for example Didier Nourrisson, Le buveur du XIXe siècle, Paris, Albin Michel, 1990, pp. 23–24. 37 K. Anderson, S. Nelgen and V. Pinilla, Global Wine Markets, 1860 to 2016: A Statistical Compendium, Adelaide, University of Adelaide Press, 2017. 38 See for example the abstract of a review for wine growers in Tunisia in 1900: “L’avenir paraît être aux vins chargés en couleur et d’un degré alcoolique élevé […] c’est-à-dire aux vins de coupage”. See Syndicat obligatoire général des viti­ culteurs de Tunisie, La vigne en Tunisie, Tunis, Imprimerie de l’association ouv­ rière, 1910, p. 13. 39 On wine production on the south of France and its economic consequences, see Stéphane Le Bras, Le négoce des vins en Languedoc. L’Emprise du marché (1900–1970), Tours, PUFR, 2019. 40 Paul Lambert, Dictionnaire illustré de la Tunisie: choses et gens de Tunisie, C. Saliba Ainé, 1912, article Syndicat général obligatoire des viticulteurs de Tunisie, p. 388. 41 Actes de la conférence de Bruxelles (1889–1890), Bruxelles, F. Hayez, 1890. 42 See CADN, Protectorat Maroc, Annuaires officiels du Maroc; CADN, Protectorat Tunisie, Annuaires officiels de la Tunisie. The Annuaires statistiques de la France can be found on www.gallica.bnf.fr. See also Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques, Paril, France (INSEE), Annuaires statistiques de la France. Résumé rétrospectif, Paris, Institut National de la Statistique et des études

58 Nessim Znaien

43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

économiques, 1966. I added the official quantity of wine produced to the wine import, minus the quantity of wine export. I divided the final result by the official number of inhabitants in the country at the time. Ibid. Znaien, Les raisins de la domination, p. 292. In a population of 9.3 million. See Jean Despois, “La population algérienne au 31 ocobre 1954”, in Annales de géographie, 347, 1956, p. 55. In 1956, 255,000 Europeans in Tunisia of a total of 3.7 million inhabitants in the country. See Michel Picouet, “Aperçu des migrations intérieures en Tuni­ sie”, Population, 26–1, 1971, p. 132. In 1952, 535,000 Europeans in Morocco of 9.3 million inhabitants. See Daniel Noin, “La population du Maroc”, L’infor­ mation géographique, 26, 1, 1962, p. 2. Data based on INSEE, Annuaires statistiques de la France. Résumé rétrospectif, Paris, Institut National de la Statistique et des études économiques, 1935 and 1966. See CADN, Annuaires statistiques du Maroc, 1940–1950. See Znaien, Les raisins de la domination, pp. 470–485. Meloni and Swinnen, “Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia”, in Anderson and Pinilla (eds), Wine globalization, pp. 442–445. On the place of wine in Moroccan trade, see CADN, Protectorat Maroc, Carton C249, Service commercial et industriel du Protectorat. See CADN, Annuaires statistiques Maroc, 1936. Huetz de Lemp, Boissons et civilisation, p. 314. CADN, Protectorat Tunisie, 123per, Institut national statistique, année 1913–1914. See also Protectorat Tunisie, Statistiques commerciales, années 1904–1907. See Didier Nourrisson, Le buveur du XIXe siècle, Paris, Albin Michel, 1990, pp. 22–36. It declined by 50%. See Meloni and Swinnen, “The Rise and Fall”, p. 20. Data found thanks to the short advertisements published, to find a farm worker in La Dépêche Tunisienne, 1905, 1915, 1925, 1934. See Archives Nationales Tunisiennes, FPC, M4, carton n°2, 1, Salaires journal­ iers, 1938, y compris allocation familale, mine de Kata Djerda. From data provided in Claude Liauzu, “Cheminots majorés et cheminots guenillards en Tunisie jusqu’en 1938”, Revue de l’Occident musulman et de la Méditerranée, 24, 1977, p. 27, p. 31 and p. 176. Which increased its vineyard areas by a factor of ten between 1920 and 1938. Meloni and Swinnen, “Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia”, in Anderson and Pinilla (eds), Wine globalization, pp. 449–450. For the French case, see Didier Nourrisson, Crus et cuites. Histoire du buveur, Paris, Perrin, 2013, pp. 115–146. Paul Sebag, Tunis. Histoire d’une ville, Paris, L’harmattan, 1998, p. 468. Société frigorifique de Tunis, Livre du cinquantenaire, Tunis, 1939. CADN, Protectorat Maroc, carton n°C228, Lettre du recteur des services économi­ ques du Protectorat à Monsieur le président de la chambre française de commerce et d’industrie, 6 juin 1923. Ibid. Includes “Annuaires statistiques marocaines”. According to the “Annuaires statistiques tunisiennes”. Sebag, Tunis, p. 372. See Znaien, “Les raisins de la domination”, p. 246. Omar Carlier confirmed this trend for Algeria. See Omar Carlier, “Le café Maure, espace de sociabilité et effervescence citoyenne”, Annales ESC, 45, 4, 1990, pp. 975–1003.

Wine in French colonial North Africa 59 69 Like Rose Prevost and Masoubi Ben Hadj. See La Dépêche tunisienne, 27 février 1896 and 9 avril 1896. 70 See Znaien, “Les raisins de la domination”, p. 245. 71 Some administrators rejected the responsibility of Jewish people for the presence of alcohol in Tunisia. See CADN, Protectorat Tunisie, Supplément au premier ver­ sement, carton n°20, Alcoolisme, Régime des vins et alcools dans le contrôle civil de Tozeur et le Sud tunisien, 23 janvier 1941. Tunisian Jews represented around 11 per cent of the population of Tunis during the Protectorate and only 1.5 per cent of the conviction rate. See Znaien, Les raisins de la domination, p. 183. 72 Statistics available in different archives. See for the tribunal archives of la Driba: Archives Nationales Tunisiennes, FPC JT1. For the repeat offenders, see Archives Nationales Tunisiennes, FPC, A. 73 Ibid. 74 To run a bar was forbidden by the dahir of 20 September 1924 and liquor consumption was forbidden by the dahir of 16 September 1940. CADN, Protectorat Maroc, carton n°2MA1140. 75 CADN, Protectorat Tunisie, Supplément au 1er versement: 20. Alcoolisme, Décret du 11 février 1937. 76 Especially to sell liquor to people below 21 years and alcohol to people below 18 years of age. These laws were published during the Second World War in a context where mainland France tried to apply stronger social control, espe­ cially against young peoples perceived as dangerous classes. See for Tunisia, CADN, Protectorat Tunisie, Deuxième versement, contrôle civil, carton 2821, règlement débits de boisson, Rapport à M. le contrôleur civil, vente de vin à des indigènes musulmans, La manouba, 20 novembre 1941. 77 CADN, Protectorat Maroc, Direction des affaires indigènes, Carton 331B, Note au sujet des moyens légaux à mettre en œuvre pour combattre l’alcoolisme en milieu musulman, 1937. 78 Edmond Lecore-Carpentier, Chiffre officiel de l’indicateur tunisien, Tunis, Imprimerie rapide, 1912. 79 Archives Nationales Tunisiennes, FCP, E, carton n°550, 9, 11, Lettre du caïd de Djerid au premier ministre, 23 mai 1907. 80 CADN, Protectorat Tunisie, Supplément au premier versement, Décret du 11 février 1937, article 9. 81 CADN, Protectorat Maroc, Direction des affaires indigènes, Carton 331B, Décret du 6 juillet 1928. 82 CADN, Protectorat Maroc, Direction des affaires indigènes, Carton 331B, Lettre de la chambre syndicale de l’alimentation de Casablanca et de sa région à Monsieur le ministre plénipotentiaire délégué de la résidence générale du Maroc, mars 1938. 83 Bottin de l’Union colonial française. Territoires et dépendances, 1956. 84 Ibid. 85 Sebag, Tunis, p. 416. André Charton, “Casablanca”, Annales de Géographie, 33, 183, 1924, p. 303. Jean-Jacques Jordi and Jean-Louis Planche (eds), Alger 1860–1939, Le modèle ambigue du triomphe colonial, Paris, Autrement, 1999. 86 For Morocco, see CADN, Protectorat Maroc, Direction des affaires indigènes, Carton 331B, Situation après recensement provisoire. 87 In France, 500,000 bars existed for 39.5 million of inhabitants in 1939, that means 120 bars per 10,000 inhabitants. Thierry Fillaut, Les Bretons et l’alcool, Rennes, ENSP, 1991, p. 210. There were 439,000 bars in 1950, for 41.5 million of inhabitants. See Suzy Lederman, Alcool, alcoolisme et alcoolisation, Paris, Presses Universitaires, 1956, p. 33.

60 Nessim Znaien 88 According to directories such as “Bottin de l’Union française. Etats associés et territoires d’outre-mer”, 1956. 89 Arrêté du 26 octobre 1934. Lettre du directeur affaires politiques, au résident général, 7 mai 1938, CADN, Protectorat Maroc, carton n°1MA200 677. 90 ANOM, Fonds Algérie, carton n°81F1622, décret du 25 mars 1901. 91 Circulaire 56, 4 Septembre 1907. CADN, Protectorat Tunisie, Supplément au premier versement, carton n°20, Alcoolisme, Circulaire 56, résidence générale. 92 Dahir 20 Septembre 1924. CADN, Protectorat Maroc, carton n°2MA1140, 20 septembre 1924. 93 CADN, Protectorat Tunisie, carton n°20, alcoolisme, loi du 29 novembre 1920. 94 CADN, Protectorat Tunisie, Supplément au premier versement, décret 11 février 1937, article 11. 95 Nessim Znaien, “Les territoires de l’alcool à Tunis et à Casablanca sous la période des Protectorats (1912–1956): des destins parallèles”, L’année du Magh­ reb, 12, 2015, p. 203. 96 Ibid. 97 See for the Tunisian case CADN, Protectorat Tunisie, Deuxième versement contrôle civil, carton n°2821n règlement débits de boisson, Rapport à M. le contrôleur civil, Hammam Lif, 14 juin 1934. 98 Archives Nationales Tunisiennes, FPC, A, carton n°58, 5, Dossier Monastir. 99 For example, Encyclopédie mensuelle d’Outre-mer, Annuaire générale de l’Algérie, Annuaire colonial, Bottin d l’Union française. 100 Judging from the family name, which may include a margin of error. See Znaien, Les raisins de la domination, pp. 317–319. 101 Znaien, Les raisins de la domination, pp. 317–320. 102 Ibid., pp. 320–325. 103 Charles Lallemand, La Tunisie, pays de Protectorat français, Paris, Librairies imprimerie réunies, 1892, p. 174. See also Lambert, Dictionnaire illustré de Tunisie, Notice bokobsa. 104 See Annuaires statistiques de la Tunisie, 1925, 1935, and Hedi Sethom, Le fellah de la presqu’île du Cap-Bon, Tunis, Publication de l’Université de Tunis, 1977, p. 47 et suivantes. 105 On the law and its perception, see CCI Lyon, Rel003/03, Emond Coanet, Tunisie, étude spéciale de grands crus et vins de France, 1936, p. 12.

4

Drinking dis-ease Alcohol and colonialism in the international city of Tangier, c. 1912–1956 Francisco Javier Martínez

In June 1912, the sultan of Morocco, Moulay Abd-al-Hafiz, on the throne after defeating his brother Abdulaziz in the civil war of 1907–08, was in a desperate state of mind. Under intense pressure from French agents attached to his court, he had just backed down from his threats of sudden abdication and his plans of joining insurgents attacking the imperial capital Fez after the recent signing of the French Protectorate treaty. Subsequently forced to move to Rabat, half-prisoner in the vast royal palace, he waited anxiously for the election of his unwanted successor. Still, the diplomatic– military team composed of Henri Regnault, the Comte de Saint-Aulaire, General Hubert Lyautey, Henri Gaillard and Khaddour ben Ghabrit had learnt after months of endless negotiations, that the sultan did not surrender easily. An accidental finding came to raise their mood. Having started to lunch with the sultan on a daily basis, Saint-Aulaire found out “just a single breach of Koranic law: he used water only for his ablutions, His Majesty drank and offered nothing but champagne”.1 Henceforth, the most select of French wines became, an unexpected ally. By proposing the Sultan a comparative study of the different brands, of which I can offer him samples thanks to the stock of our naval division, I anchor him to the shore of Rabat and prevent him from parting our company. […] the tasting sessions ease negoti­ ations by taking the Sultan to a state of euphoria and less resistance.2 When he had run out of champagne for Abd-al-Hafiz, Saint Aulaire considered port as a substitute, but the Portuguese wine could only be obtained in sufficient quantity at Gibraltar and a navy cruiser would have been necessary for its transport to Rabat. Although personally convinced of the “national interest” of this mission, the diplomat did not pursue this option for fear of “a commotion in Paris […] if a hardly avoidable indiscretion makes known such a scandalous use of our navy!”3 Nevertheless, in his personal recollections published four decades later, Saint Aulaire suggested that champagne had sufficed to break down Abd al-Hafiz’s resistance. However, his account has been questioned by historians who have

62 Francisco Javier Martínez shown that the sultan had a “reputation as a lover of fine wines” long before he engaged in the 1912 drinking sessions.4 French intoxication tactics “might have succeeded in rendering a lesser man more tractable. But Abd al-Hafiz was known for his enormous physical capacities”.5 In fact, the Alaouite (Alawite) suzerain managed to impose stringent conditions on France in exchange for his forced abdication. On 12 August, just before embarking for exile on the cruiser Du Chayla – precisely the one from which Saint Aulaire had obtained the champagne “samples” – Abd-al-Hafiz “destroyed the imperial seal and parasol, emblems of his authority, as a way of manifesting his consciousness of being the last sultan of an independent Morocco”.6 The attempt to intoxicate Abd-al-Hafiz was a powerful symbol of the limitations of European colonialism in Morocco. Mounting foreign intervention in the country since the mid-nineteenth century had reduced the state’s autonomy to the figure of the sultan alone, literally turning Abd-al-Hafiz into “Moroccan sovereignty embodied”.7 To intoxicate the royal body had thus become a most direct strategy to colonise Morocco’s body politic. But the sultan’s well-seasoned drinking habits had allowed Moroccan sovereignty to persist, no matter how distorted or damaged.8 In 1912, the city of Tangier, located at the strategic entrance of the Strait of Gibraltar, became also a symbol of European frustration. Despite being the gateway through which the European powers had tried to “civilise” Morocco for decades, the city managed to remain outside both the French and Spanish Protectorates with a vague “international status” that sheltered the last remnants of a Moroccan autonomous administration. Europeans had also used Tangier as the main gateway for a flow of European alcohol into the country that would result in its colonisation; but the city turned out to be as resilient to consumption as to domination, very much like the sultan. This chapter explores how and why Tangier stood at the centre of the troubled relationship between alcohol and colonialism in Morocco and how that relation was not unilaterally determined by Europeans. It challenges accounts that have focused on the destructive effects of European alcohol on local non-drinking populations and instead puts forward a critical analysis of the dialectic relationship between Western and non-Western drinking cultures.9 The existence of a fairly developed local alcohol industry and well entrenched consumption patterns that predated the arrival of European alcohol reduced the latter’s harmful effects. Morocco’s drinking culture had a long trajectory for, as François Georgeon has argued, the prohibition of alcohol is one of the distinctive features of Muslim societies […]; and yet, despite the prohibition and the sever­ ity of punishments incurred, […] we know that Muslims in all eras of Islamic history did not fear to transgress and consume wine and alcohol.10

Drinking dis-ease

63

Alcohol flows in the modern city Between the mid-nineteenth century and the signing of the French and Spanish Protectorate treaties in 1912, Tangier became Morocco’s modern city. The growing influence of Western diplomatic representatives attracted larger numbers of foreign nationals who engaged in commerce, industry and finance. Almost all European powers with ambitions of hegemony over Morocco dreamed of Tangier as its future colonial capital. However, Tangerian modernity was not a merely European affair. The city also became the seat of Morocco’s renewed diplomacy in 1848 after Sultan Mawlay Abdul-rahman ibn Hicham appointed a naib or representative to deal with foreign powers, with his own Dar al-Niaba office.11 Other modern institutions located there included the International Sanitary Council (1840), set up to prevent the importation of epidemics;12 the main customs house resulting from the Spanish–Moroccan treaty of 1861;13 the army’s model infantry unit (tabur al-harraba) organised according to nizam reforms inspired by the Ottoman Empire and Egypt;14 and the madrasat al-hassaniya, in which selected students received training in foreign languages before heading for Europe to study science and engineering. By the end of the nineteenth century, Tangier had become the third largest city in the country as well as its first port and industrial centre. The country’s first telephone and telegraph lines were installed, alongside power stations, tobacco factories, banks, flour mills and department stores.15 Tangier traditionally possessed a marked transcultural and transnational character as Muslims, Jews and Christians had long been living together “in an unregulated coexistence”.16 This feature intensified in the nineteenth century with the arrival of Europeans. When the Algeciras Conference of 1906 and the Protectorate treaties of 1912 resulted in the colonial division of Morocco, Tangier’s modernity turned atypical and eccentric. The city and a small surrounding area entered a legal limbo that finally led to the establishment of an international regime through the so-called Statute of 1923.17 This exceptional regime, in which the administration and government were shared by several foreign countries (France, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Russia and the United States), was comparable only to Shanghai’s “international settlement”.18 A delegate of the sultan, the so-called mendub, was the last remnant of an autonomous Moroccan power. He was at the head of a mendoubia administration and, despite limitations, participated in the city’s government. The signature of the 1923 Statute did not, however, put an end to the intense rivalries for the control of the city, especially between France and Spain. Both cherished its key geostrategic value as well as its importance for their respective projects of exclusive hegemony in Morocco.19 Finally, a new, revised Statute was signed in 1928, which secured the international status of Tangier and put the city clearly beyond the colonial hold of any particular power. Until the country’s independence in 1956, Tangier remained open to all foreign influences while being at the same time a central site for Morocco’s decolonisation initiatives. The 1940s and 1950s are still regarded by many authors as the “golden age” for the

64 Francisco Javier Martínez urban, economic and cultural development of the city, a period of stunning modernity unmatched until today.20 Alcohol soon became a distinctive feature of Tangier’s modernity. Again, this was due to a combination of local developments and foreign intervention. The local tradition of producing and drinking wine and spirits that existed in Morocco during the whole Islamic period was both transformed and complemented by the introduction of alcoholic drinks from Europe from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. Coastal ports open to foreign commerce became the main sites of production, import and consumption; first the newly built, European-style city of Mogador from the late 1700s, then Tangier from the mid-1800s. Lucien Raynaud, a French doctor based in Algeria who was hired by Moroccan authorities to supervise quarantine between 1899 and 1906, provided valuable data about the country’s drinking culture in one of the most extensive and documented pre-colonial studies on alcohol. He claimed that “there are two sources for alcohol in Morocco: a large quantity is imported from Europe (Spain, France, Germany, England); a not inferior quantity is grown and produced in the country, especially in the coastal towns”.21 In regard to the latter, he pointed out that “it is mainly the Jews who produce wine or distil alcohol and distribute them among the Muslim population”.22 The best-selling product was mahia, a sort of “national” schnapps extracted from “raisin, honey (pure wax), dates, Barbary figs (they call them Christian figs), common figs and berries”, complemented by French and German imported anise and, from the late nineteenth century, “potato alcohol” from Hamburg.23 The resulting beverages varied between 40º and 80º in strength.24 There were several Jewish mahia distilleries (masera) in Tangier in the 1890s. The city’s Jews also consumed kosher wine, though this was produced in other parts of Morocco.25 As far as Muslims were concerned, the Arabs produced various kinds of wines throughout the country. For example, the Beni Mestara tribe, native to the Jbala region 100 km southeast from Tangier, produced both a lighter and a more potent variety, the latter being called afrit (the devil).26 The imazighen (Berbers) made “wine, vinegar and a liquor: the çamet” or samit.27 According to Budgett Meakin, a British journalist based in Tangier, “they distil a sort of fiery spirit, chiefly from raisins and figs, by soaking them and after well mashing them, burying them in an earthen pitcher for some months in a manure heap where there is plenty of heat”.28 Çamet was drunk in Tangier, for the city was a traditional place of immigration for the amazigh tribes of the Rif mountains. Foreign types of alcohol, such as wine, beer and spirits were imported from several European countries and were easily accessible during the late nineteenth century. In 1883–85, imports of “wine and spirits” to Tangier amounted to an average of 150,000 German marks per year,29 which constituted between 66 and 80% of the Moroccan total.30 Raynaud learnt from a former customs official that in 1889 the average daily amount of

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65

Table 4.1 Imports of European alcohol to Tangier, 1883–1905.33 Year

Imports of “wine and spirits”

1883 1884 1885 1895–99 1900–04 1905

161,600 German marks (GM) 78,540 GM 148,100 GM 306,930 French francs (FF), annual average 325,820 FF, annual average 619,000 FF

“alcohol and spirits” that entered the port of Tangier ranged from 1,000 to 1,500 kilograms “not including wine, beer, nor the beverages made by Jews”.31 The average imports would exceed 300,000 French francs in 1895–99 and rise to twice that sum in 1905 (See Table 4.1).32 Before the French imposed their hegemony in Morocco in the period 1906–12, the Tangerian alcohol market was dominated by the Germans. Hamburg and Stettin exported most German alcohol to Morocco “which had to fight hard against Spanish and French competitors, because of their lower prices”.34 Cheap beer – especially of the pilsner variety, and some dark beers from Munich – quickly succeeded in displacing English stout, being “mainly exported to Tangier and Casablanca”.35 By 1883–85, pilsner had become one of the highest-value German imports, second only to porcelain.36 By 1900, many bars boasted of selling “real German beer” – either “aus dem Fass” (from the barrel), such as the one exported by the well-known Tivoli-Brauerei of Berlin37 or arriving in “boxes of 48 bottles of 0,7 litres each” from Hamburg – because it had become increasingly popular in the colonies of Europeans in port towns, especially in Tangier.38 Among the “cheap spirits” brought into Morocco from Germany was Floridawasser, a mixture of lemon, lavender, bergamot and clove extracts diluted in ethanol, which was very popular with the local Jewish community, a product differing only from the cologne or scent of the same name by the inclusion of alcohol.39 German “champagnes and other wines”, consumed only by “weekend-spending Europeans in Moroccan port towns and a few rich natives”, faced strong competition from their French competitors.40 As has already been pointed out, cheap “potato alcohol” was imported in large quantities from Hamburg for local production of mahia. Tangier’s incipient international status did not put a stop to the flow of alcohol but it intensified it to astonishing levels. Thus, in 1913 Tangier’s imports of alcohol were almost double those of 1905, approaching the value of one million francs (see Table 4.2). Taking into account that the Moroccan total was six million, it becomes clear that Tangier’s share was highly disproportionate considering its small size.41 This was confirmed in the specific case of wine by the French economist François Bernard, who calculated that Tangier received

66 Francisco Javier Martínez Table 4.2 Imports of European alcohol to Tangier, 1913–40.45 Year

Imports of alcohol

Country of origin

1913

539,701 francs worth of wine 128,934 francs worth of beer 336,858 francs worth of eaux-de-vie, alcohols and liqueurs 594,997 francs worth of wine 65,025 francs worth of beer 270,470 francs worth of eaux-de-vie, alcohols and liqueurs 780,000 litres of wine, annually

Spain and France Germany and France France, Germany, Low Countries, Spain

1918

1930–40

a third of Morocco’s yearly 1.2 to 1.5 million francs worth of wine imports in the period 1913–1915. Apart from French champagne, the wine was mostly imported from Spain and Portugal.42 To put these figures into perspective, only imports of fabrics, tobacco, sugar and iron were higher, while the cost of the construction of and equipment for the new Tangier Pasteur Institute amounted to 300,000 francs between 1911 and 1913. The figures remained stable until 1918, though they would surely have been higher had not the First World War interrupted the Moroccan imports of German beer and disrupted the metropolitan alcohol production and exports in general. The war was followed by a commercial boom, so that by 1930 the imports of wine alone to the French Protectorate had risen to 23 million francs (see Table 4.2).43 This constituted a considerable increase even if we take into account the devaluation of the franc of over 50% between 1918 and 1920 and of a further 30% between 1920 and 1925.44 After the more severe disruption caused by the Second World War, during which Tangier was occupied by Spain’s Francoist army and annexed to the Spanish Protectorate between 1940 and 1944, a new boom ensued. In 1947, for example, whisky and gin figured among the city’s main imports from the UK.46 Not all European-style alcohol in Tangier was imported from abroad, however. By the end of the nineteenth century, for example, some “German distilleries that sold low-grade alcoholic beverages to the new working class” were established in the city.47 In the 1920s, Spanish interests in Tangier were represented by two “fabricas de cerveza” (beer breweries) and two of “licores y refrescos” (liqueurs and sodas).48 The Melilla-based company Ramón Weil y Hermano, founded in 1908, established a branch office in Tangier. It produced liqueurs, sold imported wine and was the official distributor in Morocco of Barcelona’s Damm beer and the Italian vermouth Martini & Rossi.49 Doctor Paul Remlinger, director of the Pasteur Institute in Tangier, confirmed French

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interests, when he noted in 1937 that “draft beer was exclusively provided in Tangier by two brands, one of them Moroccan, the other Spanish”.50 By “Moroccan”, he meant “French Moroccan”, so he might have been referring to the Société des Brasseries du Maroc (still in existence today), which had a store for the distribution of its beer La Cigogne in Tangier since the 1930s.51 It could also have been the Société de la Brasserie de Tanger, which was purchased by the former in 1953. In that year, both companies “supplied 300,000 hectolitres of beer”.52 In 1955, a year before Morocco became independent, beer production in Tangier benefitted from Belgium’s worldwide prestige in the field when “Mr. Coninck brought his technical expertise to a brewery of fine beers comparable to the best ones imported”.53 Ever-increasing alcohol flows in Tangier required an equally growing number of sales outlets as well as bars, pubs, taverns and cafés in which drinking of all sorts of beverages took place. These spaces became a symbol of the city’s modernity, with some of them being immortalised in literature and cinema, especially those of the 1940s and 1950s. However, Tangerian nightlife had disturbed this once peaceful town at least since the 1880s. According to Raynaud, in 1884 “the number of cafes in which alcohol was served had considerably increased because 110 could be found in the city and its surroundings, 53 of them Moorish and 57 Spanish”.54 Two years later, a local newspaper denounced the “deplorable abundance” of taverns all over the city: “in a very short alley there are no fewer than five establishments exclusively devoted to the cult of Bacchus”.55 In October 1888, the pacha (governor) compelled all taverns and cafés that were located outside the medina to close at dusk and those within to close at 10 o’clock in the evening “to prevent nuisances”.56 Despite this, “cafes and dens had multiplied without control”, their number reaching “over 200” by 1894.57 The types of drinking spaces included everything from high-class clubs to low-grade Spanish cabarets and Moorish cafés. Some of the most popular were concentrated in the Zoco Chico, the central square of the medina. Initially, the bar of the Bristol Hotel was on one side of the square and the Café des Postes and the Café Glacier on the other.58 These would later relinquish their pride of place to the Café Tingis, the Café Central and the Café Fuentes. Outside the medina, the bar of the Minzah Hotel could be found, as well as the Café de Paris, located on the Place de France, and the Café de Madrid in an area called the “mountain of Tangier”, namely the residential hill west of the city, near Cape Spartel.59 The “golden age” brought about a seemingly endless profusion of bars, clubs and cabarets: El Morocco, World’s End, The Den; the Bar Lucifer in the heart of the medina; the Taylor’s at the Marshan plateau; the Sphinx Club; the Castle Club, a little beyond “the principal street opposite the great mosque […] atop the ramparts”; the Faro Bar, at the Place de France; the cabarets Au Rendez-Vous, La Esmeralda and Freddy’s Place, the latter

68 Francisco Javier Martínez also known as Freddy’s Embassy Club.60 Drinking spaces for the lower echelons of society were equally crowded. A Spanish resident complained in 1906 about the so-called cafés cantantes (Spanish cabarets) because such lowest genre was unknown in Tangier five years ago; but little by little there grew a penchant for them and now there is a real plague of folk-singers, dancers, flamenco-singers, tango-singers and barmaids, with its inevitable cohort of guitar-players, pimps, bullies and drunkards.61 For example, in La Incógnita, “which was empty during the day and very crowded by night […] the party lasted until 1 or 3am”.62 It was located close to the Zoco Chico, as was La Imperial. These and other cabarets were usually visited by “Moors of the port and guides, […] all of them scoundrels”, but also by the Spanish proletariat.63 The cafés morunos (Moorish cafes), could be found nearly everywhere, from the neighbourhood of La Playa (the beach) and outside the medina,64 to the Marshan plateau65 and even to the West in the direction of Cape Spartel. In these cafés tea was served during the day, but at night some of them sold alcohol. Finally, Tangerians could also purchase alcohol for their own private consumption at an increasing number of sales outlets. As Budgett Meakin pointed out in 1901, the influx of needy Spaniards has ousted the Moors from most of their little box-shops [popularly called bakalitos], and in spite of the prohib­ ition against the importation of liquor and narcotics except for personal consumption, the majority deal in drink and tobacco. Within a century it could be remarked by a traveler that Tangier was noticeable among towns of its size in not possessing one wine-shop, but today they abound and lead to much crime, not only among foreigners, but also, and with steady growth, among natives.66 Social differences were also visible in these commercial undertakings. Thus, during the 1940s and 1950s, upper-class European residents in Tangier could buy alcohol in luxury shops such as Cazeaux & Devoize, which “sold French and Moroccan wines”, and Saccone & Speed, specalists in “whisky, gin, port and sherry”.67

Tangerian dis-ease As has been shown above, it seems clear that the flow of alcohol in Tangier continued to rise in the period 1880–1956, with the exception of the temporary disruption caused by the two world conflicts. By contrast, the European perception of that flow experienced a shift from the moment the city was left outside the French and Spanish Protectorates which were established in 1912. Before this date, Tangier’s alcohol consumption had been seen as a useful strategy to facilitate and accelerate the longed-for colonisation of Morocco.

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Henceforth, the mounting production, importation and consumption in the city began to be perceived as a risk for this strategy. The risk was twofold. On the one hand, and analogous to the case of sultan Abd-al-Hafiz, Tangier’s “tolerance” to alcohol became a symbol of Morocco’s resilience with regard to consumption. On the other hand, given that the bulk of Tangier’s alcohol flow threatened to spill over the porous frontiers of the international zone towards the rest of the country, it threatened the success of the restrictive alcohol policies enacted by the French and the Spanish that had aimed at stabilising and consolidating their respective Protectorates. In the case of French Morocco, the authorities did not lose time in restricting Muslims’ access to alcoholic drinks. A series of dahirs (government decrees) was launched from 1914, most notable of which was the one of 9 March 1917, which prohibited the importation of “alcool de bouche” (alcohol for drinking) above 23º proof (absinthe, cognac, whisky, anisettes, eaux-de-vie).68 The concern seems to have been mainly with high-grade beverages, especially absinthe, a drink that became the object of specific prohibitions through the successive dahirs of 8 April 1914, 26 April 1915 and 20 February 1923.69 The policy of distinguishing between “hard” and “light” alcohol was probably imported from Algeria where, as Nina Salouâ-Studer has shown, the authorities made a distinction between wine and beer, on the one hand, and absinthe, whisky and gin, on the other.70 In the French Protectorate, the tax for “wine, beers, vinegars, mint alcohols and distilled liquids of all sorts” remained at a low 5% between 1916 and 1921, an exception to the general tax of 10–12.5% for imported alcohol arriving by sea.71 Although some of the above-mentioned decrees owed much to the special circumstances of the First World War and were later softened, the general framework of regulating alcohol in French Morocco remained highly restrictive, despite the opposition of the powerful metropolitan alcohol industry, which saw a promising new market for its products.72 These restrictive measures were threatened by the continued rampant flow of alcohol in Tangier. According to Remlinger’s paper Les progrès de l’alcoolisme au Maroc, published in 1912, this flow was very much encouraged by the reduced import tax (gate tax), which was then as low as that for “musical instruments” (7.50%), while any other general merchandise was taxed at 12.50% (for example, mineral water).73 As a result, “a bottle of good-quality absinthe” in Tangier cost 1.70 francs less than in Paris.74 Things did not seem to change much in the following decades: in the early 1950s, books were still taxed at 12.50%, while alcohol remained at 7%75 or 7.5%.76 It is true, however, that steps were taken to check the alcohol flow indirectly through the creation of a consumption tax. This measure was implemented shortly after the signing of the first Statute in 1923, which had been mainly promoted by the French. The Statute envisaged the establishment of a Régime douanier des alcools et des bières, which was passed by a dahir on 15 May 1925. The regime stipulated a tax of “500 francs per hectolitre of pure alcohol” on alcohols exceeding 14º

70 Francisco Javier Martínez contained in “wines, mistelles, vermouths, vins de liqueurs [fortified wines] or vins d’imitation” and on the whole alcohol content of “eaux-de-vies, spirits, liqueurs, soaked fruit, drugs, perfumes and other liquors without denomination”.77 Beer was only taxed at the rate of four francs “per degree hectolitre of malt”, and ethylic alcohols for industrial and domestic use at the rate of two francs per hectolitre of pure alcohol.78 These consumption duties were levied at the customs house.79 In addition, the decree banned “the import, manufacture and circulation of alembics and of any device or part of device meant for the distillation of alcohols or the repassage of eaux-de-vie and spirits”, except when permitted by the head of the customs service.80 Finally, fines were fixed for those responsible for “false depositions and smuggling in relation to this matter”.81 The revised Statute of July 1928, while sanctifying Tangier’s internationalism and free-trade status, seemed to contain a final concession to France and Spain in alcohol-related matters. A decree was passed in February of the following year, “raising the consumption (excise) duty on beer and alcohol by 50%”.82 The tax rise aimed in fact to obstruct the real destination of a good part of Tangier’s alcohol, which was either exported to French Morocco or sold in illegal drinking spaces and shops in Tangier. The effects of this measure were, however, immediately counterproductive. British commercial reports showed that in 1930 income raised by consumption tax was reduced by 400,000 francs.83 Did this mean that much less alcohol was being imported into Tangier? In our opinion, a certain percentage of imported alcohol and its consumption had moved underground to avoid taxes. Increasing quantities of alcohol were thus illegally introduced into the international zone by sea or overland (from Spanish Morocco) and then either consumed illegally in Tangier, or smuggled into French Morocco. For the Tangier-born Spaniard Leopoldo Ceballos, the smuggling of cigarettes into Tangier in the 1940s and 1950s was evident with the imports being “60 times higher than the needs of the city”, and something similar occurred for alcohol.84 He added that “some alcoholic beverages” figured among the most important smuggling merchandise of that period together with “cigarettes, watches, nylon stockings and antibiotics”.85 By that time, the destinations of this illegal traffic had expanded to include Spain, France, Italy and Portugal.86 In addition to cartels and the mafia, a lot of ordinary people in Tangier engaged in petty smuggling too, for they saw it as a sort of “natural right”.87 In Paul Bowles’s novel Let It Come Down, petty smuggling into the Protectorates was approved of by politically engaged Tangerians “on moral grounds” as a means of advancing towards the country’s independence “because it was important to insist on the oneness of Morocco, to refuse to accept the three zones into which the Europeans had arbitrarily divided it”.88 The sustained efforts by the French and Spanish authorities to prevent Tangerian alcohol from reaching their Protectorates exposed their long­ standing colonialist prejudice about the inability of Moroccans to deal with alcohol in a “normal” way. In his 1902 alcohol study, Raynaud had already

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warned about “the dreadful effects that the consumption and specially the abuse of those impure and anise-scented alcohols may cause on the Moroccan population”.89 He was actually pointing to the relationship between excessive drinking in Morocco and the reported higher incidence of mental disorders compared with Algeria, though he conceded that “we have not had the time, nor the means for studying them and determine if they are due to ethylic and cannabis intoxications or to other causes”.90 Remlinger would go further in 1912 by arguing that an essential difference existed between the drinking habits of “Arabs” and “Europeans”: while the former “seek getting drunk”, the latter drank “for the pleasure of drinking, in spite of the drunkenness that may follow”.91 Adding to this intemperance, the “Arabs” did not tolerate alcohol too well, for “furious forms of acute alcoholism” were rather common, though Remlinger admitted “they could be as much due to the low quality of beverages consumed, as to an ethnic specificity”.92 Remlinger’s account ended, not by chance, “by criticising the Spanish for the impact they made on Moroccan alcohol consumption” – another expression of the long-standing FrancoSpanish dispute for hegemony over the city.93 The French doctor argued that drinking in Spanish bars was the source of many diseases because At the back of the drinking hall, there exists one or several dark lounges to which it is easy to attract the client. He, after risking typhoid fever and dysentery due to the foul water used for aperitifs and absinthes, almost cer­ tainly contracts one or several blennorrhagic chancres; he is moreover exposed to all the maladies transmitted by fleas, bugs and lice: exanthema­ tous typhus, recurrent fever, plague, etc. How frequently in Morocco these are what could be called para-venereal diseases!94 However, the impossibility of controlling alcohol consumption in Tangier after 1912 introduced an important novelty in this pathologising discourse. It was now admitted that Europeans could have similar troubles in handling excessive drinking. Although this could happen anywhere in Morocco, the risk was highest in the international city. This view would find an explicit scientific expression in 1929, shortly after the city was granted its international regime, when Remlinger and the Spanish doctor José Sievert suggested the existence of a specific Tangerian disease in whose onset alcohol often played a significant role: the so-called “Tangerian neurosis” or “Tangerian psychosis”. Remlinger considered Tangerian neurosis as a “state of irritability, of nervous excitement set off by the climate of Tangier”.95 This syndrome characteristically appeared in healthy Europeans newly arrived at the city and alcohol was one of the main predisposing factors. Remlinger developed his ideas in a later paper published in collaboration with Henri Charrier, a teacher in natural sciences at Tangier’s French lycée. In that paper, he explored the disturbing influence of the strong levante or charki wind that often swept

72 Francisco Javier Martínez the city on “neurotone people, those instable, wholly unbalanced individuals”.96 This wind could trigger neurosis and other mental disorders as well as destabilise organic pathologies, especially tuberculosis, but also “nervous and mental disorders” associated with alcohol abuse.97 Dr Sievert would go to greater lengths in describing Tangerian psychosis. In his opinion, the roots of the disease were to be found in the “special psychology” of the city’s residents, which derived from the peculiar life in Tangier, very different from that in any other similar capital city, its range of pleasures and vices and what we could call its moral anarchy; the morbid heredity of most of its European inhabit­ ants; various meteorological causes and finally the difficulties raised and sustained by a hard life within the constraints imposed by international treaties and conveniences.98 A deeper analysis led Sievert to distinguish between predisposing factors and causes of the disease. Among the former, “civilisation” ranked first, for it had broken “the placid calm of an Arab town” and brought about shocking contrasts: “The mystic chant of the muezzin, sang during the night from the mosque tower, is silenced by the profane noise of a flamenco party or the irreverent cries of a drunkard.”99 Among causes, Sievert implicated alcoholism in general and “alcoholism in the moment of conception”, as well as “morbid heredity”. The latter two were usually associated as, in his opinion, the first Europeans that settled down in Tangier had been mostly “criminals, swindlers, smugglers, idlers and adventurers”.100 Other “occasional” causes included “internal and external intoxications, alcohol, [and] the absence of control of this kind of beverages”.101 In general, the existence of many individuals “whose health is weak or altered because of chronic malaria, diarrhoea, dysentery, syphilis, alcoholism, opium, etc.” facilitated the onset of Tangerian psychosis, for which there was no cure.102 It would be necessary to effect “a complete change of Tangier’s life, which is completely impossible”, as impossible as putting an end to the prevalence in the city of “rampant vice without a deterrent capable of subduing moral anarchy”.103 Tangerian alcohol came to be perceived as one of the main disrupting factors for the French and the Spanish in Morocco. It was believed to alter the mental and physical health of the nationals of both countries who lived in Tangier and, in this way, undermined the discourse of their racial and moral superiority over Moroccans. The former now joined (or resembled) the latter in an alleged abnormal relation with drinking that belied Raynaud’s and Remlinger’s earlier discourses. At the same time, Tangier was a threat for French and Spanish Morocco, the site from which Moroccan political (and alcohol) resilience could destabilise both Protectorates, shaking the frail bases of domination achieved through 20 years of military campaigns. Tangier was thus perceived by the French and Spaniards alike as Morocco’s “dis-ease”, both in sanitary and in political terms, just like Moroccans on their part

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referred to the city as Tanjah al-Kalb (Tangier, the dog/bitch), to express their contempt of the place that was the gateway for both European imperialism and the corruption of modern civilisation. For Remlinger and Sievert, the neurosis or psychosis that allegedly defined Tangier was symbolised by the abuse of alcohol and resulted from the peculiar social and natural climate. Theirs was a harsh critique of the “international” status that had put it beyond French and Spanish colonialism. The harmful winds that violently and relentlessly swept through Tangier were matched by the equally damaging “winds” of internationalism that had come to prevail in the city; both altered the mental and physical state of the bodies of Tangerians and Tangier’s body politic.

International drinking “What is your nationality?” A man put this question to Rick-Humphrey Bogart in Michael Curtiz’s masterpiece film Casablanca and he swiftly replied: “I am a drunkard.” If we assume, as Francis Poole has argued, that the fictional Casablanca of the movie actually represented Tangier, Rick-Bogart could not have better defined what it was like to be a Tangerian (native or adoptive) during the city’s international period.104 In our opinion, from the 1930s to the “golden age” of the 1940s and 1950s, drinking and “Tangerian­ ness” became more closely intertwined than ever before. A new narrative on alcohol in Tangier was produced, not only, nor mainly, by medicine, but also by literature and film. This narrative was not openly “negative” like the one by Remlinger and Sievert, but ambiguous. It also allowed for Moroccan voices to participate in its definition, even if the echo they achieved was much softer than that of Western voices. The new narrative was the last expression of both the resilience of Moroccan sovereignty and the limitation of European colonialism that international Tangier embodied as a territorial and a political entity for more than 40 years. Tangerian ambiguity can best be identified in literary accounts of the city. Thus, Gregg Mullins has called attention to how the famous beatnik and late 1950s Tangier resident William Burroughs coined the term “interzone” to refer, both to the manuscript that became Naked lunch and to the Inter­ national Zone of Tangier, where he lived while writing it. […] Suspended between nations, cultures and languages, the interzone is a place of intermediacy and ambiguity, a place that remains outside standard nar­ ratives of nationhood and identity.105 To this, we would add, as a critique of Mullins’ colonialist analysis that Tangier remained outside standard narratives of coloniality and colonial identity too. Its intermediacy between Western nations and the Moroccan people was different from the one provided by the French and Spanish

74 Francisco Javier Martínez Protectorates in that the multiplicity of foreign actors hindered Western hegemony and made room (however reduced) for Moroccan agency.106 Moreover, it was this relative “proximity” of Westerners and Moroccans that explained the enhanced possibilities for cultural, religious, social, linguistic and sexual exchange and transgression that were perceived as characteristic of the city and that made of it an exceptional place. Alcohol intoxication came to represent Tangier’s international or “interzone” identity exactly because of this. The use of alcohol in many cultures as a central element in rites of passage for easing or enhancing the difficulties of moving from one social or physical stage to another has been well documented. As Kate Fox has argued “the experience of intoxication mirrors the experience of rites of passage” in that, the altered states of consciousness induced by alcohol allow us to explore desired but potentially dangerous alternative realities, while the social meanings of drinking – the rules of convivial sociability invariably associated with the consumption of alcohol – provide a reassuring counterbalance.107 This symbolism of alcohol for Tangerian identity had begun well before the international period. The singularly close coexistence of Muslims, Jews and Christians since the early nineteenth century resulted in the emergence of a specific local drinking culture characterised by a tendency towards mixing beverages, of drinking communally and of sharing drinking spaces. Regarding the first of these, for example, in a 1904 book, the Spanish army doctor Francisco Triviño referred to the case of a Moroccan postcard-seller he had seen in the Zoco Chico, drunk from “whisky, kif [hashish], beer and other products ingested”.108 For Remlinger, Moroccan women either Jewish, or Muslim, drink champagne or manzanilla [a mediumgrade Spanish white wine] and even more cognac, whisky and gin. With regard to men, Jewish drink an anisette, a liquor made out of figs and a wine they produce themselves. Arabs give preference to absinthe, cognac, whisky and gin.109 Conversely, drinkers from various social and cultural origins often shared a liking for similar alcoholic beverages. Thus, as mentioned previously, German distilleries in Tangier were providing “low-grade alcoholic beverages” for local Spanish and Jewish proletarians even before the turn of the century.110 According to Raynaud, “it is with mahia, this anise liqueur especially dangerous because it contains bad-quality alcohol and convulsive essence, that Arabs and Jews get drunk most times”.111 From a more general point of view, Donald Mackenzie wrote in 1911 that

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drink, the curse of our own and other countries, has been introduced, and spirits and wines of a low class are sold [in Tangier], without restrictions, to natives and others. This poison will gradually but surely make its way into all classes of the community – even the present sultan [Abd-al-Hafiz] is said to have fallen under its influence.112 This cultural, national and social transversality of alcohol consumption in pre-international Tangier was often enacted in spaces shared by Moroccans and Europeans. We have previously mentioned how the Spaniards displaced Moroccans from their bakalitos and turned them into petty alcohol selling stores. The cafés of the Zoco Chico were typical transversal spaces, in which Westerners of all nationalities and diverse social classes sat next to Moroccans. The low-grade Moorish cafés and Spanish cabarets had also a mixed Spanish, Arab and Jewish proletarian clientele. The move from informal coexistence to formal international status intensified the transcultural, transnational and trans-social features of Tangier’s drinking cultures and made alcohol an ever more defining trait of Tangerian “international identity”. As suggested before, the new status also brought about a relative balance between Westerners and Moroccans in that they showed a similar predilection for intoxication and began to embrace the mixing of drinks, drinking partners and drinking spaces. Literature and songs captured what it was like to drink in international Tangier. For example, Asis Kanowa, a Tangerian of Spanish descent wrote a poem in the 1920s: “Muhammad, Christ, Jehova/Electric light, acetylene/alifatos [Arabic alphabets], alphabets/Babel. Clothes that rob one’s personality/variegation, confusion/Port wine, whisky, pernod.”113 A cuplé (popular song) was sung in the 1950s, which said: Some Englishmen who yesterday arrived/ as tourists at this city/ asked for whisky and soda for breakfast/ while they watched the Moors from the [café] Central/ After whisky they fought with each other/ Guillermo tried to intervene/ but the Englishmen took from him/ his six guns and even the Smith [and Wesson rifle].114 The lyrics of another song featured in the film Fire over Africa (1954) also focused on the mixing of cultures and drinks: At the Zoco Chico, night and day/ a tremendous mess is going on/ and you can hear the calls: señor, mister, mitsushiri [sic]/ and you can drink Moorish tea, next to a whisky.

76 Francisco Javier Martínez The features of Tangerian drinking are also clearly seen in the two main characters of Paul Bowles’ Let It Come Down, the American Nelson Dyar and the Moroccan Thami Beidaoui. During the first 24 hours of his stay in Tangier, Dyar, who has recently arrived from New York city, drinks a seemingly endless succession of cocktails, champagnes, cognacs, brandies, whiskies and whisky-sodas. He starts this tour de force at the luxurious mansion of Daisy de Valverde, an American married to a rich Spanish Marquis, moving later to the Café Tingis, in the Zoco Chico, where he meets Thami by chance, and ending in the Lucifer Bar, run by a Greek woman, Madame Papaconstante. Here Dyar meets Hadija, a Moroccan prostitute with whom he becomes infatuated.115 Alcohol accompanies him during the whole of his short and troubled stay in the city, whether at aristocratic parties, in the cafés of the Zoco Chico or in his hotel room. The catalogue of drinks he encounters includes English gin, machaquito (a Spanish anise brandy), White Horse whisky and Haig Pinch scotch with Perrier and ice.116 Thami, a native Tangerian, is portrayed quite differently. The son of a prominent government official and pious Muslim, he has nevertheless chosen to live his life separate from the rules of his family and religion. Alcohol is the main means to achieve this and “everyone knew he drank and had done so since the age of fifteen”.117 It was only after the death of his father that he ventured outside his family home, onto the streets, going to “hidden cafés at Sidi Bouknadel” where he would stay with other boys “smoking kif and drinking cognac until morning”; or to the beach, where they “would rent a caseta for the season, which they used for drinking competitions”.118 He got used to staying away from home for several days, but one day, “after his sixth arrest for drunkenness”, his older brother forbade him to enter the house. From then onwards he lived on his own, rather precariously. Not only did he continue to take alcohol, but he had recently begun to do it publicly, on the terraces of the cafés in the Zoco Chico. His brothers had even heard, although how much truth lay in the report they did not know, that he had been seen going on numerous trips by train to Casablanca, an activity which usually meant only one thing: smuggling of one sort or another.119 Both Dyar and Thami’s regular alcohol abuse are representative of life in international Tangier. Not surprisingly, they met at the terrace of the Café Tingis, where the American asked for a White Horse whisky and the Moroccan joined him, despite “having no idea what this might be”.120 Intoxication is for Dyar “like an ever-thickening curtain being drawn down across his mind, isolating him from everything else”. In this sense, it helps him become increasingly disconnected from his fellow Americans and Europeans, paving the way for his eventual criminal activity and escape from the city.121 For Thami, alcohol abuse helps him to trespass

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the boundaries of his religion, class and culture. Although he cultivates the company of some nationalist friends who seek to contribute to the end of European rule in Morocco, he “could not think of the mass of Moroccans without contempt […]; if he dammed the Europeans with one breath, he was bound to damn the Moroccans with the next”.122 As can be seen, Dyar and Thami find themselves in an intermediate space, in an “interzone”, between Westerners and Moroccans, and despite their many differences, close enough to drink together and engage together in illicit activities. Both outcasts of their respective societies, Tangier provides an environment for survival, which they would not find elsewhere. Alcohol abuse is one of the features of that environment, a price they are eager to pay to stay there. The arrival in Tangier is also marked by hard drinking for the main characters of the film That Man from Tangier. Mary Ellen, an upper-class American young woman, meets a handsome “Count” on a flight from Boston to Spain. The Count invites her to visit Tangier, where he runs an “import–export” business. She accepts the invitation and the very day of her arrival they begin a tour of the city’s nightclubs, cabarets and bars that ends up with their marriage while intoxicated and with the subsequent murder and disappearance of the Count before the night is over. Alcohol is also a defining feature of Tangerian life in the works of the Moroccan writer Mohammed Choukri. In El pan desnudo (or El pan a secas), a literary account of his arrival as a boy in Tangier and his childhood and adolescence in that city, Choukri’s alter ego recalls how his father, a former soldier of the Spanish colonial army, often arrived at home drunk, abused his mother, hit him and even killed his baby brother.123 When he was still very young, the family moved for some years to Tetouan, the capital of Spanish Morocco, where the boy soon started working in a café. Clients occasionally hired him as an errand boy and paid him “with a pipe of kif or a glass of wine”.124 There, he often drank Spanish beverages: wine, moscatel and Málaga (sweet wines) and Terry cognac.125 Back in Tangier as a teenager, he joined the underclass of petty thieves, prostitutes, beggars and contrabandists in which the consumption of alcohol, especially wine and cognac, but also whisky, was constant, together with kif smoking. While in El pan desnudo, Choukri’s alter ego companions are almost exclusively Moroccans, in his novel Tiempo de errores (Streetwise in English), he often drinks in the company of Europeans. For example, with regard to his neighbour at the Hotel Arcadia, a retired Danish actor who let his life slip away, reliving past performances and waiting for eventual sexual encounters to occur, Choukri’s alter ego says: If we had no luck with our waiting, we’d keep each other company, either in my room or in his, and we’d share a jug of wine to pass the time. He was very emotional and highly strung. On very hot days, he was in the habit of standing stark naked in front of the mirror. On his

78 Francisco Javier Martínez 50th birthday, he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. He drank himself more or less into a stupor, and as we carried him to bed he was mum­ bling like a kid: “Leave me alone, you bastards.”126 Although in this novel Choukri’s alter ego continues to refer mostly to wine, cognac and kif, new drinks appear. For example, while in the company of a girl who rejects his sexual advances, he reflects on how “the glasses of Mahiya eau-de-vie that I had drunk were having the same effect on me as the Del Mono anis or Terry cognac. They knocked me out. I relaxed to the sound of a female singer on the radio and dozed off”.127 This passage shows that the consumption of mahia, far from declining, was widespread and transversal in Tangier in the 1940s and 1950s. Other sources confirm this. For example, a scientific article by Remlinger and his Jewish assistant Daniel Coen argued that “alcoholism caused by mahia in the family sphere was widespread” among Tangerian Jews.128 With regard to Europeans, a short story about some Americans visiting the city published by The New Yorker in 1946 ran as follows: Then we had to fall back on the only drink that anyone could buy at retail without a ration card. I unhesitatingly state that in this beverage Mr. Anderson’s jungle juice and Mr. Wren’s raw Calvados have met their match. It is called mahia, an Arabic word which, I have been told, just means ‘drinks’ and comes in large white bottles decorated with lurid pictures.129

Conclusion This chapter examined the close and changing connection between alcohol and colonialism in Tangier frim the mid-nineteenth century to Morocco’s independence in 1956. During the first decades of this period, Tangier became the gateway for an ever-increasing flow of alcohol into the country. This was promoted by Europeans as a useful strategy to facilitate colonisation, with the rise in the city’s production and import of wine, beer and liquors demoralising the local population and paving the way for the domination of the whole country. However, Tangier and its Arab, Berber and Jewish inhabitants were also actors in this process as they actively helped to create the most solid local drinking culture of pre-colonial Morocco. In fact, Tangier’s “tolerance” of alcohol came to symbolise the resilience of Morocco’s body politic against European imperialism, just as the individual body of sultan Abd-al-Hafiz’s did when resisting French attempts at intoxication. The resilience of the city and the sultan finally materialised in the exclusion of Tangier from the French and Spanish Protectorates established in 1912. The international regime confirmed by the Statutes of 1923 and 1928 remained in force until 1956. This meant the continuing intervention in Morocco of other Western powers beyond France and Spain, on the one

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hand, and the continuity of Moroccan autonomous agency in the city, vested in the person of the mendub, on the other. From 1912, the flow of alcohol in Tangier continued to increase but became perceived as a threat both to the Spanish and French Protectorates and to French and Spanish nationals resident in the international city. Tangier was regarded as Morocco’s “dis-ease” in sanitary and political terms because its “corrupt” regime and life habits (which alcohol symbolised) undermined French and Spanish rule and their discourses of racial and moral superiority over Moroccans. Attempts were made by renowned French and Spanish physicians to pathologise Tangier through the definition of a disorder allegedly specific to the city – Tangerian neurosis or psychosis – in which alcohol played an important etiological role. However, from the 1930s, medicine, together with literature, cinema and music, eventually defined Tangier’s international identity as “ambiguous” rather than negative, namely, open to opportunities for cultural, religious, social and sexual transgressions, including the mixture of various European and Moroccan drinking cultures characterised by excessive alcohol consumption.

Notes 1 Comte de Saint-Aulaire. Au Maroc avant et avec Lyautey. Paris, Flammarion, 1954, p. 206. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Edmund Burke III. Prelude to Protectorate: Precolonial protest and resistance, 1860–1912. Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1976, p. 198. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ellen J. Amster. Medicine and the Saints: Science, Islam and the colonial encoun­ ter in Morocco, 1877–1956. Austin, University of Texas Press, 2013, p. 7. 8 Francisco Javier Martínez Antonio. “Resilient modernization: Morocco’s agency in Red Cross projects from Hassan I to the Rif Republic (1886–1926)”. Asclepio, 66, 1 (2014): 1–25, p. 1. http://asclepio.revistas.csic.es/index.php/ascle pio/article/view/584/683 9 Thomas M. Wilson. Drinking Cultures: Alcohol and identity. London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2005, p. 6. Sami Lakomäki, Ritva Kylli, Timo Ylimaunu. “Drinking Colonialism: Alcohol, Indigenous Status, and Native Space on Shawnee and Sámi Homelands, 1600–1850”. Native American and Indigenous Studies, 4, 1 (2017): 1–29, p. 1. 10 François Georgeon. “Ottomans and Drinkers: the consumption of alcohol in Istanbul in the nineteenth century”. In: Eugene Rogan (ed.) Outside in: On the margins of the modern Middle East. London and New York, I.B. Tauris, 7–30, p. 7. 11 Charles. R. Pennell, Morocco since 1830: A history. London, Hurst, 2000, p. 53. 12 Francisco Javier Martínez Antonio. “La sanidad en Marruecos a mediados del siglo XIX”. Medicina e Historia, 4 (2005): 1–15. 13 Omar Rodríguez Esteller. “La intervención española de las aduanas marroquíes (1862–1885)”. In: Eloy Martín Corrales (ed.) Marruecos y el colonialismo español

80 Francisco Javier Martínez

14 15

16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

(1859–1912). De la Guerra de África a la “penetración pacífica”. Barcelona, Bellaterra, 2002, 79–132, p. 111. Khaled ben Shrir. Britain and Morocco During the Embassy of John Drummond Hay, 1845–1886. London and New York, RoutledgeCurzon, 2005, p. 259. Francisco Javier Martínez. “Mad at Tangier: Hygienist discourses, mental dis­ orders, and European competition for hegemony in early twentieth-century Morocco”. The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 8, 1 (2017): 57–73; pp. 60–1. Susan G. Miller. “Making Tangier modern: ethnicity and urban development, 1880–1930”. In: Emily Benichou-Gottreich and Daniel J. Schroeter (eds) Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa. Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2011, 128–149, p. 130. Graham Stuart. The international city of Tangier. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1931; pp. 134–154. Ibid., p. 60. Martínez, “Mad at Tangier”, pp. 63–65. Leopoldo Ceballos. Historia de Tánger. Memoria de la ciudad internacional. Córdoba, Almuzara, 2009. Lucien Raynaud. “Alcool et alcoolisme au Maroc”. Annales d’Hygiène Publique et de Médecine Légale, XLVII, 3 (1902): 211–223, p. 215. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 218–219. Ibid., p. 215. Ibid., p. 216. Ibid., p. 215. Budgett Meakin. The Land of the Moors: A comprehensive description. London, Swan Sonnenschein & Co, 1901, p. 326. This sum was equivalent to 300 monthly wages of a German industrial labourer in 1885. http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/109_Nom%20Wage,% 20Cost%20Living_9.pdf Robert Jannasch. Die Deutsche Handelsexpedition. Berlin, Heymann, 1887, p. 66. Raynaud, “Alcool”, p. 214. Jannasch, Handelsexpedition, p. 66; Albert Cousin. Tanger. Paris, Augustin Chalamel, 1902, p. 57; Émile Gauthronet. Tanger, son port, ses voies de pénétra­ tion. Paris, Augustin Chalamel, 1913, p. 43. Data collated from Jannasch, Handelsexpedition; Cousin, Tanger; Gauthronet, Tanger. Abdellatif ben Abdelhanine. Deutsch-marokkanische Beziehungen, 1873–1914: Geschichte der internationalen Beziehungen. Aachen, Shaker, 1998, p. 69. Abdelhanine, Beziehungen, p. 69. Internationales Handbuch für Brauerei Industrie. Berlin, M. Krayn, 1908, p. 107. Jannasch, Handelsexpedition, p. 69. Jannasch, Handelsexpedition, p. 61. Robert Jannasch. “Unsere Interessen im Mar­ okko“. Export. Organ des Centralvereins für Handelsgeographie und Fórderung Deutsche Interessen im Auslande, 25, 41 (1903): 535–538, p. 348. Internationales Handbuch, p. 107; Günther Mai. Die Marokko-Deutschen 1873–1918. Gottingen, Vanderhoek & Ruprecht, 2014, p. 144. “Darstellung von Florida Wasser”, Neueste Erfindungen, 24, 1898, p. 272. Jannasch, Handelsexpedition, p. 61. Conferences franco-marocaines. Tome II. Variétés franco-marocaines. Paris, Plon, 1917, p. 371.

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42 F. Bernard, Le Maroc economique et agricole. Paris-Montpellier: Masson-Couet et Fils, 1917, p. 159. 43 M. Epstein. The Stateman’s Yearbook. Statistical and Historical Annual of the States of the World for the Year 1933. London, MacMillan and Co, 1933, p. 1116. 44 Francisco Javier Martínez. “Double trouble: French colonialism in Morocco and the early history of the Pasteur institutes of Tangier and Casablanca (1895–1932)”. Dynamis, 36, 2 (2016): 317–339, p. 331. 45 Data collated from Conférences franco-marocaines; Bernard, Maroc économique; Epstein, Stateman’s Yearbook; Bulletin International du Vin, 54, 2 (1954) 87. 46 Paul Preston and Michael Partridge (gen. eds) British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and papers from the Foreign Office confidential print. Part II, from the First to the Second World War. Series G, Africa. Morocco. Decem­ ber 1929 – December 1939. Frederick, University Publications of America, 1996, p. 502. 47 Sasha D. Pack. Turismo, urbanismo y colonialismo en Tánger, 1880–1939. Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea, 37 (2015): 45–65, p. 50. 48 Víctor Ruiz Albéniz. Tánger y la colaboración franco-española en Marruecos. Madrid, Imprenta Artística Sáez Hermanos, 1927, p. 129. 49 Marruecos Gráfico, 29 August 1926. 50 Paul Remlinger and Jacques Bailly. “Le débit de la bière”. Revue d’hygiène et de médecine préventive, 59, 3 (1937): 183–192, p. 185. 51 Compte rendu du XIIème Congrès International de Chimie Industrielle. Prague, IUPAC, 1932, p. 1935. 52 Albert Ayache. Le Maroc: bilan d’une colonisation. Paris, Éditions Sociales, 1956, p. 181. 53 Victor Vernier. La singulière zone de Tanger: ses différents aspects et ce qu’elle pourrait devenir si … [s.l.], Éditions Eurafricaines, 1955, p. 136. 54 Raynaud, “Alcool”, p. 214. 55 “Tabernas y borrachos”, Al Mogreb al-Aksa, 26 December 1886. 56 Circulaire adressé aux Légations. Tanger, 25 Octobre 1888. Centre des Archives Diplomatiques de Nantes (CADN), Fonds Tanger A, Carton 167. 57 Jean-Louis Miège, Le Maroc et l’Europe, 1830–1894, Paris, PUF, 1961, vol. III, p. 354. 58 Enrique Escribano, Tánger y sus alrededores, Madrid, Imprenta del Ministerio de Marina, 1906, p. 28. 59 Ibid., p. 80. 60 Mission à Tanger; That Man from Tangier (film, Luis María Delgado, Robert Elwyn, 1953) Paul Bowles. Let It Come Down. London, Penguin Books, 2000, p. 52, 79, 106, 181. Angel Vázquez, La vida perra de Juanita Narboni, Madrad, Catedra, 2011, p. 145. 61 Escribano, Tánger, p. 33. 62 Ibid., p. 31. 63 Ibid., p. 33. 64 Ibid., p. 72. 65 Ibid., p. 58. 66 Meakin, Land of the Moors, p. 101. 67 David Arditti. Tangier: 1940s & 50s. London, Tabletwo Productions, 2014. 68 Code marocain du commerce exterieur, Casablanca: L. Cornice, 1938, p. 109. 69 Ibid. 70 Nina Saloua-Studer. “The green fairy in the Maghreb: absinthe, guilt and cultural assimilation in French colonial medicine”. The Maghreb Review, 40, 4 (2015): 493–508, p. 495.

82 Francisco Javier Martínez 71 Notice sur le Protectorat français au Maroc. Rabat, Direction de l’Agriculture, du Commerce et de la Colonisation, 1916, p. 36. Reginald Kann. Le Protec­ torat marocain. Nancy-Paris-Strasbourg, Berger-Levrault, 1921, p. 121. 72 La Renaissance du Maroc. Dix ans de Protectorat, 1912–1922, Rabat, Residence Generale, 1922, p. 326. 73 Paul Remlinger, “Les progrès de l’alcoolisme au Maroc”. Bulletin de la Société de Pathologie Exotique, 5, 9 (1912): 747–752, p. 750. 74 Ibid. 75 Alberto España. La pequeña historia de Tánger. Tánger, Distribuciones Ibéricas, 1954, p. 433. 76 Vernier, La singulière zone, p. 153. 77 Alphonse Ménard, Georges Balazuc. Etude critique du régime spécial de la zone de Tanger, Maroc, Volumen 1. Paris, Les éditions internationales, 1932; pp. 193–194. 78 Ibid. 79 Survey of economic conditions in Morocco 1928–1929. London, HMSO, 1929, p. 50. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid., p. 81. 83 Preston and Partridge (gen. eds.) British documents, p. 19. 84 Leopoldo Ceballos. Tánger, Tánger. Barcelona, Edhasa, 2015, p. 174. 85 Ibid., p. 175. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. 88 Bowles, Let It Come Down, p. 37. 89 Raynaud, “Alcool”, p. 223. 90 Ibid. 91 Remlinger, Les progrès, p. 750. 92 Ibid. 93 Martínez, Mad at Tangier, pp. 63–65. 94 Paul Remlinger. “La prostitution au Maroc”, Annales d’Hygiéne Publique et de Médecine Legale, 19, 2 (1913), 97–106, p. 99. 95 José Sievert, “Sobre el Clima y el Ambiente Social de Tánger”. Marruecos Sanitario, 1, 13 (1929): 9–15, p. 9. José Sievert, “Sobre el Clima y el Ambiente Social de Tánger”. Marruecos Sanitario, 1, 14 (1929): 13–19. 96 Paul Remlinger. “Le Vent d’Est du Détroit de Gibraltar et son Influence sur l’Organisme”. Revue d’Hygiène et de Médecine Preventive, 52 (1930): 108–121, p. 112.

97 Ibid., p. 113.

98 Sievert, “Sobre el clima”, p. 11.

99 Ibid.

100 Ibid., p. 15.

101 Ibid.

102 Ibid., p. 15, 17.

103 Ibid., p. 19.

104 Francis Poole. Everybody comes to Dean’s: Dean’s bar, Tangier. [s.l.], Poporo

Press, 2009. 105 Greg Mullins. Colonial affairs: Bowles, Burroughs and Chester write Tangier. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2002, p. 3. 106 Martínez, “Mad at Tangier”, p. 71. 107 Kate Fox, Watching the English. The hidden rules of English behaviour, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 2004, p. 135.

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108 Francisco Triviño Valdivia. Del Marruecos español. Melilla, Tipografía de El Telegrama del Rif, 1920, p. 210. 109 Remlinger, “Les progrès”, pp. 749–750. 110 Pack, “Turismo en Tánger”, p. 50. 111 Raynaud, “Alcool”, p. 222. 112 Donald Mackenzie. The Khaliphate of the West: Being a general description of Morocco. London, Simpkin-Marshall-Hamilton-Kent & Co, 1911, p. 17. 113 Ceballos, Tánger, Tánger, p. 85. 114 España, La pequeña historia, p. 133. 115 Bowles, Let It Come Down, p. 52. 116 Ibid., p. 54, 75, 207. 117 Ibid., p. 36. 118 Ibid., p. 281. 119 Ibid., p. 37. 120 Ibid., p. 42. 121 Ibid., p. 133. 122 Ibid., p. 40. 123 Mohamed Choukri El pan a secas, Madrid, Cabaret Voltaire, 2012, p. 39. 124 Ibid., p. 45. 125 Ibid., p. 105, 111, 114. 126 Mohammed Choukri. Streetwise. London, Saqi Books, 2012, p. 127. 127 Ibid., p. 97. 128 Paul Remlinger and Daniel Coen. “Los casamientos consanguíneos en los israelitas marroquíes”. Medicina Tropical, 10 (1947): 111–118, p. 116. 129 The New Yorker, 21, 6 (1946), p. 69.

5

Between promotions and prohibitions The shifting symbolisms and spaces of beer in modern Turkey Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered

In the modern Turkish republic (1923 to present), a long tradition exists that situates rakı as the national drink. The beverage is an anise-flavoured cousin in an extended family of Mediterranean spirits that includes arak, ouzo, pastis, Sambuca and tsikoudia, but its appellation is not universal. Rather, opponents of alcohol insist that the “national” designation instead belongs to non­ alcoholic yogurt-based ayran.1 While rakı-or-ayran debates will persist into the foreseeable future, either-or arguments obscure the fact that Turks – and foreigners – consume widely and identify with the country, its cuisine and its politics many other beverages. Turkish coffee, for example, carries the ethnonym and commands recognition abroad, but among non-alcoholic drinks, black tea consumption is far more pervasive. Moreover, tea’s own histories intertwine far more with those of the nation-state.2 Among alcoholic beverages, another drink rivals and perhaps surpasses rakı’s status with respect to scales of production, profits, consumption, availability and politicisation – with detractors also contrasting it with ayran: beer. Like rakı, beer prompted debates, legislation and shifts in consumption and cultural associations, past and present. In this chapter, we interrogate how beer and its shifting places in and flows through Turkish society and politics yield collectively vital perspectives on and critical narratives of the republic’s history. Drawing on primary sources that include parliamentary transcripts, legislation, news and editorial pieces in Turkish and international media, and advertising and informed by secondary works, we begin our inquiry by locating the place of alcohol in wider Anatolian and Ottoman histories.3 From this basis, we identify beer as a late Ottoman introduction and proceed to examine its status in the modern republic. Apart from Islamic proscriptions, an early foreign status and an initially limited consumer base, advocates confronted surging waves of temperance and prohibitionism in the last decades of the empire – ones that briefly overwhelmed the formative republic. While the nation-state’s consequent imposition of an alcohol ban was short-lived, governmental controls were not; statist monopolisation of select industries absorbed alcohol production and marketing.4 Covering the impacts of World War II-era economic stress and scarcities and a post-war push for an expanded free market, we engage with how state and commercial promotions and

Between promotions and prohibitions 85 industry privatisations created new topographies for beer and its consumption. By the 1970s, the brewing industry expanded as it further normalised beer as an integral part of modern consumer lifestyles for a growing demographic. This progress, however, led to renewed public and legislative debates, and beer became a principal target. Coinciding with heightened social and cultural, political and military, health and medical, and moral and religious concerns, Turkey’s parliament deliberated regarding these issues in ways that foreshadowed today’s regulationist and prohibitionist divides.5 Following this discourse and associated legislative outcomes into the present day, we demonstrate not only the centrality of beer as a contested symbol in the Turkish republic but also its complexities as both its promoters and detractors through time resist conforming to simplistic secular–religious or modern– traditional dichotomies that scholars and other observers oftentimes impose in their analyses of the nation’s histories.

Locating alcohol and the flow of beer in Turkish history Narrative stereotypes of predominantly Muslim countries omit routinely appreciable discussion of alcohol or other intoxicants, but most societies possess rich histories of brewing, fermentation, distillation6 and inebriation7 that preceded Islam’s later arrivals and persisted long after, too. Through recorded histories, including periods when Anatolia was integral to ancient Greek and Roman civilisations, the region was central for wine production, trade and consumption,8 and the Near Eastern – but also European, African, American and Asian – origins of beer are well known.9 Additionally, Turkic peoples of Eurasia that arrived in Anatolia as early as the tenth and eleventh centuries drank kumys,10 fermented mares’ milk.11 Shared customs also incorporated local drinks, including beer-like boza, made in Anatolia for millennia with fermented wheat.12 Following Islam’s early seventh-century emergence in Arabia, its eventual diffusions into Anatolia also failed to devitalise alcohol’s presence and societal significance.13 The eventual Turkish and Islamic Ottoman Empire (1299–1922), a polity distinguished by diverse ethno-religious communities that supported alcohol’s continued presence, likewise only sporadically impeded its flow.14 Within the Ottoman ecumene – particularly in quarters of its cosmopolitan port cities,15 extensions of autonomy via the empire’s millet system of ethno-religious autonomy facilitated alcohol’s continuing place in citizens’ social lives and spiritual practices.16 While wine was integral to Christian and Jewish sacraments, other offerings survived and thrived, too. In the realms of production, Aegean and Mediterranean coastal vineyards proliferated while Anatolian commodities from elsewhere (e.g., staple grains, like wheat, and flavourings, like aniseed) also contributed variously to what was ontap. Patterns of consumption thus featured innumerable complexities – even beyond the empire’s Christian and Jewish communities. Defying generalisations about Islamic abstention, some Muslims made drinking a common practice.

86 Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered Their number ranged from those who strayed from observance, on the one hand, to those who embraced drinking as integral to their faith, on the other hand. Among the latter, thirteenth-century Sufi master Hacı Bektaş-ı Veli’s (1209–1271) followers were most conspicuous. For many Bektaşi tarikat adherents, wine, boza and other beverages are permitted and even encouraged as a means to enlightenment, honesty among believers and unity with Allah.17 Today more visible in Albania and elsewhere in Southeastern Europe, Bektaşism was prominent in Ottoman Turkey due to its strong roots among the empire’s elite infantry; the janissaries.18 Characterised as unruly, disobedient and even seditious, however, the sultan disbanded the corps in 1826.19 Bektaşi influence in Anatolia receded appreciably thereafter, but stereotypes of janissaries and Bektaşis as sometimes belligerent and often inebriated persist in popular culture.20 The nineteenth century was also an era of imperial decline and mounting European influence, and fluid geopolitical contexts expedited alcoholic diversification – and increased consumption. Attendant to changing circumstances, aspects of how, when, where and what one drank served increasingly as signifiers of one’s social and economic status, religiosity, traditional or modernist orientations, and receptivity to Europe.21 Amid these trends, reorientations and identifications, beer figured prominently and increasingly. Though nineteenth-century global trade introduced new drinks as imports – with many remaining as such, European-style beer’s place expanded beyond early British and French imports to develop an Anatolian tradition.22 Analysing beer in pre-republican Turkey, historian Malte Fuhrmann noted four distinct but overlapping phases between 1830 and 1920.23 In the initial period, small-scale, local sites of beer brewing and sales arose, especially in Istanbul. Thereafter, “semi­ industrial” production and limited regional distribution networks emerged in Izmir and its surroundings. Most notable, the German immigrant Prokopp family operated as early as the 1840s, establishing a definite regional presence by the early 1860s. Izmir thus became a distinct site of beer consumption, with associated cafés/halls and gardens opening and closing through the nineteenth century.24 Most histories maintain, however, that the first modern brewing infrastructure of significance emerged in 1890s’ Istanbul.25 There, the Bomonti Brothers of Helvetia (Switzerland) built the first factory-scale brewery. Subsequent concerns followed suit elsewhere in the empire, though Bomonti’s brand retained its prominence and endures into republican-era branding and geography, with a neighbourhood of Istanbul’s Şişli district still carrying the name.26 Recalling Fuhrmann’s periodisation, beer achieved an Ottoman-era “apogee” (and final phase) by 1915 that endured until 1922.27 Though alcohol offerings diversified (for those of means) and consumption rates rose in the empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, public antipathy to drunkenness and drinking also intensified.28 Oppositional sentiments were diverse and reflected concerns

Between promotions and prohibitions 87 that ranged from the traditional, moral and religious, on the one hand, to the progressive, hygienic and scientific, on the other hand.29 Law-and­ order and regressive motivations were apparent as well, with religious and ethno-national intolerance and anti-European sentiments sometimes interlacing with temperance and prohibitionism.30 Under these circumstances – especially after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, critics characterised beer (and sometimes even wine) as “foreign” and a marker of national disloyalty; if any drink were to be consumed, ultranationalists opted for rakı.31

From state prohibitions to state monopolies During the Ottoman Empire’s final decades, religious and public health sentiments endorsing temperance and prohibition resulted typically in shortlived and local movements.32 In a nascent Turkish republic’s formative parliament – the Grand National Assembly (GNA; later the TBMM, or Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey) – prohibitionists found a forum, unified and promoted legislative proscription. Following World War I (1914–1918) and during Istanbul’s Allied occupation (1918–1923) and Turkey’s War of Independence (1919–1923), in March 1920, Britain compelled the Ottoman parliament’s closure. In response, Mustafa Kemal Paşa (later Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, or “father of the Turks”, 1881–1938) called for a new nationalist parliament (the GNA). In April 1920, it convened in Ankara.33 Also in March 1920, Turkish physician Mazhar Osman Usman (1884–1951) established the anti-addiction society Yeşilay (the “Green Crescent”).34 The group played a significant role in Turkey’s evolving relationships with intoxicants. Later portrayals commonly depict the republic as unified under the tenets of Kemalism (or Atatürkism), but it is important to note that the early assembly lacked ideological unity and voiced many priorities and agendas discordant with those of Atatürk and his envisioned modernist nation-state.35 Despite postWWI economic shortages and demographic hardships, geopolitical precarity amid invading armies and occupation,36 and the adversarial remnants of the Ottoman Empire – and the Caliphate – interests in the GNA and beyond pushed to address the alcohol question and prohibition on its sixth day in-session, 28 April 1920.37 Presented by religionist and populist MP Ali Şükrü Bey (1884–1923) of Trabzon, his six-article proposal stipulated a ban on all production, trade and consumption in the territories of the fledgling republic’s jurisdiction. He professed, The evils and devastation that emerge from our people’s increased con­ sumption of alcohol, despite Islam’s prohibition of drinking, are too destructive to count. I propose acceptance of these measures … to save our people, whose deep ignorance and lack of restraint with alcohol always culminates with this great evil’s destruction of homes.38

88 Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered Rooted in his own nationalistic religiosity and depicted as a moral imperative, the bill provided a simple starting point; parliament endorsed its circulation for review among special committees from each of the relevant state ministries. Amid subsequent reports and debates, distinct sides emerged in parliament, among ministries and in the special committees.39 As with late Ottoman anti-alcohol movements, interests reflected religious and public health anxieties; Ali Şükrü Bey’s followers thus united with progressive social reformers and physicians serving in parliament.40 Understandably, the Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare committees favoured prohibition, and some public health proponents even deployed contemporary eugenics and nationalist rhetoric.41 Pro-prohibition committees noted that existing laws forbade only intoxication, thus permitting the underlying evils of production and consumption. As such, their reports maintained that policing drunkenness – even with greater vigilance – merely shifted alcohol’s place from public to private. They maintained, therefore, that only absolute prohibition could achieve the goals of piety and hygiene.42 Initially, the Ministry of Justice opposed the ban – though it conceded that religious objections were valid. It maintained that proper enforcement of existing laws would be adequate and that more pressing security concerns were at hand amid invasion, insurrection and occupation.43 The Ministry of Finance likewise concurred deferentially with religious sentiments, but it held that severe economic losses would accrue and that revenue shortfalls would incur geopolitical consequences, given European powers’ demands for WWI reparations.44 Rather than render a final decision, the cabinet of ministers received the reports and turned decision-making authority back to the GNA.45 Deliberations continued periodically through the summer. Some parties reversed positions, and some even argued that America’s allegedly successful example should be emulated; others disputed the preposterous assertion.46 Eventually, the GNA held a final vote after a day of lengthy debate on 14 September 1920. The vote split between 71 MPs for and 71 MPs against prohibition, with three abstentions.47 Prohibition in the republic thus passed when the GNA chair cast the deciding vote, backing enactment.48 The ban took effect after the law’s 28 February 1921 public notice in the state circular Resmî Gazete, and its final iteration specified not only spirits but also wine and beer.49 Unlike America’s prolonged experience, Turkey’s ban was comparatively brief (1921–1924).50 Arguing that prohibition imposed undue deprivations on constituents employed in viniculture, MPs from wine-producing provinces sought moderation and proposed amendments in September 1923.51 Their bill also maintained that Islamic proscriptions did not encompass production and trade, and they encouraged state control of alcohol industries – foreshadowing an eventual state monopoly.52 Their measure failed, but a second rendered greater evidence of economic hardship and presented compelling arguments why alternative livelihoods

Between promotions and prohibitions 89 and commodities (e.g., using wine grapes for raisins or preservatives) were not viable.53 Passed on 11 September 1923, the debate then turned to revision or repeal, often reflecting economic concerns.54 Couched in the rhetoric of merely amending the remaining proscriptions, a nine-article bill stipulated state authority and taxation. It achieved repeal in April 1924; beer and other intoxicants again flowed freely.55 Detailed in our prior analysis of Turkey’s prohibition, fluid geopolitical landscapes also facilitated reversal.56 Among critical developments, the War of Independence and the Allied occupation of Istanbul both concluded, the empire and sultanate jointly collapsed, the GNA’s first session ended and resulted in sweeping away (or simply purging) non-Kemalists from state posts.57 By early 1924, the GNA abolished the Caliphate and sharia (Islamic law).58 With the gates open for beer, wine and spirits to again run their course, political concerns shifted to law-and-order, secular moralism and economy. As questions of regulation returned, new alcohol issues concerned public consumption and the state’s emerging monopoly. As a condition of repeal, and intended to silence critics, the state banned hard alcohol (e.g., rakı) sales and consumption from restaurants and public places.59 Adding ambiguity to provisions at hand, however, one article stated, “consumption of beer and liqueur-like drinks that are of very small alcohol [content] and [essentially] non-alcoholic can be consumed at restaurants or similar establishments that are state-designated, sales tax paying, and licensed.”60 Some MPs wanted to see more effective enforcement and avoid abuse, so they demanded greater specificity in designating matters such as which sites were “government-selected” and which drinks were “liqueur-like drinks”. However, MPs such as Zeki Bey, who represented Gümüşhane (likely Zeki Kadirbeyoğlu; 1884–1952), received no further clarification.61 Their appeal at this moment became the first of several debates over what was “non-alcohol” that continued to arise until 1984. Central to this question were the relative legal standings of rakı and beer, as reflected in later parliamentary exchanges over the problem of some citizens defining rakı as a “liqueur” rather than “liquor” (i.e., hard alcohol).62 With the GNA unable to conclusively resolve the matter – and associated problems of public perception, it delegated the issue to two special commissions. Yeşilay physicians entered discussions, too. Though it did not permanently resolve the dilemma, a practical conclusion of the moment stated, “In reality, rakı intoxicates people and is the most consumed alcoholic beverage in our country. Drunkards and alcoholics commonly drink rakı … [more than less alcoholic drinks, like beer or liqueur].”63 Apart from classification, debate also concerned “where” particular drinks were legal – a matter integral to regulating both public space and drunkenness. On this aspect, the Ministry of Finance’s committee corroborated that public consumption and drunkenness were both still prohibited, referencing continuing legal penalties, which were, typically, either a fine of 10–100 Turkish Lira or confinement from three days to one month.64 As the leading cause for these sanctions, the committee

90 Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered argued, rakı could not be categorised with beer or liqueur; doing so would violate the spirit of the law.65 Over time, particularly in its post-monopoly era (i.e., 1969 onward), varied interpretations of beer’s “non-alcoholic” status enabled sales throughout Turkey, at pervasive scales, according to critics, in “traditional coffee houses, kebab restaurants, grocery shops, and even little buffets.”66 During the post-repeal phase, the state also assembled partially its commodity monopolies in 1925 (with alcohol added in 1926) from remnants of foreign holdings in particular sectors (e.g., British tobacco interests).67 Emerging in the nineteenth century, some concerns – including ones that oversaw alcohol – consolidated in the empire’s final decades to facilitate European collection of Ottoman debts (i.e., becoming OPDA, the Ottoman Public Debt Administration).68 Subsequent republican initiatives to form a monopoly for alcohol created intriguing but conflicting priorities. The state produced and marketed alcohol, on the one hand, while regulating these activities and consumption, on the other hand. In 1933, the various monopolies consolidated and became known singularly as İnhisarlar İdaresi (or “monopolies administration”), and the institutional body’s name appeared on all state alcohol bottles and other controlled commodities’ packaging (Figure 5.1). This institutional infrastructure was eventually consolidated in 1946 as TEKEL Genel Müdürlüğü (the “TEKEL General Directorate,” or TEKEL – an acronym of tek (“single”) and el (“hand”) meaning “monopoly”). TEKEL controlled not only alcohol but also tobacco, salt, gunpowder and other commodities – especially those of strategic significance or particularly lucrative returns.69 In later years, MPs noted how the 1920s move to monopolise

Figure 5.1 Example of rakı bottle label indicating the early monopoly administration İnhisarlar İdaresi (source: author collection)

Between promotions and prohibitions 91 alcohol facilitated greater beer production, with advocates justifying beer promotion as a counterweight to excessive rakı consumption.70 The rationale of selling more beer to diminish rakı drinking resonated strongly amid the 1924 and 1925 GNA discussions that we reviewed. Public consumption and drunkenness were concerns fixed in the rhetoric and collective wisdom of the day as rakı-associated evils. For some, state monopoly seemed an ideal instrument for both controlling abuse while freely marketing beer as an acceptable, modern antidote. The first state-built brewery materialised in 1934 and, after absorbing additional entities in 1939 and 1940, İnhisarlar İdaresi/ TEKEL maintained exclusive control over Turkey’s beer industry until 1969.71 In this beer-friendly context, all aspects of the beverage benefitted from political patronage and placement. Examples of its prominence include a brewery constructed on the outskirts of the new capital, Ankara. It became a key feature in Atatürk Orman Çiftliği’s (AOÇ; the Atatürk “forest farm,” previously Gazi Orman Çiftliği) landscape.72 AOÇ was an enormous tract of land that the leader utilised as a retreat and that he sought to imbue with a mission similar to America’s contemporary land grant colleges and universities. It would be a model for Anatolia’s majority rural populace. As an independent site of agricultural research, production, education and extension, AOÇ also proselytised modernity and nationalism.73 Its infrastructure included a tractor factory and brewery – ideal for adding value to the country’s grain harvests and for facilitating new cultural mores (Figure 5.2).74

Figure 5.2 AOÇ brewery

(source: Atatürk Orman Çiftliği archive, n.d., accessed 1999 by authors)

92 Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered A place to exhibit, learn and enjoy modern lifestyles, additional amenities included a Turkish hammam or bath, swimming pools, places to hike and relax, facilities for music, dancing, dining and a beer garden – and AOÇ produced wine, too.75 Integral to this new way of life, AOÇ also promoted the aesthetics of consumerism, supplying products (e.g., packaged foods) that were labour saving, useful or just enjoyable.76 In 1939, the year after Atatürk’s 1938 death, İnhisarlar İdaresi/TEKEL absorbed AOÇ’s beer operations. In 1940, TEKEL also purchased Bomonti, which continued operations into the republican era – and was thought commonly to have benefitted from associations with Prime Minister and later President İsmet İnönü (1884–1973). Promoting beer, however, continued unabated in Turkey. As in the West, its marketing projected a particular vision of the ideal way of life (Figure 5.3), and with beer a statecontrolled commodity, narratives of a happy and prosperous nation were also common.

Promotions and privatisation In addition to the organisation of İnhisarlar İdaresi/TEKEL as a vehicle to control and profit from alcohol, the state prioritised the place of alcohol – and beer, in particular – through administrative, pricing and legislative promotions. This orientation continued even amid economic stress. In the 1930s and 1940s, Turkey depleted its limited resources maintaining military forces at fullstrength during Europe’s accelerating armament and World War II. The republic accordingly sought profits where available. Alcohol, as always, was a reliable revenue stream. Consequently, promotions – and consumption – of beer continued. When İnhisarlar İdaresi/TEKEL acquired AOҪ’s brewery in 1939 and Bomonti in 1940, it also planned to enact dramatic price reductions. Otherwise linked with inflation rates, these price adjustments facilitated increased consumption, sales and profits.77 To offset anticipated criticism that the state “encouraged” beer drinking,78 backing MPs and administrators again asserted that the initiatives were benign efforts to wean rakı drinkers to a beverage of far lower alcohol: beer.79 As the monopoly’s minister explained in regard to 1939 reductions, our goal in reducing beer prices is to channel interests of those with alcohol habits towards low-alcohol beverages. We otherwise do not rec­ ommend that anyone without such a habit develop one. We simply want to clarify for drinkers that beer is better than rakı.80 Of course, the explanation of lowering prices to increase beer consumption (and sales) as a means to diminish rakı abuse was problematic. In 1946, some MPs and the monopoly discussed lowering rakı prices and increasing its sale. More conspicuous than its legislative and pricing promotions, however, the state’s prominent beer advertising contributed to a range of representational themes – and public reactions to them – that persist and evolve today.

Between promotions and prohibitions 93

Figure 5.3 “Everybody, drink Ankara beer!” A 1930s AOÇ advertisement (source: Istanbul Research Institute’s “poster of the month” blog, July 2012; http://blog.iae.org. tr/index.php/diger/ayin-afisi-ankara-birasi/?lang=en)

Inventing more of an idealised consumer of beer than reflecting any actual or potential Turkish beer consumers, state advertisers developed marketing schemes that proliferated from 1939 to 1969. Not just selling beverages in print and other ads, they also established a foundation for future private beer interests to later study, assess and expand upon. TEKEL’s marketing schemes thus invested heavily in proffering aspirational lifestyles that pivoted on beer acquisition, consumption, hospitality and on

94 Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered

Figure 5.4 “Neşesine doyulmaz” (roughly, “You can never get enough enjoyment”); a common print advertisement for AOÇ’s Ankara Birası that again fea­ tures a glamorous couple (source: author collection)

beer’s envisaged attributes. These narratives featured many of the trappings of modernity and consumerism that often accompanied other propaganda of the era: stylish apartments and new homes, a plethora of appliances, fashionable décor and attire, leisure time and entertainment, and desirable spouses and circles of friends (Figure 5.4). Purveying carefree surroundings and situations, these frequently domestic fantasies were rooted deeply in particular gendered and familial norms. Doğruel and Doğruel analysed the history of Turkey’s monopoly administration and pointed to an İnhisarlar İdaresi-produced example from the late 1930s or 1940s. A folding beer mug-shaped cardstock promotional, likely for table-top or other modes of distribution, the item’s interior and back side included detailed directives for the attentive and assiduous wife (Figure 5.5).

Between promotions and prohibitions 95

Figure 5.5 A “table-tent” beer mug with etiquette and lifestyle advice for women – and especially for the devoted and modern housewife (source: Doğruel and Doğruel, Osmanlı’dan Günümüze TEKEL, 257; author translated for this chapter)

In addition to promising health benefits and connecting the consumption of beer with a modern diet and lifestyle, the promotional provides direct and unambiguous instructions for women on how to entertain their husbands, serve them beer and – above all – not belittle or otherwise offend their partners. Particularly in these regards, the state-generated advertising stands out in its reaffirmation of subservient gendered norms despite the republic’s reforms that ostensibly championed the rights and status of its women and girls.81 Positioned across from a page illustrating a modern and active woman riding atop a jumping horse in West European equestrian attire, the first page of the advertisement read:82 If you wish to make your husband happy: … When he is asked about the movie he watched or about his summer vacation, don’t jump ahead and answer for him. … Don’t shame him in front of the guests about his minor shortcomings.

96 Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered … Tell him about him before telling him about yourself. When he talks to you about his work, always support him and never say, “if I were you …” … Don’t constantly tell him what your friends’ husbands are doing. … Especially, if it is very hot, serve him a glass of cold beer.83 Beyond orderly households – and very consistent with European traditions – the outdoors appeared prominently in marketing campaigns as it continued to provide idyllic settings for socialising and consuming beer. In these imagined geographies of consumption, the beer garden featured commonly as an opportune focal point and context for depicting both the drink and associated healthy lifestyles to the nation. Encouraging patrons to bring their own picnics, one notice for a brewery-based garden opening – one that played on continued public recognition of the Bomonti brand – from a 1949 issue of the Turkish daily newspaper Cumhuriyet read:

Good News! Tekel Beer Factory Garden Former Bomonti Is Opening Next Sunday As in the past, small chilled barrels are available for customers. Bringing your own food is acceptable. We don’t provide forks, knifes, or plates. We are closed on rainy days.84

In the post-Atatürk and post-WWII republic, weighty pressures internal and external (largely United States-imposed) compelled Turkey to democratise beyond its single-party system and to halt – if not reverse – statist economic policies.85 Statism in Turkey, enshrined as one of Kemalism’s six tenets, entailed a government-directed system, state ownership and control of various industries (e.g., those managed by TEKEL), and policies of nationalisation to frame and guide free market interests and dynamics.86 Associated most with capitalism’s ascendency were the increasing political influence of business elites, the establishment and prominence of Demokrat Parti (DP, or Democratic Party; 1946–1961) and the election of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes (PM 1950–1960; 1899–1961). Accordingly, the republic began to shift its orientation towards a growth-oriented, (more) free market economy. This trend has continued ever since, despite Menderes’ 1960 overthrow by junior military officers and his 1961 execution. When the state eventually extended its relaxation of control to beer production and trade in 1969, Efes Pilsen emerged domestically from established holding companies.87 Also in that year – and

Between promotions and prohibitions 97 benefitting from two preceding years of organisational presence in Izmir (i.e., as Türk Tuborg) – Danish brewer Tuborg initiated brewing and distribution in Turkey.88 In 1969, for the first time, TEKEL beer faced significant competition. Though sales in the 1939–1969 monopoly period were limited typically to 38 million litres per annum, between 1969 and 1977, Turkey’s beer sales more than quadrupled (Figure 5.6).89 The success of beer privatisation from 1969 through the 1970s derived in no small part from unprecedented advertising. Among Efes Pilsen, Tuborg and the state’s continued brands, Efes revealed the greatest acumen for tapping and expanding Turkey’s beer market – in addition to maximising its own share therein.90 As one writer later recalled, “Following a beer advertising campaign, normal beer suddenly seemed a special drink. … becoming a ‘biracı’ [“beer

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Figure 5.6 “Turkish beer industry and brand sales, 1969–1986” (source: Miller and Demirel, “Efes Pilsen in the Turkish Beer Market,” 9)

98 Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered drinker/lover”] assumed an ‘enthusiasm’ all its own.”91 By this time, as a Turkish psychiatrist observed, watching television was a predominant pastime and TV commercials were decisive both in selling products and shaping attitudes and opinions.92 Efes took full advantage of this medium, among others.93 Advertising spoke not only to beer itself but also to affordability – and that no one “need to eat with it” (acknowledging either that it differed from traditions of dining with rakı or that it was itself filling), “its availability anywhere and anytime,” and its higher measure of social acceptance.94 Through its rapidly evolving print advertising, as historians, we trace a sample of the skilled generation and diversification of Efes’ marketing as it sought an ever wider demographic through its narratives. In addition to their campaigns’ immediacy, another successful aspect of Efes’ advertising involved its self-distinction from other beers, as apparent through our analysis of promotions, asserting that “real beer drinkers” knew the difference. In an early example, Efes proclaimed, “From now on, at restaurants, casinos, or when buying it at the corner store, don’t just say ‘beer’ but order ‘an Efes Pilsen, please!’ Efes Pilsen is the genuine beer you want. It’s the beer for those who know beer” (Figure 5.7).95 Continuing concentration on beer as the drink for parties, picnics, beerhouses and other places, Efes also introduced beer as not just a couple’s drink – as notable in TEKEL’s earlier campaigns – but a family drink. Advertising included happy families sitting for a meal and declared (Figure 5.8), What a grand pleasure it is to get together at the dinner table after a ­ tiring day! Open an Efes Pilsen to complete the harmonious and happy atmosphere. Efes Pilsen is the beer you’re looking for. Efes Pilsen is a source of happiness and health. Efes Pilsen is the beer for every age and everybody. Efes Pilsen is the family beer, the beer for the dinner table. Yes, Efes Pilsen is the real beer you want.96 Another strategy entailed promoting the novelty of consumer-friendly packaging – a sort of advertising unto itself. Early in its operations, Efes began selling six-packs with easy-carry handles. This introduction complemented the company’s uniquely shaped bottles that became iconic and synonymous with both Efes and beer throughout Turkey. Carrier promotions boasted, “Innovation! The six-pack’s first time in Turkey … Now you can bring Efes Pilsen home in a six-pack.” In smaller font, Efes reemphasised, “You’ll really like it and enjoy bringing it home” (Figure 5.9).97 Shortly after introducing its “innovative” packaging, Efes delivered another “first” to customers: dark beer. With this product, Efes also incorporated a more sexualised subtext in its narrative, asking, “Blond or brunette? You liked the blond. Now you’ll like the brunette, too. Efes introduces dark beer.”98 Including Turkey’s youth was another priority (Figure 5.10).

Between promotions and prohibitions 99

Figure 5.7 Advertisement: “an Efes Pilsen, please!” (source: Cumhuriyet, 8 September 1969, 6)

Music … Dance … Laughter … Young people know how to have fun. Efes Pilsen completes the atmosphere. Because Efes Pilsen is a source of health and happiness. Efes Pilsen is the real beer. Young people know that, too, and that is why they like Efes Pilsen. Efes Pilsen is the real beer for the young and for those who feel young. It’s the beer for those who know beer.99

100 Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered

Figure 5.8 Advertisement: “the real beer you seek” (source: Cumhuriyet, 14 December 1969, 3)

Continuing these themes, one full-page ad celebrating the company’s fourth anniversary also seemed to target young women as a specific demographic. With a “six-pack” of young and ostensibly liberated women enjoying bottles of beer, Efes portrayed drinking as itself a social event (Figure 5.11).100

Between promotions and prohibitions 101

Figure 5.9 Advertisement; “the six-pack’s first time in Turkey” (source: Cumhuriyet, 16 January 1970, 7)

From a Western perspective, we might assess these ads as, for example, derivative of American campaigns, but it would be short-sighted not to acknowledge that they were also novel and innovative in the Turkish context. As a mode of social and political discourse, however, the ads may also be assessed alternatively with respect to their content, public reactions, and possible consequences of the latter. Advertisements that citizens were accustomed to from TEKEL were far less audacious and uninhibited (e.g., TEKEL’s advertisements certainly did not feature women’s parties with beer

102 Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered

Figure 5.10 Advertisement: “the real beer for the young” (source: Milliyet, 16 April 1970, 3)

as the primary refreshment). Indeed, ongoing rakı marketing continued to be far more serious, and it targeted specifically adult males. In contrast, these images were transgressive in their depictions of young adults in mixed company and of young women’s beer parties – which were very much in

Between promotions and prohibitions 103

Figure 5.11 Advertisement; Efes Pilsen’s fourth birthday party (source: Cumhuriyet, 25 August 1972)

sync with imagery from the ongoing women’s movement in America (or at least from corporate appropriations of it for marketing campaigns). At the very least, having lived in Turkey throughout this era, we surmise that they appeared immoral, radical and utterly foreign to traditional, religious and

104 Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered politically- and health-conscious segments of society. Of course, it is impossible to know just how much this imagery (as opposed to modernisation and Westernisation, more generally) accounted for mounting antagonism towards beer within the country. Nonetheless, it is interesting to speculate whether the promise of beer and the beer garden – a metaphor for the nation-state’s modernity, prosperity and desired unity – continued to attract new converts, or whether the new and unconventional marketing campaigns contributed more to social opposition than to festive drinking.

From garden to gateway Throughout the ascendancy of Efes Pilsen and Tuborg in the 1970s and early 1980s, the beer industry profited consistently from its “non-alcoholic” status. At a time when radio and television were largely state-run, however, popularity and wider social acceptability were crucial. Despite beer’s successful early promotions, observers speculated that its popularity began to plateau or even ebb. By 1984, as marketing scholars suggested in 1988, “Efes Pilsen’s market share was so high there were few converts left to win.”101 Becoming an almost banal activity for some, one writer later noted, people no longer “noticed if they were [even] drinking beer or not.”102 While enthusiasm in those years may be debated, we contend that critics of beer’s place in society began to confront collectively the perceived deluge. When late Cold War Turkey saw stark divides between state and military supporters, leftists, the ultra-right, secular traditionalists and religionists, the drink fell victim to associations with particular politics.103 At least on this issue, customary opponents of both beer (i.e., traditionalists and religionists) and other Western cultural imports (e.g., topless bathing104) connected loosely with state and military supporters and the ultra-right. Beer was over-associated with students, leftists, activists and accompanying disorder. As a conservative consensus as to beer’s objectionable nature rose, national idealism about beer and the garden seemed to fade. Despite increasingly negative views on beer among a widening demographic, as noted, sales – especially of Efes Pilsen – remained high.105 Turkey’s 1980 coup and its aftermath, however, upset the tenuous balance between market dominance and restrained social opposition. Many parties within the reformed state were not enthusiastic about sustaining beer’s sway in society – especially among the youth.106 A post-coup enactment of a new 1982 constitution also altered appreciably the institutional landscape. In Article 58, the republic asserted its authority to “protect youth”. Though not the dominant refrain among those opposing beer in the early 1980s, it was significant.107 Amid Turkey’s transition, eventual Prime Minister and later President Turgut Özal (1927–1993) established Anavatan Partisi (ANAP, the “Motherland Party”; 1983–); a centre-right coalition that included free-market liberals, traditionalists and even religionists. Empowered by changing social attitudes and a new constitutional mandate,

Between promotions and prohibitions 105 various MPs discussed reclassifying beer as “alcoholic” and circulated two associated proposals to review on 8 June 1984 – rescheduling beer would preclude further marketing on state radio and television.108 Characterising the development (and the bill’s eventual enactment in 1984) as having “plunged … the Turkish brewing industry into turmoil”, Efes and Tuborg pre-emptively challenged legislative reform in the court of public opinion.109 In some of the nation’s leading newspapers, on 11 June 1984, the companies ran full-page announcements – basically open letters – titled “Bira Olayındaki Gerçek” (roughly, “The Truth About Beer”; Figure 5.12).110 The notices essentially accused MPs seeking to reschedule beer of contributing to Turkey’s civilisational and developmental demise, collaborating with non-alcohol beverage interests (e.g., soft drink companies) and associated conflicts of interest, and espousing anti-Kemalist sentiments.111 Stating that he would step into the “arena” that the beer companies opted to create, on 14 June 1984, Ankara MP Hazım Kutay (1933–) vehemently reacted to the accusations and insinuations.112 Kutay’s initial salvo against this corporate engagement of parliament focused specifically on ad content and alleged mischaracterisations, but other MPs followed by presenting a powerful case for beer’s reclassification and regulation.113 Following Kutay’s rebuttal, themes of notable dialogue included: Atatürk’s legacy and the alleged misappropriation and distortion of Kemalism; national and Cold War politics; beer–rakı connections; beer as a “scientific” question; and beer’s annihilation of Turkish culture.114 Presenting their cases, some MPs continued to bristle at insinuations that enhanced regulation of beer was antiKemalist. Particularly galling for ANAP MP Mehmet Budak (1945–2002) of Kırşehir was not only Efes’ “very ugly, sad, and immoral attack” but also that of Tuborg – “a foreign-patented beer company”.115 MP Arif Şevket Bilgin (1925–) of Rize – and a physician – denounced as mercenary any deployment of “Atatürk as a shield” in public beer debates.116 Diyarbakir MP Mahmut Altunakar (1926–) likewise criticised the public relations feat as a profit-driven manipulation of “Atatürk’s reforms and principles” that was disrespectful and exploitative.117 Beer regulation was not anti-Western, he added, noting European regulations specifying appropriate times and places for sales and consumption.118 Bilgin even claimed that regulation made for stronger states in law-and-order, public safety and Cold War geopolitics – wherein alcohol and alcoholism were an “effective weapon.”119 MPs scientised beer’s perceived evils, too. For example, Bilgin adduced Yeşilay data and alleged that inordinate numbers of drinkers’ descendants become criminals, prostitutes, murderers, beggars, asylum inmates and parents of illegitimate children themselves.120 Budak cited Ottoman and republican histories.121 With brief periods of exception, beer effectively evaded “scientific” classification as alcohol-based.122 This trick, he contended, allowed the drink to remain merely a “social question” – shirking scientific and medical scrutiny: “Though beer was never adjudged comparable to mineral water, soda or milk anywhere in the world, it happened in Turkey.”123

Figure 5.12 An open letter: “Bira Olayındaki Gerçek” (source: Milliyet, 11 June 1984, 7)

Between promotions and prohibitions 107 Charging that “non-alcoholic” status and pervasive advertising together normalised beer, Budak detailed societal and cultural impacts. He claimed that, “students came to classes drinking beer, state employees sat at their desks drinking beer, employees reached their workbenches drinking beer”.124 Referencing uncited scientific data, he held that the number of meyhane [Turkish taverns] serving beer doubled in five to ten years. Beer-serving spread from taverns and beerhouses to coffee­ houses, to shops for köfte [Turkish ground-meat entrees], to sandwich shops and to streets and sidewalks. Groups of sixteen and seventeen year-old children [now] guzzle bottles of beer in front of bakkal [small-scale Turkish groceries], fooling around with reddened faces.125 Even through word choice – referencing quintessentially Turkish aspects of culture and community – he denounced beer. Budak argued further that: grave misunderstandings and inappropriate oversight contributed directly to addiction; beer must be regulated; alcohol products should not be endorsed through state media outlets; and failure to control beer precipitated cultural erosion – bearing a degenerate “lumpen” culture that polluted the nation.126 Further portraying beer’s annihilation of Turkish culture and society, he added, instead of our world-famous Turkish coffee, beer is served. Instead of traditional Tea Day at schools …, Beer Day is organized. When we visit our village muhtars [Turkish community leaders], MPs are served beer instead of ayran. In big cities, our ayran and dӧner wage a cultural battle against the sandwich and beer. On kabul günü [“reception day”], Turkish ladies serve beer instead of tea. If current trends continue, in the near future, we should not be surprised [to see] beer replace water.127 Finally, most speakers spurned any thought of beer having positive impacts or potential, and they rejected claims that it was “safe” or that it averted “dangerous” rakı habits or alcoholism.128 Collectively, their commentary on beer was one of the most thoroughgoing public excoriations of the beverage itself and the idealism once expressed about it. In their view, beer offered the nation no safe garden – only a gateway to abuse and addiction. Reframing beer as a malignant gateway drug, the 14 June 1984 TBMM session was a profound setback for Efes and Tuborg – and a resounding failure for their 11 June public letter. MPs approved a law based on the earlier 8 June proposals from MP Altunakar and from both MP Kutay and Balıkesir MP İsmail Dayı (1926–2008); beer was now “alcoholic”.129 Beyond anticipated outcomes of advertising restrictions, articles specified vendor licensing within eight months, rules for sales and locations of trade

108 Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered and consumption, bans on particular state properties and other sites of anticipated youth presence, and fines and/or imprisonment for violators.130 Subsequent discussions turned largely to how the state might better combat alcoholism, on the one hand, and objections from dissenting MPs who criticised the law (e.g., characterising it as hypocritical, given tobacco’s alleged dearth of regulatory control) and who wanted to first consider anticipated impacts for establishments, producers and the agricultural sector, on the other hand.131 Perhaps reflecting at the end of the day on how the rescheduling came about, one dissenting MP contended that the law was more a battle against the beer companies than about dealing effectively with either beer or alcoholism.132 Brewers’ subsequent efforts to challenge the outcome were unsuccessful, though they did obtain permission for relaxed distribution at popular tourist destinations.

From reclassification to “Şerefine Tayyip!” Despite 1984-related advertising setbacks – and a 40% contraction of its national sales within two years of the ruling, Efes Pilsen’s professional basketball team (founded in 1976) continued to carry the brewer’s name at national and international games, reaching huge demographics with the shared brand name.133 Moreover, the company pursued sales of non-alcoholic beer in the Middle East, organised major brand-sponsored musical, cultural and other entertainment events. In 1990, for example, the company organised both its first annual Efes Pilsen Blues Festival and its first annual Istanbul Film Festival, and it even funded participatory archaeological excavations.134 Over time, Efes sponsored additional festivals and events elsewhere in Europe (e.g., Kiev), complementing increased export sales. In 2000, Efes also initiated its “Pub Rehabilitation Project,” a programme that selected establishments and underwrote thorough make-overs.135 This programme provided site-specific publicity, even leading to other businesses queueing for refurbishment.136 It confronted Turkish notions of pubs as dark, male-dominated haunts and recast them as fashionable, inclusive and immensely popular gathering places. By 2005, the company supported public exhibitions137 and publications138 in collaboration with historical foundations and other institutions.139 Increasingly, beer’s way was paved into popular narratives of Anatolian, Turkish and republican histories. The enthusiastic advances were outgrowths of tactical responses to the setbacks attributable to 1984 and part of an even longer tradition of innovation. They also constituted forward-looking strategic manoeuvres to expand further Efes’ marketing reach while keeping ahead of future regulatory setbacks. Given the rise of political Islam in Turkey in the 1990s – initially in urban politics – the national majority achieved by the Islamist and neoliberal AKP (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AK Parti, or “Justice and Development Party”; 2001–) in the 2002 general elections, and AKP’s invariable predominance since, Efes’ innovative acumen proved itself an existential imperative.

Between promotions and prohibitions 109 Aligning with AKP’s ascendancy and advancing neoliberal structural reforms of the late 1990s onward, the republic initiated privatisation of state concerns, such as those administered by TEKEL (in the early 2000s, TEKEL’s beverage holdings were sold to the Turkish corporation Mey İçki Sanayii ve Ticaret, A.Ş.).140 Also in 2002, the state established TAPDK (the “Tobacco and Alcohol Market Regulatory Authority”).141 In an earlier analysis of Turkey’s 2013 alcohol geopolitics, we argued that partial readings of the 1982 Constitution’s Article 58 (i.e., acknowledging just the second sentence specifying how to “protect youth” from substance abuse and other negative influences while disregarding the first sentence that stressed maintaining Kemalist traditions) enabled a predisposed parliamentary majority to prioritise its mandate to “protect youth” in a manner advocating tighter restrictions.142 Advocates of greater regulation or prohibition continue to rely on this partial reading, and TAPDK served as but one vehicle for implementation. Described as an institutional but also “symbolic shift” from marketing alcohol under TEKEL to regulating it under TAPDK, the AKP-led state initiated wide-ranging policy reforms and passed new laws that critics allege will only cease – if not resisted – with a return to prohibition.143 For their part, most AKP officials do not shy from criticising alcoholic beverages and drinking, and they insist routinely that their agenda only amounts to a more accountable regulation of alcohol – and tobacco. This is a mission consistent with their constitutional duties to the nation’s youth and public health obligations.144 To these debatable ends, the parliament passed legislation in 2005 that greatly restricted advertising to youth.145 The law’s terms, however, went far beyond most limits on youth-focused marketing, as observable in other countries. Public visibility of corporate logos at events and rudimentary descriptions of products, their attributes and even suggestions that – as beverages – they quenched one’s thirst became legal offenses. The restrictions, added TAPDK directives and later enactments compelled logo and name changes for Efes’ basketball team. Beyond Efes Pilsen Spor Kulübü’s 7 January 2011 rebranding to Anadolu Efes Spor Kulübü, since its formation, the team underwent at least six logos changes (Figure 5.13).146

Figure 5.13 Relating the athletic organisation’s history, the Efes-/Anadolu-sponsored basketball team Anadolu Efes Spor Kulübü note details of its evolving names and logos, including those of 2011 (source: Anadolu Efes, “Kulüp Tarihçesi.”)

110 Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered In August 2005, a law broadly regulating business formation and permit acquisitions mandated the spatial delineation of alcohol trade and consumption. Ambiguities in specifying its terms resulted in varied local-scale implementation by pro-prohibition officials.147 The new geographies became known informally as kırmızı sokaklar or kırmızı bölgeler (“red streets” or “red zones” – in Turkish, these phrases carry a connotation comparable to the meaning of “red light districts” in English) and resulted in court challenges.148 Despite legal resistance to the adoption and imposition of such moral geographies, these acts and other policies inflicted losses on businesses.149 Coupled with other changes, some merchants felt compelled to close.150 Also targeting directly alcohol trade, recent history reveals a succession of dramatic increases in state-mandated excise taxes on alcohol.151 These point-of-sale assessments impact especially local vendors and consumers, with critics characterising them as not just revenue-generating but punitive and prohibition-driven. According to Turkish columnist Şükrü Kızılot, from the time in 2002 when AKP attained a majority until October 2012, alcohol taxes rose 655%.152 Boğaziçi University political scientist and weekly Radikal columnist Koray Çalışkan noted similarly that one rakı bottle priced at US$13.00 in 2004 soared to US$30.00 by 2013.153 In mid-July 2017, consistent with ongoing penalisation of activism and dissent,154 the Turkish state arrested professor Çalışkan along with over 40 other university employees for alleged ties with anti-government interests.155 Though consumers of beer and other drinks were reminded with each purchase of what critics allege to be a creeping prohibition, until spring 2013 international attention on this issue was minimal. When the regulation–prohibition question became part of the wider story of Gezi Park and associated protests,156 foreign journalists took notice.157 Mobilisation of anti-prohibition dissent in 2013, however, actually began weeks prior to the demonstrations. On 26 and 27 April 2013, Turkey’s anti-addiction society Yeşilay collaborated with the World Health Organization (WHO) to hold their Global Alcohol Policy Symposium. Hosted in Istanbul, organisers attracted over 1,200 attendees with representatives from 53 nation-states. Though not unusual for Turkish officials to deliver remarks at such meetings, AKP Prime Minister (and later President) Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s (1954–) conference address included statements that many Turks found highly objectionable and even ridiculous.158 Erdoğan’s speech followed an opening address delivered by WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan. Chan praised both the prime minister and Turkey for its ongoing anti-tobacco campaign. Citing the achievement as a successful model for the world, she encouraged Turkey’s leader to take comparable steps towards confronting alcohol in the republic.159 When Erdoğan later spoke, he remarked that the republic had a regrettable history of dispensing alcohol to its own people, insinuated unambiguously that Atatürk over-indulged, and declared that Turkey’s

Between promotions and prohibitions 111 “national drink” most certainly was never either rakı or beer but instead ayran.160 He insisted that he did not seek “Islamisation” but progress in advancing public health and protecting Turkish youth. Though Atatürk’s death is attributed (almost) universally to cirrhosis, to many, the nature of Erdoğan’s assertions before an official and international audience were appalling. Also reflected in Turkish headlines, perhaps even more found the characterisation about ayran to be utterly absurd, despite acknowledging the beloved beverage’s ubiquity in Turkish households, restaurants and shops, and at outdoor gatherings and other events. While secular Turks would likely identify rakı as the “national” drink – given its “purely” Anatolian derivation – beer’s inclusion in Erdoğan’s remarks was explicit and undoubtedly political. With his open inclusion of beer and his justification of policies on behalf of the nation’s youth, he tapped into the fact that popular perceptions of youth and their drinking habits are more closely associated with beer. The following month when Erdoğan again spoke of dealing with alcohol and the country’s youth, he further underscored that beer was a necessary target. He stated, “Kafası kıyak nesil istemiyoruz” (“we don’t want a drunk generation”).161 Though foreign journalists translated this as “tipsy”, drunk would be literally more accurate. However, an even more accurate figurate translation is “wasted”.162 Erdoğan conveyed precisely the same sentiments when he later characterised the (mostly young) Gezi Park protesters as “çapulcu” – another word of variable interpretation. Although journalists literally translated the term as “looters” or “hooligans,” the word figuratively implies even more so “a shiftless and pathetic character; a lesser order of humanity”.163 Again ridiculing the leader, protesters appropriated the term and made it their own. Inverting çapulcu as a badge of honour and a rallying call, the word featured on many signs, in protests and graffiti, in memes and elsewhere.164 Though likely less prominent, they also embraced the cause of anti-prohibition and the state’s divisive – and sometimes questionably accurate – narratives about alcohol. Especially prominent, images and slogans, such as “Şerefine Tayyip!” (literally, “To your honour, Tayyip” – but more accurately, “Cheers, Tayyip!”; Figure 5.14), flourished that spring and summer – and ever since. While the state’s push for regulations may be motivated by considerations of public health, through its officials’ words, policies and conduct, it is undeniably seeking to achieve social control and impose a restrictive ideal of order that discourages drinking and does not permit its visibility. In this context of targeting Turkey’s youth and the entire society – beyond just drinkers, beer serves as a pretext for escalating authoritarianism – increasingly specified in this setting as Erdoğanism – but also constitutes a potent – and some may say “intoxicating” – symbol for resisting it.

112 Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered

Figure 5.14 Sold in June 2013 along İstiklal Caddesi – adjacent to Gezi Park, the t-shirt with filled beer mugs boisterously proclaims “Şerefine Tayyip!” as both a shout of unity for protestors and ridicule for Erdoğan (source: author photo; Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran”)

Conclusion Following Erdoğan’s alcohol symposium address, the Turkish parliament reviewed the regulatory proposals that circulated on 10 May 2013 and after. After reviewing and debating the measures,165 they approved them on 23 May as part of Law no. 6487.166 Enacted upon its 11 June 2013 publication, the new set of regulations prohibited: sales of any alcohol produced in or imported into Turkey that does not carry product warning labels, the size, design and content of which would be determined by TAPDK; most remaining types and forms of advertising alcohol not prohibited previously; depictions of alcohol in film, TV programmes and music videos in ways that may entice and encourage consumption; and, sales at a variety of commercial establishments and other locations along with provisions for acceptable times of sale.167 Notably, the framing and adoption of the new regulations were reminiscent of the highly significant measures approved in 2005 as part of a broader law covering businesses and permits. In particular, critics note that this approach by the state avoids creating the symbolic visibility of any specific governmental act (e.g., America’s Eighteenth Amendment and Volstead Act) and thus minimises public awareness and dissent, on the one hand, while creating a network of prohibitionist laws that can better evade immediate revision or repeal, on the other hand.168

Between promotions and prohibitions 113 Given beer’s far greater visibility and presence (as compared with other drinks, like rakı), upon Law no. 6487’s enactment, there were significant ramifications for the place of beer – as a beverage, as a commercial product, and even as an idea – that were evident in Turkey’s public sphere. Perhaps the most pervasive among these changes throughout the country, the law compelled the many pubs, bakkal and other establishments that benefited from sponsored signage (e.g., from Efes or other companies) to remove or alter the signs to erase any reference of alcohol corporations’ and brands’ names or logos. In many instances, this included the primary sign over and carrying the names of the businesses themselves. Costs of creating entirely new placards would have been prohibitive for countless places, so establishments were required to simply modify existing signs. In many municipalities, city workers performed or assisted with this task of painting over or otherwise changing the signs (Figure 5.15). The bakkal continue to operate throughout Turkey, though some no longer sell beer. Similarly, for corporations, their advertising options in print, television, radio and electronic media were effectively erased – along with many opportunities for sponsoring entertainment events, exhibitions and

Figure 5.15 A typical corner, ground-level bakkal in Istanbul displays its re-worked Efes-sponsored store placard complete with name, telephone number, and TAPDK registration number all deleted (source: author photo, June 2016)

114 Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered community programmes. When Efes sought to utilise the sound of its bottle tops opening – a distinctive version of a popped-bottle sound associated for decades with the company’s radio and other commercials – and distribute the “pop” online to be used with cellular phones or other electronic devices as a ringtone or other sound effect, it also encountered state reprisal.169 In this context, the company found its own solution from the situation itself – as it did in the past when it simply changed logos but also like the Gezi protestors when they seized and inverted state narratives. Efes featured essentially blank websites with a slight message acknowledging Law no. 6487, indicating their compliance and noting the company continued operation (Figure 5.16). Likewise, in print media, images of unlabelled bottles with a similar text also pointed out the company’s many years of operation in the country. Just as the ringtones were recognised widely throughout Turkish popular and advertising cultures, Efes’ uniquely shaped and iconic bottle said “Efes Pilsen” to any who would see the image – even without label (Figure 5.17). In both, variations on the phrase “Görmesek de biliriz” also told patrons and all others that, even though you do not see it, the company and its unnamed product were still there and doing business as usual. Blank websites and bare bottles may serve powerfully as both inventive marketing and political resistance, but beyond their immediate symbolisms, amid erasures and absences, Turkish beer continues to flow.

Figure 5.16 Protesting online with nothing: Görmesek de biliriz (source: www.efespilsen.com.tr/; screenshot last taken 10 July 2017)

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Figure 5.17 Protesting without a label: Görmesek de biliriz (source: author collection)

Acknowledgements We are grateful for support from Michigan State University’s Asian Studies Program, Center for the Advanced Study of International Development (CASID), Center for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (CERES), and Muslim Studies Program, and for the excellent interlibrary loan services pro­ vided by MSU Libraries. We are especially thankful to Waltraud Ernst and the others who assisted her organisation of the “Alcohol flows across cultures: Drinking cultures in transnational and comparative perspective” in June 2016, and we appreciated the insights and comments of fellow attendees.

Notes 1 Evered, Emine Ö., and Kyle T. Evered. “From Rakı to Ayran: Regulating the Place and Practice of Drinking in Turkey.” Space and Polity 20, no. 1 (2016): 39–58. 2 Hann, Chris. Tea and the Domestication of the Turkish State. Huntingdon: EOTHEN, 1990. 3 Food scientist Pasin covered aspects of this history in passing, Pasin, Gonca. “Turkish Alcoholic Beverages.” In Alcoholic Beverages, edited by Gordon G. Birch and Michael G. Lindley, 115–128. London: Elsevier Applied Science Publishers, 1985. Also note: Evered, Emine Ö., and Kyle T. Evered. “A Geopol­ itics of Drinking: Debating the Place of Alcohol in Early Republican Turkey.” Political Geography 50, no. 1 (2016): 48–60. 4 Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking.”

116 Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered 5 Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran.” 6 al-Hassan, Ahmad Y., and Donald R. Hill. Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and UNESCO, 1986, 138–144. 7 Georgeon, François. “Ottomans and Drinkers: The Consumption of Alcohol in Istanbul in the Nineteenth Century.” In Outside In: On the Margins of the Modern Middle East, edited by Eugene Rogan, 7–30. London: I.B. Tauris, 2002, 7–8. 8 Gorny, Ronald L. “Viticulture and Ancient Anatolia.” In The Origins and Ancient History of Wine: Food and Nutrition in History and Anthropology, edited by Patrick E. McGovern, Stuart J. Fleming, and Solomon H. Katz, 133–174. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers, 1996; McGovern, Patrick E. Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007; McGovern, Patrick E. Ancient Brews: Rediscovered and Re-created. New York: W. W. Norton, 2017; And, Thurmond, David L. From Vines to Wines in Classical Rome: A Handbook of Viticulture and Oenology in Rome and the Roman West. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Speaking to the region’s opulence – and no doubt its associated wine culture – during these periods, historian Peter Garnsey notably observed that healers like Galen of Pergamum and Soranus of Ephesus dealt more so with the impacts of gluttony than of malnutrition. Garnsey, Peter. Food and Society in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 115. 9 McGovern, Patrick E. Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010; and Nelson, Max. The Barbarian’s Beverage: A History of Beer in Ancient Europe. London: Routledge, 2008. 10 Shah, Nagendra P. “Other Dairy Products: Yogurt, Kefir, Kumys.” In The Oxford Handbook of Food Fermentations, edited by Charles W. Bamforth and Robert E. Ward, 385–407. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 11 On the early domestication and milking of horses in Eurasia that facilitated subsequent kumys production, note Outram, Alan K., Natalie A. Stear, Robin Bendrey, Sandra Olsen, Alexei Kasparov, Victor Zaibert, Nick Thorpe, and Richard P. Evershed. “The Earliest Horse Harnessing and Milking.” Science 323, no. 5919 (2009): 1332–1335. 12 Compared commonly with the bread-based kvass of traditional Slavic societies, there are many varieties of boza ranging from southeastern Europe, through the Middle East, and into Eurasia. On Turkish boza, see: Arıcı, Muhammet, and Orhan Dağlıoğlu. “Boza: A Lactic Acid Fermented Cereal Beverage as a Traditional Turkish Food.” Food Reviews International 18, no. 1 (2002): 39–48; Tangüler, Hasan. “Traditional Turkish Fermented Cereal Based Products: Tar­ hana, Boza and Chickpea Bread.” Turkish Journal of Agriculture – Food Science and Technology 2, no. 3 (2014): 144–149; and Pasin, “Turkish Alcoholic Bever­ ages.” It should be noted that boza is but one of numerous traditional fermented beverages of Anatolia, and not all contain appreciable amounts of alcohol, such as şalgam, which commonly contains turnip juice along with a variety of other ingre­ dients (see: Erten, Hüseyin, Hasan Tangüler, and Ahmet Canbaş. “A Traditional Turkish Lactic Acid Fermented Beverage: Shalgam (Şalgam).” Food Reviews Inter­ national 24, no. 3 (2008): 352–359), and hardaliye, a drink made of grapes and mustard seed, among other constituents (see: Çoşkun, Fatma. “A Traditional Turkish Fermented Non-Alcoholic Grape-Based Beverage, ‘Hardaliye.’” Beverages 3, no. 1 (2017; doi:10.3390/beverages3010002): 1–11. 13 Georgeon, “Ottomans and Drinkers,” 7–11; and, Matthee, Rudi. “Alcohol in the Islamic Middle East: Ambivalence and Ambiguity.” Past and Present 222, supplement 9 (2014): 100–125; 101–107. Also, as a social history of beverages

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14

15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

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in the Middle East, see: Hattox, Ralph S. Coffee and Coffeehouses: The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East. Seattle: University of Washing­ ton Press, 1988. Georgeon, “Ottomans and Drinkers,” 7–23; and, Matthee, “Alcohol in the Islamic,” 107–119. Indeed, a comparable examples exist in Persian history, as well; Matthee, Rudi. The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500–1900. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. Georgeon, “Ottomans and Drinkers,” 8–9. On the concept of the millet and the Ottoman millet system, see: Ursinus, Michael O.H. “Millet.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, second edition, edited by Peri J. Bearman, Thierry Bianquis, Clifford Edmund Bosworth, Emeri van Donzel, and Wolfhart P. Heinrichs. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Online at: http://dx.doi. org.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0741 (last accessed 15 May 2017). Abu Jaber, Kamel S. “The Millet System in the Nineteenth Cen­ tury Ottoman Empire.” The Muslim World 57, no. 3 (1967): 212–223. Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 51–52. Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 51. Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 51. Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 51. Georgeon, “Ottomans and Drinkers,” 15–23. Köse, Yavuz. Westlicher Konsum am Bosporus: Warenhäuser, Nestlé & Co im späten Osmanischen Reich (1855–1923). Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010, 151 and 170; cited by Fuhrmann, Malte. “Beer, the Drink of a Changing World: Beer Consumption and Production on the Shores of the Aegean in the nineteenth Century.” Turcica 45 (2014): 79–123, 85–86. Fuhrmann, “Beer, the Drink of,” 89–91. Fuhrmann, “Beer, the Drink of,” 89–91. Fuhrmann, “Beer, the Drink of,” 89–91. Such characterisations about Bomonti exist even in official governmental sources; TBMM, TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, 26 April 1940, 159–167. Fuhrmann, “Beer, the Drink of,” 95–100. Georgeon, “Ottomans and Drinkers,” 24; and, Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 50–58. Georgeon, “Ottomans and Drinkers,” 24; and, Evered and Evered, “A Geopol­ itics of Drinking,” 50–58. See also: Fuhrmann, “Beer, the Drink of,” 101–104. Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 53–58. Outlining beer’s inclusion in a rhetoric of xenophobia in both Ottoman Anato­ lia and Salonica, see: Fuhrmann, “Beer, the Drink of,” 104–115. Üçüncü, Uğur. Milli Mücadele Yıllarında bir Yasak Denemesi: Men-i Müskirat (İçki Yasağı) Kanunu ve Toplumsal Hayata Yansımaları. Konya: Çizgi Kitabevi, 2012, 15; and, Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 51–52. Briefly covering this period, with a particular eye towards secularisation, see: Erdoğan, Mustafa. “Islam in Turkish Politics: Turkey’s Quest for Democracy Without Islam.” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 8 (1999): 25–49, 31–34. Noting the organisation’s continued significance and its recent incorporation as a governmental organisation dealing with all range of addiction problems, see: Evered, Kyle T. and Emine Ö. Evered. “‘Not Just Eliminating the Mosquito but Draining the Swamp:’ A Critical Geopolitics of TUBİM and Turkey’s Approach to Illicit Drugs.” International Journal of Drug Policy 33 (2016): 6–14. On the construction of Turkish identity in the early republic, see: Hale Yılmaz, Becoming Turkish: Nationalist Reforms and Cultural Negotiations in Early Republican Turkey (1923–1945). Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2013.

118 Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered 36 Analyzing Istanbul’s occupation, note: Mills, Amy, The Cultural Geopolitics of Ethnic Nationalism: Turkish Urbanism in Occupied Istanbul (1918–1923). Annals of the American Association of Geographers 107 (2017): 1179–1193. 37 On the influence exerted by the remaining Caliphate during this period and the geopolitical circumstances of its eventual abolition in 1924, see: Evered, Emine Ö. and Kyle T. Evered. “Decolonization through Secularization: A Geopolitical Reframing of Turkey’s 1924 Abolition of the Caliphate.” The Arab World Geographer 13, no. 1 (2010), 1–19. 38 TBMM, TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, 28 April 1336/1920, 114; cited in Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 53. 39 Covering precisely this topic in our previous study (i.e., Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking”), for complementary coverage of how this episode played out in some of the newspapers and popular discourse of the day, see: Üçüncü, Milli Mücadele Yıllarında bir. 40 Noting this large number of physicians serving as parliamentarians in early republican politics, see: Tınal, “Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi,” cited in Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 53. 41 Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 53. 42 Upon completion, these special committees read their reports into the parlia­ mentary record in the following month of May 1920; TBMM, TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, 17 May 1920, 329–333; cited in Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 53. 43 Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 53–54.

44 Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 54.

45 TBMM, TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, 17 May 1920, 329–333; cited in Evered and

Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 53–54. 46 Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 56–57. 47 TBMM, TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, 14 September 1920, 138–151; cited in Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 57. 48 TBMM, TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, 14 September 1920, 138–151; cited in Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 57. 49 Resmî Gazete, “Men-і Müskirat Kanunu (14 September 1920),” 28 February 1921; cited in Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 57. 50 Providing an excellent overview of America’s Prohibition, see: Okrent, Daniel, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. New York: Scribner, 2010. 51 Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 57–58. 52 Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 57–58. 53 Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 58. 54 Üçüncü, Milli Mücadele Yıllarında bir, 117–124. 55 TBMM, TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, 8 April 1924, 417–424; cited in Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 58. 56 Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 58. 57 Again, recall: Erdoğan, “Islam in Turkish Politics,” 31–34. 58 Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 58. 59 TBMM, TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi [later republic-era parliamentary proceedings; successor to TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi], April 1924, 417–424. 60 TBMM, TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, 8 April 1924, 418–419; emphasis on “non-alcoholic” added by authors. 61 TBMM, TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, 8 April 1924, 419. 62 TBMM, TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, 11 November 1924, 172. 63 TBMM, TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, 21 January 1925, 241. 64 TBMM, TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, 21 January 1925, 241–242. 65 TBMM, TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, 21 January 1925, 242.

Between promotions and prohibitions 119 66 Doğan, Yıldırım B., “Turkey: Drinking Behaviour in a Changing Society.” British Journal of Addiction 77 (1982): 209–210. 67 The state facilitated this 1926 incorporation of alcohol with Law no. 790; Resmî Gazete, “İspirto ve Meşrubatı Küuliye İnhisarı Hakkında Kanun (22 March 1926),” 3 April 1926. 68 Evered and Evered, “A Geopolitics of Drinking,” 54; citing: Donald C. Blaisdell, European Financial Control in the Ottoman Empire: A Study of the Establishment, Activities, and Significance of the Administration of the Ottoman Public Debt. New York: Columbia University Press, 1929. 69 On TEKEL’s history, see: Doğruel, Fatma and A. Suut Doğruel. Osmanlı’dan Günümüze TEKEL. Istanbul: Türkiye Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakfı, 2000. 70 TBMM, TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, 26 April 1940, 159–167. This rationale of promoting beer over rakı was based largely on the fact that rakı has a higher percentage of alcohol than beer – which was even designated as “non-alcoholic” during periods of the twentieth century, on the one hand, and the assumption that rakı was the main source of alcoholism – and thus disorder, on the other hand; as covered in subsequent sections, these ideas – nurtured by proponents of beer – became sources of significant contention. 71 Miller, Fred and Ahmet Hamdi Demirel. “Efes Pilsen in the Turkish Beer Market: Marketing Consumer Goods in Developing Countries.” International Marketing Review 5 (1988): 7–19, 8. 72 On the histories and politics of this site from the time of design through our present day, see: Evered, Kyle T. and Emine Ö. Evered. “Ankara’s Forest Farm and the Turkish Nation: Modern Narratives of Agriculture, Identity, and Con­ testation.” In The City as Power: Urban Space, Place, and National Identity, edited by Alexander C. Diener and Joshua Hagen, 71–78. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. Discussing this site and others within the wider context of Ankara’s construction and the emergent Turkish nation, see: Evered, Kyle T., “Symbolizing a Modern Anatolia: Ankara as Capital in Turkey’s Early Republican Landscape.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 28, no. 2 (2008), 326–341. 73 Evered and Evered, “Atatürk Orman Çiftliği and.” 74 Addressing how the brewery and other key structures were part of an overall design plan for AOÇ, see: Leyla Alpagut, “Atatürk Orman Çiftliği’nde Ernst Egli’nin İzleri: Planlama, Bira Fabrikası, Konutlar ve ‘Geleneksel’ bir Hamam.” METU Journal of the Faculty of Architecture 27 (2010): 239–264. 75 Evered and Evered, “Atatürk Orman Çiftliği and.” 76 Among AOÇ products, there were many packaged foods – a novelty in the new Turkey. Providing insight to this culture of consumerism as it related to apart­ ment homes and ideals of domesticity, see: Gürel, Meltem Ö., “Defining and Living out the Interior: The ‘Modern’ Apartment and the ‘Urban’ Housewife in Turkey during the 1950s and 1960s.” Gender, Place, and Culture 16 (2009): 703–722. 77 Doğan, “Turkey,” 209. 78 Such criticisms arose, nonetheless, and were expressed openly by a number of MPs in parliament; TBMM, TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, 6 July 1939, 130–135. 79 TBMM Zabit Ceridesi, 6 July 1939, 135. 80 Cumhuriyet [Turkish news source]. “Bira Fiyatları.” Cumhuriyet, 1 August 1939, 3. 81 On reforms for women in the Turkish republic, see: Deniz Kandiyoti, “End of Empire: Islam, Nationalism and Women in Turkey.” In Women, Islam and the State, edited by Deniz Kandiyoti, 22–47. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991. 82 Doğruel and Doğruel, Osmanlı’dan Günümüze TEKEL, 257.

120 Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered 83 Author translation for this chapter; figure source: Doğruel and Doğruel, Osmanlı’dan Günümüze TEKEL, 257. 84 Cumhuriyet. [TEKEL advertisement for its Bomonti factory’s beer garden] Cumhuriyet, 30 April 1949, 6. 85 Arguably, the two goals of democratisation and an entirely free market were one and the same. 86 Contextualising the Ottoman-to-republic historical development and subse­ quent economic experience in Turkey, see: Keyder, State and Class in. 87 Miller and Demirel, “Efes Pilsen in the,” 9. 88 Miller and Demirel, “Efes Pilsen in the,” 9. 89 Miller and Demirel, “Efes Pilsen in the,” 9. 90 Miller and Demirel, “Efes Pilsen in the,” 10. 91 Hüseyin Kuzu, “Kapağın Altındaki Kӧpük.” Cumhuriyet, 18 August 1982, 5. 92 Doğan, “Turkey,” 210. 93 For example, the company also promoted its product by holding lotteries; Doğan, “Turkey,” 210. 94 Doğan, “Turkey,” 210. 95 Cumhuriyet. [Efes Pilsen advertisement; “an Efes Pilsen, please!”] Cumhuriyet, 8 September 1969, 6. 96 Cumhuriyet. [Efes Pilsen advertisement; “the real beer you seek”] Cumhuriyet, 14 December 1969, 3. 97 Cumhuriyet. [Efes Pilsen advertisement; “the six-pack’s first time in Turkey”] Cumhuriyet, 16 January 1970, 7. 98 Cumhuriyet. [Efes Pilsen advertisement; “Blond or Brunette?”] Cumhuriyet, 5 February 1970, 5. 99 Milliyet. [Efes Pilsen advertisement; “the real beer for the young”] Milliyet, 16 April 1970, 3. 100 Cumhuriyet. [Efes Pilsen advertisement; Efes Pilsen’s fourth birthday party] Cumhuriyet, 25 August 1972. 101 Miller and Demirel, “Efes Pilsen in the,” 16. 102 Kuzu, “Kapağın Altındaki Kӧpük,” 5. 103 Miller and Demirel, “Efes Pilsen in the,” 16. 104 Miller and Demirel, “Efes Pilsen in the,” 16. 105 Historicising the marketing of beer, especially in the 1970s and early 1980s, along with associated advertising campaigns and strategies, see: Miller and Demirel, “Efes Pilsen in the.” 106 As discernable through Article 58 of the resulting constitution of 7 November 1982. 107 The 7 November 1982 constitution, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Anayasası, 1982 (Law no. 2709), featured Article 58; it consisted of just two extended sentences that declared: “The State shall take measures to ensure the education and develop­ ment of the youth into whose keeping our independence and our Republic are entrusted, in the light of positive science, in line with the principles and reforms of Atatürk, and in opposition to ideas aiming at the destruction of the indivis­ ible integrity of the State with its territory and nation. The State shall take necessary measures to protect youth from addiction to alcohol and drugs, crime, gambling, and similar vices, and ignorance.” Important in the early 1980s, partial citing of just the second sentence was critical in the prohibitionist politics of 2013; Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran,” citing Turkish government’s English-language translation, published initially in Turkish in Resmî Gazete, 9 November 1982. 108 Miller and Demirel, “Efes Pilsen in the,” 16. 109 Miller and Demirel, “Efes Pilsen in the,” 16.

Between promotions and prohibitions 121 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122

123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140

141 142

For example, Milliyet, “Bira Olayındaki Gerçek,” Milliyet, 11 June 1984, 7. Milliyet, “Bira Olayındaki Gerçek,” Milliyet, 11 June 1984, 7. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 341–343. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 341–355. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 341–372. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 351. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 353. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 355. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 355. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 353–354. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 353. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 350–351. In this instance, Budak references a period between 1965 and 1974 when beer’s non-alcoholic designation seemingly lapsed, but only insofar as it permitted police and security personnel to inspect related sites (e.g., of its sale, consump­ tion, etc.). In this regard, the state amended Law no. 2559, “Polis Vazife ve Sal­ ahiyet Kanunu (4 July 1934)” (Resmî Gazete, 14 July 1934) on 16 July 1965 but then – according to Budak – reversed back to the status quo (with regards to beer) in 1974; TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 350–351. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 350–351. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 351. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 351. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 351. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 351–352. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 350–372. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 341–372. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 356. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 356–360. TBMM, TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, 14 June 1984, 356–360. Miller and Demirel, “Efes Pilsen in the,” 16–17. Discussing these marketing innovations, note the company’s own online history; Efes Pilsen, “Tarihçemiz,” www.anadoluefes.com.tr/hakkimizda/tarihcemiz (last accessed 4 July 2017). As discussed on the architecture and design website Akıl İşleri; “Efes Pilsen BİP Projesi,” www.akilisleri.com/islerimiz/musterilerimiz/efes-pilsen/efes-pilsen­ bip-projesi (last accessed 4 July 2017). Hürriyet Haber. “Birahaneleri ‘Turkish Pub’la İyileştirme Projesi.” Hürriyet Haber, 27 January 2002. www.hurriyet.com.tr/birahaneleri-turkish-pub-la-iyiles tirme-plani-38,344,151 (last accessed 4 July 2017). Tarih Vakfı. “Biranın Binlerce Yıllık Tarihi Darphane’de!” 7 November 2005, www.marjinal.com.tr/basin/detaytum.asp?mus=tarihvakfi&id=51 (last accessed 4 July 2017). Ercan Eren, Geçmişten Günümüze Anadolu’da Bira. Istanbul: Türkiye Ekono­ mik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakfı, 2005. With the foundation Tarih Vakfı, for example; online at: http://tarihvakfi.org.tr/ (last accessed 4 July2017). On the rise and spread of neoliberalism in Turkey – and informing the role of Islam and the influence of institutions like the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and World Bank, see: Atasoy, Yıldız, Islam’s Marriage with Neoliberal­ ism: State Transformation in Turkey. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Resmî Gazete. “Tütün ve Alkol Piyasası Düzenleme Kurumu Teşkilat ve Görevleri Hakkında Kanun (3 January 2002),” 9 January 2002, Law no. 4733. Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran,” 42–48.

122 Emine Ö. Evered and Kyle T. Evered 143 Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran,” 45–46. 144 Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran.” 145 Resmî Gazete. “Alkollü İçki Reklamlarında Uyulacak İlkeler Hakkında Tebliğ,” 18 January 2005, Law no. 5040. 146 Anadolu Efes, “Kulüp Tarihçesi”; Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran,” 48. 147 Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran,” 48–49. 148 Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran,” 48–49. 149 Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran,” 48–49. 150 Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran,” 48–49. 151 Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran,” 48–49. 152 Kızılot, “Alkollü İçki ÖTV’sinde Dünya,” cited in Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran,” 50. 153 Çalışkan, “Rakı Vergisine Yüzde 655 Zam,” cited in Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran,” 50. 154 On Turkey’s present state of human rights, see: Human Rights Watch. “World Report 2017.” 155 Agence France-Presse. “Turkish Authorities Have Detained.” 156 On Gezi Park protests – with coverage of alcohol, see: Evered, Kyle T., “Eras­ ing the Place of Dissent: Inscriptions and Eliminations of Gezi Park Graffiti.” Area 51, no. 1 (2019): 155–165. 157 For example, see: Arango, Tim, “Resisting by raising a glass.” The New York Times, 9 June 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/06/10/world/europe/pushing-back­ and-raising-a-glass-in-turkey.html (last accessed 17 July 2017). 158 Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran.” 159 Chan, Margaret, “Support for Strong Alcohol Policies: Opening Address at the Global Alcohol Policy Symposium, Istanbul Turkey.” Delivered 26 April 2016, www.who.int/dg/speeches/2013/global_alcohol_policy_symposium_20130426/en/ (last accessed 17 July 2017), cited in Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran,” 50–51. 160 HaberTürk, “Başbakan’dan ‘Alkol’ Çıkışı!” www.haberturk.com/canliyayin/ 88179-hava-durumu (last accessed 04 January 2020). 161 Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran,” 52. 162 Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran,” 52. 163 Evered, “Erasing the Place of.” 164 Evered, “Erasing the Place of.” 165 Summarising and analysing the new law and associated debates – and citing relevant sections from TBMM Tutanak Dergisi, see: Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran,” 51–54. 166 Resmî Gazete, “Bazı Kanunlar ile 375.” 167 Outlining these provisions in greater detail, see: Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran,” 53–54. 168 Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran,” 52. 169 Evered and Evered, “From Rakı to Ayran.”

6

Good hope for the pilsner Commerce, culture and the consumption of the pilsner beer in British Southern Africa, c. 1870–1914 Malcolm F. Purinton

In 1885, the British Brewer’s Journal exclaimed, “Nothing more strikingly exemplifies the wide influence of England all over the world than the way in which our national beverage, beer, finds its way to all quarters of the globe.”1 This boast, however, proved short-lived: within 15 years, consumers worldwide had turned overwhelmingly to drinking Continental pilsner beer. Pilsner-style beer today constitutes around three-quarters of all beer consumed and produced in the world, with the top four pilsner-style brewers – Anheuser-Bush InBev, SABMiller, Heineken and Carlsberg – accounting for over half the global market for beer.2 Between 1870 and 1914, the pilsner style of beer developed from a Continental beer to one with global reach in nations and colonies that had no direct political or economic links to the major lager producers. Each new beer market necessarily has its own story regarding the arrival and acceptance of this beer style; this chapter uses British South Africa as a case study to highlight the consumer choices made in a British settler colony. In order for pilsner to dominate in South Africa (or any British settler colony), it had to triumph over well-established British beer styles, brewing methods and cultural perceptions of the lager. In other words, for the adoption of pilsner beer to succeed in British settlement colonies such as South Africa, taste had to triumph over colonists’ loyalty to their empire’s own breweries and beer styles. While in South Africa and in fact in the other settler colonies of Australia, New Zealand and Canada many settlers went to great lengths to retain a high level of “Britishness” through the purchase of imperial commodities such as cotton and foodstuffs, they did not do so in their choices of beer.3 The break between British settlers and their country of origin in regard to beer consumption is a unique element of their colonial experience. In comparison, as Groeneveld’s chapter on drinking cultures in colonial Qingdao shows, other European colonisers sought to replicate with precision the beers of their homeland.4 This chapter explores this phenomenon by looking at the South African brewing industry, which went from an industry based on British beer styles to one dominated by the pilsner between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

124 Malcolm F. Purinton South Africa is an ideal choice for a case study because of the surfeit of available sources regarding beer production and consumption at the end of the nineteenth century. The transition from British style ales to German style lagers in South Africa brings together each element of change seen in Europe, including the adoption of new technology and science through education and the establishment of European business practices for capital investment. The case of South Africa is also emblematic of other British settlement colonies including Australia where lager production and consumption developed around the turn of the twentieth century through the influence of Continental lager importation and changing tastes.5 Several books and articles have explored the history of alcohol in South Africa, but nearly all of these focus on the twentieth century and especially the Apartheid era.6 These works have mostly traced race relations without dealing with history before World War I. This chapter concentrates on the beer styles white European settlers and the local white Afrikaners (descendants of Dutch settlers) chose to produce and consume and their methods for doing so. Beer production by black South Africans is not looked at here because it involved local varieties of beer using local grains and different indigenous techniques for brewing that were not influenced significantly by the spread of pilsner beer.7 European colonial control over African alcohol use sought to prohibit indigenous populations from purchasing and consuming European-produced beer, wine and spirits for the most part by the end of the nineteenth century.8 Hence, black South Africans’ beer production and consumption did not impact white South African brewers or beer importers with European connections.9 This chapter fills a lacuna in the history of beer production and consumption in South Africa and in the transnational flow of brewing techniques and drinking styles. It explains how European brewing techniques and innovations affected colonial beer production and preferences. It is argued that even though South Africa was a British settler colony, its beer industry changed due to influence from Continental lager brewers and their use of new business strategies, scientific brewing methods and technologies as well as European migrations to these colonies after diamonds and gold were found in abundance towards the end of the nineteenth century.

The context South Africa has a long history of beer brewing that begins with the original European colonists in 1652. The Dutch established a makeshift brewery shortly after their arrival and declared the area around Table Mountain to be the Dutch Cape Colony, led by Jan van Reibeeck.10 The transition from amateur to professional brewing occurred soon after the establishment of the original Dutch colony. In 1694, the first professionally trained brewer for the colony, Rutgert Mensing, arrived from Amsterdam after being specially selected by the

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11

Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC). Mensing received land and support from the colonial Governor and set up his brewery in Newlands on a piece of land called Papenboom.12 The Newlands area of Cape Town, around the eastern edge of Devil’s Peak and Table Mountain, has been the centre of South Africa’s brewing industry from the first Dutch settlers in the 1650s. Reasons for this included abundant streams running from the mountain, good soil and relief from the Southeast winds.13 Even though it was difficult to obtain good yeast and hops, the first settlers refused to give up trying to brew beer and were eventually successful in 1658. Jan Van Riebeeck, the colonial administrator, ordered the building of a special brewhouse in 1659 just outside the fort’s walls.14 A few years later, the first private licenses for beer production were issued in 1664 and the sale of beer and liquor leases became an important source of revenue for the Dutch East India Company, in spite of the arrival of substantial beer imports from European ships.15 Early European settlers and their descendants: Afrikaners The early, mainly Dutch settlers became known as Afrikaners, pejoratively known as Boers.16 The colony existed as a way station for European ships going between Europe and Southeast Asia and was often referred to as the “Tavern of the Sea.”17 There were few natural resources for trading due to a lack of forests, fertile fields and enough rainfall for extensive agriculture. While the colony produced wine and meat, they were of such poor quality that European investment remained light.18 In spite of the lack of raw materials and investment, the Cape Colony maintained enough importance as a stopping point for traders to allow for permanent settlements around Cape Town to develop. When the British officially took control of the Cape Colony in 1806, the Afrikaner population resisted the enforced Anglicisation of the colony. Throughout the nineteenth century, the British imposed their education, architecture, government, social and leisure activities, and economic networks.19 The Afrikaner rejection of British culture and society had consequences for the brewing industry in the Cape Colony and the rest of South Africa over the following century. As the British expanded their influence via colonisation, the Afrikaner community attempted to out-distance them by migrating east out of British control. They did this several times, first from the Cape Colony during the 1830s and 1840s (known as the Great Trek), and then later from Natal in 1843 when the British established the British Natal Colony.20 Due to these out-migrations, the colonial population in the British South African colonies continued to be dominated by the British through the end of the nineteenth century. This meant that if the local brewers wanted to do well, they had to produce beer preferred by their customers: British ales. Migration played an important role in the adoption of pilsner lagers in southern Africa through the influence of nearby German colonies and the

126 Malcolm F. Purinton Mineral Revolution of South Africa when diamonds and gold were found in abundance during the late nineteenth century, setting off waves of inmigration of miners from all over the world, though mostly from Europe. The next sections will focus on the choices in beer style and technology, the business strategies of colonial brewers, and the role of immigration to the colonies and its impact on decisions in the production and consumption of different beer styles. It will conclude with an analysis of the foundation of South African Breweries Ltd and the domination of lager beer in the British South African colonies by the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century.

Modern brewing: technology and styles The perception of what accounted for modern brewing changed considerably over the course of the nineteenth century both in Southern Africa and in Europe and the rest of the world. From the early part of the nineteenth century brewers and beer consumers, especially in Cape Town, considered British beer production and styles as the pinnacle of modern brewing. It was not until they met with competition from the production of lager beers by South African Breweries Ltd in the 1890s that the most well established local South African brewers in Cape Town began to change their own production to meet the new demand. Between 1870 and 1900, brewing in South Africa followed a similar trajectory to European brewing in the growing importance of science in beer production and in the various technological implements used in the brewing process. There are two important transitions we must consider when looking at science and technology in South African brewing. The first was the transition from practical to scientific brewing. The application of scientific knowledge to brewing created sharp divides between “scientific” brewers who drew on microbiology and chemistry on the one hand and “practical” brewers who continued to use traditional brewing methods. For the most part, “scientific” brewing was a Continental choice while the British followed tradition. Continental breweries employed scientists and scientific knowledge in order to guarantee consistent, high quality beer. The turn to scientific brewing in Southern Africa occurred at more or less the same time as it did in Europe, but after the 1890s it became even more important in South Africa than in Europe. The second transition was the lowering status and importance of British ale brewing knowledge and equipment in favour of Continental lager brewing that occurred during the second half of the 1890s. The industrialisation of the brewing industry in Southern Africa began in Cape Town. The first successful modern brewer in the Cape Colony was a Swedish businessman named Jacob Letterstedt who established the Mariendahl brewery and Josephine’s Mill in the Newlands area on the far side of Devil’s Peak from Cape Town.21 Letterstedt produced British-style

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ales and imported skilled Swedish labourers and modern brewing equipment from England in the late 1830s.22 During this period the British brewers were known to produce the best quality beer and their brewing methods were considered the best in the world, especially when compared with German beer at the time. According to J.C. Jacobsen, the founder of Carlsberg in Denmark, Continental European beer was “sold new, half fermented only, and never bright and clear. Of course it quickly turned sour, and, as a rule, was drink [sic] more or less raw.”23 Throughout the middle of the nineteenth century, Letterstedt took several voyages to Europe to visit his home country of Sweden and update his knowledge about current brewing technology and techniques via stops in London.24 During his fourth trip between 1855 and 1858, however, he took care to visit Munich for a close study of the breweries there.25 The results of this trip led to the building of a new brewery in 1859 that included freshly imported European equipment. However, as Letterstedt advertised on 18 February 1859 the selection of beers would be limited to “any quantity of Cape Ale” instead of the Bavarian style lagers he, no doubt, had tasted in Munich.26 Even two decades later with the rising popularity of pilsner becoming much more well known, the firm maintained its focus on Britishstyle ales including pale ales and stouts and with the help of visiting British brewers they helped design and install English-made brewing equipment “on the most recent European models”.27 Though the Letterstedt brewery firm continued on after its founder’s death, the most prominent brewer in the Cape Colony from the early 1880s through the beginning of the twentieth century and for some time in South Africa as a whole was Anders Ohlsson who began his own brewery in Newlands in 1880.28 Wanting to build a modern brewery, Ohlsson looked to England and contracted the design and construction to Henry Pontifex & Sons of Albion Works at King’s Cross in London.29 The architects and engineers of Pontifex were well known for designing English breweries and had recently worked on another brewery in Cape Town,30 likely Letterstedt’s Mariendahl Brewery.31 They used an English brewery design, built with English oak, and installed English brewing equipment including an English Steele mashing machine.32 Ohlsson’s devotion to the British system of brewing included sending his head brewer to England to train with Mr W.J. Green of Cannon Brewery in Watford rather than having him attend a Continental brewing school.33 He later hired a brewer from England in 1883 to continue producing British pale ales, porters and stouts for the colonies in South Africa because it was easier and cheaper, and there was a strong market for locally made British beer.34 For example, the owner of the Cape Town Café Royal sold only colonial ale – rather than lager-style beers – because “the colonial beer has been so good [my] customers seem to prefer the colonial. It is never questioned with me whether it is colonial or English.”35

128 Malcolm F. Purinton Ohlsson’s brewery set out to brew British-style ales and succeeded in producing high quality pale ales, porters and stouts quite quickly.36 Within a year, they won first prize for the “best hogshead of Cape-made draught ale” and second prize for their Cape-made stout at the 1882 Cape Town “Grand Show” of crops, animals, and produce.37 The role of tickey beer The brewing industry in the 1880s produced only British-style ales for export to other Southern African colonies and for local consumption by British colonists and Malays.38 The beer produced included porter, export ale and a local style known as tickey beer. Tickey beer was similar to the lower-alcohol and lighter-coloured running ales produced in Great Britain after 1875.39 It also had a short shelf life and was cheaper than other styles of beer. It had a quick turnaround for the brewers so that they could make more money by producing large quantities. Had they been brewing lagers the turnaround would have been months instead of days.40 The Inspector of Excise in Cape Town, Thomas Crowe, noted that “tickey beer would compare with the lowclass ales in England” and the brewers mostly agreed.41 However, they did argue that while the “low-class” English beer corresponded in strength, tickey beer was different due to the needs of the different climate and hence the required addition of molasses for carbonation.42 Tickey was the most important beer for the brewers because it made the most money and was consumed by more people due to its low cost and lighter flavour and colour. For instance, in 1883 Ohlsson’s brewery produced five hogsheads of tickey to one of the higher-alcohol pale ale; the prosperity of the brewery was dependent upon this style of beer.43 The head brewer and manager of the technical part of Cloete’s brewery, R.V. Smith, said that they made 30 times more tickey beer than export ale and stout as well as about ten times more than pale ale or porter.44 In 1884, Ohlsson’s brewery produced around 30 hogsheads of beer, a majority being tickey beer. After an excise act put a higher duty on the beer, prices rose and the brewery produced less than three hogsheads.45 Still, tickey beer was a precursor to the adoption of golden lager beers as it shared its lighter colour and lower ABV or alcohol by volume. By the twentieth century tickey beer would be on its way out as the pilsner style came to dominate the beer markets of South Africa. The development of a modern brewing industry in the South African colonies required modern brewing equipment like that bought and imported by Jacob Letterstedt during his tenure as owner of the Mariendahl Brewery in Cape Town. The equipment he chose to import and the consultants he hired to build his modernising breweries were all British. This was because Cape Colony brewers were as adamant as British brewers in their devotion to the British methods of brewing beer. As mentioned earlier, Ohlsson was dedicated to British training and brewing methods in his Cape breweries. He

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sent his brewer to England for training and hired the English company Pontifex to design his Newlands brewery. Another brewery, Cloete’s, also held to the traditional British methods of brewing and employed a “practical” brewer but slowly began to make use of scientific methods similar to the Continental brewers in the early 1880s and, when pushed, admitted that scientific methods led to better results. In 1885, the Treasurer-General of the colony questioned Captain John Spence of Cloete’s Brewery about the training of his head brewer. The Treasurer-General went to lengths to question why Spence’s brewer was not a “scientific brewer”, and whether they had attempted to get a scientific brewer to train him. Spence defended his “practical brewer” but said that while he was not better than one with a scientific background, he was just as good. Continued questioning revolved around the adoption of scientific and “systematic” brewing methods with the assumption by the Treasurer-General that brewing beer based upon scientific methods, like those used in Continental Europe, were the best. While Spence defended his current brewing methods and brewer, he admitted that since they began incorporating a more scientific approach to brewing, their production had become much better and more efficient.46 Within the next ten years, the transition from British to Continental – practical to scientific – brewing methods and the preferred styles of beer they produce was complete. The loyalty to traditional methods of brewing that we see here gave way to a market dominated by Continental lager beers produced by South African companies, including Ohlsson’s Cape Breweries by the beginning of the twentieth century. One way this occurred was by better investment accumulation through incorporation.

Modern brewing: business strategies During the 1880s, the South African brewing industry in Cape Colony was concentrated in the hands of a few privately owned companies. The strategies of these breweries in expanding their market control were the same as those of British breweries. Their management choices remained similar to those of breweries’ founders rather than relying on professionally trained managers. In addition, Cape brewers also engaged in tied trade, purchasing and investing in retail outlets to maintain and expand market control like the British.47 After beginning his own brewery in 1880, Ohlsson succeeded in expanding his production through purchasing other local breweries and by the 1890s became the largest beer producer in the South African colonies. Ohlsson’s strategy followed the British pattern of merger and acquisition.48 Ohlsson and other Cape brewers like Cloete’s utilised a tied house system to control the local market.49 This worked so well through the middle of the 1880s that when a new brewery, Van Rhyn, entered into the local market, Ohlsson lost no trade because of the tied trade he had built up in Cape Town.50 Like the British, Cape Colony brewers were hesitant to exploit the

130 Malcolm F. Purinton opportunities of the Second Industrial Revolution. With their small geographical size, lack of local raw materials and ability to be financially successful in their home market, most of the Cape brewers were not attracted to investments in production, distribution and management that could help them exploit economies of scale.51 Yet at the same time the tied trade strategy was in use, some breweries attempted to raise capital via investment through becoming Limited Liability Companies (LLCs). While LLCs had been growing in popularity for several decades in Europe, they did not become popular in the South Africa brewing industry until the late 1880s. LLCs offered many benefits to investors by limiting their risks if a business did not succeed and/or went bankrupt. If an LLC failed, the investors would only be responsible for their original investment and no other costs that may have accrued. Two South African brewery firms, Cloete’s and Van Rhyn’s, attempted to float their breweries as LLCs around 1885. In spite of high hopes for investment capital from England and glowing prospectuses, neither brewery succeeded due to local economic downturn and poor markets.52 However, by the late 1880s Ohlsson found himself in the same predicament as the leading British brewers who wished to continue to expand their production and distribution but required more investment to do so. To this end, Ohlsson established his brewery as a Limited Liability Company in 1889. Ohlsson’s Cape Breweries Ltd registered in London with overseas capital of £350,000 to support expansion and updating of the Newlands brewery.53 Ohlsson’s incorporation was quickly profitable for its shareholders, according to their annual general meetings in London.54 In the early 1890s, the firm continued to buy more tied houses to maintain control of the local beer market in South Africa. By following the incorporation trends of Europe and the United States, Ohlsson was able to compete successfully with European imported beers and South African breweries at the time. However, the formation of South African Breweries, Ltd (SAB) represented a new threat to Ohlsson’s market control. The history of SAB shows how successful Continental business strategies that aimed at lager production could be in a colonial market.

From Cape ales to Jo’burg lagers and the role of migration During the early 1890s, the major producers of beer in South Africa were located in Cape Town. Anders Ohlsson’s brewery held the top position for several years and continued to do well producing British ales and tickey beer. However, by the end of the 1890s he lost his lead to South African Breweries, an LLC based in Johannesburg, which quickly came to dominate the region with its Castle Lager beer.55 This transition in market power and consumption occurred because of migration to the Transvaal gold fields, the support of British investors and the adoption of scientific brewing and new brewing technologies from Europe.

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While the Dutch had been the first Europeans to settle and brew beer in southern Africa, large migrant influxes of French, Scandinavian, German and British populated the South African colonies up to the early twentieth century. Immigration flows during the nineteenth century in particular constitute an important part of the history of pilsner in South Africa because of the concomitant flows of certain communities’ consumer tastes and commodities catering for them. Several key moments in the history of South Africa are linked to immigration and internal migration and are especially important to the spread of golden lagers. These include the discovery of diamonds in the Cape Colony along the Orange River (1867), the Transvaal War (also known as the First Boer War, 1880–1881), the annexation of Southwest Africa by Germany (1884), the discovery of gold in the Transvaal (1886), the Anglo-German Treaty (1890) and the South African War – also known as the Second Boer War (1899–1902). Each of these events led to large-scale movements of people (mostly of men) to southern Africa and the creation of new consumer markets for both locally produced and imported beer. Over the course of the late nineteenth century the options for consumers changed, influenced by the demographic makeup of the consumers. Particularly important in this context was the transformation of the Transvaal on account of the growth of gold mining and the concomitant foundation and growth of the city of Johannesburg. The new developments made the region attractive to immigrants from around the world.56 Mineral discoveries led to large migrations of Germans and other Europeans to the Afrikaner-controlled areas in southern Africa. The discovery of diamonds in the Northern Cape in 1867 and then gold in 1886 in the Transvaal led to rushes of migrants from Germany and many other parts of the world.57 Even with wars breaking out with the British – leading to British control over these areas – the wealth of the mines created a strong and stable market for pilsner beer within these areas.58 The mining operations grew very large, requiring many men to provide labour and live in the camps and nearby towns.59 While in the early days most Germanstyle lagers were imported to the mines, some people saw the potential profits to be made by starting their own breweries including the Englishmen who founded South African Breweries Ltd. In this context, the 1883–4 Berlin Conference was an important occasion, as the most powerful European nations effectively divided Africa into separate colonial regions of control. In southern Africa this meant that the colonies of Transvaal, Cape Colony, Orange Free State and Natal came under British control – although annexation of Transvaal and the Orange Free State by the Afrikaners involved much fighting during the first and second South African Wars. Just north of this region, Germany claimed German South-West Africa. The import of large quantities of German beer and other alcohol followed the German arrival in Southwest Africa. In 1884, roughly 64% of the total weight of exports from Hamburg to Africa consisted of alcohol, including beer.60 Settlers to

132 Malcolm F. Purinton German South-West Africa consumed large amounts of beer, as evidenced by piles of beer bottles left at diamond mines.61 Indeed, of the 167 firms and companies licensed in South-West Africa in 1903, 53 were exclusively or primarily concerned with the alcohol trade.62 The German government supported the export of beer from the metropole by subsidising full shipments to the colonies.63 German-brewed beer, including pilsners, became an important way to fill space in the German ships, particularly because it took up a lot of space and was guaranteed to sell upon arrival.64

Pilsner production in South Africa South African Breweries Ltd South African Breweries Ltd were the first successful lager brewers in the British South African colonies. With the foundation and rapid expansion of SAB in the 1890s the establishment of lager beer as the most popular beer style in South Africa quickly followed. The story of South African Breweries Ltd begins with two Englishmen, Fredrick Mead and George Henry Raw, in the British colony of Natal in 1889 with the foundation of the Natal Brewery Syndicate. They had come to South Africa because of the gold rush, but decided to start a brewery when they realised the potential profits.65 After raising funds in England for the new brewery in Pietermaritzburg (Natal), Mead and Raw started producing British ales and stouts in July 1891.66 The pair soon looked toward the growing centre of the gold rush, Johannesburg. In 1892, they met Charles and Mrs Glass, founders of Castle Brewery, and bought their brewery for the future site of South African Breweries Ltd.67 There are some myths about the early beginnings of SAB. One of the most popular is that Charles Glass set out to make the best (lager) beer for the miners of the Transvaal and that this was how Castle beer became famous. He was said to have experimented with different lager recipes and then brought out the beer on a wheelbarrow to the miners, listening to their comments until he had a perfect recipe. The resulting brew became the now famous Castle Lager.68 In another version, told by SAB itself in a 1961 brochure about the company, it was ale and stout that Mr Glass “hawked” from a horse-drawn trolley.69 However, there is no evidence that these stories are true. Charles Glass and his wife founded Castle Brewing around 1890 in Johannesburg. Mrs Glass did the brewing. The couple sold beer to miners for about two years before Fred Meade arrived from Pietermaritzburg and offered to buy them out. While Meade and Raw decided to keep the name of Castle for their beers, the Natal Brewery Syndicate could not afford to expand the brewery as much as they desired.70 Hence, as many Continental breweries had done, Meade and Raw set about raising money through further incorporation and founded the South African United Breweries Ltd.

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In 1892, South African United Breweries Ltd registered in London with a capital of £100,000 but just a few years later it was restructured as South African Breweries Ltd (SAB) and registered with a capital of £350,000 in order to acquire and expand the property and production of the previous brewery.71 Correspondents at the British Brewers’ Journal reported in 1895 that “they had obtained the concession of the rights for special machinery for South Africa for the manufacture of lager beer”, and that the trade was steadily increasing.72 SAB’s lager was able to compete with imported beers, even though the company had to use locally grown barley malt.73 The lager brewing equipment they obtained came from the United States and used new technology to speed up the lagering process considerably.74 The decision by Meade and Raw to brew lager beer in the Transvaal was due to an awareness of the growing local demand for pilsner. Advertisements for Castle Lager went out in both English and German due to the “large and beer-loving Teutonic section of the Rand (Transvaal) populace”.75 By the end of the 1890s, the popularity of SAB’s lager threatened the importation of German beer from Bremen and Hamburg according to the British Brewers’ Journal.76 SAB effectively utilised Continental brewing methods and business strategies and American machinery to take over the South African beer markets by producing pilsner. Without the business connections and funding possibilities of incorporation, the latest scientific technology developed in Europe and the United States, and the large population of light beer drinkers, Mead and Raw would not have been able to establish a lager brewery in South Africa. SAB quickly dominated the Transvaal and Natal regions of South Africa and soon looked west to the Cape Colony where it went up against the British beer styles and production techniques that had dominated southern Africa for decades. Lager comes to Cape Town In 1899, Ohlsson’s Cape Town brewery felt the increased competition from Johannesburg’s South African Breweries Ltd but did not change its business strategies or the styles of beer it produced. Instead of brewing their own pilsner, Ohlsson attempted to retain market share as the British brewers did, by purchasing tied houses.77 However, control over the local Cape markets was not enough. Ohlsson changed his strategy and built another brewery in 1901 in order to compete in the larger colonial markets.78 The new plant produced both “English and lager beers”.79 The purpose was to capitalise on the popularity of the golden lager produced by SAB in the eastern South African colonies and on the influx of soldiers and refugees from those regions due to the South African War that had begun in 1899.80 Ohlsson needed the new lager brewery to compete with SAB, which had recently purchased property for a new brewery in Cape Town.81

134 Malcolm F. Purinton The lager succeeds When Mrs Ohlsson anchored the foundation stone for the new brewery in the ground with a silver trowel during a well-attended ceremony in 1900, a correspondent from the British Brewers’ Journal compared the event to the sale of a large London brewery over a hundred years before, saying that both were moments of possibility.82 The correspondent emphasised the special nature of the ceremony because it was not the foundation of “an ordinary brewery, such as has existed in Cape Town for years, but that of an entirely new departure”.83 In fact, Ohlsson’s was the first lager brewery in the Cape Colony.84 This was the culmination of the Cape Colony’s transition from an older British-style brewery producing British-style ales through the 1880s to an incorporated, scientific brewery modelled on Continental and German blueprints by the turn of the century. Ohlsson’s new lager brewery was facilitated by shareholder investment and had the latest design and machinery for brewing quality pilsner: “all the requirements of science [had] been adopted regardless of the question of cost.”85 Ohlsson himself noted in 1900 that “there was no comparison between the beer which he found [when he first came to the colony] and that of the present day.”86 Ohlsson’s views were reported in the Brewer’s Journal: He thought it only right for the benefit of the colony that lager beer should be brewed in that country, and that they should not be depend­ ent on Germany and other countries for the imported article. The very best of skill and scientific help had been called in to make the undertak­ ing a success by securing a lager beer equal in all respects to the best brands now being imported into the colony.87 Within ten years, the Cape Colony had transitioned from British to Continental beer styles. Ohlsson’s devotion to British brewery design and ale slowly diminished when faced with direct competition from SAB’s South African lager. The changing markets and tastes had brought about an entirely different beer market in the Cape Colony.

Conclusion This chapter has been about how the pilsner came to South Africa. It focused on the history of brewing in South Africa, changes in consumption and production through immigration and internal migration, the introduction of new scientific approaches to brewing, and the quick transition to lager brewing once SAB established itself in Johannesburg as a strong competitor on the market for alcohol. South Africa offers an example of a region whose white settler communities had formerly been devoted to British beer and brewing methods but came to adopt Continental lager and brewing methods over the

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course of a few decades during the late nineteenth century. Unlike most histories of empire that focus almost exclusively on the dyadic relationship between metropole and colony, this case study highlighted the important role in the establishment of ale and lager breweries in South Africa and the spread of European production methods of imperial trade networks that were fuelled by colonial settlement, European trade and commercial interests, war, the attraction of gold and diamonds, and migration.

Notes 1 Anon.,“Interesting Facts,” Brewers’ Journal, 1/15/1885. 2 David Jones, “Top four brewers account for over half of world’s beer,” Reuters, 10 February 2010, accessed 30 January 2013, www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/ 08/beer-idUSLDE61723K20100208. 3 For more on this see: E. M. Collingham, The Taste of Empire: How Britain’s Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World (New York: Basic Books, 2017); James Walvin, Fruits of Empire: Exotic Produce and British Taste, 1660–1800 (New York: New York University Press, 1997); Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global His­ tory (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015); K. T. Achaya, The Food Industries of Brit­ ish India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994); Roy Moxham, Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003). 4 Sabina Groeneveld, “‘A hotbed of sins’ and ‘just like home’ – Drinking cultures in colonial Qingdao (1897–1914)” in Alcohol Flows Across Cultures, Chapter 7. 5 “British Trade in Lager Beer,” 1916 Allsopp letters, PRO: CO 323/734/22. 6 These include Paul la Hausse, Brewers, Beerhalls, and Boycotts: A History of Liquor in South Africa (Johannesburg, South Africa: Ravan Press, 1988) and Anne Kelk Mager, Beer, Sociability, and Masculinity in South Africa (Blooming­ ton, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010). 7 For more on black South African consumption and production see: Deborah Fahy Bryceson, Alcohol in Africa: Mixing Business, Pleasure, and Politics (Ports­ mouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002); Paul la Hausse, Brewers, Beerhalls, and Boy­ cotts: A History of Liquor in South Africa (Johannesburg, South Africa: Ravan Press, 1988); and Lynn Pan, Alcohol in Colonial Africa (Finland: Aurasen Kirja­ paino, 1975). 8 For more on the history of power and control of alcohol over African popula­ tions by European colonial powers see: Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong, Drink, Power, and Cultural Change: A Social History of Alcohol in Ghana, C. 1800 to Recent Times (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996) and Justin Willis, Potent Brews: A Social History of Alcohol in East Africa, 1850–1999 (London: British Institute in Eastern Africa in association with James Currey, 2002). 9 For more on the state of black South African liquor laws, consumption and pro­ duction see: Paul la Hausse, Brewers, Beerhalls, and Boycotts: A History of Liquor in South Africa (Johannesburg, South Africa: Ravan Press, 1988); Anne Kelk Mager, Beer, Sociability, and Masculinity in South Africa (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010); and Lynn Pan, Alcohol in Colonial Africa (Finland: Aurasen Kirjapaino, 1975). 10 Eric Rosenthal, Tankards and Tradition (Cape Town, SA: Citadel Press, 1961), 12. 11 Rosenthal, Tankards, 21–22. 12 Rosenthal, Tankards, 21–22. 13 Beatrice Law, Papenboom in Newlands: Cradle of the Brewing Industry (Cape Town, SA: B. Law, 2007), 1.

136 Malcolm F. Purinton 14 Rosenthal, Tankards, 12, 17. 15 Law, Papenboom, 2–3. 16 Afrikaners originated as a mix of several European nationalities but their language closely relates to the first white settlers, the Dutch. 17 Thomas Victor Bulpin, Tavern of the Sea: The Story of Cape Town, Robben Island, and the Cape Peninsula (Cape Town, SA: Fish Eagle, 1995). 18 Roger B. Beck, The History of South Africa (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000), 33. 19 Beck, History, 53. 20 Beck, History, 64, 68–69. 21 James Walton, The Josephine Mill and Its Owners: The Story of Milling and Brewing at the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Town, SA: Historical Society of Cape Town, 1978), 51. 22 Walton, The Josephine, 51. 23 J.C. Jacobsen, “Brewing Progress During the Last Fifty Years,” Brewers’ Journal, 1/15/1885, 30. 24 Walton, Josephine, 58. 25 Walton, Josephine, 58. 26 Walton, Josephine, 58. 27 Walton, Josephine, 63, 65. 28 Anon., “New Brewery at Cape Town,” Brewers’ Journal, 12/15/1880, 396. 29 “New Brewery at Cape Town,” Brewers’ Journal, 12/15/1880, 396. 30 “New Brewery at Cape Town,” Brewers’ Journal, 12/15/1880, 396. 31 Walton, Josephine, 73. 32 “New Brewery at Cape Town,” Brewers’ Journal, 12/15/1880, 396. 33 “New Brewery at Cape Town,” Brewers’ Journal, 12/15/1880, 396. 34 Carter, “Report of the Select Committee of the Brewers’ Petition” (Cape of Good Hope, To Votes and Proceedings of Parliament, 1885), line 483. Krawehl, “Brewers’ Petition,” (1885), line 643. 35 Dunn, “Report of the Select Committee of the Brewers’ Petition” (Cape of Good Hope, To Votes and Proceedings of Parliament, 1885), lines 583–612. 36 Walton, Josephine, 73. 37 Walton, Josephine, 74. 38 The Malays had originally arrived as servants and prisoners of the Dutch in the late seventeenth century. Black South Africans were not among the consumers due to their own local production of traditional styles of beer as well as colonial prohibition against the sale of European alcohol and beer to the black popula­ tions. For more on the prohibitions against African consumption of European liquors see Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong, Drink, Power, and Cultural Change: A Social History of Alcohol in Ghana, C. 1800 to Recent Times (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996); Justin Willis, Potent Brews: A Social History of Alcohol in East Africa, 1850–1999 (London: British Institute in Eastern Africa in associ­ ation with James Currey, 2002), and Paul la Hausse, Brewers, Beerhalls, and Boycotts: A History of Liquor in South Africa (Johannesburg, South Africa: Ravan Press, 1988). 39 Running ales were the British brewing industry’s response to the light lagers from the European Continent. They were cheap, low alcohol, and had a quick maturation and turnover. R.G. Wilson, “Changing Taste for Beer in Victorian Britain” in The Dynamics of the International Brewing Industry since 1800 (New York: Routledge, 1998) 99, 103. 40 Frank Thatcher, A Treatise of Practical Brewing and Malting (London: The Country Brewers’ Gazette Limited, 1905), 426–9.

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41 “Report of the Select Committee of the Beer Excise Duty Bill” (Cape of Good Hope, Appendix II, To Votes and Proceedings of Parliament, 1883), lines 65–66. 42 “Report of the Select Committee of the Beer Excise Duty Bill” (Cape of Good Hope, Appendix II, To Votes and Proceedings of Parliament, 1883), lines 65–66. 43 “Report of the Select Committee of the Beer Excise Duty Bill” (Cape of Good Hope, Appendix II, To Votes and Proceedings of Parliament, 1883), lines 209–211; or two-thirds to three-fourths of all production according to Anders Ohlsson, line 465. 44 “Report of the Select Committee of the Beer Excise Duty Bill” (Cape of Good Hope, Appendix II, To Votes and Proceedings of Parliament, 1883), lines 279–280. 45 Ohlsson, “Report of the Select Committee of the Brewers’ Petition” (Cape of Good Hope, To Votes and Proceedings of Parliament, 1885), line 182. 46 Spence, “Report of the Select Committee of the Brewers’ Petition” (Cape of Good Hope, To Votes and Proceedings of Parliament, 1885), line 110–118, 205, 306–307. 47 Ohlsson, “Report of the Select Committee of the Brewers’ Petition” (Cape of Good Hope, To Votes and Proceedings of Parliament, 1885), line 192–194. 48 Alfred Chandler and Takashi Hiino, Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Indus­ trial Capitalism (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1990), 287. 49 Cruse, “Report of the Select Committee of the Brewers’ Petition” (Cape of Good Hope, To Votes and Proceedings of Parliament, 1885), line 334–336. 50 Ohlsson, “Report of the Select Committee of the Brewers’ Petition” (Cape of Good Hope, To Votes and Proceedings of Parliament, 1885), line 191–194. 51 Chandler, Scale, 284, 286. 52 Ohlsson and Spence, “Report of the Select Committee of the Brewers’ Petition” (Cape of Good Hope, To Votes and Proceedings of Parliament, 1885), line 200–204, 295–302. 53 A. Gordon Bagnall, “100 Years of Brewing in South Africa,” in The Story of Ohlssons, Cape Town, SA: S.A. Hotel Reviews: February 1953), 7. 54 “Ohlsson’s Cape Breweries, Limited,” Brewers’ Journal, 7/15/1892, 300–301. 55 “Ohlsson’s Cape Breweries, Limited,” Brewers’ Journal, 7/15/1899, 374. 56 Eero Kuparinen, An African Alternative: Nordic Migration to South Africa, 1815–1914 (Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 1991), 21–22. 57 Kuparinen, African Alternative, 21–22. 58 Beck, History, 77–95. 59 Kuparinen, African Alternative, 21–22. 60 William R. Jankowiak and Daniel Bradburd, Drugs, Labor, and Colonial Expan­ sion (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2003), 123. 61 Jankowiak and Bradburd, Drugs 123. 62 Jankowiak and Bradburd, Drugs 123. 63 Edward Gordon, Sixty Years of Kenya Breweries (Nairobi: Dunford, Hall for Kenya Breweries, 1983). 64 Gordon, Sixty. 65 Rosenthal, Tankards, 123–124. 66 Rosenthal, Tankards, 124–125. 67 Rosenthal, Tankards, 109, 127. 68 du Plessis, Marketing, Vol. 21/07 SAL, 14–15. 69 The Harvest of our Soil, 27. 70 Keeping Pace with the Nation we Serve, 5. 71 “South African United Breweries,” Limited, Brewers Journal, 12/15/1892, 560; “South African Breweries, Limited,” Brewers’ Journal, 6/15/1895, 315. 72 “South African Breweries, Limited,” Brewers’ Journal, 19/15/1895, 475.

138 Malcolm F. Purinton 73 “South African Breweries, Limited,” Brewers’ Journal, 9/15/1895, 475. 74 “Eine Brauerei in der Sudafrikanischen Republik Transvaal,” Allgemeine Brauer und Hopfen Zeitung, 5/14/1897, 955. 75 Rosenthal, Tankards, 128. 76 “The Production and Export of Beer at Hamburg,” Brewers’ Journal, 12/15/ 1898, 891–892. 77 “Ohlsson’s Cape Breweries, Limited,” Brewers’ Journal, 7/15/1899, 374. 78 “Ohlsson’s Cape Breweries, Limited,” Brewers’ Journal, 7/15/1899, 374. 79 “Ohlsson’s Cape Breweries, Limited,” Brewers’ Journal, 7/15/1900, 408. 80 “Ohlsson’s Cape Breweries, Limited,” Brewers’ Journal, 7/15/1900, 408. 81 “South African Breweries, Limited,” Brewers’ Journal, 7/15/1900, 408. 82 “Ohlsson’s New Lager Beer Brewery,” Brewers’ Journal, 8/15/1900, 457. 83 “Ohlsson’s New Lager Beer Brewery,” Brewers’ Journal, 8/15/1900, 457. 84 “Ohlsson’s New Lager Beer Brewery,” Brewers’ Journal, 8/15/1900, 457. 85 “Ohlsson’s New Lager Beer Brewery,” Brewers’ Journal, 8/15/1900, 457. 86 “Ohlsson’s New Lager Beer Brewery,” Brewers’ Journal, 8/15/1900, 457. 87 “Ohlsson’s New Lager Beer Brewery,” Brewers’ Journal, 8/15/1900, 457.

7

“A hotbed of sins” or “just like

home”?

Drinking cultures in colonial

Qingdao (1897–1914)

Sabina Groeneveld

In deutschen Wirtschaften mit deutschen Kameraden: wie schmeckte das heimatliche Bier gut!1 [“In German pubs with German comrades: how good did the beer from home taste!”]

The above quote reflects how closely German soldiers in Qingdao associated the availability of beer “from home” with their sense of comradery and belonging. Alcohol is indeed a central component of a wide range of social practices and tightly interwoven with the very essence of many group and individual identities.2 The consumption of alcohol has influenced nearly every civilisation. Its meanings and uses are an essential part of the construction of social hierarchies and the dynamics of class, gender and ethnic differences.3 It therefore holds great promise to focus on drinking cultures and associated lifestyles to gain a more nuanced understanding of how social relations and feelings of belonging are developed. This contribution aims to do this by investigating the ways alcohol and drinking behaviour in colonial Qingdao (青岛, transcribed Tsingtau under German occupation) defined life there. Scholarship on the role of alcohol consumption within Qingdao’s colonial society is non-existent. This may appear surprising, given that Tsingtao beer, one of China’s most recognisable beer varieties to date, originated in colonial Qingdao. Yet, alcohol use among Europeans within colonial settings remains an under-researched area.4 The following chapter will shed light on drinking cultures among several social groups in Qingdao (German soldiers, German civilians, the Chinese elite and Chinese labourers). It will investigate the ways in which alcohol became a crucial part of the construction of colonial identities. The diverse occasions and locations for alcohol consumption and the types of alcohol consumed – such as German beer and wine, Chinese wine and Scottish whisky – will be discussed in relation to the different groups’ perceptions of each other. It will be shown that particular drinking patterns helped Germans to re-establish traces of “home” in an alien environment and that these patterns affected

140 Sabina Groeneveld German–Chinese relations in Qingdao. Primary sources for this investigation are private letters, diaries and memoirs, alongside local newspapers, advertisements and official records and reports addressing the “Alkoholfrage” or alcohol question within the colonial context of Qingdao.

German colonialism in China Qingdao, a port city in China’s eastern Shandong province, experienced 17 years of German occupation between 1897 and 1914. During this period, it developed into one of imperial Germany’s most prestigious colonial endeavours. Officials hoped to establish here new approaches to and standards of colonialism within both the national and the international context. Qingdao was the main centre of Kiautschou, (胶州, now transliterated Jiaozhou),5 an area of some 500km2 occupied by Germany.6 Formally, Kiautschou was a leased territory that Germany claimed on the 14 November 1897 for 99 years as part of a set of reparation payments, subsequent to the murder of two German missionaries in the Shandong province. Germany had eagerly awaited an opportunity like this to make her move on China. After the successful seizure, Kiautschou was treated as a proper colony that Germany proudly included in her existing empire. It was the only German colony managed by the Navy Ministry rather than the Ministry for Colonial Affairs, and the naval authorities were keen to show it off as a flagship of imperial Germany’s newly adopted Weltpolitik.7 Therefore, the rapid and costly construction of Qingdao that immediately followed the occupation can be understood as a direct reflection of Germany’s strong desire to be acknowledged as a global player. This colonial city was to function as a port, commercial centre and military camp and was destined to become the cultural hub of Kiautschou. The resident population displayed the typical imbalance in the ratio of colonisers and colonised. While the number of Germans living in Qingdao never exceeded 4,500, the Chinese population rapidly increased from about 1,000 at the time the German takeover in 1897 to c. 53,000 by 1914.8 Alongside Germans and Chinese, a number of Japanese settled in Qingdao.9 The German population consisted mainly of military personnel (c. 2,400 navy officers and soldiers), alongside government officials, entrepreneurs, missionaries and a small number of professionals such as architects and medical doctors. Qingdao’s German population remained predominantly male, even though after 1904 the number of German women increased significantly, resulting in a rise in marriages and, subsequently, births.10 Many of the German soldiers were working class while the majority of civilians came from the upper-middle or upper classes. The two groups had little contact with each other since the German civilian population settled in or close to Qingdao’s “European” district, while navy personnel were based in barracks outside the city boundary. The majority of the local Chinese were male and had arrived in the colony to work as labourers (coolies) or domestic servants.11 However, Chinese business developed very

“A hotbed of sins” or “just like home”? 141 successfully in Qingdao and eventually resulted in several well-off Chinese businessmen and their families living in Qingdao.12 This group of wellsituated Chinese in Qingdao expanded further after the Xinhai revolution in 1911, as a considerable number of former officials of the Qing dynasty and their families took refuge in Qingdao. Representatives of the Chinese elite therefore also left their mark on Qingdao’s colonial life from 1912 onwards. The missionary and later sinologist Richard Wilhelm remembers fondly that, from then onwards, Qingdao developed into a place where a vibrant intellectual exchange between Chinese and German scholars became possible, with regular meetings between both groups.13 However, the majority of Germans in Qingdao had little direct contact with members of the Chinese elite. Their everyday encounters remained restricted to working-class Chinese and therefore to the typical colonial master–servant relations of German households and of public spaces where Chinese rickshaw-drivers, tradespeople and shop owners competed for German customers. Most Germans were able to establish an everyday life that echoed their former one in Germany with the notable exception that, due to the high number of Chinese within the service sector, they enjoyed a significantly more privileged, luxurious and affluent lifestyle than before.14 One element that made them feel at home while, albeit at a more privileged level, was the availability of a wide range of alcoholic beverages.

A Bierfest in China? Colonies were unique places characterised by unequal distribution of power and an eagerness on the part of the colonial rulers to display national and cultural attributes they believed to be most noteworthy. These peculiar spaces captured the imagination of both Germans who were keen to live there and those who stayed in the colonial metropolis. Immediately after the German annexation, representations that could fuel these imaginations were still scarce, but the lack of photographs and illustrations of the newly claimed territory did not discourage Germans from visualising their presence in China. One such example is a postcard that was sent from Qingdao to Germany in August 1898, nine months after the occupation when only a handful of buildings had been completed and the colonial city was still in the early stages of construction (see Figure 7.1). Qingdao was at that time still a bleak place, especially since nearly all former Chinese buildings had been demolished by the Germans. The painting on the reverse side of the postcard titled “Gruss aus Kiaotschau” (Greetings from Kiautschau) however, presents us with a very different image of Qingdao. We see a lively scene set at the harbour close to a boarding bridge, where a small group of newly arriving German civilians disembark. These are the only characters in the picture who are not

142 Sabina Groeneveld

Figure 7.1 Postcard sent to Germany from Qingdao, 1898. Published by Bruno Bürger & Ottilie, Leipzig 1898. The image was uploaded by Immanuel Giel [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Accessed on 22.5.2016. https://upload. wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Tsingtau_Postkarten_1898.jpg

drinking or appear intoxicated. All of the other protagonists, Germans and Chinese alike, are engaged in merry drinking activities, set around pubs with names such as “Zum Fidelen Matrosen” (“The Jolly Sailor”). Groups of German sailors and Chinese men are sitting close together at wooden tables in front of these pubs and enjoying “Berliner Weiße” or large mugs of beer, served by women that appear Japanese in style – one of them holding seven mugs of beer similar to images associated with a Bavarian “Volksfest”. Beer is the only beverage that is consumed and as many as nine barrels can be seen in the picture. One German sailor holding a Chinese fan is accompanied by two females. It is not clear whether these women appear Japanese because the postcard illustrators had a confused notion of Chinese women or whether they depict quite accurately the relatively high number of Japanese prostitutes that settled in Qingdao.15 The image on this postcard follows long-established clichés of colonialism as gendered interactions between European “conquerors” and the colonised space, with the latter being portrayed as the personified desirable female.16 Yet the implied colonial hierarchy is challenged right away by an image of a drunken

“A hotbed of sins” or “just like home”? 143 Chinese, dressed in Mandarin costume, wearing glasses and a German “Pickelhaube” (pointed German military helmet), who mimics a strict German soldier by goose-stepping and by jokingly calling another Chinese to order, who is even more intoxicated and lying down next to a beer barrel. The apparently carnivalesque distortion of power relations demonstrates that mocking stereotypes of oneself and of others was perfectly in the range of expressions within the German context. This implies a certain level of self-confidence among Germans at the end of the nineteenth century. The postcard also seems to suggest that Germans and Chinese were equally overjoyed by the fact that Germany had gained a foothold in China. That this supposedly shared delight is represented by a wild beer-orgy, in which Germans and Chinese would actively participate, demonstrates that the availability of German beer was conceived of as an essential signifier of an established and accepted German-ness in a foreign environment. Of course, this vision of a German “Bierfest” in China is far from the actual situation in Qingdao, where such a close public encounter between Germans and Chinese would have been unthinkable. Not only did Chinese residents find little reason to celebrate the fact that they found themselves suddenly under German rule, but even if they had, it would not have been expressed by excessive drinking. In traditional Chinese culture, the consumption of alcohol was restricted by tight rules and drunkenness in public was associated with a severe lack of selfcontrol, which was followed by disgrace and “losing face”.17 Furthermore, the colonial order that was swiftly established by the German administration left little space for the kind of inter-communal festivity the designers of the postcard portrayed in what was meant as a humorous parody of national clichés. Nevertheless, the postcard establishes several important points. First, alcohol in general and beer in particular was to play a vital role in Qingdao’s development and its social history. Second, as Salouâ Studer argues in her chapter on French wine and absinthe in Algeria, once the colonised start drinking the colonising nation’s favourite tipples, the civilising mission is sure to be implemented.18 Even though in Qingdao’s colonial reality, local Chinese by no means developed into frequent consumers of German beer, the postcard highlights the fact that it seemed necessary for Germans to imagine otherwise in order to support the idea that they had successfully taken up residence in China. Finally, the fact that a particular German region’s drinking culture (namely Bavaria’s) is standing in for “Germany” and “German-ness” demonstrates that by the end of the nineteenth century this conflation already functioned as a commonly recognised signifier that was able to unify German national, popular imagination.19

Alcohol in Qingdao In the first years following the establishment of German rule, only a small number of shops and restaurants run by German businessmen sold German

144 Sabina Groeneveld beer and wine. German sailors and soldiers found it nigh impossible to afford the high prices for these imported goods.20 In 1903, the traveller Carl Tanera spoke with a group of German naval soldiers stationed in Qingdao and mused: Things also look quite bad when it comes to beer. It is of course avail­ able, but it is still too expensive for our people. Once the new water supply system, which is currently under construction, is completed and delivers absolutely germ-free water […] then a brewery will certainly emerge, and there will be an end to our grief.21 Tanera was proved right. The Germania Brauerei was founded in August 1903 and launched its Tsingtau Bier on New Year’s Eve 1904. The entire equipment for this brewery was shipped over from Germany22 and the beers produced by the Germania Brauerei were brewed under the German “Purity Law” of 1516.23 The intention was not so much to create new beer varieties in Qingdao but rather to offer a range of beers that were as authentic as possible and easily recognisable as “German” to Europeans living in China. The consumption of these beers would engender a sense of familiarity and with that a direct connection to “home”. Beer advertisements in the local newspaper Tsingtauer Neueste Nachrichten, promoted beer as “Pilsner style” and “dark beers in Munich style” to let consumers know that they were able to continue enjoying their favoured beer variety while living in Qingdao.24 Easy access to beer that tasted like it did at home was, according to Lieutenant Friedrich Reinhard, one of the main reasons why this colonial city would be remembered so vividly and fondly by many Germans even years after they had returned to Germany.25 In a similar fashion, the “Tsingtaulied” (Tsingtau song) from 1912 celebrated as the biggest achievements of the German presence in Qingdao the German brewery and pubs that were “quenching the German thirst”, alongside the newly constructed harbour and railway system that connected Qingdao with Beijing.26 During the years before the Germania Brewery started to operate, it had been mainly Chinese rather than German entrepreneurs who identified a promising business opportunity and opened simple pubs for German soldiers and sailors passing through. As early as 1898, the Chinese Ling-Pao opened the tavern “Zur Zauberflöte” (The Magic Flute). According to the illustrator Adolf Obst, who visited Qingdao in 1900 during the Boxer rebellion, German soldiers “drank diligently”, even though he believed that the Zauberflöte was not much more than an “elendes Chinesenhäuschen” (miserable Chinese lodge).27 Similar establishments followed, which were also quite deliberately given names such as “Hotel Irene” and “Zum Riffs-Piraten”, in order to attract German customers.28 This demonstrates that these Chinese entrepreneurs’ business sense was combined with a good level of cultural expertise. Chinese liquor dealers further ensured the flow of affordable alcohol. Within Qingdao’s business district, Tapautau (Dabaodao, 大鲍岛), which was designed as

“A hotbed of sins” or “just like home”? 145 a shared zone for Europeans and Chinese, 112 liquor shops could be found in 1912.29 All shop holders and bar owners had to apply to the colonial authorities for a licence to sell alcohol and, once approved, had to pay a quarterly fee to maintain their business.30 While German soldiers and sailors preferred Chinese pubs on grounds of affordability, German officers and civilians would never have considered visiting these simple taverns.31 They frequented more up-market German-run establishments, which started to open in larger numbers after 1900.32 For example, Zum Deutschen Hause served “exquisite drinks”, together with a European cuisine,33 while Paul Müller’s Restaurant zur Eiche had “excellent beers and wines” on offer.34 Next to this, a Bayrische Bierhalle attracted all German colonist as the Austrian diplomat and travel writer Ernst von HesseWartegg observed in 1898: “Even a Bavarian beer hall with a bowling alley exists and on Sundays much fun is to be had there.”35 Restaurants and guesthouses began to open outside Qingdao to cater for German and other European day-trippers who explored the surrounding Laoshan Mountains. The nearby village Syfang was one such popular destination where several guesthouses were established, such as the “Paradiesgarten”.36 A main attraction was the traditional Chinese temple in its vicinity. A number of German guesthouse operators settled close by. In later years, German barkeepers and restauranteurs were experiencing growing competition from Chinese and also some Japanese providers.37 Whereas Chinese-operated pubs of the early years targeted predominantly German soldiers and sailors, this new wave of Chinese and Japanese enterprises aimed at German civilians and the growing number of European holidaymakers in Qingdao.38 Consequently, German guesthouse operators feared for their existence and tried to become more competitive and resilient by establishing the “Tsingtau Hotel AG”, a public limited company that included the colony’s most successful hotels, pubs and guesthouses.39 As a direct result of this lively competition, alcohol became increasingly available and, by 1913, there was no longer any shortage of restaurants and pubs in Qingdao.40 This was not least due to increasing alcohol imports. Between 1906 and 1910, the amount of beer imported to Qingdao increased nearly threefold and the quantity of wine doubled.41 A look at the advertisement sections in the Tsingtauer Neueste Nachrichten reveals that the range of imported alcohol varieties was expanding steadily. In April 1905 for example, advertisements for Ober Ingelheimer Rotwein (a German red wine variety), Weißbier complete with “echt Berliner Weissbiergläser” (wheat beer with original Berlin wheat beer glasses) and Henkel Trocken (a brand of German sparkling wine) can be found among many others.42

Alcohol consumption among Germans in Qingdao The largely separate drinking environments of German soldiers and sailors on the one hand and of upper-middle and upper class Germans on the

146 Sabina Groeneveld other hand are indicative of the general separation between the lives of these two groups. German soldiers and sailors were not permitted to join the annual grand beach party, which was held at the end of the bathing season and was according to the navy sailor Karl Krüger only intended for “high society”, namely German civilians, officers, and their families, and European visitors spending their summer holiday in Qingdao.43 Krüger found that German navy soldiers had to bear quite a high level of snobbery from the German civilian population.44 Social gatherings were frequent among civilians and the consumption of alcohol was the norm, like at the weekly meetings of the large number of “Vereine” (clubs) that were held in Qingdao’s German pubs and restaurants.45 “Bierabende”, “Männerabende” and similar men-only events were also common, and at other festivities, men would stay on longer than their wives to indulge in the more alcohol focused part of the evening.46 However, German women took an active part in most recreational pursuits. Typical leisure activities included tennis, hiking in the Laoshan Mountains and horseback riding. The annual social calendar included regular horse races, sailing regattas, an annual sports week and several beach summer parties, all of which were usually rounded off with a grand dinner party. Elisabeth von Schoeler, who lived with her family in Qingdao between 1901 and 1908, complained in her letters to her mother about the social pressure she felt to participate in the never-ending cycle of social events, which would often last into the early hours: Next week we will be quite beleaguered with socialising. Waldemar is now booked for ten evenings in a row, all of them farewell dinners for departing gentlemen; yesterday polo club, then the hotel, then the casino, then three private banquets – it is really bad!47 Every invitation had to be answered by a counter invitation and the success of these social gatherings was crucial for securing and maintaining one’s status and position within the colonial hierarchy. The role of German women was predominantly to participate successfully in this relentless round of invitations with the aim to further the family’s standing and the husband’s career. Due to the high number of banquets, tiredness and exhaustion were common among Germans.48 However, since many could not avoid taking part in social activities, German colonists found themselves in a situation where they would drink more regularly and consume higher amounts of alcohol than they would have back in Germany. Lilli Leibbrand for example, who arrived in 1902 to join her husband Eugen, hoped in vain to be able to continue her newly adopted teetotal lifestyle. She found it an impossible undertaking to remain abstinent in Qingdao’s busy social scene49 and her letters are full of examples of merry dinners, which resulted in the unavoidable “Brummschädel” (sore head).50 This

“A hotbed of sins” or “just like home”? 147 active party circuit received even further momentum by the fact that Qingdao developed into a health resort of sorts and a popular holiday destination for Europeans living in other parts of East Asia from 1902 onwards.51 Apart from the Pilsner from the Germania Brauerei, which was mostly consumed in German restaurants, beer gardens and pubs, Germans showed a strong preference for “Sekt” (German sparkling wine). It was also common for families back in Germany to supply them with wine varieties from their home region (for example, Mosel and Riesling) and for them to order wine and hold private wine tasting parties for their neighbours, friends and colleagues when a new delivery had arrived.52 One drinking habit that higherranking German officers and members of the upper-middle classes adopted from the British was the consumption of whisky-soda.53 It was commonly served at the Tsingtau-Club, which was established in 1903 and intended to merge elements of a traditional British club with those of a typical German “Stammtisch” (regulars’ table).54 The frequent social gatherings indicate a strong urge for social bonding in the colony. However, this society was not stable but rather in constant flux due to high staff turnover rates and redeployments. In the early years, most Germans socialised in one single circle, which was according to the veterinary officer Moritz Pfeiffer like “one big family”.55 With time, this circle became more and more fragmented. This was driven by a diversification of professional affiliation combined with class divisions, which became increasingly important as the number of Germans settling in Qingdao increased.56 In a letter to her mother, Elisabeth von Schoeler emphasised how crucial it was that she and her husband, a high-ranking officer, fulfilled their social duties in Qingdao. She stressed that they were expected to live up to a certain standard and display “Styl” or flair in every respect.57 This could result in financial pressure for some German colonists, who were expected to serve “Sekt” next to other costly imported beverages and food items from Germany.58 Festivities that had been relaxed in nature during the earlier period became increasingly prim and formal. More attention was paid to who was to be invited and seating plans had to reflect guests’ status accordingly. An error in this regard was seen as a breach of social etiquette.59 As has been the case in writing on social life in other European colonies, the blame for these developments has usually been directed at upper-class women who were seen to be keen on emphasising their elevated position and on maintaining social distance from those they considered inferior.60

Alcohol consumption in Qingdao in the crossfire The strong emphasis on keeping up appearances and on being a competent socialite who regularly participated in banquets, dinners and balls was not

148 Sabina Groeneveld to everybody’s taste. Emma Kroebel concluded that while pleasure and sociability were “in full bloom” in Qingdao, “more serious things would come off badly because of it”.61 Similarly, the marine vicar Hans Weicker feared that Germans in Qingdao, who had not many meaningful distractions apart from endless social gatherings and sports events, would eventually experience mental decline and be reduced to exchanging mere gossip instead of engaging in more serious conversations.62 The Catholic missionary Joseph Freinademetz went so far as to compare the social life in Qingdao with a sodoma (a hotbed of sins).63 Freinademetz and other missionaries were concerned that the hedonistic lifestyle that many Germans in Qingdao displayed was so far removed from a Christian model that it would prevent local Chinese from joining their churches.64 This criticism was often interconnected with the debate around the “Alkoholfrage” (alcohol question), a moral and medical discourse on alcohol (and abstinence). As in other Western cultures, the Alkoholfrage was debated heatedly in Germany and peaked around 1900. Within Germany’s newly emerging modern industrial society, alcohol use was no longer perceived as a personal habit but as having a bearing on society as a whole. Especially drinking among the working classes was scrutinised and targeted by social reformers. One of the most prominent advocates of the antialcohol movement was the physiologist Gustav Bunge. In his lecture of 1886 titled “Die Alkoholfrage”, Bunge highlighted concerns about the negative impact alcohol had on mind and body alike and linked its regular consumption directly to poverty, criminal behaviour, insanity and family breakup in Germany. This debate eventually reached the colonial context, where it was linked to the imperative that German colonists had to represent moral values in order to influence the indigenous population by leading an exemplary lifestyle.65 It was further argued that the acclimatisation process Europeans were expected to undergo after arriving in tropical areas would be severely undermined by alcohol. Lieutenant Max Fiebig, a sanitary officer, believed that Europeans who consumed alcohol in colonial situations would sweat more excessively, experience a higher degree of nervousness and, eventually, could even fall prey to the much-feared “Tropenkoller”, a form of “tropical madness”.66 He and other experts of tropical medicine advised against alcohol use in colonies altogether, since they were convinced that regular consumption would not only destroy the health of coloniser and colonised alike but also be counterproductive to the cultural aims colonisers were hoping to achieve and, ultimately, damage their reputation.67 These concerns were echoed in the colonial literature on Qingdao. The missionary Hans Weicker, for example, advised that alcohol should only be consumed in “homeopathic amounts” to support the acclimatisation process and ensure general wellbeing.68 And even an advertisement for the German sparkling wine Kupferberg Gold in the Tsingtauer Neueste Nachrichten tapped into this debate by highlighting that Kupferberg Gold is “especially

“A hotbed of sins” or “just like home”? 149 light and elegant in nature” and therefore popular in foreign climates and preferable to a “sweet and heavy French champagne”.69 The debate around the Alkoholfrage may not have had much of an impact on the alcohol consumption of Germans in Qingdao, but as this advertisement shows, the issues raised by it were omnipresent and at times even used in the marketing of alcohol. A much greater concern than the effect of alcohol on the physical health of Europeans abroad was the potential for aggressive behaviour following consumption. Hans Weicker pointed out that Europeans felt “freer” and consequently adopted a “Herrengefühl” (sense of superiority) when they lived among “coloured people”.70 He observed that Qingdao’s Germans would often use harsh language and show little patience and respect towards their Chinese domestic staff. “Even someone who would at home [in Germany] never think of striking out at someone”, Weicker observed, “can often restrain himself only with difficulty from using his horse whip once in a while on a person.”71 This condition of “nervous irritation” that Germans were believed to experience in Qingdao was expected to be aggravated by alcohol consumption.72 A series of articles in the Kölner Volkszeitung of 1898 suggested that German civilians behaved just as badly in this respect as German soldiers and sailors. The articles claimed that members of civilian society next to German soldiers took part in carousals that resulted in cases of rape of Chinese women.73 However, in subsequent years, such incidents were mainly linked to German soldiers and sailors.74 Local newspaper articles, private documents and official court files show that German civilians became increasingly intolerant of the reportedly high number of drunken German sailors roaming the streets of Qingdao. Lillie Leibbrand complained in a letter to her parents-in-law that one would always know when it was Sunday, because so many drunken sailors could be seen in Qingdao that day.75 That alcohol was ubiquitous is also evident from photographs of colonial Qingdao. For example, an image from 1908 shows a group of 11 German navy soldiers celebrating Christmas in their barracks with no fewer than eight of them nursing a glass of beer or a bottle of wine (see Figure 7.2). The noisy behaviour of drunken soldiers and sailors presented an ongoing problem that resulted in several legal cases and newspaper reports.76 Nevertheless, as long as the drunken men did not break the law, the authorities could not intervene.77 A regulation intended to control alcohol use had been introduced as early as 1899. It stipulated that bottles of Schnapps could only be sold to German sergeants and soldiers who had a written permit from their supervising officer.78 However, the many complaints by civilians indicated that this regulation was mainly honoured in the breach. In official representations, the problem tended to be played down or ignored. German navy soldiers were at times even portrayed as responsible and well behaved, as was the case in the article, “Germany in

150 Sabina Groeneveld

Figure 7.2 Christmas celebrations in Qingdao, 1908 Source: Bundesarchiv/Bundesbildstelle, Berlin, BArch, Bild 116-127-088/o.Ang

Shantung”, by the superintendent of the Berlin Mission in Kiautschou, Carl Johannes Voskamp. The article was aimed at an international readership.79 Voskamp mused: The German soldiers also, coming as they do from all ranks and classes of the people (owing to universal conscription), by their discipline and good behavior (a drunken soldier is seldom seen in the streets) make the colony secure, which is much appreciated even by the Chinese themselves.80 Similarly, there was silence on the part of the German administration on the lucrative sex trade industry in Qingdao connected with alcohol consumption among German sailors in order “to avoid giving cause to the press for undesirable commentaries”.81 A clear divide between Qingdao’s carefully constructed official image and its reality is evident.

German–Chinese relations and alcohol Unlike the situation in other German colonies, alcohol abuse by the indigenous population did not draw much attention from colonial officials.82 This was due to the fact that it was uncommon for Chinese labourers to drink – they were more

“A hotbed of sins” or “just like home”? 151 likely to indulge in opium smoking if their financial situation allowed them to do so.83 While it was illegal to grow opium in Kiautschou from 1902 onwards, trading was permitted for another decade.84 The German administration introduced a tax on imported opium and attempted to further control consumption by issuing permits for opium dealers, but otherwise developed a relatively relaxed approach to opium.85 According to the Chinese customs office,86 opium consumers within the colony did not exceed 5 per cent in 1906, while the number for the surrounding area in the province of Shandong was estimated at more than 30 per cent.87 Frank Dikötter has pointed out that although China as a “slave to opium” had been a well-known image in the late nineteenth century, consumption by most Chinese was light to moderate.88 Nevertheless, the late Qing dynasty in China itself developed an uncompromising stance on opium, which continued until well after the Chinese revolution in 1911. Due to the growing pressure from the Chinese side to make the opium trade illegal, the colonial government followed suit and enacted an ordinance to that effect, which became effective in 1912.89 In general, Germans did not refer to opium use by their servants in memoirs and letters. If they did complain about any addiction among their Chinese servants, it was gambling. Opium use did not seem to have presented much of a problem.90 While Chinese servants and labourers were not in the habit of regular alcohol use, the Chinese elite did consume alcohol on a more regular basis. A variety of warmed, flavoured and naturally fermented rice wines were the most widely consumed beverages. At the beginning of the twentieth century, wine made from grapes was barely produced in China and beer was not known before it was introduced and produced there by Europeans. The Chinese name for beer bi jiu is a direct transliteration from the German word Bier.91 Alcohol was considered “spiritual” and played an important role in religious life and festivities. It was attached to a different cultural understanding than in the European context. Toasting practices for example, were closely connected to showing somebody respect (“giving face”) and to reconfirming existing hierarchies.92 These different meanings and contexts of drinking alcohol provided a platform for experiencing cultural diversity for those Germans and Chinese who would socialise at festivities. German missionaries and officials had the most regular contact with the Chinese elite in Qingdao. The missionary Richard Wilhelm, who met there with Chinese scholars and members from the Chinese elite on a regular basis during the time of German occupation, provided a vivid description of the drinking habits in these circles and the cultural meaning attached to them. He noted that the Chinese banquets he attended were men-only affairs, which would allow for a relaxed atmosphere while at the same time the rules of etiquette were still in place.93 Young women might be included for entertainment (“Sing Song girls”) but otherwise did not participate directly in such social gatherings.94 Another characteristic that Wilhelm noted was that groups met for food and drink in closed-off areas. Even outside the private home, restaurants

152 Sabina Groeneveld would provide larger rooms for groups, which allowed them to socialise while being separated from other restaurant guests. Concerning the consumption of food and alcohol, Wilhelm remarked on how much selfdiscipline a foreigner needed to display in order to make it through a Chinese banquet, which would normally consist of a high number of courses and several rounds of Chinese wine. During his time in Qingdao, he witnessed several other Germans who would eat and drink too much early on instead of taking small samples of each course and small sips of their wine. Consequently, they found themselves unable to conclude the festivities, ending up intoxicated and overly full, while “every Chinese knows exactly how much he can tolerate and acts accordingly”.95 In a similar fashion, Chinese officials and members of the Chinese elite could experience a culture shock when they were invited to social events organised by the German administration in Qingdao. They were surprised by the presence of German women, who actively participated in get­ togethers, and particularly by the way they dressed. The missionary Wilhelm observed one Chinese Mandarin asking another: “What is actually the purpose of them being so bare at the upper body and so covered up below?”96 Chinese officials who were not used to Germans who would “fight out many diplomatic debates with the Sekt glass in hand” and become intoxicated in the process, were in need of a good strategy to get out of this debacle without losing face.97 This could involve a servant who would interrupt with a “timely” telegram that announced the death of a close family member. Behind this façade, a Chinese official was able to depart supposedly in the depths of despair while being supported by his servants.98 On the other hand, when a Chinese official was able to hold his drink at a festivity, this was positively commented on by his German hosts. The former district attorney Ernst Grosse remembered fondly “Herzog Kung”, the Chinese official Kong Lingyi, who proved himself a “tremendous boozer” at a dinner party given by the German Governor of Qingdao, Oskar Truppel in 1910.99

Conclusion It has been argued that the role of alcohol within the colonial society of Qingdao was manifold. Alcohol became widely available in Qingdao due to commercial and private imports even before a brewery (Germania Brauerei: Tsingtau Bier) was established in the territory in 1903. Social gatherings were frequent and characterised as especially “merry” by German colonisers. At the same time, the acclimatisation of German colonisers to a new environment was seen as challenging and medical experts advised against alcohol consumption within colonial settings. Alcohol was believed to not only impair the acclimatisation process but also to overstimulate the nerves and result in aggressive behaviour patterns. Nevertheless, these concerns did not change the fact that the majority of Germans in Qingdao

“A hotbed of sins” or “just like home”? 153 consumed alcohol on a regular basis. Alcohol was embedded in various practices of different groups of Germans in Qingdao and tied to social relations among themselves and with Chinese living in Qingdao. German beer was an evocative ingredient in images and representations of the German presence in China in the early days of colonial rule and a substance that German colonisers felt they needed as soon as they had arrived in Qingdao. In an environment that lacked common cultural attributes in the early days after occupation, the availability of German alcoholic beverages, together with food from home, was crucial for the development of feelings of belonging. Germans in Qingdao did not show much eagerness to experiment when it came to their drinking habits – clinging to the familiar was more agreeable and reassuring than negotiating the unknown. Letters and memoirs demonstrate that the introduction of German food and drink in shops, restaurants and pubs and their use at home anchored them in China and allowed them to develop a colonial selfimage that was interconnected with their former lifestyle and built on a cultural consensus with fellow colonisers. Qingdao saw the development of a lively social life, which over time became increasingly fragmented. While German civilians and German soldiers and sailors maintained separate drinking cultures throughout, social differentiation among these groups increased later on as a result of a gradually more acute awareness of class associations that was driven by the upper classes and aimed at distancing themselves from an aspiring upper-middle and middle class. The Alkoholfrage, which was debated in Germany around 1900, did not have much impact on actual consumption patterns in the colony. In general, Germans in Qingdao consumed alcohol in higher quantities and more regularly than back in Germany. Still, aspects of the alcohol debate were echoed by critics of the hedonistic lifestyle that many Germans led in Qingdao. German missionaries feared that their compatriots gave a poor example of Christian morals and consequently would discourage Chinese from joining their churches. Others were concerned that the consumption of alcohol would facilitate aggressive behaviour towards Chinese. For many Chinese in Qingdao, drinking alcohol was not a regular practice. Rarely did Germans and Chinese socialise outside the circles that were developed by scholars and officials. Within these circles, the different drinking cultures provided a platform for cultural exchange and, at times, mutual misunderstanding. In the meantime, Chinese entrepreneurs recognised the existing demand for German beer and wine with an expeditiousness that German businessmen failed to match. While early on, their target group consisted of German soldiers and sailors, later years saw Chinese pub and guesthouse operators in close competition with their German counterparts. Most Chinese in Qingdao may not have taken to the consumption of the “colonisers” tipples’ but trading them was another matter.

154 Sabina Groeneveld

Notes 1 Friedrich Reinhard, Mit dem II. Seebataillon nach China 1900–1901, Berlin: Lie­ belschen Buchhandlung, 1902, 154. All quotations originally in German are translated by the author unless otherwise indicated. 2 Thomas M. Wilson, “Drinking Cultures: Sites and Practices in the Production and Expression of Identity.” In: Drinking Cultures, edited by Thomas M. Wilson, 1–24. Oxford: Berg, 2005, 9ff. 3 Gina Hames, Alcohol in World History, London: Routledge, 2012, 1. 4 Harald Fischer-Tiné, “‘The Drinking Habits of Our Countrymen’: European Alcohol Consumption and Colonial Power in British India.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History vol. 40, no. 3 (2012): 383–408, 384. 5 The German transcription of “Kiautschou” used to refer to the colonial lease­ hold, 1897–1914. Please note: Jiaozhou is also the name of a city outside the former German leasehold. 6 Kiautschou was taken over by Japan during the first weeks of the First World War. 7 This ambition is reflected by the term Musterkolonie (model colony) that is associated with Kiautschou/Qingdao. See: Mechthild Leutner and Klaus Mühlhahn, Die Mus­ terkolonie Kiautschou. Die Expansion des Deutschen Reiches in China. Deutsch­ chinesische Beziehungen 1897–1914. Eine Quellensammlung. Quellen zur Geschichte der deutsch-chinesischen Beziehungen 1897–1995. Berlin: Akademischer Verlag, 1997, 399–423. 8 Wilhelm Matzat, “Alltagsleben im Schutzgebiet: Zivilisten und Militärs, Chinesen und Deutsche.” In: Tsingtau – ein Kapitel deutscher Kolonialgeschichte in China 1897–1914, edited by Hans Martin Hinz and Christoph Lind, 106–120. Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum, 1998, 106. 9 See Annette Biener, Das deutsche Pachtgebiet Tsingtau in Schantung 1897–1914, Institutioneller Wandel durch Kolonialisierung, Studien zur Geschichte Schan­ tungs und Tsingtaus, edited by Wilhelm Matzat, 6, Bonn: Matzat, 2001, 218f. 10 In 1913, about 2,400 German soldiers and 1,855 German civilians lived in Qing­ dao. See Jork Artelt, Tsingtau, deutsche Stadt und Festung in China 1897–1914, Düsseldorf: Droste, 1984, 19. In 1910, about 2,200 German soldiers and sailors lived in Qingdao alongside other Europeans (979 men, 203 women and 439 children). See Walter Uthemann and Otto Fürth, “Tsingtau: Ein kolonialhygienischer Rückblick.” Beiheft zum Archiv für Schiffs- und Tropenhygiene vol. 15, no. 4 (1911): 5–39, 37. 11 In 1910, the Chinese population in Qingdao consisted of 28,127 men, 3,804 women and 2,249 children under 10. 12 In fact, by 1914 nearly 95 per cent of business in Qingdao was in Chinese hands. See Klaus Mühlhahn, Herrschaft und Widerstand in der “Musterkolonie” Kiautschou: Interaktionen zwischen China und Deutschland, 1897–1914, Munich: Oldenbourg, 2000, 154. 13 See Richard Wilhelm, Die Seele Chinas, Frankfurt a.M.: Insel Verlag, 1980 [Original Edition: Berlin: Reimar Hobbing Verlag, 1926], 210ff. 14 See Sabina Groeneveld, “Far Away at Home in Qingdao 1897–1914.” German Studies Review vol. 39, no.1 (2016): 65–80, 65–80. 15 See on Japanese prostitutes in Qingdao: Biener, Das deutsche Pachtgebiet Tsing­ tau, 279; Klaus Mühlhahn, “Prostitution in der ‘Musterkolonie’ Kiautschou.” In: Frauen in deutschen Kolonien, edited by Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst and Mechthild Leutner, 96–101. Berlin: Christoph Links, 2009, 98. 16 See David Ciarlo, Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011, 164f. 17 Zhengping Li, Chinese Wine, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011, 68.

“A hotbed of sins” or “just like home”? 155 18 [Salouâ Studer; Chapter 2 in this volume]. 19 See on the presentation of Loewenbrau in the USA after 1945 in relation to the Bavarian stereotype in the global perception of Germany: [Terrell, Lurvenbrow, 9; Chapter 10 in this volume]. 20 As early as November 1898, the Restaurant Trendel advertised that a fresh delivery of Culmbacher-Bier had just arrived. See Deutsch-Asiatische Warte, classified section, 1, 21.11.1898. 21 Carl Tanera, Eine Weltreise. Berlin: Allgemeiner Verein für Deutsche Literatur, 1903, 142f. 22 Pans and the equipment for the construction of the Germania brewery were provided by the factory “Germania” in Chemnitz. Filters and other brewery equipment were provided by the firm “Enzinger” in Worms. See Wilhelm Matzat, “Beitraege zur Geschichte Tsingtaus: Germania Brauerei und ihre Angestellten (1903–1914),” Tsingtau.org. Beiträge zur Geschichte Tsingtaus 1.11.2007, www.tsingtau.org/ germania-brauerei-und-ihre-angestellten-1903-1914/. [accessed 12.3.2017]. 23 The Germania Brauerei was not an entirely German concern in regard to finances. While German master brewers operated it, it was established as an Anglo-German cooperation to avoid the strict German law on stock companies. See also Terrell’s chapter in this volume. 24 See i.e., Tsingtauer Neueste Nachrichten, 1.4.1905. 25 Friedrich Reinhard, Mit dem II. Seebataillon nach China 1900–1901, Berlin: Liebelschen Buchhandlung, 1902, 154. Friedrich Reinhard was a lieutenant of the 2nd battalion and was temporarily stationed in Qingdao in June 1900 during the Boxer rebellion (1900–1901). 26 Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg (BA/MA): N224/65, Tsingtau Lied. 27 See Adolf Obst, “Aus Deutsch-China.” Die Woche, vol. 2, no.9, Berlin 1900, 377–379, 377. 28 Irene was the name of the wife of Prince Heinrich, the brother of the German Emperor Wilhelm II. Prince Heinrich and Princess Irene visited Qingdao in 1899. 29 See Heinrich Schnee, Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon, Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1920, 268. 30 See Friedrich Wilhelm Mohr, ed. Handbuch für das Schutzgebiet Kiautschou, Qingdao: Verlagsanstalt Walther Schmidt, 1911, 136, 139. 31 German sailors also regularly visited the Seemannshaus (Seamen’s Club), where German beer was sold at a much lower price than in German pubs. See Karl Krüger, Von Potsdam nach Tsingtau: Erinnerungen an meine Jugendjahre in Uniform 1904–1920. Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2001, 94. 32 See Die Woche, 2, Nr.9, Berlin 1900, 377. A list of hotels, restaurants and cafés that had been established by 1904 can be found in: Friedrich Behme and Michael Krieger, Führer durch Tsingtau und Umgebung. Wolfenbüttel: Heckner’s Verlag, 1904, 26f. 33 See Amtsblatt für das Deutsche Kiautschou-Gebiet, 1, nr.5, Qingdao, 4. 8. 1900, 43. 34 Studienwerk Deutsches Leben in Ostasien (StuDeO): Adressbuch des KiautschouGebiets Qingdao: Otto Rose, 1902, Advertisement-Inlay. 35 “Auch eine bayrische Bierhalle mit einer Kegelbahn ist schon vorhanden, und sonntags geht es dort sehr lustig zu.” Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg, Schan-tung und Deutsch-China, Leipzig: J.J. Weber, 1898, 11. 36 See StuDeO: Adressbuch des Deutschen Kiautschou-Gebiets, 1902, AdvertisementInlay. 37 For example, the Chinese Hsü Tsai Mau opened the guesthouse “Tengyau” in Syfang. See Tsingtauer Neueste Nachrichten, 10.5.1914, 8.

156 Sabina Groeneveld 38 By 1906, Qingdao welcomed more than 600 summer guests. See Otto E. Ehlers, Im Osten Asiens. Sammlung belehrender Unterhaltungsschriften für die deutsche Jugend, vol. 2, Berlin: Herman Poetel Verlag, 1913, 168. 39 See Biener, Das deutsche Pachtgebiet Tsingtau, 159. 40 Rudolf Wagner, ed., “Kiautschou. Eine Reise durch die deutschen Kolonien.” Kolonie und Heimat, 1913, 38. Especially the Friedrichstraße was home to a string of pubs and restaurants. See Ludwig Winter, Tsingtau. Eine Erinnerung an Ostasien, Qingdao: Haupt, 1911, 6. 41 See Mohr, Handbuch für das Schutzgebiet, 461.

42 See Tsingtauer Neueste Nachrichten, 1.4.1905, supplement.

43 Karl Krüger, Von Potsdam nach Tsingtau: Erinnerungen an meine Jugendjahre in

Uniform 1904–1920, Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2001, 113. 44 Ibid. 45 For a list of social clubs, see StuDeO: Adressbuch des Kiautschou-Gebiets, Qingdao: Otto Rose, issued annually 1905–1913. 46 See Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munchen (BSB): Neukamp-Sammlung, Ana 517, letter from Elisabeth von Schoeler to her mother, 14.3.1900: […], daher zog ich mich früher zurück, da nun wohl der Saufteil des Festes beginnt. 47 See BSB, Neukamp-Sammlung, Ana 517, letter from Elisabeth von Schoeler to her mother, 19.2.1907. See also similar letters from 28.7.1901 and 3.8.1906. See also Biener, Das deutsche Pachtgebiet Tsingtau, 321; Katja Heise, Deutsche Frauen in Tsingtau 1898–1920. Studien und Quellen zur Geschichte Schantungs und Tsingtaus, edited by Wilhelm Matzat, no. 8, Bonn: Matzat, 2005, 82. 48 See Tsingtauer Neueste Nachrichten, 19.6.1909, Sprechsaal. 49 Private Archive, University of Sydney (PAS): Germany in Sydney: Yixu Lü, Letter from Lilli Leibbrand to her parents in law, 12.11.1902. 50 PAS, Yixu Lü: Letter from Lilli Leibbrand to her parents in law, 4.10.1903, see also letter of 20.6.1903. 51 See Ehlers, Im Osten Asiens, 168. 52 PAS: Yixu Lü, Letter from Lilli Leibbrand to to her parents-in-law, 4.7.1903; see also letter of 21.1.1903. 53 Hans Weicker, Kiautschou. Das deutsche Schutzgebiet in Ostasien, Berlin: Schall, 1908, 118. 54 See Biener, Das deutsche Pachtgebiet Tsingtau, 320. 55 See Moritz Pfeiffer, Die Welt des fernen Ostens. Erlebnisse eines Deutschen in den asiatischen Ländern des stillen Ozeans, Dresden: Deutsche Buchwerkstätten, 1923, 8. 56 See Weicker, Kiautschou, 134; Emma Kroebel, Wie ich an den Koreanischen Kaiserhof kam, Berlin: R. Jacobsthal, 1909, 91. 57 BSB: Neukamp-Sammlung, Ana 517, Letter from Elisabeth von Schoeler to her mother, 1.2.1900. 58 See, Johannes Leonhart, “Kiautschou”, Fortschritt, Halbmonatsschrift für Politik Wirtschaft und Marinefragen, edited by Johannes Leonhart, vol. 2, no. 24, Kiel, 15.121908, 699–702, 701, [BA/MA, RM 16/43]. BSB, Neukamp-Sammlung, Ana 517, Letter from Elisabeth von Schoeler to her mother13.7.1906; Katja Heise, Deutsche Frauen in Tsingtau 1898–1920. Studien und Quellen zur Geschichte Schantungs und Tsingtaus, edited by Wilhelm Matzat, no. 8, Bonn: Matzat, 2005, 81. 59 Kroebel, Wie ich an den, 91. 60 On the situation in German colonies in Africa, see for example: Martha Mamo­ zai, “Einheimische und ‘koloniale’ Frauen.” In: Frauen in den deutschen Kolonien, edited by Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst and Mechthild Leutner, 14–30, 21. Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2009.

“A hotbed of sins” or “just like home”? 157 61 Kroebel, Wie ich an den, 86. 62 See Weicker, Kiautschou, 128f. 63 Letter from Joseph Freinademetz to Arnold Janssen, 28.4.1904, cited from Mühlhahn, Herrschaft und Widerstand, 312f. 64 See Lydia Gerber, Von Voskamps “heidnischen Treiben” und Wilhelms “höheren China”. Die Berichterstattung deutscher protestantischer Missionare aus dem deutschen Pachtgebiet Kiautschou 1898–1914, Hamburger Sinologische Schriften 7, Hamburg: Hamburger Sinologische Hefte, 2002, 112, 120. 65 See Max Fiebig, Die Bedeutung der Alkoholfrage für unsere Kolonien, Berlin: Wilhelm Süsserott, 1908, 5. 66 Ibid., 8f. 67 Ibid., 14; see also Hans Paasche, Was ich als Abstinent in den afrikanischen Kolonien erlebte: Vortrag, Reutlingen: Mimir, 1911, 12. 68 See Weicker, Kiautschou, 118. 69 See Tsingtauer Neueste Nachrichten, 10.5.1014, advertisement-inlay. 70 See Weicker, Kiautschou, 125. 71 Ibid., 126. 72 Ibid. 73 See Mühlhahn, Herrschaft und Widerstand, 312. 74 See BSB, Neukamp-Sammlung, Ana 517, Letter from Elisabeth von Schoeler to her mother, 14.3.1900; Deutsch-Asiatische Warte, 5.4.1899, Eine Sensationsnachricht. 75 See private archive Yixu Lü: Letter from Lilli Leibbrand to her parents-in-law, 22.7.1901. 76 See Ruhestörender Lärm, TNN v. 29.9.1907. See also Biener, Das deutsche Pachtgebiet Tsingtau, 243. 77 The most common offences were lack of discipline, leaving one’s post, stealing, and participating in a fight. See Biener, Das deutsche Pachtgebiet Tsingtau, 242f. 78 Mohr, Handbuch für das Schutzgebiet, 136. 79 C. Johannes Voskamp, “Germany in Shantung.” In: Shantung. The Sacred Province of China, edited by Robert Coventry Forsyth, 132–137. Shanghai: Christian Literature Society, 1912, 131–137. 80 Ibid., 134. 81 See Mechthild Leutner and Klaus Mühlhahn, eds. “Musterkolonie Kiautschou”. Die Expansion des Deutschen Reiches in China. Deutsch-chinesische Beziehungen 1897–1914. Eine Quellensammlung. Quellen zur Geschichte der deutsch-chinesischen Beziehungen 1897–1995. Berlin: Akademischer Verlag, 1997, 220 [Doc. 55]. 82 See for example the quite different situation in Cameroon: Susan Diduk, “European Alcohol, History, and the State in Cameroon.” African Studies Review vol. 36, no. 1 (1993): 1–42. 83 Find an overview on opium use in Qingdao in: Biener, Das deutsche Pachtgebiet Tsingtau, 144ff. 84 See Mohr, Handbuch für das Schutzgebiet, 183f.; Georg Crusen, “Die rechtliche Stellung der Chinesen in Kiautschou.” Zeitschrift für Kolonialrecht vol. 15 (1913): 4–17, 47–57, 53. 85 See Mohr, Handbuch für das Schutzgebiet, 183ff; Biener, Das deutsche Pachtge­ biet Tsingtau, 144f. 86 Kiautschou obtained the status of a duty free zone in September 1898. However, from 1906 only the harbour remained duty free; all other customs matters were transferred to the Chinese Custom office. 87 See Biener, Das deutsche Pachtgebiet Tsingtau, 146. 88 See Frank Dikötter, Lars Laamann and Xun Zhou. “China, British Imperialism and the Myth of the Opium Plaque.” In: Drugs and Empire, edited by James H. Mills and Patricia Barton, 19–38. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave, 2007, 21.

158 Sabina Groeneveld 89 See Mohr, Handbuch für das Schutzgebiet, 188. 90 See Crusen, “Die rechtliche Stellung der”, 53. 91 See Josephine Smart, “Cognac, Beer, Red Wine or Soft Drinks? Hong Kong Iden­ tity and Wedding Banquets.” In: Drinking Cultures, edited by Thomas M. Wilson, 107–128. Oxford: Berg, 2005, 110. 92 See Li, Chinese Wine, 72. 93 Wilhelm, Die Seele Chinas, 398. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid., 401. 96 Ibid., 208: Was hat das eigentlich für einen Sinn, daβ sie am Oberkörper so nackt und am Unterkörper so verhüllt sind? 97 Ibid., 209: … wurden auch manche diplomatischen Kämpfe mit dem Sektglas in der Hand ausgefochten. 98 Ibid. 99 See Ernst Grosse, Ostasiatische Erinnerungen, München: Neuer Filfer-Verlag, 1938, 105.

8

Filched fungi? Bioprospecting and the circulation of “Chinese yeast”, c. 1892–1933 Tristan Revells

Unfortunately, the nation was in great disorder and the government and the people fell into confusion. As for the brewing of these types of alcohol, [our people] remained indifferent. The enigmatic Chinese yeast and ferments were taken by foreigners and researched. In the end, there was the discovery of the Amylo process. The result of our own country’s produce, and we did not know how to improve it – how shameful!1 Chen Taosheng, Industrial Microbiologist An Initial Report on Producing Ethanol with the Amylo Process, 1934 Each country produces alcohol differently, but divided simply, there is a western and an eastern method. The western uses malt, hydrolyzing starch to form sugars; this is known as the saccharification process. The eastern method uses jiuqu in place of malt, and simultaneously uses cultivated yeasts. The processes of saccharification and fermentation proceed at the same time. Because the ingredients are mixed, the processes are limited, and the rate of ethanol production is slow. This is known as the old style fermentation method – it was pioneered by our country. Foreigners call it the Amylo process.2 Guo Zhiliang, Professor of Chemistry at Shandong University A Chemical Perspective on Chinese Yeast, 1944

Histories of alcohol often focus on the relationship of its potable form to religious rites, social mores, cultural production, and health and regulation issues. This chapter suggests that analyses of alcohol in relationship to the histories of science and industrialisation are equally vital to an understanding of the material, political and social roles of alcohol at both the local and global level. Primarily focused on the years 1890 to 1945, this essay traces global flows of knowledge and microorganisms related to alcohol production, endeavouring to place the importance of alcohol in twentieth-century industrial chemistry alongside its more familiar role as a beverage. Informed by recent scholarship on colonial bioprospecting and biopiracy, the chapter examines the role Chinese alcohol production techniques played in the efforts

160 Tristan Revells of Western microbiologists and biochemists to harness microorganisms to industrial methods for the production of both potable and non-potable alcohol. But rather than arguing for the priority or originality of one actor or community in shaping knowledge regarding the value of these microorganisms, this chapter highlights tensions and contradictions in different actors’ narratives of origin and discovery. It thereby suggests that whether emanating from a French chemist or a Chinese microbiologist, accounts of scientific innovation are frequently tailored to serve personal, institutional and patriotic goals, obscuring a comprehensive understanding of the process of knowledge building – a process that in this case flowed back and forth across the globe.3 A key term guiding this inquiry is the Amylo process. In broad strokes, the Amylo process is a method for producing ethanol alcohol distinguished by its reliance on microorganisms rather than malt to convert starches such as grain, corn or sorghum into sugar. The sugar can then be turned to ethanol via yeast. Unknown in European brewing practice, variants of this production method were widespread throughout East and Southeast Asia when they became the object of research and speculation by Western chemists, microbiologists and entrepreneurs in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In Chinese brewing practice, these microorganisms were cultivated, transported and applied in cake-like compounds known to foreign observers as “Chinese yeast” (jiuqu in Chinese).4 Combined with high quality rice, aromatic herbs and a variety of yeasts, a wide range of potable alcohols could be produced. Initial Western scientific interest revolved around industrialising the process for efficient production of potable alcohol. But as will be shown below, the production of alcohol for industrial purposes during this time period surged due to widespread applications in the manufacture of munitions, fuel, artificial silk and rubber, and many other aspects of the booming chemical industry. Interest in Chinese techniques of alcohol production was thus part of a larger, global drive to find cheaper, more efficient ways to produce both potable and non-potable alcohols, which drove researchers to examine similar methods and microorganisms in China, Japan, Indochina and the Dutch East Indies.5 Yet as may be seen from period sources, the Amylo process in fact eludes easy definition. In part, this chapter is driven by a question: what was at stake and what was signified when writers of various nationalities invoked the term Amylo process? What was omitted and what was gained when the term was mobilised? A brief example can clarify the point: the epigraph of this essay features the accounts of two Chinese scientists, a microbiologist and a chemist, offering definitions of the term. Writing in the second half of the Republican era, both scientists are reflecting on the historical origins of a process they themselves spent considerable time researching. But they differ noticeably in how they frame its origins. For Chen, the Amylo process was “discovered” by Western science because of the “shameful” indifference of the Chinese people and government to “enigmatic Chinese yeast and ferments”. For Guo, the Amylo process is

Filched fungi? 161 simply the name by which foreigners call a method of producing alcohol pioneered by China – for whatever improvements may be offered, it is ineluctably Chinese, one side of a binary division between Western and Eastern methods. While Chen understands the Amylo process as an industrialised departure from longstanding Chinese production practices, Guo views the industrial technique as simply a more efficient modern twist on a Chinese method known to Westerners as the Amylo process. Yet despite the interpretive differences, in both cases the Amylo process is defined in relationship to the history of Chinese brewing practices, an attribute not always shared by accounts in Western period sources. As will be seen, the role of Chinese participants in the development of this process is often minimised in Western language sources, whether they be journals of industrial chemistry, popular science articles, or the publications of entrepreneurs and brewing societies. In fact, Chinese participation often does not feature at all. While mapping the geographic spread of the Amylo process from Indochina through Europe, then into a range of tropical colonial settings and China, this chapter suggests that French, English and Chinese accounts alike vary in their representations of its pedigree as they parse and mobilise specific aspects of the process’ development to complement wider, frequently self-serving narratives of scientific innovation. In the final section of this chapter, I attempt to trace the recirculation of industrial versions of these techniques back to China by the late 1920s. In an industrialised form, they would be used to power some of the first large-scale industrial alcohol plants in the country. And by the late 1930s, deployed to produce an ethanol-based gasoline substitute known as “power fuel”, they would eventually play a crucial part in the Chinese war effort against Japan (1937–1945). However defined, the Amylo process and research on fermentation methods more generally would play another role in China as well. For Chinese scientists, technocrats and writers in the popular press during the Republican era (1911–1949), the expansion of applications and research concerning alcohol was accompanied by a pronounced interest in forging connections between the innovations of “modern Western science” and China’s own history of brewing practices. In an era in which the contours of Chinese nationalism were in great flux, such connections could simultaneously evoke keen anxiety and pointed national pride.6 As will be seen, even as scientists struggled to balance disciplinary demands for “objectivity” with calls to employ modern science in the service of the nation, their rhetoric sought to redefine sources of expertise and authority in society.

Theoretical perspectives: biopiracy, bioprospecting, discovery This chapter views both alcohol and Chinese yeast as forms of chemical and microbial technology. In light of the context in which the divergent

162 Tristan Revells claims to the origin, priority of discovery and pedigree of the Amylo process were created, it is important to be mindful of connections between scientific enterprise and notions of intellectual property. Recent anthropological and historical work concerning issues of biopiracy and bioprospecting has challenged traditional formulations of intellectual property and scientific authorship, particularly in settings in which the contributions to the collection and spread of bio-information by colonised or indigenous populations has been minimised or erased by later accounts of scientific discovery. Such scholarship suggests the potency of an analysis of the historical exchange and circulation of bio­ information informed by the theoretical lenses of biopiracy and bioprospecting. For example, as Londa Schiebinger’s work on colonial bioprospecting in the “expanded Caribbean” has demonstrated, intimate connections between empire, gender and scientific voyages of discovery (and biopiracy), as well as the selective use and classification of biomatter and botanical knowledge, constructed and celebrated very specific narratives of scientific discovery.7 In a similar vein, this chapter pays attention to instances in which the classification and nomenclature of scientific practice applied to biomatter – in this case, “Chinese yeast” – aided the construction of certain historical narratives concerning its development. Abena Dove Osseo-Asare’s study of attempts to convert six wellknown “healing plants” into pharmaceuticals reveals a long history of interaction between African healers, scientists and international drug companies, one in which colonial scientists frequently appropriated both plants and plant knowledge from colonised regions, claiming credit for discovery as well as profiting from the commercialisation of drugs derived from the plants.8 Cognisant of the conceptual and practical difficulties of determining ownership or specific rights for plants-related information present over large geographic areas, Osseo-Asare avoids a narrative of discovery focused on one inventor or tribe, instead tracing “key moments of exchange” to argue for a multi-actor account of drug knowledge innovation.9 She also extends standard arguments of post-colonial scholarship by pointing out that while operating within an anti-colonial, nationalist framework, post-colonial scientists in Ghana and elsewhere often privatised herbal knowledge for their own gain via scientific publication, commercialisation and even patents, while the communities and healers that traditionally cultivated and transmitted knowledge of healing plants had less ability to control or benefit from their use.10 Finally, Cori Hayden’s examination of botanical bioprospecting in Mexico examines efforts by scientists and corporations to harvest knowledge and organisms from the roadsides and markets of biodiverse regions. As Hayden points out, prior to the 1992 UN Convention on Biological Diversity,

Filched fungi? 163 cultural knowledge and wild genetic/biological resources were among the many resources considered internationally as common heritage – a de facto part of the appropriable public domain, and thus, resources freely available to be taken out of their natural state, innovated-upon, and patented.11 As will be seen, this attitude clearly prevailed in regard to “Chinese yeast”, as colonial scientists untroubled by any need to share credit for their “discoveries” or profits from their “innovations” targeted and harvested microorganisms from compounds used and sold by local alcohol producers in colonial and semi-colonial environments. The insights of this line of scholarship are particularly salient to this chapter because many sources are drawn from scientists and scientific research produced or supported in the context of colonial governance. In fact, as will be seen below, scholars of French Indochina have clearly demonstrated that the scientist most frequently credited with inventing the Amylo process, Albert Calmette, did so for the specific purpose of enabling an alcohol monopoly to support the French administration’s budget in its colonies. It is also important to keep in mind that disinterested scientific inquiry was hardly the driving motive behind interest in the Amylo process. Chemists, entrepreneurs and states across the globe saw alcohol not only as one of the bases of the chemical industry, but as a potential source of biofuel, weapons and synthetic products ranging from silk to rubber. It was therefore the nexus of science and commerce that drove interest in research into mould and yeasts derived from China, French Indochina, the Dutch East Indies and elsewhere, with successful industrial applications promising huge future profits.

The development of Chinese yeast Before discussing the intersection of Chinese alcohol production techniques with industrialised alcohol production in the late nineteenth century, it is worth reviewing the development of Chinese techniques in prior periods. A brief sketch of the development of “Chinese yeast” is possible thanks in large part to decades of scholarship collected in H. T. Huang’s recent volume on Fermentation and Food Science, part of Joseph Needham’s monumental “Science and Civilisation in China” project.12 Huang contends that the use of micro-organisms to produce alcohol stabilised during the Zhou period (1046 BCE–256 BCE), while archaeological excavations that unearthed jiuqu sacks amongst burial remains indicate that the use of the ferment was common by the Han period (206 BCE–220 ACE).13 Scholars agree that at that time, two methods of alcohol production coexisted in China. One used a sprouted grain technique (somewhat similar to the malting process favoured in Europe), but it was supplanted by a method utilising what would come to be known as jiuqu, which allowed for a wider variety of flavours and greater control over the

164 Tristan Revells brewing process.14 Dictionaries and agricultural treatises preserved from this era, such as the Analytical Dictionary of Characters (說文解字121 ACE) and the Essential Arts for the People’s Welfare (齊民要術 544 ACE), attest to an increasing array of ferment types as brewers began to experiment to achieve different flavours as well as higher alcohol contents (those above and around 10 per cent became objects of long distance trade).15 As Huang demonstrates, a series of treatises on the subject of food technology from the sixth to the tenth centuries provide further insight into fermentation development in China. For example, the Essential Arts for the People’s Welfare devotes several chapters to explaining varied methods used for making nine forms of ferment and 37 varieties of wine. The importance of regulating and maintaining production conditions via workers’ hygiene and carefully regulated temperatures is continuously noted. The Song-era (960–1279 ACE) Wine Canon of North Hill (北山酒经) by the winemaker Zhu Yigong recorded a variety of wine types achieved through raising the temperature of the fermentor, and through modifying the additions of jiuqu and grain.16 Zhu Yigong also mentioned an additional process, the heating of wines, to allow for long-term storage and transport. Huang posits this as the first recorded example of pasteurisation of alcohol.17 Huang points out that the Ming-era Exploitation of the Works of Nature (天工开物 1637 ACE) clearly suggests that the use of an inoculum when making jiuqu, while mentioned in earlier texts, was widespread by this time.18 In other words, the conscious decision to preserve and propagate strands of the moulds and yeasts present in one batch of ferment is clearly in evidence. Furthermore, the selection in the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368 ACE) of a red mould (Monascus sp), which is particularly resilient at higher temperatures, suggests “probably the earliest example of the selection of a desired microbial culture from a mixed population of organisms, a technique that has been applied on a massive scale in modern times in the fermentation industry”.19 Space precludes an in-depth examination of many of these sources, but it is worth examining the following passage from the Exploitation of the Works of Nature, which makes clear that jiuqu was produced and marketed by specialised manufacturers who distributed their product over long distances: If the raising of the yellow ferment is deficient, and diligent observation is not performed, and if the tools are not thoroughly cleaned, then a few pellets of the blemished ferment can easily ruin many bushels of grain. Therefore, for those buying ferment at the market, it is always necessary to purchase from a trustworthy, well-known manufacturer. As for all the ferments used in making yellow wine in Hebei and Shan­ dong, the vast majority is made in Anhui and Jiangsu [the south] and is transported by boat or cart to northern cities.20

Filched fungi? 165 In summary, it is worth emphasising that the production of jiuqu is an elaborate, lengthy process in which temperature, environment and microbial organisms interact in circumstances carefully controlled by workers in order to achieve specific forms and flavours. The successful production of jiuqu and the popular alcohols based upon its power was the province of skilled professional wine houses. Furthermore, as reported in the Exploitation, there also existed cross-province national trade, as the yellow wine (huangjiu) produced in Shandong and Hebei, for example, came northward from Anhui province.

The rise of industrial alcohol Having reviewed the use and development of “Chinese yeast” or jiuqu in China prior to the nineteenth century, this section will trace the currents of research and commerce in Europe that led to an interest in the microorganisms contained in the compound around the beginning of the twentieth century. Of necessity brief and simplified, this overview should not give the impression that developments in the alcohol or chemical industries in Europe or the USA were symmetrical or unified, a point well illustrated by Ernst Homburg, Anthony Travis and other historians of the subject.21 It is also important to keep in mind that in these decades, the production of industrial alcohol was frequently carried out at the same plants as that of potable alcohol. The chemical and biological processes by which alcohol is produced were not entirely understood by the late nineteenth century. Lavoisier had demonstrated that fermentation converts sugar to carbon dioxide and alcohol in 1792, yet many other questions remained unanswered.22 In his history of international chemistry, Fred Aftalion writes of this period, Although substances obtained through fermentation were becoming better known, the mechanism under which the reactions took place remained unexplained. Great chemists like Berzelius, Woehler and Liebig, who had taken such pains to free organic chemistry from “vital­ ism”, remained impervious to any biological explanation.23 Further, “Berzelius, in particular, considered yeast as an inanimate catalyst, while Liebig saw it as the result, not the cause of fermentation.”24 A widespread scientific consensus accepting the biological nature of yeast and its role in fermentation only occurred in the wake of Louis Pasteur’s studies of the subject in the 1860s and 1870s.25 Pasteur’s efforts not only helped to revive the French alcohol industry but also helped to spur widespread interest in research on microbes.26 By 1883, working in a laboratory at the Carlsberg brewery in Denmark, Emil Hansen found one particular strain of yeast particularly appropriate for brewing, leading him to devise a system for propagating pure culture yeasts, thus allowing the standardisation of yeasts used in brewing.27

166 Tristan Revells But while the applications of such research might be apparent to brewers and winemakers, what were the possibilities or benefits for chemical industries? The importance of alcohol as a solvent and as a chief raw material for the production of plastics and many other products in the twentieth century underlay increasing demand. Prior to World War I, the industrial alcohol industry was relatively young, but growing rapidly; it surged with the onset of the war.28 Smokeless gunpowder and cordite, mustard gas, industrial solvents, synthesised chemicals for textiles and fuel additives for motors were all dependent on forms of alcohol, exponentially increasing the market for and production of industrial alcohol in Germany, the USA and elsewhere.29 It was part of the larger boom in industrial applied chemistry which by the 1880s and 1890s was increasingly well developed in many Western European countries such as Germany, whose chemists were recognised as being at the forefront of applied organic chemistry, leading exploration into the vast potential of alcohol and other chemicals for use in dyes, celluloid for film, synthetic rubber, explosives, artificial leather and many other products.30 The trend would continue after the hostilities of the First World War ceased. In his account of the British chemical industry in the interwar period, Anthony Travis writes: The range of organic products changed as a result of World War I, par­ ticularly with the increased use of electrical equipment and motorized transport. Further, the absence of previously abundant raw materials, as well as the fear of shortages, stimulated research and development in both Allied and German academic and industrial laboratories. Work on the production of nitric acid from synthetic ammonia, and on synthetic petroleum and synthetic rubber, underscored the new needs, particularly the growing reliance on new industries.31 It is essential to keep in mind, however, that such development was uneven, even amongst European industrial heavyweights, with England notably lagging behind Germany prior to WWI.32 For example, in a study of the rise of the Spanish chemical industry, Nuria Puig notes, “In common with many industrially less advanced countries on the eve of World War I, the Spanish chemical industry had been an auxiliary of agriculture and textile production.”33 And further, The extraordinary conditions created by the European war [WWI] con­ verged with an acceleration of structural changes and were a big push for local chemical industrialists […] chemicals became a relevant and dynamic sector of the growing Spanish industrial economy between the end of World War I and the [Spanish] Civil War.34 In the industrial alcohol sector, the USA were also behind in the game. Indeed, in a 1906 treatise on the status of the industry internationally, Rufus Herrick,

Filched fungi? 167 a chemist and member of the American Chemical Society and Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Society of Arts, wrote, “The scarcity of literature treating the subject of Denatured or Industrial Alcohol is so great that there are practically no books concerning it.”35 Further, “the whole problem of Denatured Alcohol in this country is therefore in a pioneer state of development, and for this reason the alcohol-using apparatus here described is largely of foreign make”.36 Yet precisely because of the utility of alcohol, the situation in the USA changed quickly. Writing in the journal of Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute in 1920, Burnell Tunison of the US Industrial Alcohol Company pointed out that in the Denatured Alcohol Act of 1906, the USA repealed a per gallon tax on alcohol sold for fuel, light and power, thus paving the way for widespread industrial production and application.37 The result was that while the Internal Revenue Service recorded just over three million proof gallons of denatured alcohol in 1907, by 1919 the figure had nearly reached 60 million gallons. Wartime statistics were far higher – in 1916, 1917 and 1918, between 84 and 93 million gallons of denatured alcohol were produced per year.38

Chinese yeast: the colonial context It is in the context of the colonisation of much of East and Southeast Asia by Western and Japanese powers that the history of industrial chemistry intersects with the history of Chinese brewing practice. As Schiebinger’s work on the “expanded Caribbean” and Osseo-Asare’s work on “healing plants” in a number of African countries demonstrate, colonial contexts provided not only a vast range of new biomatter for Western scientists to “discover”, but also many opportunities to convert such discoveries into profit. Bringing together these theoretical insights with the scholarship of historians of French Indochina, such as Gerard Sasges and Erica Peters, this section begins to follow a flow of knowledge and microorganisms related to the Amylo process, a path that leads from Chinese brewers in French Indochina to Europe, through Western colonial possessions, and finally into Republican-era China. By the 1940s, many biochemists and microbiologists studying industrialised production of alcohol, using moulds and microorganisms sourced in East and Southeast Asia, would trace their work back to two initial methods: that of the Japanese chemist Jokichi Takamine and the French chemist Albert Calmette, both of whom industrialised Asian methods of mould-based fermentation in the 1890s.39 This chapter focuses on Calmette, a student and disciple of Pasteur, who analysed and industrialised so-called “Chinese yeast” for alcohol production.40 While working at the first overseas Pasteur Institute in Saigon (1891–93), Calmette encountered the substance while observing the production practices of ethnically Chinese brewers who controlled the regional rice wine trade in the south-eastern part of what was then French Indochina. He undertook a study of the yeast cakes, eventually isolating different microorganisms to determine which were most efficacious for producing alcohol in high yields.

168 Tristan Revells More than objective scientific interest lay behind his inquiries. In Calmette’s first scientific publication regarding Chinese yeast and an industrial process for utilising it, he is clear about a primary motivation for his research: In all our possessions in the Far East, trade and the manufacture of rice spirits are granted as a monopoly to the Chinese in return for a royalty to the Treasury. In Cochinchina, this fee reaches 2,400,000 francs, and the dealers realized a net profit of nearly five million! Their contract expires on the 1st of January, 1894. Nothing, therefore, prevents our national indus­ try, better armed for the struggle, from exploiting for its profit this source of wealth in a colony which, after all, exists only for the economic expan­ sion of France, and not for that of the Chinese.41 Calmette believed that his countrymen could supplant the monopoly of Chinese rice wine merchants with a French imitation of the popular Chinese product. The Chinese were the primary producers and distributors of alcohol in Cochinchina (present day southern Vietnam), while in Annam and Tonkin (present day central and northern Vietnam), specialised Vietnamese distilling villages were the chief producers.42 Calmette would ultimately take out a patent for the industrial production of alcohol from the microorganism he named Amylomyces Rouxii after his teacher Émile Roux, a close collaborator of Pasteur.43 Keeping in mind the insights of Schiebinger and Hayden, this moment marks a clear instance in which knowledge related to the value of these moulds begins to be branded as the province of modern science, separated from the “primitive practice” of Chinese brewers via the isolation of the most efficient aspect of the compound, and by a taxonomic practice that celebrated a very particular line of scientific researchers. Between 1897 and 1933, efforts to concentrate profits from alcohol production in French hands eventually led the French colonial administration to grant what was in effect a monopoly to A. R. Fontaine’s Société française des distilleries de l’Indochine (SFDIC), which utilised methods derived from Calmette’s initial studies.44 Annick Guénel’s analysis of the early years of Calmette’s work for the Pasteur Institute summarises the result for Calmette: “Calmette’s work on Chinese yeast, published in his first article in the Annales de l’Institut Pasteur, led to his candidacy to the French Academy of Sciences and was for many years cited as an important contribution to colonial works.”45 Indeed, Calmette became a great friend of the proprietor of SFDIC, Albert Fontaine, and profited both directly and indirectly from his work on “Chinese yeast”.46 Yet from the standpoint of the French colonial state, the attempt to monopolise alcohol production and revenues was hardly an unmitigated success. Gerard Sasges’ study of the alcohol monopoly in Northern Vietnam persuasively demonstrates that the monopoly was less effective as a source of revenue than as a means of extending state control over officials and the

Filched fungi? 169 population via the Department of Customs and Excise, the administration’s largest civilian department.47 And Erica Peters has demonstrated that the SFDIC’s imitation product was frequently resisted by Vietnamese consumers: their use of inferior types of rice, the dilution of the industrial product with river water, and the need to use pure microbial cultures for industrial efficiency (and commercial profit) all affected the product’s taste and turned large portions of the population against the result.48 In short, industrialisation of a process Chinese distillers used in Cochinchina did not necessarily produce a better rice wine product. However, the attention Calmette brought to the techniques and microorganisms used by these Chinese distillers would open an avenue of scientific research that continued for decades.

Chinese yeast: research journals, industry bulletins, popular science It is worth asking how Calmette viewed the circumstances of this “discovery”. His initial research report from 1892, “Chinese Yeast: A contribution to the study of ferments of starch”, was published in the French journal Annales de l’Institut Pasteur.49 Calmette first described his interest in the production of alcohol, and the time he spent in Vietnam at the Pasteur Institute in Saigon. He then went on to identify the source of his ideas: In China and Indo-China, they create many sorts of rice wine and brandies with the help of an especially active ferment, one which is often confused with Japanese koji when it is even mentioned. This fer­ ment, composed of the symbiosis of mold and many varieties of alcohol producing yeasts, saccharifies starch with great energy. Its production is the monopoly of a small number of industrious Chinese: the indigenous distillers are completely ignorant of the manner of its preparation. Europeans call this by the name of Chinese yeast.50 It is important to consider the implication of Calmette’s comments. Calmette recognised wide variation in the Chinese alcohol industry based upon different production methods, a point in accord with the above review of scholarship on Chinese alcohol production prior to the nineteenth century. He also noted that such production was not simply “common knowledge”, but rather the specialised province of a community of Chinese brewers, which is also in line with Huang’s study of the development of jiuqu (or “Chinese yeast”). To the best of my knowledge, this is the sole instance in which contemporary Western literature concerning the Amylo process directly referenced a link between the Chinese distillers on the one hand, and any sense of proprietorship, special skills and innovation related to the substance they used to produce wines popular throughout China and Southeast Asia on the other.

170 Tristan Revells As Gerard Sasges points out, the SFDIC did not actually employ Calmette’s patent for an industrialised use of Chinese yeast. The SFDIC in fact relied for production upon the work of two of his intellectual descendants, Collette and Boidin, who extended and improved upon Calmette’s research. Inspired by Calmette, it was their work which was first labelled “the Amylo process”.51 Sasges notes: When they claimed that their technology was derived from Calmette’s work, the SFDIC and the regie [administration] also claimed that their alcohol was in some sense “indigenous.” After all, Calmette had studied alcools indigènes, made from local rice, water, fungi and yeasts. The same claim could not be made for Collette and Boidin’s research. Thus if for science, the SFDIC and the regie depended on the two French researchers’ amylo process, for rhetoric they depended on Calmette’s 1892 report.52 This insight dovetails with a central theme of this essay. From the very first example of its licensing and use, the Amylo process proved to be a malleable term. Inspired by Calmette’s work, it did not in fact use the same microorganisms utilised by Chinese brewers in Cochinchina.53 Yet association with Calmette’s initial research allowed the SFDIC to present their imitation wine as if it was indigenous in an effort to dampen resistance to their control of the alcohol market, despite the fact that it used different microorganisms and often inferior ingredients. As will be seen, the term would be continually if subtly redefined over the ensuing decades to accommodate a variety of interests. For example, a 1914 issue of the Journal of the Institute of Brewing records a transcript of lectures on “The Amylo Process of Fermentation” by Professor Otto Grove of the University of Bristol. In Grove’s account – and in other Western professional and scientific literature to follow – the narrative of discovery (and by extension, the right to patent and industrialise) is consistently described as originating from Calmette. When the Chinese community is mentioned in relation to this procedure, their contribution is diminished; in a sense, it exists outside the history of scientific development these publications themselves construct and disseminate. The lecture begins: The two principal features of the amylo process are (1) the employment of mould fungus to carry out the transformation of the starch into fer­ mentable sugar, the mould taking the place of the malt used in the ordin­ ary mashing methods; and (2) the rigorous application of pure culture principles on a very large scale. The process is based on the Chinese method of making an alcoholic drink from rice, which has been in use in China and other Eastern countries for perhaps thousands of years. In the crude native method, rice is cooked with water, and, after cooling, the socalled “Chinese yeast” is added … The Chinese yeast was first brought to

Filched fungi? 171 Europe and examined by Professor Calmette, Director of the Pasteur Institute at Lille, and on close investigation the rice cakes were found to contain different micro-organisms … which were found to be able to transform starch into sugar, and also to split up the sugar formed into alcohol and carbonic acid. After many experiments carried out by Profes­ sor Calmette and Mr. Boidin, an industrial process was worked out.54 Cori Hayden noted that the idea of a public domain enabled the appropriation of cultural knowledge and biological resources by scientists throughout much of the twentieth century. In a similar manner, tropes that described the technology and expertise of colonised and semi-colonised regions as unchanging and crude facilitated the transfer of this knowledge and enabled its positioning in terms of scientific discovery. The transcript is also noteworthy in that Owen conceptualises the Amylo process based upon two principal features: the use of moulds in place of mash, and the use of pure cultures. Even while denigrating “crude native methods” and affording them little intellectual credit, Owen nevertheless regards such methods’ unique use of moulds as a defining quality of the Amylo process. A transcript of audience remarks follows the lecture: [Audience member] Mr. R. L. Siau referred to the process as an example of the use in highly modern and highly developed industry, of a process ascertained from research into another system which had been in operation from prehistoric periods. The Chinese and Japanese races had produced alcohol by that ancient method, apparently from time immemorial, and that system had apparently gone on absolutely unchanged. Then within the last 20 years the enquiring mind of Dr. Calmette investigated this process, and by his researches had pro­ duced modern modification of that ancient industry of the greatest importance and of worldwide value.55 Both Grove’s lecture and Siau’s remarks elide the contributions of the “non­ scientific”, emphasising instead the aspects of the process specific to its industrialised form. Delivered just over 20 years after Calmette’s initial publication, there is a clear erasure of the fact that the yeast as used by Chinese distillers was very much a specialised product, knowledge of its production being restricted to only a small circle of manufacturers granted little credit despite their specialised knowledge and skills. As was also the case in Osseo-Asare’s work on biopiracy in Africa, patents were developed utilising this method and the microorganisms associated with it, with no regard for compensation or credit for those who specialised in its application. While it may be argued that Calmette’s research paper and the Journal of the Institute of Brewing reached only a specialist audience, knowledge and excitement outside of formal scientific circles concerning the Amylo process

172 Tristan Revells was certainly not limited strictly to brewing industry insiders and entrepreneurs familiar with the chemical industry. In publications devoted to popularising scientific advances of the time, the same pattern of omission exists. For example, as early as 1906, a supplement in the Scientific American devotes space to “The Modern Manufacture of Alcohol”.56 The supplement ends with a “Special Processes” section which goes into considerable detail on Calmette’s isolation of the active organism from Chinese yeast, and the subsequent work being carried on under the name of the “Amylo process”. As was evident in the sources above, just as industrialised methods involving “Chinese yeast” were represented as “modern” forms of brewing in Western language literature, the environment, processes and communities from which modern scientists extracted bio-information became “traditional”. Aside from the detail that the yeast is Chinese, there is no mention whatsoever in the Scientific American of its specialised status, production and expansive distribution – and little hint, therefore, that others may have had some hand in its development: Special Processes: Distillers of grain and spirit are beginning to employ two new processes of simultaneous saccharification and fermentation. The “amylo process” is the result of the study in 1892 by Dr Calmette, director of the Pasteur Institute at Lille, of the Chinese yeast used in the manufacture of chum-chum or rice-brandy. Dr Calmette succeeded in isolating the active organism a mold which he gave the name Amylo­ myces Rouxii (Fig 3). In 1897 Boidin and Rolants proved that a leaven of remarkable properties could be made of mold and vinasse (light wash exhausted by distillation). These experiments led to Collette and Boidin’s amylo process which not only effects saccharification and fer­ mentation in one operation but also the use of sterilized wort and thus insures the absence of secondary fermentations.57 We can also see this pattern at work in the entry for “spirits” in a 1911 version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.58 In the initial paragraph surveying alcohol across the world, China is mentioned together with Egypt, alongside an illustration of a small, primitive alcohol still. After considerable attention devoted to medieval and early modern European techniques of brewing, the authors bring the reader up to date on the latest technological advances. Describing in extensive detail new methods for the production of industrial alcohol, the Amylo process is introduced. Yet, the fact that Calmette, Boidin and other researchers derived the process and the biotechnology involved from Chinese products and methods is omitted. There is no mention of the site or method of discovery (much less of the colonial exploitation of French Indochina and the concerted effort at destruction of the Chinese monopoly on wine production which surrounded the alleged discovery). Knowledge of the process of mould-based fermentation is posed in passive terms, without a subject:

Filched fungi? 173 Of late years a process has been discovered whereby these disadvan­ tages, as far as industrial spirit is concerned, are entirely overcome. It has been known for some time that certain micro-organisms possess the power of converting the starch directly into fermentable sugar, and fur­ ther of splitting up the latter into the usual products of alcoholic fer­ mentation … Calmette discovered a mould to which he gave the name Amylomyces Rouxii, which was employed by A. Collette and A. Boidin for producing alcohol on an industrial scale. Since then Boidin has dis­ covered another mould to which he gave the name of Mucor B, which possesses advantages over the other microorganisms named inasmuch as it works more rapidly and in a more concentrated wort. The amylo process, as this method of producing alcohol is termed, is now worked on a very large scale in many countries.59 “Discovery” of these moulds and their use in alcohol production is constructed as solely a product of the efforts of these scientific researchers. This is made possible by omitting the preceding acts of collection, innovation and experimentation, and by suggesting that “native practice” was “immemorial”, “timeless” and, above all, unchanging. The utility of the microorganisms becomes part of the history of scientific discovery by being removed from the trappings and details of its historical site of production and appropriation.

The circulation of “Chinese yeast” As seen above, the techniques and microorganisms associated with the Amylo process moved from a circle of Chinese specialist brewers in a French colonial context to France and then to Europe and the USA. This section outlines its re-exportation to other tropical colonies. This trend was driven both by the drastic upsurge in demand for industrial alcohol post 1914 and the need for a cheaper method of using raw materials in the colonies to produce potable alcohol. It is important to emphasise that the process of Amylo-oriented scientific discovery reflected in scientific publications was fuelled by the effort to commercialise the process. Indeed, the very patent system by which each incremental advance in production efficiency was recognised required that the industrial applicability of the new advance be proven in order for the patent to be issued. A textbook entitled Technical Mycology: The Utilization of Micro­ organisms in the Arts and Manufactures, published in Vienna in 1903 and translated into English, aligns with the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s assertion that applications of the Amylo process had reached many parts of Europe by the early 1900s.60 Furthermore it makes clear that refinements of the process were far from a fringe branch of research. The author of the book, Dr Franz Lafar, was the first director and professor

174 Tristan Revells of the Imperial Vienna Technical Institute, a university research institute set up in 1897 to rival the Pasteur Institute in Paris and the Institute of Fermentation Research in Copenhagen.61 The textbook’s intended audience appears to have been those with a scientific or technical background, but not necessarily experts in the field who sought a digest of the major innovations in the field within the past few years.62 The textbook references the work of a second wave of researchers who began modifying Calmette’s ideas using different moulds and yeasts to effect the same result. By the date of its publication a number of these had been implemented in Europe: in a distillery at Seclin, near Lille, in AustriaHungary and, in modified form, at the Anker distillery in Antwerp.63 Further, after a fire at their main plant in 1908, the Distillers Society of Deux-Sèvres rebuilt a new alcohol production facility in Melle, France specifically to utilise the Amylo process.64 The influence of the Amylo process continued to spread. A 1908 lecture by Dr Philip Schidrowitz, reprinted in the UK-based Journal of the Institute of Brewing, suggests that at time of publication around 20 large distilleries worldwide made use of some variant of the Amylo process, pumping out a combined 13 million gallons of alcohol.65 Concerned with popularising the process in England, where Inland Revenue Authority restrictions made use of the Amylo process difficult due to the necessity of having a wort mash that inspectors could measure to assess tax, Schidrowitz personally visited a number of distilleries in Europe. He made clear that employment of the process was not simply experimental: It should be remembered in this connection that the Amylo process is not merely in the experimental stage, but that these figures are based on actual working results obtained from some 20 distilleries in different parts of the world, namely, in Spain, France, Italy, Hungary, Norway, Indo-China, the Philippines, Mexico, Brazil and the Argentine Republic.66 A French work published in 1910 by two agricultural engineers, Paul Hubert and Emil Dupre, devoted a full chapter to the potential of utilising the Amylo process for alcohol production in French colonial possessions.67 “Cassava” was dedicated to the commercial uses of this plant throughout the French colonies. As part of the Bibliotheque Pratique du Colon series, it was funded by subscriptions from the Ministry of the Colonies and colonial governments, and dedicated to Monsieur W. Ponty, Governor General of French West Africa. The primary thrust of the authors’ argument was that in many colonial possessions with tropical environments, raw materials such as molasses, sugar cane, maize and cassava lent themselves for use in alcohol production. Yet due to the difficulty of maintaining malt production during hot summer months, “the distilleries of the tropical countries must

Filched fungi? 175 continually import from Europe dry malt, of which the transportation costs in packaging double or triple the price of returns”.68 This, the authors claimed, was however no longer a problem as “presently, the employment of malt in the amylo process is completely removed”.69 Exhaustive calculations of the potential savings on denatured alcohol produced by the Amylo process using cassava followed. The process still found favour in colonial contexts in the late 1920s and 1930s. For example, for the January 1933 issue of the journal Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, a professor at Louisiana State University, W. L. Owen, submitted an article entitled “Production of Industrial Alcohol from Grain by Amylo Process”. Owen noted:70 The Amylo process was developed by Calmette and Boidin at Seclin near Lille, and subsequently at Antwerp, and since that time this, or other similar processes, have been utilized in almost every country of the world where fermentations of amylaceous materials are carried out. At first Amylomyces Rouxii was exclusively used in the process, but subsequently Calmette and his co-workers employed Mucor B. Mucor G., and Rhizopus Delemar, all of which were isolated either from Chin­ ese yeast or from Japanese kojii. The advantages of these subsequently isolated cultures were their greater tolerance of alcohol and their lower production of acid.71 Again, we are reminded that further developments of the technology were commonly derived from the commercial products of Japanese and Chinese brewers. It is also evident that use of the process expanded over a wide geographic range. It is also relevant to note that further research continued to be linked to colonial contexts and conditions. Comparing different microorganisms’ alcohol yields, Owen wrote, in a study of the Boulard process [a refinement of the Amylo] in Mada­ gascar by the Institut Colonial de Marseille, it was found that the yields of alcohol were from 37 to 39 liters of alcohol per 100 kg. of maize as against 34 liters by the malting process.72 The use of these moulds to produce alcohol had been exported from a French colony in Southeast Asia, to Europe, and back to a French colony off the coast of Southeast Africa within the span of a few decades.73 The arguments of enthusiasts such as Hubert and Dupre who championed the use of the Amylo process in colonial contexts 20 years before appear to have been prescient. In the correspondence section of the same journal a few months later, M. Neubaeur, writing from Budapest, suggested that the Boulard extension of the Amylo process which again substituted a new microorganism in his view held the most promise for achieving efficient production of industrial alcohol. Within the context of this chapter it is

176 Tristan Revells important to note that he cites statistics from two Amylo-powered distilleries in Syria, providing additional evidence of the geographic spread of the process, as well as its colonial links (Madagascar had been a French colony since 1897, and Syria a mandate since 1923).74

Chinese yeast, power fuel and scientific nationalism in China Previous sections have traced the global dissemination of techniques and microorganisms derived from jiuqu while analysing the tensions inherent in varied constructions of the Amylo process’ origins. This final section focuses on the recirculation of the process within the context of Republican era China (1912–1949). In the wake of the fall of the Qing empire in 1911, China experienced a period of internecine strife commonly known as the warlord period, in which the country was divided into contending zones of political and military power. Chiang-Kai Shek’s Northern Expedition in 1927 did not completely unify the country, but it allowed centralisation of power along the eastern seaboard under his Guomindang (KMT) led nationalist government. As part of the new government’s consolidation of the organs and institutions of power, government ministers developed a number of multi-year plans for the development of light and heavy industry across the country to reduce reliance on foreign imports, with the ultimate aim of both economic and political self-sufficiency, rendering the past several decades of semicolonial relations with Western and Japanese powers a thing of the past.75 After the Mukden incident of 1931, in which militant Japanese officers staged an attack on their own rail lines in order to provide a pretext for the takeover of Manchuria (present day northeastern China), the threat of a full-scale Japanese invasion increasingly oriented national planning – and government-funded scientific research – toward the possibility of full-scale warfare.76 As Zuoyue Wang argues in a study of the first “comprehensive scientific society” in China, while the international standards of scientific professionalism pushed some Chinese scientists of the period to argue for increased disciplinary autonomy from the government, government and semigovernmental support for scientific research and institutions was crucial during the Republican era, particularly during the Nanjing decade (1927–37).77 The technocratic orientation of the KMT government drew on the talents of many scientists and social planners recently returned from overseas study in Japan, the USA and Europe.78 Many returned to China to guide and staff expanding university departments and research establishments. Industrial microbiologist Chen Taosheng, whose observations on the Amylo process’ relationship to China appeared in the epigraph, was one such example. Chen graduated from the Beijing University of Industry and Applied Chemistry in 1921.79 At the time it was the only institution of higher learning to offer courses in applied microbiology in China. He initially worked at the Puyi Fermentation Plant in

Filched fungi? 177 Shandong province, which aimed to convert beet sugar into ethanol for sale as industrial alcohol, but local fighting and scarcity of materials quickly led to the plant’s closure.80 In 1930 he came directly into contact with the KMT government via his work at the National Bureau of Industrial Research (NBIR) in Nanjing as director of its fermentation laboratory.81 Chen’s experience at both the Shandong plant and the NBIR informed his 1932 article, “A Plan For Developing China’s Ethanol Industry,” which makes an early argument for the importance of encouraging China’s self-reliance in ethanol production.82 That year he studied abroad in the USA with W. L. Owen at Louisiana State University, where he undertook graduate work on fermentation and the Amylo process.83 From 1928 to 1937, the KMT’s determination to reconstruct China via sweeping multi-year plans, first through the National Reconstruction Commission, then through the National Economic Council, had ramifications for all aspects of the economy, from urban planning to electrical utilities and commercial law.84 Chen was thus well-positioned upon returning to China. Furthermore, his exhortations to expand the ethanol industry had made an impression. Head of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce Kong Xiangxi’s (孔祥熙) five-year plan for the development of heavy industry in China included encouragement of ethanol plant construction in China to promote national self-reliance.85 Within the context of the KMT’s strategic planning, there were two primary uses for the ethanol produced by such factories: munitions and “power fuel”. The latter was a substitute for gasoline should fuel supplies be cut by a full-scale Japanese invasion.86 A highly visible example of this cooperation appeared over 1933–34, when the China Alcohol Distillery was erected in Shanghai’s Pudong district.87 Both domestic and international entrepreneurs and scientists were consulted and recruited to guide investment.88 When it opened in 1935, it was by far the largest ethanol plant in China and ultimately utilised the Amylo process for ethanol production.89 Chen Taosheng was chosen to serve in the capacity of the distillery’s chief chemist.90 By the late 1930s, well aware that petroleum poor nations such as Germany and Japan were highly active in scientific research on petrol substitutes, Chinese entrepreneurs and fermentation experts, often backed by the KMT’s National Resources Commission (NRC 资源委员会), had markedly improved China’s situation via a series of distilling plants around Shanghai and in the wartime capital of Chongqing.91 Eventually, the distilling network stretched throughout the provinces of Sichuan, Gansu, Shaanxi, Guangxi and Yunnan, pumping out millions of gallons of “power fuel”.92 During the war years, Chinese government scientists experimented and tinkered with the best formulas for “power fuel”. While formulations varied, ethanol was always key to the blends, and would be mixed with gasoline, ether and other compounds in proportions of 25 to 65 per cent ethanol. Precise proportions varied based upon plant location, as formulas for the most powerful or efficient ethanol blends were not always possible

178 Tristan Revells due to material scarcity and price inflation.93 In the dire years following the Japanese seizure of the Burma Road, these plants continued to supply both the Kuomintang armies and allied US armed forces with fuel for the fight against Japanese armies.94

Expertise and Chinese yeast Within the above context, it is not surprising that in Chen Taosheng’s and Guo Zhiliang’s accounts cited in the epigraph of this chapter, research inspired by contact with Chinese yeast was seen from a decidedly nationalist perspective. While Western accounts marked as “traditional” or “primitive” the contributions of Chinese actors (and therefore, undeserving of any credit), Chinese scientists such as Chen and Guo simultaneously chastised and celebrated the history of their country’s brewing practices while explaining and disseminating useful research and applications of the Amylo process. Yet it is also important to emphasise that the endeavours of Republican-era scientists simultaneously sought to strengthen the nation and enhance their own authority and social positions. Grace Shen’s probing study of modern geology in Republican China points out that in many cases Chinese scientists and scientific societies learned to shape their rhetoric and their research in ways that aligned with state interests while still preserving a measure of intellectual and institutional autonomy.95 Likewise, Osseo-Asare’s study of post-colonial scientists in Africa reminds us that the language of anticolonialism and nationalism can go hand in hand with redirecting intellectual credit and remuneration in ways benefitting those who wield the authority of modern science.96 With these insights in mind, it is important to analyse Chen Taosheng’s definition of the Amylo process. By highlighting the chaos of the country and the “indifference” of those who brewed alcohol to the power of the microorganisms they harnessed, Chen implicitly creates a role for the modern scientist in China – that of a figure who can save and revitalise the nation via mastery of the methods of scientific inquiry, while preventing the resources of the nation from being appropriated and exploited by foreign actors. Indeed, in a post-war article entitled “The Problem of Reviving the Chinese Ethanol Industry” published in 1946, Chen crowed over the success of the collaboration between scientists and the KMT’s National Resources Commission in markedly improving the nation’s ethanol production capacity to meet wartime needs.97 Looking to the future, he suggested that the nationwide alcohol industry be overhauled, with brewers and distillers using traditional methods unable to meet the highest standards of modern production and left to fail. In most cases, he suggested that the industrialised Amylo process should be implemented. In Chen’s estimation, it was not only efficient, but compared to industrial processes based upon molasses that were increasingly popular in the West, it enabled the use of the vast quantities of sorghum and other grains available from Chinese farmland.98

Filched fungi? 179

Conclusion According to the representations of government-associated scientists, the ethanol programme during this period was the result of a grand alliance between modern science and state-supported industry. Yet despite Chen’s denigration of traditional brewers and their methods, KMT archival documents show that during times of material scarcity or inflationary prices in the war, large-scale industrialised government ethanol factories were far from independent of the thousands of local, small-scale wine and liquor makers who still relied on traditional methods and jiuqu (Chinese yeast) to produce alcohol. The economics were simple: it was costly and slow to transport raw ingredients from outlying farming counties to factory sites. Rather than attempt to secure raw materials, factory purchasing managers would often simply arrange to buy up the output of local winemakers and distillers.99 The potable wine and liquor, usually ranging from 12 to 40 per cent alcohol, would then be distilled further in industrial machinery to 90 to 95 per cent alcohol, and then used either for munitions or fuel blends.100 Western scientists and entrepreneurs emphasised specific aspects of knowledge related to “Chinese yeast” to rechannel profits and construct a lineage of intellectual credit that minimised the importance of Chinese participants. A few decades later, Republican-era scientists such as Chen Taosheng enhanced their own authority and professional standing via narratives that emphasised the role of the expertise of modern scientists in both saving and strengthening the nation. This chapter has probed the claims of contemporary Western scientists and writers whose work was often indebted to colonial contexts, and whose taxonomic practices and narratives of discovery minimised the contributions of Chinese participants, resulting in the reallocation of professional credit and commercial gain. It likewise recognises that Republican-era Chinese scientists were often quick to dismiss the “traditional knowledge” of artisans and communities, arrogating expertise and authority for their own disciplines, even while industrial techniques and production relied upon the techniques and substances they allegedly surpassed. By examining tensions and conflicts in rhetorical constructions of the Amylo process that extend across decades as well as across national borders, this chapter has argued that knowledge concerning the value of the techniques and microorganisms associated with the Amylo process is best described as having been coproduced by a wide variety of participants, in a process in which biomatter and bioinformation flowed between China, French Indochina, Europe and the USA.

Notes 1 Taosheng Chen, 陳騊聲. “Aminglou Fa Zhizao Jiujung Zhi Yanjiu Di Yi Ci Baogao” 阿明露法製造酒精之研究第一次報告 [Research on the Amylo Method of Producing Alcohol Report Number 1]. Gongye Zhongxin 工业中心 (1934): 64–67; 64.

180 Tristan Revells 2 Zhiliang Guo, 郭質良. “Jiuqu Zhi Huaxue Guan” 酒麴之化學觀 [A Chemical Perspective on Jiuqu]. Dongfang Zazhi 東方雜誌 7 (1944): 32–41. 3 A few terms must be clarified from the outset. Ethanol, methanol (wood alco­ hol), and butanol alcohol are three of the more familiar groups of the organic compound known generally as alcohol. Ethanol alone is potable, and forms the base of alcoholic beverages, but is also a useful raw material for the creation of many industrial products. In potable beverages, ethanol alcohol generally ranges from 3% (beer) to 40% (vodka and whiskey) of the beverage. When sold for non-potable uses, ethanol is commonly referred to as “industrial alcohol”. Ethanol sold for non-potable uses may be sold in “pure” or “denatured” form. Sold as “pure” ethanol, it is usually 95–96% ethanol, plus water. Denaturing is a process whereby pure ethanol is mixed with methanol or other substances to render it unfit for consumption; this is usually done to avoid taxes or duties applicable only for potable ethanol alcohol. In the first decades of the twentieth century, many industrialised factories would produce both potable and non-potable products to maximise opportunities for profit. Finally, “industrially produced alcohol” should be distinguished from “industrial alcohol”. The former term simply connotes alcohol produced in large quantities by modern industrial methods. It encompasses many potable beverages available at supermarkets as well as non-potable alcohols. “Industrial alcohol” usually denotes ethanol that is high proof and produced in great volume to meet the demands of industrial and chemical applications. The terms are often conflated, leading to confusion. 4 “Chinese yeast” is something of a misnomer and derives from initial uncer­ tainty regarding its active properties: while the cakes did contain yeasts, the translation belies the fact that they also contained a variety of moulds capable of converting grains into sugar. It was these moulds and their abilities that primarily attracted scientific interest. 5 Limited by space and my own abilities, this chapter focuses primarily on inte­ grating the history of Chinese brewing practices with histories of industrial chemistry. This is not to suggest that the microorganisms and production tech­ niques solely originate from China. Similar methods can be found in the koji of Japanese brewing practice, the ragi of Javanese practice, etc. 6 For an insightful analysis of this tension in the context of geological science see Grace Yen Shen, Unearthing the Nation: Modern Geology and Nationalism in Republican China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. 7 Londa Schiebinger, Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press, 2007, 35–46 and 194–205. 8 Abena Dove Osseo-Asare, Bitter Roots: The Search for Healing Plants in Africa. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014, 107–113. 9 Ibid., 3. 10 Ibid., 162–164. 11 Cori Hayden, When Nature Goes Public: The Making and Unmaking of Bio­ prospecting in Mexico. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003; 25. 12 Contemporary sources employ the term “Chinese yeast” indiscriminately to refer to a wide variety of compounds containing microorganisms used for alco­ hol production both inside and outside of China’s borders. 13 H. T. Huang, ed. Fermentations and Food Science, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000. A former programme director for biochemistry at the National Science Foun­ dation, Huang was also a historian of Chinese science. Published in 2000, his contribution to the Needham project offers the interested reader an excellent point of departure to briefly review the state of Chinese fermentation techniques

Filched fungi? 181

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31

prior to the late Qing and Republican period. His work drew on his decades of fieldwork in China beginning in the 1940s as well as the scholarship of Chinese archaeologists, historians and anthropologists. Ibid., 157. Ibid., 169. Ibid., 184–186. Ibid., 187. Ibid., 191. Ibid., 194. Yixing Song, 宋應星. Tian Gong Kai Wu 天工開物 [Exploitation of the Works of Nature]. http://so.gushiwen.org/guwen/bookv_3732.aspx. (accessed June 15, 2017) [My translation]. Ernst Homburg, Anthony S. Travis, and Harm G. Schroter. The Chemical Industry in Europe, 1850–1914 Industrial Growth, Pollution and Professionaliza­ tion. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998; 344. See also Anthony S. Travis, The Rainbow Makers: the Origins of the Synthetic Dyestuffs Industry in Western Europe. Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 1993. Fred Aftalion, A History of the International Chemical Industry. Translated by Otto Theodor Benfey. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991, 93. Ibid., 93. Ibid., 94. James A. Barnett, “A History of Research on Yeasts 2: Louis Pasteur and His Contemporaries, 1850–1880.” Yeast 16, no. 8 (2000): 755–771; 756–767. Raymond G. Anderson, “History of Industrial Brewing.” In Handbook of Brewing, Second Edition, edited by F. G. Priest and Graham G. Stewart, 1–37. Boca Raton: CRC/Taylor & Francis, 2006, 12. James A. Barnett and FW Lichtenthaler, “A History of Research on Yeasts 3: Emil Fischer, Eduard Buchner and Their Contemporaries, 1880–1900.” Yeast 18, no. 4 (2001): 363–388; 366–367. Aftalion, History of the Chemical Industry, 95. Aftalion writes, “The term biochemistry began to be applied around 1910 to the science of substances extracted from the living world and to the mech­ anisms leading to their formation. Emil Fischer laid the foundations for this science. It took only a few years for the new science to make its break­ through into the industrial world. Indeed with the needs born of World War I, substances produced through fermentation acquired great significance just as improvements in biochemical technology were paving the way for mass production.” J.H. Holland, Sources of Industrial Alcohol. Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) 1925, no. 5 (1925): 193–216; 193. Aftalion, 39. Anthony S. Travis, Determinants in the Evolution of the European Chemical Industry, 1900–1939: New Technologies, Political Frameworks, Markets and Companies. Dordrecht: Springer, 2011; 178. In many cases, forms of alcohol underlay much of this growth. As Travis notes, an article by Herbert Levinstein in an issue of Chemistry and Industry from 1939 makes the connection crystal clear: “There are three sources of raw materials for the manufacture of industrial products and three sources only: (I) The large group of naturally growing things [for methanol and ethanol]; (2) Coal; (3) Pet­ roleum. Plastic substances serve many different purposes. They are, however, for the most part derived from very simple and very similar raw materials. Thus the three sources of raw material overlap in the most remarkable fashion. This is not the case with the older organic industries, based on coal tar, which present a close

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32 33

34 35

36 37 38 39

40 41 42

43 44 45 46

analogy in some respects. In these a simple substance like benzene may be con­ verted into an astonishing variety of dyes or maybe pharmaceuticals, perfumes, or photographic chemicals, but they cannot be made from things that grow or from petroleum. In the plastics industry alcohol may be said to play the part of benzene. Alcohol is easily converted into acetic acid, acetic anhydride, acetone, or even ethylene. Ethylene is used not only as a raw material for plastics, but for making mustard gas. So too, ether and acetone are used in the manufacture of propellants.” Travis and Homburg, An Issue of Different Mentalities, 117. Nuria Puig, “The Frustrated Rise of Spanish Chemical Industry Between the Wars,” In Determinants in the evolution of the European chemical indus­ try, 1900–1939: new technologies, political frameworks, markets and compan­ ies, edited by Anthony Travis, 301–320. Dordrecht: Springer, 2011; 302. Ibid., 303. Rufus F. Herrick, Denatured or industrial alcohol: a treatise on the history, manufacture, composition, uses, and possibilities of industrial alcohol in the vari­ ous countries permitting its use, and the laws and regulations governing the same, including the United States. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1907, iii. Ibid., v. Burnell R. Tunison, “Industrial Alcohol.” Journal of the Franklin Institute 190, no. 3 (1920): 373–420; 376. Ibid., 373–420. See for example: Lu Cheng Hao, “Fungal Amylases as Saccharifying Agents in the Ethanol Fermentation of Starchy Materials.” PhD diss., Iowa State Univer­ sity, 1942, 13–21. http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/13097/ Kenneth Justin Goering, 1941. “Mineral Acids and Mold Amylase as Sacchar­ ifying Agents for Production of Fermentable Sugars from Starch.” PhD diss., Iowa State University, 1941, 14–16. http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/13095/ Alice Lee, “Evaluation of Saccharifying Methods for Alcoholic Fermentation of Starchy Substrates,” PhD diss., Iowa State University, 1955, 6–8. http://lib.dr. iastate.edu/rtd/13626/ Albert Calmette, “Contribution à l’étude des Ferments de l’amidon. La Levure Chinoise” [Contribution to the Study of Starch Ferments: Chinese Yeast]. Annales de l’Institut Pasteur 6, (1892): 604–620; 604–620. Ibid., 607. Erica J. Peters, “Negotiating Power through Everyday Practices in French Viet­ nam, 1880–1924.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2000; 80–85. http:// ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.cul.col umbia.edu/docview/304641007?accountid=10226 Annick Guénel, “The Creation of the First Overseas Pasteur Institute, or the Beginning of Albert Calmette’s Pastorian Career.” Medical History, 43 no. 1 (1999): 1–25; 2. Erica J. Peters, “Taste, Taxes, and Technologies: Industrializing Rice Alcohol in Northern Vietnam, 1902–1913.” French Historical Studies 27, no. 3 (2004): 569–600; 578–583. Guénel, “Albert Calmette’s Pastorian Career,” 1–25. Gerard Henry Sasges, “L’Autorité de la machine: Albert Calmette et l’histoire du monopole d’alcool,” [The Authority of the Machine: Albert Calmette and the History of the Alcohol Monopoly] In Autorités de l’Indochine coloniale, edited by Jean-Jacques Tatin-Gourier. Paris: Collection Carrefour d’empires dirigée par Christine de Gémeaux, 2015; 8–9.

Filched fungi? 183 47 Gerard Henry Sasges, “Contraband, Capital, and the Colonial State: the Alcohol Monopoly in Northern Viet Nam, 1897–1933.” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2006, v. 48 Peters, “Taste, Taxes, and Technologies,” 590–595. 49 Calmette, “Contribution to the Study of Ferments,” 604–620. 50 Ibid., 604. 51 Sasges, “Contraband Capital,” 50–51. 52 Ibid., 52. 53 W. L. Owen, “Production of Industrial Alcohol from Grain by Amylo Process.” Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 25, no. 1 (1933): 87–89. 54 Otto Grove, “The Amylo Process of Fermentation.” Journal of the Institute of Brewing 10, no. 4 (1914): 248–266. 55 Ibid., 262. 56 Anonymous, “The Modern Manufacture of Alcohols.” Scientific American, 29 September 1906, 25696, 25697. 57 Ibid., 25697. 58 Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information, Volume 25. New York: Encyclopaedia Britannica Co, 1911, 694–705. 59 Ibid., 703. 60 Franz Lafar, Technical Mycology: The Utilization of Micro-Organisms in the Arts and Manufactures. Translated by Charles T. C. Salter. London: C. Griffin & Co., 1903, 86–98. 61 This institution exists today as the Institute of Biochemical Technology and Microbiology at Vienna Technical University. See I. M. Roehr, “History of Biotechnology in Austria.” In History of Modern Biotechnology, edited by A. Fiechter, 128–129. Berlin: Springer, 2000, 128–129. 62 In other words, the book is focused on application and practical uses of scien­ tific research, a point affirmed by its subtitle “A Practical Handbook on Fermen­ tation and Fermentative Processes for the use of Brewers and Distillers, Analysts, Technical and Agricultural Chemists, Pharmacists, and All Interested in the Industries Dependent on Fermentation”. Indeed, it is reviewed in trade journals such as the April 15 1903 issue of the Brewers Journal (p. 252). 63 Lafar, Technical Mycology, 94–96.

64 A. E. Case, E. F. Armstrong, Julian L. Baker, Edward Gardner, J. Barritt,

C. A. Hill, and M. Neilson, “Obituary Notices.” Journal of the Chemical Soci­ ety (Resumed) 1939, no. 0 (1939): 1224–1237; 1232. 65 Philip Schidrowitz, “The Practical Application of Pure Cultures in the Distil­ lery.” Journal of the Institute of Brewing, 14. No. 3 (1908): 264–281; 269–281. 66 Ibid., 275–277. 67 Paul Hubert and Emile Dupré. Le Manioc [Cassava]. Paris: H. Dunod and E. Pinat, 1910. www.manioc.org/gsdl/collect/patrimon/archives/FRA12338.dir/FRA12338.pdf 68 Ibid., 242. 69 Ibid. 70 Owen, “Production of Industrial Alcohol,” 87–89. 71 Ibid., 87. 72 Ibid., 88. 73 Hubert and Dupré, Cassava. 74 M. Neubauer, “Correspondence – Comparative Efficiencies of Amylo and Malt Processes for Production of Industrial Alcohol.” Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 25, no. 6 (1933): 712.

184 Tristan Revells 75 William Kirby, “Engineering China: Birth of the Developmental State, 1928–1937.” In Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond, edited by Wen-hsin Yeh, 137–155. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000, 137–155. 76 For recent scholarship on Chinese efforts to mobilise against the Japanese, see Rana Mitter, China’s War with Japan, 1937–1945: The Struggle for Survival. London: Allen Lane (Penguin Imprint), 2013. 77 Zuoyue Wang, “Saving China through Science: The Science Society of China, Scientific Nationalism, and Civil Society in Republican China.” Osiris 2, no. 17 (2002): 291–322; 309–314. The Zhongguo Kexueshe or China Scientific Society was founded in 1914–15. 78 Space precludes a full analysis of figures such as Guo Zhiliang and the Japan­ ese educated Wei Yanshou (魏嵒壽), who played large roles in the establishment and expansion of the fields of industrial chemistry and microbiology in China. Like Chen, their scientific research is frequently framed in reference to the pro­ ject of national self-strengthening. With the publication of an article in the journal Science in 1929, Wei would in fact be the first Chinese scientist to pub­ lish in a peer reviewed Western natural sciences publication. 79 “Shanghai Wenshi Ziliao Xuanji” 上海文史資料選輯. [Selected Historical and Literary Documents and Records of Shanghai]. Shanghai Renmin Chuban She. 上海人民出版社 52 (1985): 102–103; 100. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid., 101. 82 Taosheng Chen, 陳騊聲. “Fazhan Zhongguo Jiujing Gongye Jihua” 發展中國 酒精工業計劃 [A Plan for the Development of China’s Ethanol Industry]. Gongcheng 工程 7, no. 2 (1932); 163–164. Chen notes that China imported 5 million gallons of ethanol per year, a number that would only grow. 83 Ai Min Zhao, 赵爱民. Dang Dai Zhong Guo Jiu Jie Ren Wu Zhi 当代中国酒界人物 [Contemporary Figures in the Chinese Alcohol Industry]. Beijing: Zhongguo Qing Gong Ye Chubanshe, 2009; 2–3. 84 Kirby, William. “Engineering China,” 137–143. 85 Qitian Cheng, “Chinese Government Economic Planning and Reconstruction Since 1927.” China Institute of Pacific Relations, 1933, 19–20, https://clio.columbia. edu/catalog/6818155. See also: James Reardon-Anderson, The Study of Change: Chemistry in China 1840–1949. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991; 244. 86 Second Historical Archives of China, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China (SHA): Sichuan Ethanol Plant Survey Report 四川酒精廠調查報告 in Situation in China’s Pharmaceutical Factory and Herbal Medicine Industry 中國製藥廠草藥業況, Digital Call Number 11/11888. Used to stretch petroleum supplies, substitute fuel went by several names in Chinese but all could be used in internal combus­ tion engines and formed one of the Nationalists’ major wartime industries. The two most prominent were “power fuel” (dongli jiujing 動力酒精) and “gasoline substitute” (daiti shiyou 代替石油). Abroad, the term “gasohol” was popular. 87 Zhongguo Jiujingchang Kaimu Jiniance. [Souvenir Publication for the Official Opening of the China Alcohol Distillery]. Publisher Unclear, 1935. 88 Experts and funds from diverse nations were engaged for such projects. In the case of the Puyi Shandong plant, Chen worked alongside Japanese technicians. In the case of the China Alcohol Distillery, funds were provided by an ethnic­ ally Chinese entrepreneur based in Java, 黃宗孝 Huang Zongxiao. Just back from study in the USA, Chen was chosen to be the head fermentation expert. 89 “Documents and Records of Shanghai,” 102–103.

Filched fungi? 185 90 Souvenir publication for the China Alcohol Distillery, 43. 91 See Chongqing Municipal Archives, Chongqing PRC: Sichuan Province, Chongqing, Lu County, Leshan District Factory Table, Sichuan Ethanol Indus­ try Survey Report 四川省重慶,瀘縣, 樂山區究竟工廠一覽表, 四川酒精工業調 查報告, Digital Call Number 0018-0001-00019-0000-125-000. 92 The production of ethanol in Yunnan increased from 263,600 gallons in 1942 to 670,680 in 1943 and 1,288,490 in 1944. Renjie Huang and Tuzhang Shen 黃人傑, 申屠樟. “Yunan Jiujing Gongye Gaikuang” 雲南酒精工業概況[Survey of the Yunnan Alcohol Industry]. Ziyuan Weiyuanhui Jikan 資源委員會季刊 1 no. 1 (1945): 128–129; 129. 93 See SHA: An Inspection of Samples from the Xinmin Substitute Gasoline Plant by the National Resources Commission, Industrial and Mining Adjust­ ment Administration, and National Bureau of Industrial Research 資源委員會, 工礦調整處, 及中央工業試驗所調查重慶市新民代汽油廠试验样品按, Digital Call Number 4/36414. 94 Huang and Shen, “Yunnan Alcohol Industry,” 128–129.

95 Shen, Unearthing the Nation, 117–120.

96 Osseo-Asare, Bitter Roots, 162–164.

97 Taosheng Chen, 陳騊聲. “Zhongguo Jiujing Gongye Fuxing Wenti” 中國 酒精工

業復興問題 [The Problem of Reviving the Chinese Ethanol Industry]. Gongcheng 化學世界1, no. 14 (1946): 2–3. 98 Ibid., 3. 99 For instance, see SHA: Military Affairs Department Controlling Shaanxi Prov­ ince Ethanol Factories, 軍政部統治陝西省酒精廠案, Digital Call Number 4/08514. In one example in 1941, around 60 small brewers and distilleries in Shaanxi province provided tens of thousands of gallons of distilled alcohol to the prov­ ince’s industrialised ethanol factories, which would use modern equipment to distil it further to around 95% purity. The practice was common in Guizhou, Yunnan and Sichuan factories throughout the war. 100 A sampling of the range of formulations scientists at the NBIR employed can be found in the notes of the Bureau’s Director Gu Yuquan in SHA: An Inspection of Samples from the Xinmin Substitute Gasoline Plant by the National Resources Commission, Industrial and Mining Adjustment Administration, and National Bureau of Industrial Research 資源委員會,工礦調整處,及中央工業試驗所調查重 慶市新民代汽油廠试验样品按, Digital Call Number 4/36414.

9

Gariahat Whisky Bootlegged cosmopolitanism and

the making of the nationalistic

state, Calcutta c. 1923–1935

Projit Bihari Mukharji

Recently a lot of scholarly attention has been given to historically specific forms in which people sought to think and act beyond the local. Crime in general and bootlegging in particular, despite being one of the most frequent sites for such thinking and acting beyond the local, has been ignored in this scholarship. Using the Gariahat Whisky Case of the 1930s, I address this lacuna. First, I demonstrate how thoroughly cosmopolitan the enterprise really was. Second, I argue that the enterprise, in both its inception and its collapse, was related to the emergence at the time of a new ‘nationalistic state’ that was much more emphatically interested in enclosing economic operations within a strictly territorialised national boundary. I call this state ‘nationalistic’, rather than ‘nationalist’, since in the period I am discussing it was still technically a colonial state but one which was already displaying some ‘national’ characteristics, especially in the realm of economic policies. Sometime in 1933–34 the sales of a famous brand of Scotch whisky, the ‘House of Lords’ Whisky, suddenly plummeted at the port city of Dairen (Dalian) in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in north China.1 The concessionaries who held the licence to export this particular brand of whisky to Manchukuo were based in Singapore and initially suspected that the Japanese were pushing their own domestic whiskies in the colonies. Upon inquiry, however, it transpired that the brand that was pushing the Scotch out of the market was not Japanese but rather another rival Scottish product imported via Calcutta. After many bureaucratic delays when the case was actually investigated a further surprise awaited. It turned out that the bottles shipped from Calcutta did not in fact contain the rival Scottish brand at all, but a whisky distilled locally in Calcutta from Javanese spirits. The investigation into the case would go on to reveal an extensive international syndicate for the production and distribution of illegally distilled liquors. The actual investigation itself would take nearly two years to complete and the prosecution several more years. The geographic spread of the network ranged from Dalian in China to Marseille in France and several important cities in-between. When the case was finally prosecuted in court, it implicated some of the wealthiest and most respected families in Calcutta. Fittingly for a syndicate of such proportions, but somewhat out of

Gariahat Whisky 187 character with the divisive political climate of the British Raj at the time, the criminal syndicate also included an astonishing religious and cultural diversity within its ranks. Initial estimates posited that the provincial and the federal governments in British India had both lost to the tune of Rs. 22,000/- per month in tax revenue.2 Since the syndicate is alleged to have operated between 1929 and 1935 (though it is possible they had been active since 1923), this meant a total loss of at least Rs. 3,168,000/- in combined provincial and federal revenues. Adjusting for inflation, this would today amount to an astounding Rs. 6,50,833,920/.3 This excludes the monies lost to governments beyond British India. Despite its scale and its place in social memory, the Gariahat case has not yet been assessed by historians.4 Remedying this historical lacuna will not only fill a crucial gap in the history of alcohol in South Asia, but will also illuminate broader concerns in the contemporary historiography of South Asia. I particularly wish to situate this study at the cusp of two major emergent strands of Asian historiography, namely histories of cosmopolitanism and histories of smuggling. Locating the Gariahat Case in a conversation between these strands can, in my view, do much to help us understand the nature and consequences of this iconic case.

Cosmopolitanism and smuggling The rise of the academic interest in cosmopolitanism, in all its various forms, developed at the intersection of three distinct politico-economic developments, namely, the transformations in late twentieth-century nationalisms, the rise of multiculturalism and the globalisation of late liberalism (some would say, neoliberalism).5 Philosophers such as Seyla Benhabib have argued that the evolution of global civil society has automatically necessitated the transition from ‘international’ to ‘cosmopolitan’ juridical norms.6 Recent scholars of cosmopolitanism, however, have emphasised the need to analyse ‘cosmopolitanism as a grounded category’, rather than as a ‘normative concept’.7 This new trend has simultaneously generated a ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ that has refused to accept the ‘national frame’ as the ‘given unit of analysis’.8 The focus of these new histories of cosmopolitanism have therefore been on ‘negotiations of difference via empathetic engagements with other cultures and value-systems, issues of self-transformation, and mobilities of various kinds.’9 This move away from normative accounts to situated histories has also meant that scholars have become sceptical about viability, or even the desirability, of precise definitions of the term itself. Scholars have increasingly avoided the question of ‘what is cosmopolitanism?’ and asked instead ‘who are the cosmopolitans’?10 As Sheldon Pollock, Homi Bhabha, Carol Breckenridge and Dipesh Chakrabarty pointed out,

188 Projit Bihari Mukharji cosmopolitanism is not some known entity existing in the world, with a clear genealogy from the Stoics to Immanuel Kant, that simply awaits more detailed description at the hands of scholarship. We are not exactly certain what it is, and figuring out why this is so and what cosmopolitanism may be raises difficult conceptual issues.11 They have argued that Cosmopolitanism may instead be a project whose conceptual content and pragmatic character are not only as yet unspecified but also must always escape positive and definite specification, precisely because speci­ fying cosmopolitanism positively and definitely is an uncosmopolitan thing to do.12 Instead of a singular ‘cosmopolitanism’, authors have increasingly sought historically specific ‘cosmopolitanisms’.13 Leaving cosmopolitanisms un­ defined has allowed it to say ‘something of our need to ground our sense of mutuality in conditions of mutability, and to learn to live tenaciously in terrains of historic and cultural transition’.14 In other words, some authors have argued that we ought to ‘simply look at the world across time and space and see how people have thought and acted beyond the local’.15 This focus on concrete, historically specific ways of thinking and acting beyond the local has led to the identification of a large number of distinctive types of ‘cosmopolitanism’. Several authors for instance, have discussed a ‘romantic cosmopolitanism’ of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that has explored the curious nexus between European nationalisms, imperialisms and transnationalisms.16 Seema Alavi, likewise, explores the ‘Muslim cosmopolitanism’ during the high noon of the British Empire in South Asia. She describes the cosmopolitanism as a ‘specific type’ of cosmopolitanism that was both old, in that it invoked and was inspired by the Prophet and the Islamic scriptures, as well as new, in that it built upon the imperial vision of Ottoman Sultans such as Abd-al Aziz and Abd-al Hamid II. It also remained undergirded by the trade networks of the Indian Ocean.17 Mamadou Diouf has written of the ‘vernacular cosmopolitanism’ engendered in the trade in Murids in Senegal.18 Sugata Bose and Kris Manjapra, for their part, have explored the ‘cosmopolitan thought zones’ in which both inter-war fascism and communist internationalism circulated widely, especially in networks connecting British India and Germany.19 Despite the wide variety of cosmopolitanisms explored by these and other scholars, smuggling and crime and the cosmopolitanisms brought about by these illicit métiers are conspicuous by their absence. There is thus an implicit suggestion that religion, politics and aesthetics alone tend to inspire men and women to think and act beyond the local. Yet, even a cursory perusal of the archives of crime in general and smuggling in particular,

Gariahat Whisky 189 shows us that illicit, cross-border trading has been one of the most powerful motivations for thinking and acting beyond the local. The absence of smuggling in the scholarship on historically grounded cosmopolitanisms is particularly conspicuous in light of the rich historiography developing on smuggling. We must thank historian Eric Tagliacozzo for almost single-handedly developing the ‘secret trades’ and smuggling into an object of historical research in itself.20 Following him, several other scholars have begun looking anew at cross-border criminal mobilities. Most of these latter scholars have affirmed and extended Tagliacozzo’s key argument that border-making and border-transgressing were two sides of the same coin.21 As modern colonial states began to map, demarcate and enforce a stricter and more precise set of territorial borders, cross-border traffic proliferated. Some of this traffic was simply following much older routes that had rather suddenly become criminalised due to the demarcation of borders, greater state control of human and commodity movements etc. Whilst other forms of smuggling arose anew in response to the forms of new control imposed by the new bordermaking and policing.22 Reading the extant scholarship on cosmopolitanisms in light of the emerging historiography on smuggling two things become clear. First, that smuggling is certainly one important way in which a wide variety of modern subjects have thought and acted beyond the local. Smuggling in other words has generated its own distinctive forms of cosmopolitanisms. Second, what is ‘local’ and what is ‘beyond the local’ are not ahistorical facts. They change over time. Consider for instance, the movement of rice from the eastern rice growing districts of Bengal to the city of Calcutta. Until 1947 this was a perfectly legal and mundane, if large, traffic that had developed for centuries. After the partition of Bengal between India and Pakistan in 1947 this movement became subject to new forms of control and taxation. Those who sought to avoid the new regimes of state-making and continue to follow the old routes of trade, suddenly became smugglers. The contours of the ‘local’ and the ‘extra-local’ have changed over time.23 As a result the ways of thinking and acting beyond the local must also have changed. In short then if we accept smuggling as an occupation that by its very nature encourages and enables a kind of cosmopolitanism, we must simultaneously learn to locate the historical shifts of such forms of cosmopolitanism to the political processes of state and border-making.

Bootlegged cosmopolitanism I have already provided the outlines of the Gariahat Whisky Conspiracy Case. Its international character would already have insinuated its cosmopolitan character. Yet, it would be useful to give a fuller description of the actors involved in the conspiracy and in the ways in which they sought to think and act beyond the local. In this regard it would also be useful to make a basic distinction between two senses of the word ‘local’,

190 Projit Bihari Mukharji i.e. first as a purely cartographic designation and second as a designation of social geography. Thinking or acting beyond the local might therefore be undertaken either by way of thinking across geographic locations or across social locations. To begin with let us consider the ways in which the participants in the Gariahat Whisky Conspiracy thought and acted beyond the local in a strictly geographic sense. The strictly geographic cosmopolitanism of the Gariahat conspirators can in turn be thought of in terms of three axes. First, access to and transfer of the necessary technical knowledge and equipment through networks that went beyond the immediate geographic locality. Second, the mobilisation of raw material necessary for the production of bootlegged alcohol once again depended upon a number of extra-local networks. Third, the finished products, as I noted at the very outset, were marketed in many far-flung regions of the world. Each of these three axes needed the articulation of complex ways of thinking and acting beyond the geographic locality in which the conspirators lived. The technical brains behind the conspiracy were those of one Charles Granatstein. Granatstein was an Ashkenazi Jew born in Poland and naturalised in Canada.24 He moved to Calcutta sometime in the 1930s and was initially in the business of selling paper pulp. A few years later, Granatstein suffered a loss in his business and had to switch trades. He now became an agent in Calcutta for supplying German-made glass bottles and machinery. Though it is not entirely clear, it seems likely that he utilised his old Polish contacts to start this agency.25 It was the bottle-agency that brought Granatstein into contact with distillers and wine-merchants. He got particularly well-acquainted with the owner and staff of the Russa Distillery in Tollygunge, then a suburb of Calcutta.26 The owner of Russa Distillery, Hajee Ismail Sait, eventually appointed Granatstein his new business manager. Even as Granatstein continued to run his own bottle-agency, he now undertook the overall running of the Russa Distillery. This was Granatstein’s first experience of running a distillery. Soon he convinced Sait to send him on a grand tour to promote Sait’s business interests in Europe and north America. Granatstein toured Germany, France, America and Canada, meeting liquor barons, wine-merchants and distillers.27 It was during this tour that he also got in touch with manufacturers who produced the latest equipment used in distillation. Forever the entrepreneur, he convinced the ruling prince of Mayurbhanj to appoint him as his agent in Europe for the purposes of importing a post-still distillery.28 Granatstein bought the equipment from a German firm and had it assembled in Mayurbhanj.29 This gave him the necessary contacts and knowledge for importing distillation equipment from Europe in to South Asia. It was knowledge that would later be crucial to the entire enterprise at Gariahat. The actual state-of-the-art distillation equipment that was eventually assembled at 52 Gariahat Road in Calcutta were most likely brought in via

Gariahat Whisky 191 the networks and connections that Granatstein had established during his tour of Europe and America. The prosecutors later alleged that the equipment had been brought into British India, most likely from Germany, around 1933. This equipment comprised of six large distillers and twelve large washers in which the liquor was prepared. The washers were connected to the distillers via massive pipes.30 Like the distillation equipment, parts of the actual technical knowledge for producing bootlegged whisky also came from outside of British India. During the investigation into the conspiracy, the police in Calcutta discovered suspicious links between some of the key conspirators in Calcutta and a bankrupt wine merchant in London named William Estevez.31 Though Estevez died in a suspicious accident on the London underground railway very soon after the discovery of the link. The investigators were able to find a note in which Estevez gave technical information to the men in Calcutta about how to produce bootlegged whisky.32 Even more interestingly, the information that Estevez supplied was, by his own admission, drawn from the practices of North American bootleggers.33 The death of Estevez and the paucity of actual records made it difficult for the investigators to gauge the extent of Estevez’s involvement in the transfer of technical knowledge. Notwithstanding these doubts about the extent of his role, that he did play a role in transferring north American technical knowledge about bootlegging to British Indian conspirators was clear. Once the equipment and the technical knowledge had been assembled, the conspirators still needed to arrange for regular supplies of raw materials for their operations. The basic process that the conspirators engaged in was one in which pure ethyl alcohol produced from sugar was carefully mixed with a range of chemicals that added flavour and colour to the former thereby turning it into whisky. In theory of course Scotch whisky is supposed to be produced by the fermentation of mashed grains. The liquid thus produced, in chemical terms, is simply ethyl alcohol together with a variety of chemical additives that gives the singular flavour, colour and texture to the drink. To produce bootlegged whisky therefore, the conspirators required a supply of ethyl alcohol and of the necessary ingredients at the very least. On 20 October 1935, the day when the unexpected excise raid upon the house on Gariahat Road brought the entire syndicate to light, the excise officers found hundreds of mounds of molasses waiting to be turned into rectified spirits.34 The subsequent chemical analysis of the recovered bottles of spuriously labelled whisky from across the world found the drink to have been made from rectified spirits distilled from molasses, rather than from malted grain as in the case of authentic Scotch whisky.35 Since molasses were not contraband in themselves the trial and the press both demonstrated remarkably little interest in where the hundreds of mounds of molasses came from. The only information we get in this regard is that one of the key conspirators had made a bid of acquiring one of the leading sugar manufacturing companies in British India, i.e. Carew & Co., only

192 Projit Bihari Mukharji a few years prior to the investigation. The bid, however, had been unsuccessful and so it is not clear where exactly the large quantities of molasses came from. Prior to 1932 the domestic production of molasses in British India had been low, while the consumption was high. As a result British India used to annually import large quantities of molasses from abroad. In 1930–31 for instance, it imported a total of 102,000 tons of molasses. The next year, once again, 40,000 tons were imported into British India. In 1933–34, however, the total import fell to a relatively small 3,000 tons. In the same period, domestic production climbed rapidly. In 1930–31, the colony had produced around 248,000 tons of molasses. By 1933–34 this had risen to 500,000 tons.36 Simultaneously domestic consumption of molasses was falling at the time. As a result, availability rose and prices of molasses fell just around the time the conspirators set up their clandestine distillation apparatus. This was not coincidental. In fact, prior to this reversal the conspirators had sourced their ethyl alcohol from Java by utilising gaps in the excise regulations and corrupt government inspectors. The prosecution in fact alleged that the roots of the conspiracy most likely went back to the early 1920s and that since 1929 the conspirators had been producing bootlegged whisky using Java spirits.37 In 1931, however, the British government of India changed its excise policies making it more difficult to import Java spirits into India. These changes in themselves may have been connected to the development of an indigenous sugar industry that was now beginning to gradually produce sufficient amounts of molasses for domestic consumption. It was the combination of these changed excise laws and the easy and cheap availability of molasses on the domestic market, that led the conspirators to set up their own distillery. What is clear then is that even though the conspirators most probably used a local supply line for their molasses, this was a strategic choice that was worked out by thinking beyond the local. The prior use of Javanese spirits and the subsequent switch demonstrated that for the conspirators locality was only one factor in making their business decisions. Like most astute entrepreneurs they chose the cheapest and easiest available alternative, not because their horizon of choice was limited to a narrow, local world, but because it made better economic sense. Finally, we must tackle the issue of markets. We have seen that the technical apparatus and knowledge of bootlegging was most likely sourced from Europe and America. Likewise we have seen that the main raw material of the process, i.e. ethyl alcohol, was only sourced locally because other developments made it less profitable to continue importing Javanese spirits as they had initially done. In the case of markets, too, the conspirators evinced a similarly cosmopolitan outlook in thinking and acting beyond the local. We have already seen that the whisky they produced was being sold in Dairen, Japanese China. But this was hardly the limit of their reach. Within

Gariahat Whisky 193 British India the conspirators, through a combination of their own outlets and franchises, marketed their bootlegged products in Rangoon (Yangon), Akyab (Sittwe), Karachi, Bombay (Mumbai), Lahore, Darjeeling, Chittagong and Hazaribagh.38 Further afield, the investigators were able to track the bootlegged commodity to Kobe (Japan), Singapore and Marseille (France).39 Indeed, though we cannot be certain of this, the involvement of Estevez suggests that whisky drinkers in the imperial capital itself might also have occasionally drunk the bootlegged colonial product. Over and above these instances of how the conspirators thought and acted beyond the local in a strictly geographic sense, there are also numerous examples of how the conspirators transcended their own sociogeographic localities. In fact, this is possibly where their cosmopolitanism is most clearly discernible. The gang of conspirators involved men, and a few women, from a wide range of different communities who otherwise tended to inhabit their own respectively distinct social and cultural worlds. The technical mastermind of the operations, as we have seen, was the Polish-born, Canadian of Ashkenazi Jewish extraction Charles Granatstein. The capital for the enterprise was supplied by two prominent Baghdadi Jewish Bengali families who traced their origins to Baghdad, namely, the Gubbays and the Ezekiels. Despite their common faith, there were many historical and cultural differences amongst the Ashkenazim and the Baghdadis. The investigators found, for instance, that the Baghdadis still passed secret notes amongst each other written in ‘the Hebrew script current in Baghdad’, i.e. an Arabized dialect of Hebrew usually referred to as Judeo-Arabic or Judeo-Baghdadi.40 By contrast, the Ashkenazim, who hailed from Eastern Europe, mostly spoke Yiddish, German, Polish etc. In the early 1930s, consequent to the settlement forged at the Second Round Table Conference of 1931, the colonial government was still attempting to create a new political structure based on communally segregated electorates.41 This led to a debate about how to classify the various Jewish communities of India. Initially the assumption seemed to have been to include the Ashkenazim in the European electoral college while all other Jews, whether Baghdadis, Bene Israel, or Cochin Jews, would vote with various Indian electoral colleges. The Baghdadis, who were mistakenly thought to be based exclusively in Calcutta, had close social ties with the local European community and sought to be classified as Europeans. This, however, made the colonial and metropolitan bureaucrats and politicians uneasy. As a result, even after six years of intense lobbying, the Baghdadis were eventually not included in the European electoral college.42 Even more striking than the presence together of different Jewish communities within the conspiracy was the presence of a wide variety of non-Jewish communities. One of the key figures who eventually served jail time for his prominent role in the conspiracy was a Bengali Brahmin named N. L. Mukhuti. Granatstein had first employed Mukhuti when he was running his bottling business. Later, when he himself became the

194 Projit Bihari Mukharji Sait’s Business Manager, he promoted Mukhuti to take care of his own business. Eventually, Mukhuti was the one who oversaw the day-to-day affairs of the clandestine distillery. His official position was that of book­ keeper for the business. The long association and progressive delegation of more and more responsibilities demonstrate the close ties of trust that must have existed between the Polish-born Ashkenazi and the Bengali Brahmin. Whereas Mukhuti was a high-caste Brahmin, two other similarly trusted Bengali men belonged to a much ‘lower’ caste. Abinash and Haran Chandra Mandal, were a father and son duo, who had long worked for Granatstein and his co-conspirators and eventually faced prosecution for their role.43 In Bengal, as in many other parts of the subcontinent, the relationship between the upper and lower castes was highly politicised by the mid-1930s. The issue of communal electorates that had arisen in the case of the Calcutta Jews had also inflected caste relationships. Some Bengali Dalit (lower caste) leaders, such as Jogendranath Mandal, sought separate electorates for the Dalits. He also proposed a Dalit–Muslim alliance against the upper caste Hindus.44 These debates were playing out in the larger political arena precisely at the moment when Mukhuti and the Mandals were working together at Granatstein’s clandestine distillery. Two men from southern India also featured prominently in Granatstein’s enterprise. The more enigmatic of the two was a man described simply as ‘the Madrasi astrologer’ in the police memos. Granatstein allegedly consulted this Madrasi (possibly Tamil) astrologer before taking any step however great or small. When Granatstein’s house in Darjeeling was searched, a horoscope drawn by the astrologer was found in his safe. Interestingly, the horoscope predicted that that particular day would be a ‘very black day’ for him and he would soon be engulfed in serious litigation.45 The other south Indian, C. N. Naidu, had a much more hands-on involvement in the enterprise. Several official documents seized by the police during the initial raids on the distillery bore his name. It was Naidu who oversaw the actual distillation process and maintained a ledger of how much alcohol was sent where. In other words, his role was absolutely crucial to the daily operation of the enterprise. Though there is limited information on Naidu’s background, his name makes it clear that he was a Telegu­ speaker from a middling caste.46 Beyond the immediate circle of Granatstein’s employees and clients at the Gariahat establishment there were of course a larger circle of people the enterprise depended on as a whole. Here again, we notice a remarkable social diversity. In Rangoon for instance, members of two important firms were initially convicted for their participation in the conspiracy. These were A. Gasper, A. J. Gregory and S. J. Gregory, all partners of Gasper & Co., and Charles Joseph of C. Joseph & Co.47 Of these men, Charles Joseph was described as a leader of the Jewish community in Rangoon.48 But the

Gariahat Whisky 195 Gregorys as well as another initially convicted Rangoon merchant, E. Arakie, seem by their names to be Armenians.49 The presence of Armenians was also affirmed in other parts of the clandestine network. A report in the Times of India for instance, stated that of the 33 people accused in a subsidiary trial, most were ‘Jews and Armenians’.50 Whereas Jews and Armenians were at the forefront of the business in British Burma, in western India the men prominently associated with the business came from other communities. In Lahore, the main accused was one Mohanlal Jhani or Jani, the proprietor of Morton & Co.51 Jani’s name suggests he was most likely a Bardai Brahmin from western India. In Bombay, an accountant named Pacheko or Pachaeko was an employee who became a key witness for the prosecution.52 Going by the name again, Pacheko was most likely a Goanese Roman Catholic. The 1930s were a particularly fractious time in South Asia. The Communal Award of August 1932 extended the principle of separate electorates to 12 different groups, i.e. Forward Castes, Depressed Castes, Backward Castes, Muslims, Sikhs, Anglo-Indians, Indian Christians, Europeans, Landholders, Labour, Universities, and Commercial and Industrial Classes.53 We have already seen above how the process of determining these classifications opened up unexpected lines of conflict and contestation. The Jewish community for instance was divided between European and Indian electorates. The Armenians remained classed with the Indians. The Dalit or Depressed and Backward classes were divided over the way they were classified. In sum, the social location of everyone living in India became a matter of political concern and explicit reflection. The Government of India Act of 1935 and the elections held according to it two years later, in 1937, went on to bequeath a new reality to these classifications. The prosecution alleged that the Gariahat Conspiracy was conducted between 1929 and 1935. These were precisely the years when the separate electorate were being discussed. The combination, mutual trust and co-operation between members of so many different communities, ranging from the Ashkenazim to a Goan Catholic, from Bengali Brahmins to Dalits and from Armenians to the Sephardim, precisely at the moment of heightened consciousness of communal differences is truly remarkable. In fact, if we look beyond the immediate list of those charged by the prosecution, we notice an even more diverse cast of characters. Haji Ismail Sait for instance, played no part in the conspiracy proper. Yet, it was his patronage of Granatstein that had allowed the latter to acquire the crucial knowledge of distillation and eventually even made it possible for him to travel to Europe. We could therefore say that Sait, a Muslim, played a crucial, though admittedly somewhat remote, part in the enterprise. In terms of both actual geographic localities as well as social geographies therefore, we notice the Gariahat conspirators thinking and acting beyond the local. Every aspect of the enterprise, ranging from the acquisition of knowledge, equipment and raw materials, to the sale of the finished products

196 Projit Bihari Mukharji involved thinking and acting beyond the local. In other words, the entire enterprise was thoroughly cosmopolitan. This form of cosmopolitanism, however, does not fit into the forms of cosmopolitanism already studied by scholars. Our actors were neither travellers nor politicians. Similarly they were not poets or artists. They were simply not the sorts of people scholars have tended to think of in their explorations of cosmopolitanisms. Yet, in their own way and for their own ends our actors were resolutely cosmopolitan and their enterprise was almost entirely based on thinking and acting consistently beyond the local. I will argue therefore that this type of cosmopolitanism is best studied on its own terms as ‘bootlegged cosmopolitanism’.

Bootlegged cosmopolitanism and the emergent nationalistic state Even if we accept that the Gariahat Excise Conspiracy was a thoroughly cosmopolitan enterprise, we must still interrogate why this matters. This is where, I would argue, Tagliacozzo’s insights are cogent. Tagliacozzo insists that we must see border-crossing and border-making as two parts of the same coin. Studying the history of ‘secret trades’, as he calls them, is therefore motivated as much by the interest in illuminating the social and cultural history of a vibrant domain of economic activity as it is about explicating the history of state-formation. Unfortunately, we do not often think of decolonisation as a moment of state-formation. Rather it is seen as a handover of an already formed state. The prominent case of the Gariahat Excise Conspiracy instigates us to rethink that narrative and think of ways in which decolonisation was linked to forming a new type of state. It would be trite to point out that the Gariahat Case aimed to enhance the state’s revenue collection. But an actual investigation of how the state now sought to improve the collection of excise revenue is highly revealing. I shall focus on two ways in which the Gariahat Case reveals aspects of state-formation. The first of these, I have already hinted at above. The distillery at 52, Gariahat Road, Calcutta, was established only after a prior system of acquiring raw ethyl alcohol from Java collapsed. This prior system had depended upon a set of institutions known as ‘private bonded warehouses’. Private bonded warehouses were in themselves a curious space created to reconcile conflicts arising out of the dual charge of modern governments to encourage industry as well as ensure health and safety. The Bengal Consolidated Customs Act of 1878 codified these spaces and their operations. According to section 100 of the act, private parties upon the payment of a fee could enter into a bond with the collector of customs for the Calcutta port to store the imported goods in either a public or a privately owned warehouse for a period of time. During this time, the ‘bonder’ was permitted to undertake certain actions, such as testing the purity of the goods, weighing it etc. The bonder could also occasionally and

Gariahat Whisky 197 with explicit permission of the customs officers, withdraw small sample amounts. The most important permitted task, so far as alcohol importers were concerned, however, was ‘denaturing’ pure alcohol. Denaturing consisted of a simple chemical process whereby the pure ethyl alcohol was rendered unfit for human consumption. This denatured alcohol could then be used for industrial processes, but not drunk by human beings. A parallel mechanism, described in section 148 of the same act, allowed importers of spirits to enter into bonds that would enable them to pay the customs duty at the port of importation rather than exportation. Taken together, sections 100 and 148 laid the foundation of a system whereby pure ethanol could be brought into the Calcutta port and left there for considerable time, without import duties having to be paid. As long as the terms of the bond were honoured and the spirits were methylated in the warehouse and such methylation testified to by the customs inspectors, the bonder and importer would have to pay much less duty than they would have had to pay had they been importing alcohol meant for human consumption. What the Gariahat conspirators did was simple. They had imported pure ethanol from Java and stored it in government warehouses. They had claimed that it was for industrial use only. This meant that the ethanol would have to be methylated before it left the warehouse. Bribing the government’s inspectors, however, the conspirators had taken the ethanol out of the warehouse without methylation and used it to produce bootleg whisky. As a result, they secured a steady supply of their most crucial raw material from Java without having to pay the heavy excise duties for importing alcohol meant for human consumption.54 In 1931 this system was abolished by the Excise Department. The abolition was part of a new set of regulations to support indigenous Indian sugar production. The regulations had followed the emergence of a strong Indian sugar lobby led by the Birlas who had opened one of the first sugar factories.55 Nationalist capitalists like the Birlas, who now also had a stake in sugar production, forced a shift from an older laissez-faire system which allowed the procurement of cheap sugar from Java. In fact it was the Dutch imperialists who had turned Java into a sugar-producing colony, using a system of licences. Tagliacozzo points out that from at least the 1850s the well-regulated Dutch system had been undercut by quiet coastal smuggling operations.56 The British Empire had been happy to officially procure cheap sugar and spirits from this Dutch imperial system. Underneath this official system, enterprises such as the Gariahat conspirators also carried on their own systems of procurement. There was no commitment on the part of the government or the ‘secret traders’ to buy locally produced sugar or spirit. It was the emergence of nationalism that created a new emphasis on indigenous industry. Manu Goswami has argued that at the heart of Indian nationalism was a notion of a single economically unified territory. The early ideological importance of arguments about the ‘drain of wealth’ in nationalist circles

198 Projit Bihari Mukharji emphasised the nation as a single, economically unified territorial unit.57 By the 1930s, nationalist capitalists, such as the Birlas, were prominent purveyors of this particular idiom of nationalism.58 Clearly, then, the Gariahat Case cannot be understood without reference to the development of a nationalism that strongly emphasised economic borders. This economic territorialism of Indian nationalism was not merely an important political context, but indeed through the direct involvement of the Birlas in the sugar industry became a crucial part of the reason the distillery was established at Gariahat in the first place. The new nationalistic state that was already emergent in the 1930s, through the growing power of the Indian capitalists and their proximity to nationalist leaders such as M. K. Gandhi, encouraged a new rhetoric of economic self-sufficiency. Raw materials like sugar had to be procured locally and local capitalists demanded tariff protections.59 As a result, not only was the bonded warehouse system abolished, but additional duties were imposed from 1932 on all foreign sugars. All this made the national borders of India much more impermeable for Javanese spirits. This, however, was only one aspect of the new nationalistic state-formation that was engendered in and through the Gariahat Case.60 A second aspect was the development of a new chemical method for determining the geographic origin of particular spirits. Even before the detection of the counterfeit whisky in Dairen in 1934 the Excise Department had, from time to time, received anonymous letters stating that a massive bootlegging operation was underway. The Department, however, did not have the scientific wherewithal to detect this bootlegging. Most remarkably, when one of the leading Scottish whisky makers complained to the British Indian government in 1934 that their brand, i.e. the ‘House of Lords’, was suffering in Manchukuo due to the overland importation of counterfeit whisky from India, the Department went so far as to have some of the whisky from the two firms involved in the Gariahat Conspiracy tested. The official Chemical Examiner, however, was incapable of determining the origin of the whisky.61 Both of relevant departments of the government, i.e. the Excise and the Customs, were primarily interested in ascertaining the percentage of ethanol in any given drink. The taxation structure up until that point had basically been premised upon the strength of ethanol. There had been no serious need to chemically determine the origin of a distillate. As a result, the government’s Chemical Examiners had never developed the tests or the skills necessary for such detection. They could only measure the quanta of ethanol.62 Eventually, the case had to rely on the in-house Chemists of the British firms who bore the brunt of the financial losses arising out of the Gariahat enterprise. These commercial chemists, employed by large firms, had developed more sophisticated chemical techniques that allowed them to detect what kind of stills (especially distinguishing ‘patent’ and ‘pot still’ distillates) had been used to distil any specific drink.63

Gariahat Whisky 199 The development of this new technique, which until then had been entirely unknown in governmental circles, built a significant new capacity for the emergent nation-state. This science would, at least in theory, allow for more efficient taxation of distillates based on geographic origin. Whether this did really lead to enhanced revenue collections would have to be investigated separately. But it is clear that the state, after the Gariahat trial, developed the capacity to use the new chemical method to identify the geographic origins of distillates. Interestingly, this new capacity complemented the economic territorialism that now urged the strengthening of economic borders. In both the successful lobbying by the sugar industry to stop the importation of Javanese spirits and the development of the new chemical method to identify the geographic origins of distillates, we see a new invigoration of economic boundaries of the emergent nationalistic state. The imperial state had operated on a much larger scale and remained content to move products around between territories in ways that would be profitable. The new nationalistic state, however, insisted on a territorial logic and selfsufficiency. It sought to promote ‘national’ industries and local procurement over free movement of goods and people through its borders. Such protectionism might actually be imperative for emergent nationstates, and I do not wish to criticise the state in South Asia at the brink of decolonisation from pursuing this goal. Yet, it is important to take note of this transformation. It is crucial to account for new capacities that the nationalistic state sought to develop that were different from the imperial state that preceded it.

Conclusion There is a growing body of literature on the history of alcohol in British India. Most of it remains focused on temperance, prohibition and attitudes towards drunkenness.64 Alcoholism in the imperial army and the racialised and classist framing of drunkenness have been other redolent themes of historical inquiry.65 Bootlegging on the other hand has been almost entirely ignored. Likewise, histories of statecraft and cosmopolitanism engendered through alcohol have also been overlooked. What I have demonstrated above is that these three overlooked themes, namely, bootlegging, cosmopolitanism and state-making, can illuminate new aspects of the histories of alcohol in South Asia. Bootlegging enterprises, at least the largest one uncovered during the colonial era, were resolutely cosmopolitan at a time when exclusive identity politics was particularly rife in the region. This bootlegged cosmopolitanism, I have argued, illuminates one particular way in which a set of specific actors sought to think and act beyond the local. This study thus adds a new dimension to extant studies of actually lived cosmopolitanisms. The history of the Gariahat Conspiracy is particularly

200 Projit Bihari Mukharji unique in illustrating that cosmopolitanism did not always arise out of high and noble ambitions. It could and was just as easily engendered in the seemingly ‘immoral’ and ‘criminal’ enterprise of bootlegging. Just as the conspiracy itself evinced a remarkably cosmopolitan network, the prosecution against it revealed new aspirations and capacities for an emergent nationalistic state. Notwithstanding its continued formal colonial character, the nationalistic state emphasised a new economic territoriality that was much more invested in distinguishing an economically unified national territory from the lands outside its borders. The combination of new national, capitalist lobbies and their demands on the state’s protective mandate as well as the development of new scientific techniques to enforce economic nationalism, allowed for the emergence of a nationalistic state with markedly different interests and capabilities than its immediate predecessor. In fact, from this perspective, it is perhaps better thought of as an intermediate form of the state in-between the high imperial state of the pre-WWI era and the post-colonial nation state.

Notes 1 British Library London, India Office Records and Oriental Collections: ‘Papers of Donald MacPherson: An Account of the Gariahat Whisky Conspiracy Case (1935–42) as Accepted by Cambridge University for Its Indian Records,’ 6–7. 2 Correspondent, ‘Huge Loss To Government: Calcutta Distillery Raid Case Echo.’ Times of India, 23 October 1935. 3 https://infogr.am/How-much-is-Rs-100-from-then-worth-now 4 For instances of recent social memory of this case see, Sunanda K. Datta Ray, ‘City in the Past: Calcutta’s Power to Make Foreigners Feel at Home Is Gone.’ The Telegraph, India, 3 December 2016. Flower Silliman. ‘The Gariahat Case.’ Recalling Jewish Calcutta: Memories of the Jewish Community in Calcutta, n.d. www.jewishcalcutta.in/files/original/b6f7a7ae14240a8c01c9361a06163196.pd 5 Sheldon Pollock, Homi K. Bhabha, Carol A. Breckenridge, and Dipesh Chakrabarty. ‘Cosmopolitanisms,’ in Sheldon Pollock, Homi K. Bhabha, Carol A. Breckenridge and Dipesh Chakrabarty, eds. Cosmopolitanisms. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002, 1–14, 7. 6 Seya Benhabib. ‘The Philosophical Foundations of Cosmopolitan Norms.’ Another Cosmopolitanism Another Cosmopolitanism / Seyla Benhabib ; with Commentaries by Jeremy Waldron, Bonnie Honig, Will Kymlicka ; Ed. and Introd. by Robert Post, 2006, 13–44, 15–16. 7 Maria Rovisco, and Magdalena Nowicka. ‘Introduction.’ In The Ashgate Research Companion to Cosmopolitanism, 1–15. London: Taylor & Francis, 2016, ‘Introduction,’ 1. 8 Rovisco and Nowicka, 2. 9 Rovisco and Nowicka, 2. 10 Rovisco and Nowicka, 3. 11 Pollock et al., ‘Cosmopolitanisms,’ 1. 12 Pollock et al., 2. 13 Pollock et al., ‘Cosmopolitanisms.’ 14 Pollock et al., 4. 15 Pollock et al., 10.

Gariahat Whisky 201 16 Esther Wohlgemut, Romantic Cosmopolitanism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; Michael Tomko, ‘Remembering Elizabeth Inchbald’s The Massacre: Roman­ tic Cosmopolitanism, Sectarian History, and Religious Difference.’ European Romantic Review 19, no. 1 (2008): 1–18; Pauline Kleingeld. ‘Romantic Cosmopolit­ anism: Novalis’s “Christianity or Europe.”’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 46, no. 2 (2008): 269–84; Adriana Craciun, ‘Citizens of the World: Emigres, Romantic Cosmopolitanism, and Charlotte Smith.’ Nineteenth-Century Contexts 29, no. 2–3 (2007): 169–85. 17 Seema Alavi, Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015, 4–5. 18 Mamadou Diouf, ‘The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora and the Making of a Vernacular Cosmopolitanism.’ Translated by Steven Rendall. Public Culture 12, no. 3 (2001): 679–702. On vernacular cosmopolitanism see also, Pnina Werb­ ner, ‘Understanding Vernacular Cosmopolitanism.’ Anthropology News 47, no. 5 (1 May 2006): 7–11. 19 Sugata Bose and Kris Manjapra, eds. Cosmopolitan Thought Zones: South Asia and the Global Circulation of Ideas. Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 20 Eric Tagliacozzo, ‘Ambiguous Commodities, Unstable Frontiers: The Case of Burma, Siam, and Imperial Britain, 1800–1900.’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 46, no. 2 (2004): 354–77; Eric Tagliacozzo, ‘Border Permeability and the State in Southeast Asia: Contraband and Regional Security.’ Contemporary Southeast Asia 23, no. 2 (2001): 254–74; Eric Tagliacozzo, ‘Contraband and Violence: Lessons from the Southeast Asian Case.’ Crime, Law and Social Change 52, no. 3 (1 September 2009): 243–52; Eric Tagliacozzo, Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States along a Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865–1915. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2009. 21 Claude Markovits, ‘The Political Economy of Opium Smuggling in Early Nine­ teenth Century India: Leakage or Resistance?’ Modern Asian Studies 43, no. 1 (January 2009): 89–111; Robert J. Antony, Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers: Violence and Clandestine Trade in the Greater China Seas. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. Philip Thai, ‘Law, Sovereignty, and the War on Smuggling in Coastal China, 1928–37.’ Law and History Review 34, no. 1 (February 2016): 75–114. etc. 22 Tagliacozzo, Secret Trades, Porous Borders. 23 W. B. Reddaway and Md Mizanur Rahman. ‘The Scale of Smuggling out of Bangladesh.’ Economic and Political Weekly 11, no. 23 (1976): 843–49. 24 Anonymous, ‘Gariahat Excise Case: 18 Months’ Jail For Granatstein.’ Times of India, 28 January 1937. 25 Anonymous, ‘Excise Case: Accused Discharged and Examined as Witness,’ 27 August 1936. 26 Anonymous. 27 Anonymous. 28 Mayurbhanj was one of over 600 Indian Princely States. See: W. Ernst and B. Pati, eds. India’s Princely States. People, Princes and Colonialism, London and New York: Routledge, 2007. 29 Anonymous. 30 Correspondent, ‘Big Illicit Liquor Haul Calcutta Raid: Monster Distillery in Heart of City – German and 21 Others Arrested.’ Times of India, n.d. 31 Anonymous, ‘News in Brief.’ The Times, London, 24 October 1935. 32 ‘Papers of Donald MacPherson: An Account of the Gariahat Whisky Conspir­ acy Case (1935–42) as Accepted by Cambridge University for Its Indian Records,’ 15.

202 Projit Bihari Mukharji 33 ‘Papers of Donald MacPherson: An Account of the Gariahat Whisky Conspir­ acy Case (1935–42) as Accepted by Cambridge University for Its Indian Records,’ 15. 34 Correspondent, ‘Monster Distillery.’ 35 Correspondent, ‘Calcutta Excise Raid Echo: Wine Merchants Remanded.’ Times of India, 25 October 1935. 36 Special Correspondent, ‘How to Dispose of Molasses: Serious Problem – Possibility of Export from India.’ Times of India, 8 October 1934. 37 Anonymous, ‘Gariahat Excise Case: Alleged Conspiracy – Defence Arguments in Appeal.’ Times of India, 20 May 1938. 38 Anonymous, ‘Excise Case.’ 39 Anonymous, ‘Wide Sale of Indian Illicit Liquor: Calcutta Trial – Prosecution Story of Sale in Marseilles.’ Times of India, 1 April 1936. 40 ‘Papers of Donald MacPherson: An Account of the Gariahat Whisky Conspiracy Case (1935–42) as Accepted by Cambridge University for Its Indian Records,’ 15. On Judeo-Baghdadi, see, Gene Moshe Schramm, Judeo-Baghdadi: A Descriptive Analysis of the Colloquial Arabic of the Jews of Baghdad. Philadelphia, PA: Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, 1954. 41 The three Round Table Conferences between 1930 and 1932 were set up to nego­ tiate self-rule for British India. The Second Conference led to the passing of the Government of India Act of 1935, which granted limited autonomy to British Indian provinces. It was the last major piece of British colonial legislation before Indian Independence was achieved in 1947. 42 Joan G. Roland, Jewish Communities of India: Identity in a Colonial Era. Abing­ don, UK: Routledge, 2018. 43 Anonymous, ‘End of Gariahat Excise Case: High Court’s Orders on Sentences,’ 9 February 1939. 44 For a variety of different perspectives on the influence and impact of Jogendra­ nath Mandal’s politics on Bengali political culture see, Uday Chandra, Geir Heierstad and Kenneth Bo Nielsen. The Politics of Caste in West Bengal, 2016. See also, Sen, Dwaipayan. The Decline of the Caste Question: Jogendranath Mandal and the Defeat of Dalit Politics in Bengal, 2018. 45 ‘Papers of Donald MacPherson: An Account of the Gariahat Whisky Conspiracy Case (1935–42) as Accepted by Cambridge University for Its Indian Records,’ 13; Anonymous, ‘Alleged Widespread Conspiracy to Sell Illicit Liquor: Thirty-Two Accused on Trial – Prosecution Story of Transactions with Marseilles and Far East.’ Times of India, 2 April 1936. 46 Correspondent, ‘Monster Distillery.’ 47 Anonymous, ‘Marseilles.’ 48 Anonymous, ‘Gariahat Excise Case: Importer’s Statement,’ 23 July 1937. 49 Anonymous, ‘Gariahat Excise Case Appeal: Arguments Conclude.’ Times of India, 8 September 1938. 50 Anonymous, ‘Sequel to Excise Raid in Calcutta: 38 on Trial.’ Times of India, 18 March 1936. 51 Own Correspondent, ‘Java Spirit as Whisky.’ The Times, London, 15 February 1938. 52 Anonymous, ‘Admissibility of Evidence: Excise Conspiracy Case.’ Times of India, 7 March 1936. Anonymous, ‘Alleged Excise Conspiracy: Prosecution Story – Charge Against Bombay Firm’s Proprietor.’ Times of India, 21 February 1936. 53 S. N. Sen, History Modern India. New Age International, 2006, 196. 54 Anonymous, ‘Alleged Conspiracy,’ 20 May 1938. 55 R. N. Agarwal, Sugar Industry in India: My Recollections. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, No Date. 56 Tagliacozzo, Secret Trades, Porous Borders, 15–16.

Gariahat Whisky 203 57 Manu Goswami, Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2013. 58 Markovits, ‘The Political Economy of Opium Smuggling.’ 59 Agarwal, Sugar Industry in India: My Recollections. 60 I call this a ‘nationalistic-state’ rather than a nation-state simply because I believe the name nation-state should only be employed for the post-colonial state. In these closing years of the imperial system, the state was increasingly ‘nationalistic’, but not yet a ‘nation-state’. 61 ‘Papers of Donald MacPherson: An Account of the Gariahat Whisky Conspiracy Case (1935–42) as Accepted by Cambridge University for Its Indian Records,’ 7–8. 62 ‘Papers of Donald MacPherson: An Account of the Gariahat Whisky Conspiracy Case (1935–42) as Accepted by Cambridge University for Its Indian Records,’ 7–8. 63 ‘Papers of Donald MacPherson: An Account of the Gariahat Whisky Conspiracy Case (1935–42) as Accepted by Cambridge University for Its Indian Records,’ 7–8. 64 Harald Fischer-Tiné and Jana Tschurenev, eds. A History of Alcohol and Drugs in Modern South Asia: Intoxicating Affairs. 1st edition. London; New York: Routledge, 2013. Robert Eric Colvard, ‘A World without Drink: Temperance in Modern India, 1880–1940.’ PhD, The University of Iowa, 2013. 65 Erica Wald, Vice in the Barracks: Medicine, the Military and the Making of Colonial India, 1780–1868. Basingstoke, England; New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014; Harald Fischer-Tiné, ‘“The Drinking Habits of Our Countrymen”: European Alcohol Consumption and Colonial Power in British India.’ The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 40, no. 3 (1 September 2012): 383–408.

10 “Lurvenbrow” Bavarian beer culture and barstool

diplomacy in the global market,

1945–1964

Robert Shea Terrell In 1952 a London newspaper announced to readers that after a wartime hiatus, “Löwenbräu is back!” A “stein” of the brew was a “really potent reminder that the world’s best beer since 1383” was still brewed in Munich (Figure 10.1). The legacy of Nazi aggression remained palpable in much of Great Britain in the 1950s, and some even considered the nascent power of Germany an equal threat to that posed by the Soviet Union.1 This ad, however, reminded consumers that Germany – and indeed Munich, a city the Nazis had called the “capital of the movement” – was more than Nazism, indeed it was the centuries-long home of the “world’s best beer”. It went on cheekily, “If you can pronounce Löwenbräu* you’ll pronounce it the finest beer you’ve ever tasted.” An asterisk further down explained: “repeat ‘Lurvenbrow’ ten times.”2 Learning pronunciation and relearning the product encouraged a reconsideration of the English encounter with Germany. In effect, the ad presented the beer as a cultural ambassador, an introduction to (or reminder of) a different Germany that was not exclusively home to Nazism but also to an unthreatening and much longer past that everyone could enjoy and appreciate. Tracing the flow of Löwenbräu beer exports in the two decades following the Second World War, this chapter discusses the importance of tastemakers who operated in bounded cultures of political, legal and economic interest. The role that these competing and collaborating tastemakers play in generating, shaping and assigning meaning to consumption and demand provides an example of what the cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai termed the “political economy of taste”.3 The promotion and sale of Löwenbräu beer required that tastemakers generate knowledge about the specifics of both production and consumption. The chapter thus follows the flow of beer as much as the information about beer from the standards of production to the modes of consumption. In the process of shaping the legal and cultural scaffolding that would ensure sales, tastemakers produced meanings about the product and its consumption that took on larger significance for global re-imaginings of Germany in the wake of National Socialism and in the shifting geopolitical terrain of the Cold War. What follows is divided into three parts, each explaining how the Löwenbräu Brewery and its global allies helped produce a global icon. First, in

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Figure 10.1 Advert, London Evening Standard, June 12, 1952

the local context of Bavaria, Löwenbräu and other leaders in the Bavarian brewing industry sought to protect their global market by legally ensuring that “Bavarian beer” remained a product specific to the place, as opposed to a style of beer that could be produced beyond its historic place of origin. Second, tastemakers outside of Bavaria and West Germany faced additional challenges to product exclusivity. Case studies from the USA and UK demonstrate how global actors helped shape and protect product exclusivity by marketing authenticity and the experience of consumption. Finally, this constructed authenticity of Löwenbräu, which was coproduced by local and global actors, took on much larger political significance at the height of the Cold War. The creation of an aura of authenticity around Löwenbräu and Bavarian beer and

206 Robert Shea Terrell the proliferation of “German Beer Cellars” and Oktoberfest celebrations as the best places to enjoy consuming these products derived from a clever marketing strategy and a network of capital interests surrounding the product. But it also distilled a Bavarian stereotype in the global perception of Germany that percolated into the highest levels of politics.

“A delocalising effect” – Bavarian brewers and the political economy of taste The Löwenbräu Brewery in Munich faced many obstacles in the years just after the Second World War. Like other German breweries, it had been severely damaged by Allied bombardment. Heavy taxation and immense material scarcity in the late war and immediate post-war years presented significant challenges to the brewing industry. To top it all off, the Allied Military Government of defeated Germany decreed a prohibition on beer production for civilian consumption that was in effect from 1945 to 1948.4 Despite these challenges, Löwenbräu was among a select few German breweries that dedicated significant energy to reviving the export market in the early post-war period. They were thus part of an early phase of the post-war construction of a new German trade–state paradigm.5 But as they were reopening and expanding export networks, they were also working very diligently to ensure that their product would remain unique in the global marketplace. Officials at the Löwenbräu brewery and their trade partners in Bavaria actively policed the image of their product in an effort to hold on to and expand their global market share. In pursuing capital growth, they sought to preserve and indeed construct some of the cultural values like “quality” and “authenticity” that generate demand in the political economy of taste. Throughout the 1950s the Bavarian Brewers’ Association (Bayerischer Brauerbund) and its industrial allies responded to complaints from Löwenbräu and other breweries with dreams of export success to engage in a number of national and international legal battles in the name of preserving the exclusivity of Bavarian beer. In January 1952 a representative of the Löwenbräu brewery complained to Carlo Proebst, a legal counsel of the Bavarian Brewers’ Association, about an export brewery based in the northern German city Hamburg called the Bavaria-und-St.-Pauli-Brauerei. The Hamburg brewery had been exporting a beer called, in English, “Bavaria Beer”, that the Löwenbräu representative felt was a “conscious attempt to mislead consumers”.6 This sort of manipulation, he argued, fell under Section Sixteen of the Law Against Unfair Competition, which dealt with product descriptions and labelling. The initial determination was that the Hamburg brewery violated no laws because the spirit of its label meant “in the Bavarian style”. The Löwenbräu brewery remained unsatisfied, however, and maintained that there is in fact a difference between beer “in the Bavarian style” and beer made in Bavaria due to the stricter interpretation of the Beer Purity Law (Reinheitsgebot) in Bavaria – “and only in Bavaria”.7 Unless the Hamburg brewery was matching Bavarian

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standards, which they were not, the original critique stood. The future president of the Bavarian Brewers’ Association, Dr Werner Schladenhaufen, took the logic further and accused the Hamburg brewery of attempting to develop an appearance or pretence (Anschein) of being Bavarian and thus misleading consumers.8 The issue slowly simmered until 1956 when Löwenbräu encouraged the Union of Bavarian Export Breweries – an allied organisation of the Brewers’ Association – to enlist the services of patent lawyers in Berlin and Munich.9 The ensuing legal entanglement lasted for years, and in some respects decades. At stake, the lawyers argued to the German Patent Office, was “a delocalising effect” (entlokalisierende Wirkung) on the very word “Bavaria”.10 As precedent for this phenomenon, the team offered the case of Pilsner beer.11 The beer was first crafted by a Bavarian in the employ of a Czech-run Habsburg brewery in the town of Plzeň/Pilsen in 1842. Its astronomical rise to global prominence was driven in part by the work of North German brewers in places like Qingdao as well as British imperialists, notably in South Africa.12 By the early twentieth century, the German court ruled that “pilsner beer” had become a style all its own, devoid of geographical peculiarity.13 This, much to the chagrin and capital loss of the Pilsner Urquell Brewery in the Bohemian Lands of the Habsburg Empire. Speaking to this precise issue, the Bavarian legal team claimed that even within West Germany the English word “Bavaria” would immediately conjure the German state of Bayern.14 According to the patent lawyers, “Bavarian beer”, as a type of beer, could thus not be as transferrable as “pilsner beer” had been in previous decades.15 Both terms – Bavarian beer and Pilsner beer – indicated a product from a place but in the case of Bavarian beer, they argued, the product and the place could not be separated because of the stricter provincial adherence to the Reinheitsgebot.16 There were, in fact, legal concerns about how the law in different regions of West Germany mattered for the production of beer intended for export. Brewers in Bavaria were beholden to the law for export beer where other states of the Federal Republic were not.17 This was not a simple legal dispute with economic ramifications, however, but rather a legal argument that just barely hid the pressures of capital interest and market share protectionism. Correspondence between the lawyers, the Munich and Hamburg breweries, the Bavarian Brewers’ Association and the Union of Bavarian Export Breweries debated the semantics and symbols at play. Löwenbräu argued that “Bayerisch”, “Bayern”, “Bavaria”, “Bavarian” and the Hamburg proposal for the nonsensical “Bavariana” all meant the same thing and threatened the same delocalising effect.18 Letters went back and forth over the subtleties of the Hamburg bottle labels, even featuring sustained debate about where to make typographic spaces on the labels to ensure that the beer could not be mistaken as being from Bavaria. This was considered in such depth that one letter complained that if a consumer looked at the bottle from one particular angle, the excessive space between “Bavaria” and “St. Pauli” might lead them astray.19 The Hamburg Bavaria-und-St.-Pauli-Brauerei ultimately admitted

208 Robert Shea Terrell that their beer was being sold as “Imported German Bavarian Beer” in Florida but that this was the fault of their local distributor who had since changed his labels to read “Beer Imported from Hamburg, Germany”.20 The Hamburg brewery was not unique in this and the stakes were high – or so Bavarian breweries claimed.21 In April 1957 as the Hamburg debate was reaching a fever pitch, the Löwenbräu brewery exacerbated tensions, writing to the Bavarian Brewers’ Association about the Dutch Brouwerij­ Bavaria-Lieshout. Complaining to the patent lawyers in Berlin and Munich, the Löwenbräu brewery noted that the Dutch brewery had been overcharging for their beer in Tripoli, literally capitalising on the Bavarian reputation.22 The Hamburg brewery had likewise been accused of overcharging in Lebanon. Under pressure of these concerns the lawyers conducted an international study of how these non-Bavarian “Bavaria beers” were being sold in more than twenty countries world-wide including England, Cyprus, the Dominican Republic, Denmark, Haiti, Iraq, South Korea, Mexico, Norway, Nigeria, Peru, Pakistan, South Africa, Turkey, Japan, Venezuela, Libya, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.23 This relatively mundane legal battle, it should be remembered, had capital stakes of global proportions. Ad hoc solutions satisfied the various parties, but the larger debates continued and are on-going. In 1959, the Hamburg brewery made changes to their bottle labels all of which were worked out in a dizzyingly mundane discussion of spacing and typography. Within West Germany, legal claims to “Bavaria” or “Bavarian” beer largely fizzled out because despite the lawyers’ argument that West Germans recognised “Bavaria” to mean “Bayern”, the word “Bavaria” means nothing in German. More importantly, the dispute was always ultimately about global perception. Nowhere was this more important than in the United States, which was by far the dominant market for Bavarian, German and all export beers in the 1950s and 1960s.24 Moving to clamp down on wording, the Union of Bavarian Export Breweries filed a US federal trademark registration for “Genuine Bavarian Beer,” which was accepted in 1960 by the Bavarian Brewers’ Association. Further disputes in the 1960s brought trademarks on “Bayrisch Bier” and “Bayerisches Bier” in 1968, and “Reinheitsgebot seit 1516 Bayerisches Bier” in 1985.25 As recently as 2011 the Bavarian Brewers’ Association engaged in legal action with the Dutch Bavaria Brewery in the European Court of Justice.26 At every stage in the early disputes, Löwenbräu initiated and exacerbated tensions around proprietary claims of being from Bavaria and being Bavarian. This was not ever just about “Bavarian beer” as a product from a place. It was, and remains, about global capital interests. These Bavarian brewers and trade organisations were actively policing the exclusivity of their product in hopes of avoiding a Pilsner-like “delocalising effect” and a consequent loss of revenue. In the process they sharply limited who could make truth claims about the nature of the commodity. At the top of the knowledge network were the Bavarian brewers themselves. This exclusivity

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of the commodity played out in its global reach as well, and distributors and marketers of Bavarian beers such as Löwenbräu came to shape the global “political economy of taste” and have a profound global cultural impact as beer sales soared.

“A magnificent advertisement” – from quality to authenticity In the early 1950s in the United Kingdom, the United States and other early boom markets, Löwenbräu beer was sold as a luxury – “the world’s best beer”. In part this approach was an effort by importers, distributors and advertisers to overcome the exceptionally high price point of the product. In almost every sector of the global market, the beer cost significantly more than domestic and other import beers, even other Bavarian beers and global premium brands such as Heineken and Tubourg. The Kent, UK based importer and distributor Fremlins Ltd, and their London based marketing agency McLaughlin Ltd, centred their advertising energies on isolating “circles receptive to a luxury beer”.27 The head of the London agency, J.C. McLaughlin, worked tirelessly to establish niche demand in luxury hotels and bars, but confessed that sales were dipping in the early 1950s.28 This effort in the UK to sell the beer as a luxury was mirrored in the United States where one advertisement in Chicago featured a man stopped at customs and giving up smuggled jewels but begging to keep his Löwenbräu.29 Advertisements in popular magazines and newspapers in the USA and the UK played up the beer being more like Champagne than conventional beer, drawing attention to the green bottle, the gold foil top and the high price point.30 Even though growth was slow, claims to expense and connoisseurship in part assuaged the high price point as long as consumers remained convinced that the claims to exclusivity were true. But the global market, and especially the vibrant American market, was flooded with imitations that boasted their own luxury, and even began to encroach on the authenticity of the product. In 1955 for example, American brewing giant Anheuser-Busch launched their “Busch Bavarian” which was branded with a snowy mountain scene complete with buildings in the Bavarian alpine architectural style.31 Today, the beer is known simply as Busch, in part to satisfy Bavarian trademarks, but is still branded with snowy mountains in spite of hailing from St. Louis, Missouri. The Cincinnati brewery “Wunderbräu” was likewise branding itself in the German image. On its six-pack cartons, which featured lions and a coat of arms reminiscent of Munich iconography, it even claimed in German that you won’t find one better: “Ein besseres findest du nicht.”32 To Löwenbräu’s local importers and distributors in the United States, these sorts of products presented a direct challenge. In the case of Wunderbräu, for example, it was first brought to the attention of the Munich brewery by the head of Detroit-based importer Premium Beer Sales, Felix Faber, who encountered it while on vacation in Florida. As he explained to two of the

210 Robert Shea Terrell Munich brewery heads, “The entire promotional advertising used for Wunderbräu is calculated to deceive the public into thinking that it is an authentic German beer. And it is a miserable imitation!”33 He considered the aroma and taste of the beer as dismal, incapable of competing even with a good American beer. But in bars and restaurants the beer was often listed as an import. The brewery, he claimed, was “capitalizing on the merit and esteem which good German imported beer enjoys.”34 The beer could not even claim a German heritage. Faber argued that the claim on the cans that the beer was “now brewed in Cincinnati … by its original Braumeister” wrongly implied the beer was once brewed in Germany, which it was not.35 There was very little the Munich brewery could do about this sort of issue directly. In the case of Wunderbräu, the beer actually never made any claims to being Bavarian, and Faber’s concern was that it was pretending to be German. Ideas about German beer abroad became intricately tied up with Bavarian traditions, imagery, stereotypes and, of course, capital interest.36 This conflation of things Bavarian and things German ultimately fed into the making of a Bavarian stereotype of West Germany, but in order for this to happen, Löwenbräu beer had to first become more than a luxury. It had to become an ambassador of German-ness, a metonym for West Germany itself. Far from an intentional national rebranding, the process arose out of the desire of Löwenbräu and its global partners to sell more beer. They sought, in short, to overcome the claims of competitors such as Busch Bavarian and Wunderbräu by selling the most authentic beer in the most authentic experience. Unlike the versatility of pilsner, the authenticity of Bavarian beer was inherently tied to the place. It was thus also tied to mythologies and stereotypes about the place and beginning in the 1960s the commodity and the mode of consumption became intimately related. Increases in sales bolstered, and were bolstered by the dissemination and popularisation of an allegedly authentic drinking experience. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Löwenbräu and their partners in the United Kingdom and the United States shifted towards selling not only the “highest quality beer” but also the most authentic experience of consumption. In 1958 Dudley Mozely of Fremlins Ltd attended the World’s Fair in Brussels where he visited the Löwenbräu Beer Hall, adorned with traditional décor and even featuring a large roaring lion, a staple of the Löwenbräu tent at the Munich Oktoberfest. The brewery had been promoting the 3,500 person establishment to their clients around the world from Fremlins itself to their distributor in New Delhi.37 When Mozely returned to England, he wrote to Munich that, the whole “set up” is a magnificent advertisement, and although it must certainly have cost a lot of money to finance the Hall, you seemed to be taking a lot of money judging by how crowded it was with visitors.38

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After conveying his impression of the experience, he concluded that, “if a cellar could be procured in London about half the size it might also be a good advertisement”.39 He was not alone in his thinking. Already in 1957 the Los Angeles based Wisdom Import Sales Co. was working with local notables in Monterey, California to develop the Monterey Bay Oktoberfest. The festival was first thrown in 1956 by G.I.s at the Fort Ord Soldier’s Club. It was a relatively small gathering and the beer was likely a San Francisco knockoff called Wunder Beer.40 The next year, local businessman and community notable Tinsley C. Fry chaired a committee to expand the event and worked with Wisdom Import Sales to get the Munich Löwenbräu brewery involved. Fry wanted to stage an authentic Oktoberfest celebration complete with draft Löwenbräu beer, décor, Bavarian Trachten or traditional outfits and glassware. He even invited the mayor of Munich to attend the 1957 Monterey Oktoberfest, but the latter does not seem to have abided.41 The festival turned a small profit and became a regular event growing each year for the next few decades.42 Similarly, in 1961 the Detroit importer Felix Faber enlisted the help of the Munich brewery in remodelling a German restaurant in Detroit. The owner of Krager’s Restaurant, Frank Krager, wanted to “make a ‘true Bräuhaus’ of his restaurant”.43 Krager was considering renaming the restaurant after Löwenbräu and requested that the Munich brewery send sample luncheon and dinner menus, postcards, pictures of the interior and exterior of their Munich location, samples of their glassware and pictures of the uniforms worn by their waiters and waitresses.44 Even in Belgium, the popularity of the 1958 World’s Fair exhibition generated local demand for the style of consumption and by the early 1960s restaurateurs and hoteliers in Belgium were working to capture and capitalise on the authentic sensory experience of proper consumption.45 The result of these developments was tremendous. For example, in 1965, British beer drinkers consumed about 10,000 gallons of Löwenbräu beer.46 In 1967, only two years later, they were drinking more than 100,000 gallons – a ten-fold increase.47 This jump owed almost everything to J.C. McLaughlin who, in collaboration with Löwenbräu in Munich and with local capital investors, opened ten establishments across Britain.48 According to a piece in the London newspaper The Sun, these were “authentic German beer ‘kellers’ [where] … for six shillings a pint for Lowenbrau draught or bottled, keller customers get a real German night out with accordionist, plenty of rousing song and waitresses in traditional German dress”.49 The first of these establishments was the Löwenbräu Beer Keller, which opened in 1965 in Soho, and was advertised: “Travel to ‘Old Bavaria’ without leaving London!”50 J.C. McLaughlin had held the Löwenbräu marketing contract since 1952 but it was not until this transition towards selling an authentic experience of drinking in Bavaria and Germany that sales in Britain soared, capitalising on the newfound opulence of the English youth (Figure 10.2).51 Throughout these transitions in the USA and the UK, there was profound confusion about what was Bavarian and what was German. In

212 Robert Shea Terrell

Figure 10.2 British youth waiting outside the Löwenbräu Beer Keller in Manchester Source: BWA F 2/8534

the London Daily Express, which boasted a circulation above four million, readers were taken through a night out at an “authentic German beer-cellar in Aldwych”.52 Our narrator is taken out by an old drinking friend who promises, “a new and diverting view of the British drinking classes”. Inside the “keller”, English, Scots and Irish were singing “‘Waltzing Matilda’ at the tops of their voices and thumping beer mugs on the table top”. They were greeted with a “Guten Abend” from the accordion player and then given Löwenbräu beer “imported from Bavaria, [and] the dearest in Britain”. Stronger than British beer, the Löwenbräu “put you in a great trim for a sing-and-shout session”. The waitresses wore “folklore dresses that squeeze their bosoms up” and at least one song in 20 was in German to keep up the “echt Deutsche stimmung [sic]” – genuine German mood or atmosphere. Other songs included American classics, British war songs, folk songs of Wales and Scotland, and the theme songs of West Ham FC “immediately followed” by that of Tottenham Hotspur. “By 10 o’clock the ‘stimmung’ [sic] was at its height. Eyes glazed, beer mugs thumped the boards” and our narrator had had enough. He stumbled home, leaving his friend to continue his “sing-and-shout session”, and concluded that he could “see the point of the bierkeller [sic] … Singing and shouting appeal to

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all”. The experience departed from other London establishments that encouraged quiet, passive, and even lethargic, drinking. This “authentic German Bierkeller” and the approximation of apparently authentic consumption that it encouraged, did apparently offer a “new and diverting view of the British drinking classes”. It levelled national difference, transcended football rivalries, and cut across social classes, provided one could afford the six-shilling beers. It seemed to fill a niche in London culture where singing and Stimmung were all that mattered. It was “German” but also somehow British. Indeed the author closed by joking that by next year American tourists in Britain would be told, “Now the next call on our schedule is a visit to a typical British bierkeller [sic].”53 Unbeknownst to the author, and perhaps also to J.C. McLaughlin, many Americans would have already been familiar with this experience if they had ever visited Monterey Oktoberfest, Krager’s Restaurant, or any of the many other examples from across the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The stakes of this experience, however, went far beyond what many could fathom. Not only was this a good way to make money, it also came to shape the conception of West Germany itself at a time of great global instability.

“A most objectionable and ill-timed resurrection of the Nazi image” – Cold War success on display at the 1964 World’s Fair The 1964 New York World’s Fair exposed how Löwenbräu beer came to stand at the centre of an international contention over the politics of memory and the representation of Germany more broadly. It was, in short, an issue of how far the sort of authenticity built around Löwenbräu and Bavarian beer should stand in for the real Germany and its real recent past. In the build-up to the fair, the West German state pulled out of official participation. As a member of the Bureau of International Expositions, West Germany took issue with the fair for violating principles hammered out at the 1928 Paris Convention involving the high rates for participation and the long duration of the planned fair. However, while the state would not officially participate, they supported the participation of corporate representatives, one of which, perhaps the biggest of which, was Löwenbräu.54 In now familiar fashion, the brewery and their New York distributor Holterbosch oversaw the contracts for and construction of a half-million-dollar beer garden, complete with all the appropriate Munich flair.55 When the West German state made it known that it would not participate in the World’s Fair, voices of dissent emerged in the United States arguing that this absence would be an injustice to post-war successes. In the summer of 1962 the president of the New York World’s Fair Corporation Robert Moses enlisted the help of former High Commissioner of Germany John J. McCloy to help convince West German Chancellor

214 Robert Shea Terrell Konrad Adenauer that the fair was “an unparalleled opportunity for Germany to demonstrate to the American people all that has been achieved since the War”.56 Making explicit the Cold War utility of participation, McCloy wrote to Adenauer in August 1962 that, There has never been a fully adequate representation in the United States of the progress and strength of the growth of West Germany since the war and I believe the times almost demand it now both for economic and, more importantly, political reasons. The constitutional and cultural progress is, to my mind, comparable with the economic progress and too few people here sense the advances which have been made in the former field … Other countries are making their prepar­ ations (notably the Soviet Union) and I would very much like to see the German Exhibit made truly representative of the full achievements of the country.57 Convinced by the argument but determined to honour the organisational critique of the fair itself, Adenauer reiterated that the state would not formally participate. But he also endorsed an ad hoc committee to support the participation of German industries.58 Over the course of the next year, participation of German companies was ironed out and preparations were made for the expansive Löwenbräu pavilion. While Moses, McCloy and Adenauer agreed not to let the opportunity of re-presenting Germany to the world slip away, others became concerned what the representation would actually look like. Edwin Hartrich, who had been a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal in Germany in the late 1940s, felt a personal connection to the country and was compelled to intervene.59 He conveyed his concerns to West German Minister of Economics Ludwig Erhard in the spring of 1963. He praised the architect of the “economic miracle” and the “almost fifteen years of unprecedented economic, social and political recovery, during which time Germany resumed her place and prestige in the Western family of nations”.60 The Berlin Wall had gone up only two years earlier and West Germany remained the only internationally recognised German state. Perhaps because of these pressures, Hartrich lamented that unless the West German state officially participated, “the outward ‘face’ of Germany in a World’s Fair that will be visited by 80 million people of all nations, races, and political creeds” would be “just beer and sauerkraut!”61 Concerns of this partial and apparently politically irrelevant representation may have also motivated American President John F. Kennedy to urge Adenauer’s reconsideration when they met in Bonn in late June 1963.62 Others were concerned, however, that the partial representation was incomplete in the wrong ways and was perhaps entirely too political. The former Governor of New York, Charles Poletti, was a Second World War veteran and the Vice President for International Exhibits at the New York

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World’s Fair. At an Overseas Press Club luncheon in July 1963 Poletti critiqued West German industrialists for – among other things – using the fair as an opportunity to “erase an image here of a Nazi Germany”.63 This claim drew the immediate critique of the German-American Chamber of Commerce (GACC), an institution whose very raison d’être was to protect and advance the capital interests of German companies. In that capacity the GACC became folded into the hierarchies of tastemakers as it came to the defence of capital interests and cultural representation. Gordon Michler of the GACC lambasted Poletti for various other critiques he had made of German industry, but on the issue of the Nazi image he avoided arguing it was untrue.64 Instead, he stressed the heightened importance of Germany in on-going Cold War tensions: “At this particular time, the German government and public are giving our country the staunchest possible support in the defence of Western democracy.”65 He highlighted the public embrace of Kennedy in West Germany and the continued promises of nowChancellor Ludwig Erhard to honour West Germany’s NATO commitments.66 Whether for these political reasons and their aversion to picking the scabs of old animosity, or because Michler was tasked with supporting German business interests, he characterised Poletti’s claim as “a most objectionable and ill-timed resurrection of the Nazi image”.67 Michler associated Nazism with lawlessness, and pointed out the steadfast adherence of West Germany to the World’s Fair Paris Agreement as evidence of just how far Germany has “thrown off Naziism [sic] or Nazi methods”.68 The New York World’s Fair ran from April to October of 1964 and 1965. Instead of being located next to the pavilion of participating countries, the Löwenbräu Gardens stood smack between the Ford, Chrysler and General Motors exhibitions and less than 300 metres from the iconic Unisphere at the centre of the grounds. Not only was it thus part of a high traffic path, it also drew visitors from across the park with a horse-drawn wagon featuring barrels of beer and a crew clad in traditional Bavarian Tracht outfits that would circle the fairgrounds at regular intervals. Once inside, the space was constructed as a “replica of an open-air cafe in a village square”, complete with Bavarian Alpine architecture designed by Munich architect Rupert Augustin, wooden benches, and material details down to the flags, coasters and glassware. Eleven of the waitresses in the Löwenbräu Gardens were titled nobility – countesses and baronesses – flown from Munich to serve beer at the “Bavarian hamlet”.69 For the women it was a chance to experience New York on the ground. For Holterbosch and Löwenbräu, the women were preferable to professional waitresses because instead of wanting to make money, they would “make good ambassadors for Germany”.70 In sum, the conception of a Germany of beer drinkers or a Germany that is home to the best beer in the world is not a natural or timeless reality. Likewise the notion that consuming the highest “quality” beer in the world in the most “authentic” setting could somehow approximate German-ness

216 Robert Shea Terrell was similarly constructed. In both cases, knowledge about the commodity, produced, protected and promoted by Löwenbräu and their global partners to ensure sales and market growth, came to shape cultural geographical conceptions of a beer-drinking, Bavarian West Germany. This phenomenon says a great deal about how commodities and consumption shape the individual encounter with the foreign and help domesticate the world, reducing it to purchases, bites and gulps.71 Considering how claims to the alleged authenticity of a product and the mode of its consumption came to stand in for geographical and historical realities demonstrates just how diversely “the political economy of taste” functioned at the global–local nexus from Midwest marketers concerned with Ohio imitations, to West German and American heads of state arguing about the beer-drinking German and the proper ways to represent the West German “economic miracle” as a triumph of western capitalism.

“A beer that does not meet Munich tastes” – coda In the two decades following the Second World War, Löwenbräu became the largest exporter in all of West Germany by any number of metrics: volume, sales and market geography. The brewery took it upon itself as a marketing strategy to play a leading role in the international image of Bavarian and German beer more broadly. It not only blazed marketing and advertising trails and joined forces with other markets such as air travel and tourism, but it also actively worked to police global marketing. On numerous occasions the brewery kicked off naming rights disputes with other breweries – both West German and international – that they thought had infringed on their proprietary claims to the authenticity and quality of Bavarian beer. In this way, the brewery was the vanguard of the image of Bavarian and German beer. It fought for, created and reinforced concepts of quality and authenticity that became important in the global encounter with Germany. On the one hand this is a straightforward history of global capitalism: seeking markets, defining markets, shaping product image, expanding product placement and protecting the exclusivity of the product. On the other, the idea of a Germany of beer drinkers and the notion that somehow the drinking masses of the world could approximate a true German experience by drinking the highest “quality” product in the most “authentic” setting was not a natural or timeless reality. Ideas of authenticity and culture were produced between local realities, commodity experts and the global marketplace, and in so doing they entered into a much larger reckoning with German identity on a global level. In 1963 Löwenbräu commissioned a study of beer drinkers in Munich from the Society for Consumer Research (Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung, GfK), Germany’s largest and oldest market research organisation, based in Nuremberg.72 The brewery paid 20,000 DM in hopes of gaining insight into

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the Munich consumer base, a market that in spite of their expansive global growth had remained elusive, committed as they were to other local options.73 The GfK focused not only on the taste of the beer but also perceptions of Löwenbräu compared to those of their local competitors.74 In contrast to its global image as the champagne-of-beers and the lubricant of an authentically German boisterousness, respondents in Munich associated Löwenbräu with lower class workers and foreigners.75 This association seems to have been the collateral damage of building their post-war growth on exports. Real Münchner knew Löwenbräu as the beer tourists asked for. Residents of the city viewed it first and foremost as an export beer that “does not meet Munich tastes”.76 Reconciling these perceptions sheds further light on the stakes of some of the ways that alcohol flows across cultures. The very beer that had become the standard-bearer, most prized, most purchased, and most symbolic of Bavarian and indeed West German beers around the world was one of the least esteemed beers in Munich; an object of criticism and a symbol of foreigners and the working classes; groups on the margins of the bourgeois city. But Löwenbräu and their allies in the Bavarian brewing industry and around the world including importers, distributors and marketers played an essential role not only in selling their product but in selling a new idea of what was authentically German. Through seeking and defining markets, shaping product image, expanding product placement and protecting the exclusivity of the product, these tastemakers and the masses of thirsty consumers together produced ideas of authenticity and culture between local realities, commodity expertise and the global marketplace. In the process they entered into a much larger reckoning with German identity on a global level – beer and gaiety rather than just Nazis and fanaticism. In a city that the Nazis had dubbed “the capital of the movement”, it was to be beer halls rather than the Beer Hall Putsch that would dominate international perception.77

Notes 1 Spencer Mawby, Containing Germany: Britain and the Arming of the Federal Republic. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999, 197. 2 Löwenbräu ad, The Evening Standard, June 12, 1952; and The Times, June 26, 1957. 3 Arjun Appadurai, ed. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, 45. 4 Birgit Speckle, Streit ums Bier in Bayern: Wertvorstellungen um Reinheit, Gemeinschaft und Tradition. Münster: Waxmann Verlag, 2001, 35–40. 5 For more on this transition more broadly, see, Reinhard Neebe, Weichenstellung für die Globalisierung: Deutsche Weltmarktpolitik, Europa und Amerika in der Ära Ludwig Erhard. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2004, 18. 6 January 11, 1952 letter to Carlo Proebst. Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (henceforth BayHStA) Brauerbund 1453. 7 June 10, 1953 letter to Carlo Proebst. BayHStA Brauerbund 1453. 8 Ibid.

218 Robert Shea Terrell 9 April 9, 1956 Walter Meissner and Herbert Tischer to the German Patent Office. BayHStA Brauerbund 1453. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Malcolm Purinton, “Empire in a Bottle: Commerce, Culture, and Consumption of the Pilsner Beer in the British Empire, 1870–1914.” PhD diss., Northeastern University, 2016; and Jeffrey M. Pilcher, “‘Tastes Like Horse Piss’: Asian Encounters with European Beer”, Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2016): 28–40. See also the chapters by Purinton and Groeneveld in Ernst, ed. Alcohol Flows. 13 “Enthält die Bezeichnung ‘Pilsener Bier’ für ein nicht aus Pilsen stammendes Produkt einen Verstofs gegen die deutschen Gesetze zum Schutze der Warenbe­ zeichnungen und zur Bekämpfung des unlauteren Wettbewerbs?”, Zeitschrift für das gesamte Brauwesen, Vol. 27, No. 50 (1904), 887–8. 14 April 9, 1956 Meissner and Tischer to the German Patent Office. BayHStA Brauerbund 1453. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 The differences between the Bavarian and German Reinheitsgebot centre on two things, rooted at least as far back as 1906, codified in the 1952 Beer Tax Law (Biersteuergesetz), and worked out in application in the course of the 1950s and 1960s. First, in Bavaria, the list of allowed ingredients is the same for beers brewed with both bottom- and top-fermenting yeasts (lagers and ales, respect­ ively): barley malt, water, hops, and yeast. In the rest of West Germany, the four-ingredient list governed only bottom-fermenting lager beer, while ales, which are much rarer in Germany, were allowed to have additional grain malts and natural sugar and colouring agents. Second, in Bavaria, the Reinheitsgebot as codified in the 1952 law, applied to export beers while in West Germany it did not. The reasons have to do with the fragmented national history of integrating production standards. This history is in part taken up in my dissertation, “The People’s Drink: Beer, Bavaria, and the Remaking of Germany, 1933–1988.” 18 March 8, 1957, Löwenbräu to the Bavarian Brewers’ Association. BayHStA Brauerbund 1453. 19 Dr Droste, quoted in December 15, 1959 Meissner and Tischer to the Union of Bavarian Export Breweries. BayHStA Brauerbund 1453. 20 December 12, 1958 Circular 54/58–59 of the Union of Bavarian Export Brewer­ ies. BayHStA Brauerbund 1453. 21 In addition to the Löwenbräu correspondence, see similar complaints from other Munich breweries such as Pschorr and Hacker in the summer of 1956. BayHStA Brauerbund 1453. 22 April 12, 1957 letter to Bavarian Brewers’ Association. BayHStA Brauerbund 1453. 23 See letters from April 4; May 2; and May 13, 1957. BayHStA Brauerbund 1453. 24 See for example the combined export statistics from 1945 to 1961, broken down by country. Bayerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv (henceforth BWA) F 2/495 & F 2/496. 25 For example, Michael Blakeney, The Protection of Geographical Indications: Law and Practice. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014, 125–6. 26 “‘Bayerisches Bier’ (Bavarian Beer): Decision of the Supreme Court 20 Septem­ ber 2012 – Case No. 15958/12”, IIC – International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law, Vol. 46, No. 7 (November 2015): 881–7. 27 April 27, 1954 Dudley Mozley to Löwenbräu, Bayerisches Wirtschaftsarchiv (henceforth BWA) F 2/384. 28 October 27, 1953 J.C. McLaughlin to Dudley Mozley, BWA F 2/384.

“Lurvenbrow”

219

29 Löwenbräu ad, Chicago Tribune, May 8, 1956, p. A7. 30 See ads ranging from the mid-1950s to mid-1960s in BWA F 2/8902. 31 Staff Reporter, “Anheuser-Busch Uncorks Busch Bavarian, New Popular-Priced Beer”, The Wall Street Journal, August 26, 1955, p. 4. 32 February 21, 1955 and March 1, 1955, Felix Faber to Karl Messner and Josef Kugl­ statter, emphasis in the original. March 14, 1955 Messner and Kuglstatter to Faber. BWA F 2/405. (Italic emphasis added. Underlined emphasis in original.) 33 Ibid., (Italic emphasis added. Underlined emphasis in original.) 34 Ibid. (Italic emphasis added.) 35 Ibid. 36 Eva Göbel argues that Bavarian consumer culture more generally came to dispro­ portionately shape global perceptions of Germany. See Eva Göbel, Bayern in der modernen Konsumgesellschaft: Regionalisierung der Konsumkultur im 20. Jahrhun­ dert. Berliner Beiträge zur Zeitgeschichte Bd. 4. Berlin: Weißensee Verlag, 2005, 251–70, 333–52. 37 See for example, May 13, 1958 Löwenbräu to Lavena Trading Corporation, New Delhi. BWA F 2/366. 38 July 8, 1958 Dudley Mozley to F. Kugelstatter, BWA F 2/385. 39 Ibid. 40 This had been the standard of German beer drinking in the area for decades. See, Tim Thomas, The Abalone King of Monterey: “Pop” Ernest Doelter, Pioneering Japanese Fishermen, & the Culinary Classic that Saved an Industry. Charleston, SC: American Palate, 2014. 41 August 2, 1957 Tinsley Fry to Löwenbräu. BWA F 2/651. 42 Thanks to Dennis Copeland, archivist at the Monterey Public Library and his­ torian of the city for his insight as to the fate of the celebration. 43 July 8, 1958 Mozley to Kugelstatter, BWA F 2/385. 44 December 21, 1961 Faber to Kugelstatter, BWA F 2/411. 45 “Munich et son ‘Oktoberfest’”, le C.H.R. – Organe officiel de la Confédération Nationale des Unions Professionnelles des Cafetiers, Hôteliers et Restaurateurs de Belgique. No. 20, November 3, 1961. 46 “The Toast is ‘prosit’” The Sun, December 11, 1967. Sent as a clipping by McLaughlin to Löwenbräu. BWA F 2/8902. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Egon Larsen, “Münchner Bierkeller in Soho. Lederhosen aus dem Kostümver­ leih”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, August 19, 1965, p. 3. 51 See for example, Christopher Booker, The Neophiliacs: A Study of the Revolution in English Life in the Fifties and Sixties. London: Collins, 1969; and William Osgerby, Youth in Britain since 1945. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1998. 52 Peter Chambers, “Booming Now in Britain – The German Style ‘Pub’: Shout as you Drink!”, Daily Express, December 11, 1967. Sent as a clipping by McLaughlin to Löwenbräu. BWA F 2/8902. Subsequent quotes in this para­ graph come from this source unless otherwise noted. 53 Ibid. 54 See for example the failed efforts to get West German business giant Friedrich Krupp AG involved in late 1963. New York Public Library (henceforth NYPL), New York World’s Fair, 1964–65, Box 271. 55 See correspondence with Holterbosch and Löwenbräu. NYPL, New York World’s Fair, 1964–65, Box 271. 56 June 13, 1962. Robert Moses to John J. McCloy. New York Public Library (henceforth NYPL), New York World’s Fair, 1964–65, Box 271.

220 Robert Shea Terrell 57 McCloy to Konrad Adenauer, qtd in August 27, 1962 Gates Davison to Scholten. NYPL, New York World’s Fair, 1964–65, Box 271. 58 August 30, 1962 Adenauer to McCloy; and September 12, 1962, Edwin Hartrich to Davison. NPYL New York World’s Fair, 1964–65, Box 271; “Bonn will shun New York’s Fair,” The New York Times International Edition. December 21, 1962. 59 March 26, 1963. Hartrich to Ludwig Erhard. NYPL, New York World’s Fair, 1964–65, Box 271. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 “Germany Restudies World’s Fair Role,” New York Times, June 27, 1963, p. 12; “Neue Hoffnungen auf eine Teilnahme Westdeutschlands” Sonntagsblatt StaatsZeitung und Herold, June 30, 1963; and July 12, 1963 Hartrich to Jameson Parker, NYPL, New York World’s Fair, 1964–65, Box 271. 63 July 22, 1963. Gordon H. Milcher to Charles Poletti. NYPL, New York World’s Fair, 1964–65, Box 271. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 69 Walter Carlson, “Noble Frauleins tend Bar at Fair”, New York Times, May 21, 1964, p. 45. 70 Ibid. 71 Löwenbräu beer was of course not alone in this, cf. Bernhard Rieger, The People’s Car: A Global History of the Volkswagen Beetle. Cambridge, MA: Har­ vard University Press, 2013. 72 For an excellent treatment of the early history of the GfK, see Chapter 5 in S. Jonathan Wiesen, Creating the Nazi Marketplace: Commerce and Consumption in the Third Reich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 73 Budgetary information in “Kommentar zum Etat-Plan 1963/64 – Stand 6. Dez. 1963,” BWA F 2/6878. 74 “Trinkergewohnheiten der Münchner Stadtbevölkerung und Markenbilder ausge­ wählter Brauereien” Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung – Archiv, S 1964 029, pp. 5–6. 75 Ibid., 30. 76 Ibid., 34. 77 The Beer Hall Putsch of November 8–9, 1923 was a failed coup effort by Adolf Hitler and Erich Ludendorff to seize power in Munich and Bavaria. They and a number of their conspirators were tried and convicted. Hitler himself served just over one year of a five year sentence during which time he wrote Mein Kampf and pledged that any future efforts at state power would come through legal channels.

11 Twenty-first-century transnational neo-temperance Julie Robert

Temporary Sobriety Initiatives (TSI) are short-term campaigns through which participants refrain from drinking alcohol for a period of time, typically a month, and (although not always formally required) concurrently raise money for a sponsored charity by soliciting donations. Better known by names such as FebFast and Dry January, these increasingly popular initiatives fuse the current fashion of channelling philanthropic engagement through the body (as seen in charity campaigns such as Movember and charity fun runs) with the broader public health concerns seeking to address what have been deemed to be problematic drinking cultures in places such as Australia, the United Kingdom and Finland. Having begun in Finland 2005 but developed in earnest starting from Australia in 2008, these initiatives emphasise a combination of charitable giving, responsibility for one’s personal health, and awareness of alcohol’s effects and social ubiquity. From their origins as grassroots campaigns, TSI have multiplied and crossed borders. Like many social movements of the twenty-first century, TSI have used existing philanthropic networks and the connectivity afforded by the Internet and social media to exceed their smallscale origins and become international movements and major fundraisers.1 To wit, in 2017, Australia’s Dry July campaign raised nearly 4.3 million Australian dollars, not counting the funds raised in its New Zealand and British spin-offs, and a British survey reported that roughly one in six members of the adult drinking population intended to have a dry January.2 TSI portray themselves as novel and innovative responses to crises of binge drinking and the creeping cultural ubiquity of alcohol.3 Cognisant of the reputation of temperance movements as archaic and moralistic organisations, most are at pains to keep temperance associated with the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.4 Despite the apparent and arguably deliberate disconnection between TSI and temperance, TSI have deep but unacknowledged roots in temperance. Like the transnational temperance movements that gained in popularity from the 1870s, TSI found greatest favour in English-speaking countries, spreading from the Antipodes first to Europe and then to North America. They have effectively mobilised scientific arguments about health and economics to motivate commitment

222 Julie Robert to temporary abstinence and moderation. They have also embraced the temperance tradition of using both personal commitment and collective action to address larger cultural issues springing from alcohol. Despite their Anglo-orientation, TSI most resemble temperance actions from continental Europe: drinking strikes, boycotts and temporary periods of abstinence. Far from being just facets of the embodied philanthropy trend, TSI should be considered a form of temperance, albeit reinvented in and for the twentyfirst century. Wary of the temperance taint, TSI have followed the lead of many medical temperance advocates and eschewed any links with religion and refrained from making claims about how alcohol should be regulated.5 They have instead focused on how individuals may use abstemious practices as ways to achieve the “super values” of health, along with philanthropic civic responsibility that emerged as priorities in the late twentieth century.6 The practices of TSI, wherever they operate, are consequently grounded in a common neoliberal ideology focused on personalised, indeed embodied, civic responsibility that has allowed them to cross borders and take root in a number of locations. This chapter proposes to consider TSI as neo-temperance campaigns that are united by praxis as much as by purpose. Using discourse and visual analysis of public-facing TSI self-presentations, notably websites, social media sites, press-releases, traditional media commentary and annual reports, this chapter considers how TSI, as both philanthropic and health initiatives, were able to cross national and cultural boundaries, all the while connecting to earlier temperance traditions.

Understanding TSI Owing to their novelty, TSI have not generated much scholarly inquiry. The majority of available material has been published with some involvement from the campaigns themselves. These caveats aside, the phenomenon is coming to be better understood. Most TSI, even those that pitch themselves first and foremost to be sacrifice-driven fundraisers for worthy causes, claim to change drinking cultures and/or promote healthier lifestyles. FebFast’s initial stated objective, for instance, was “to influence Australian communities’ thinking and behaviour around alcohol and other drug use”.7 One current of research has accordingly been evaluative, often undertaken in partnership with the organisation running the TSI, to establish the benefits of participation.8 A large-scale survey of Dry January participants has established that even failed participation leads to less drinking in the six months following the campaign.9 Independent clinical studies have also shown a one-month period of alcohol abstinence to be of some benefit in improving vital statistics.10 These investigations, however, tend to reduce TSI to a mere 30-day period of sobriety, as though it were little more than

Transnational neo-temperance 223 an elimination diet. Consequently, they fail to consider TSI as organised campaigns that have made deliberate choices around their approach, marketing and overall public presentation. Case studies of Dry January, FebFast and Hello Sunday Morning (itself not a philanthropic month-long TSI and thus different in structure and orientation to most of the other initiatives) have better recognised the role that TSI marketing and communications strategies play in encouraging individuals to change their behaviours and attitudes toward alcohol consumption.11 While largely still evaluative, these studies have probed how the campaigns achieve their results and have identified factors such as the implicit philanthropic contract with sponsors – a form of semi-public commitment – and an overall focus on moderation as important elements of their success.12 Lacking in most of these analyses of individual campaigns is a sense of how TSI are not isolated or unique initiatives, but are in many respects very similar programmes in terms of structure, aims, methods and even conditions of emergence, both within countries holding multiple initiatives and across national borders. There is also a dearth of comparative work. Consequently, the choices made by organisers of specific TSI, such as the overtness of their public health messaging, nature of charity supported, timing of initiative and overall strategic focus, have not been examined to date. In contrast, trade publications and discussions from within the philanthropic sector have engaged with these matters in some, albeit limited, ways.13 Work by Henry Yeomans is starting to study TSI in relation to larger theoretical paradigms, including their relationship to selfhood and regulatory frameworks.14

TSI on the move TSI present a complicated timeline if one is seeking to trace their global movements. Where the first, Tipaton Tammikuu (Dropless January), and most recent iterations of the campaigns, including On The Dry, are relatively easy to identify and explain, the vast majority of initiatives, which emerged between 2008 and 2015, present complications to researchers seeking to understand the process by which the ideas for these enterprises were transmitted and taken up. The first TSI, albeit without an obvious philanthropic component, began in Finland. A submission to a German Ministry of Health initiative to collect information on novel approaches to combat binge drinking reported that Finland’s Alcohol-Free January, subsequently rebranded as Tipaton Tammikuu, began in 2005.15 The report speculated about origins linked to a political campaign in 1942 and tied to the labour movement, a feature of Finnish temperance in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.16 Nonetheless, it ultimately posited the modern iteration as the initiative of various, unnamed, non-governmental organisations concerned with combatting substance abuse which launched

224 Julie Robert in earnest on a national scale in 2007.17 The Finns, subsequent to the popularisation of the Tipaton model have laid claim to the concept, citing it as a self-corrective measure developed by a population aware of its alcoholic excesses.18 Despite being first, what became Tipaton Tammikuu appears to have grown in relative isolation from the larger group of philanthropic TSI that appeared in Australia as public campaigns in 2008. This disconnection likely stems from a simple language divide, for Tipaton operates only in Finnish, a language not readily understood or often encountered outside of Finland and its expatriate communities.19 Where Tipaton began as a deliberate public health undertaking, the next volley of TSI all claimed to have their origins in largely private citizen action that snowballed of their own accord into larger movements. The public self-presentations of these campaigns champion a founder’s moment of inspiration that was able to be capitalised upon, expanded and turned into a successful philanthropic initiative. Thereafter, these initiatives spread to other contexts and also proliferated in locations that already had successful TSI. Although two of these TSI, the Australian iterations of FebFast and Dry July, sprang up in 2008 with no apparent connection between them, the lag between them and the first of the British (2011) and Canadian (2012) TSI suggest that the claims of innovation must be weighed against ubiquitous and unrecognised processes of cultural transfer occasioned through what Manuel Castells refers to as “mass (self-) communication”.20 The first TSI to self-generate in this way was Australia’s FebFast, which recounts the story of its origin in banal terms: The idea for turning an alcohol free month into a fundraising activ­ ity was conceived at a barbeque a few days before Christmas in 2006. A guest at that barbeque, and now FebFast’s chief executive officer, was Fiona Healy. She and a friend, Eliza Anderson, then followed through on what they thought was a good idea in February 2007. The pair raised $910, which they donated to YSAS Pty. Ltd. (the Youth Substance Abuse Service) Victoria’s largest service provider for young people who have problems with alcohol and substance use. From there Fiona decided to turn the concept into a fully fledged charitable trust.21 FebFast, as the public iteration of the campaign became known, launched in time for February 2008 and ran four more campaigns as an independent organisation. It disappeared as a separate legal and financial entity in October 2011 when it was acquired by YSAS, the charity it first supported, to be an in-house fundraising campaign.22 Dry July similarly began as a small-scale philanthropic project among friends, Brett Macdonald, Phil Grove and Kenny McGilvary, in Sydney in June 2007. As noted in the first of the charity’s annual reports, a suspected

Transnational neo-temperance 225 cancer diagnosis for one of them prompted the trio to raise money to support adults in their community undergoing cancer treatment through a donation to the oncology unit of their local hospital.23 The next year’s campaign was intended to be only slightly less modest in scope: a group of ten friends working toward a target of AUD$ 3,000. Local media in Sydney nonetheless heard of the initiative and launched the group’s challenge to a wider audience and 1,049 people succeeded in raising over AUD$ 250,000.24 That year, Macdonald and Grove created the Dry July Foundation to run the annual event and disburse funds to the beneficiary organisations.25 The cultural circumstances, notably a peak in public discourse and concern about binge drinking and alcohol-related violence, that allowed both FebFast and Dry July to launch as successful public campaigns in Australia in 2008 do not fully account for their quieter private origins some years earlier.26 Indeed, the inspiration for the independently conceived ideas to forego alcohol as a way to raise money for a worthy cause are difficult to trace, but deeply engrained norms, practices and views of alcohol provide grounds for speculation. The tradition of the New Year’s resolutions, a vow of self-discipline after the excesses of the festive season, which in Australia extends until the end of January on account of summer holidays, is widespread. The phenomenon was even rebranded, thanks to a Daily Mail article from 2002, as “Janopause”.27 The neologism, used to designate the phenomenon of a teetotal January in a generic sense rather than as a concerted campaign, received much more publicity in 2012 after the British Liver Trust criticised the practice as a faddish hollow gesture.28 Periods of self-sacrifice are common religious practices and the Christian tradition of a Lenten fast, which is often enacted through the foregoing of a particular pleasure such as sweets, smoking or alcohol, are part of the cultural vernacular for many people in contexts with a predominantly Christian heritage even if the practice has been popularly abandoned. That said, an alcohol-free Lent was recently reinvented as a TSI in the New Orleans Times-Picayune’s #AlcoholFreeFor40 campaign, begun in 2016, as a lifestyle and wellness challenge following the customary excesses of Mardi Gras and carnival season.29 These potentially unacknowledged precedents are also likely to have coupled with larger patterns within the philanthropic sphere. Embodied philanthropy, the process of channelling philanthropy through the body’s actions, habits and surfaces, has been gaining in popularity, both through durational campaigns centred on a calendar month (such as November’s Movember fundraiser, which began in Melbourne in 2003) and event-style fundraisers (long-distance walks for breast cancer, charity 10K runs), which were at peak popularity around the same time as TSI launched.30 The public in places such as Australia, the UK and Canada, especially those attuned to various kinds of philanthropic behaviour, had thus already accepted the premise that charitable activity could come from doing something unconventional and potentially a little self-serving (insofar as

226 Julie Robert one could use a charity campaign as a way to get fit, lose weight or justify a radical change to appearance) with one’s body. It is in relation to this larger and shared cultural ethos, with both FebFast and Dry July already in full operation, that British and Canadian TSI began. Each of these campaigns claimed that they too were the inspired idea of their founders. The UK’s Dry January, run by the public health and advocacy group Alcohol Concern, report their origins as the personal health project of Emily Robinson.31 Robinson gave up drinking for the month of January in 2011 to help her train for a long-distance run. Having begun work at Alcohol Concern in the intervening year, Robinson repeated her personal project in 2012 and, inspired by her initiative, her new employer hosted a kick-off event for Dry January in May 2012 in advance of a first public outing in January 2013. This first campaign attracted 4,350 participants.32 In Quebec, the Défi 28 jours sans alcool [28 Days Sober] ran for the first time as a major public event in 2014, albeit under the bilingual and oddly translated Soberary – Les 28 jours les plus longs de ta vie [The longest 28 days of your life]. The event is cited as the brainchild of friends Jean-Sébastien Chouinard and Antoine Théorêt-Poupart.33 Chouinard notes the genesis of the campaign as a December 2012 idea that took root among a small group of friends who abstained from alcohol in February 2013 and used Facebook to motivate and publicise their project.34 Chouinard and Théorêt-Poupart encouraged participation by hosting an exclusive party, to begin at midnight on 1 March, for those who managed to abstain for the whole month.35 The Jean Lapointe Foundation, a Montreal-based drug and alcohol charity running both residential treatment and education programmes, subsequently approached them about launching the idea on a larger scale incorporating it as an in-house fundraiser, much as YSAS had incorporated FebFast into its organisation.36 The same factors that help to explain the near simultaneous emergence of the Australian campaigns were likely also influential in the development of the British and Canadian TSI. Sharing a language, traditions of Lent and New Year’s resolutions, trendy experiences with embodied philanthropy and larger preoccupations with health and wellness, these locations had a common cultural ethos, which might have made the TSI premise a logical response to local circumstances. Theories of multiple discovery, which hold that innovations are often made independently (and also in many cases simultaneously), may thus indeed validate the claims of independent grassroots action concretising into highly similar campaigns in different locations, in some cases, at a few year’s remove from one another.37 Discourses of TSI as solely sui generis programmes or grassroots initiatives nonetheless need to be weighed against the highly visible and mediatised way in which they operate. TSI have, from the outset, encouraged participants to blog, post and fundraise online. TSI operate as digital entities that have successfully employed connectivity of the Internet, the viral potential of social media and even digital donation platforms and apps to publicise their presence and objectives.38 The practices of what

Transnational neo-temperance 227 Manuel Castells calls mass self-communication have been pivotal in the spread of social movements and have more generally led to unprecedented levels of information exchange about even banal phenomena.39 TSI participants accordingly use social media and other platforms to broadcast their involvement in TSI or even their reactions to TSI as local campaigns among their potentially international networks. In doing so they communicate the core TSI premise to potentially vast audiences. Even the reporting on TSI in conventional media has become integrated into these communications networks through the practices of hyperlinking and sharing. The idea of the TSI has thus been able to circulate freely for nearly a decade, a situation that may contribute to explanations of how TSI were able to arise “organically” in Australia, the UK and in Canada. The emphasis on TSI being home-grown solutions to local problems enacted by inventive individuals, a discourse reinforced in “Our Story” style narratives, is nevertheless a strategic framing of the origins stories. Every one of the origins narratives emphasises the ordinariness of the TSI founders; they attend barbecues, have friends who will join them in unconventional projects, suffer through health scares, struggle with exercise commitments, have jobs and like parties. Crucially, they also drink and enjoy doing so. In short, they are the everyday member of society, somebody relatable whose small personal action, far from radical but still irregular in societies where drinking is a social norm, was a vital part of what became an important social movement. They are (or at least were) neither authorities on the alcohol question nor exceptional individuals, just people who acted on an idea. Except in the Finnish and Irish cases, TSI direct the funds they raise to two types of charitable initiatives: drug and alcohol education and treatment services or cancer support and research organisations. Each of these sectors operates as an international network of charities and community service organisations with similar aims. Moreover, the sharing of information and strategies through publications, conferences and personal connections is common.40 These specialised circles operate in addition to broader philanthropic or third sector forums, such as the Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration, which promote novel and successful approaches to shared concerns.41 Where temperance movements beginning in the nineteenth century utilised existing commercial and cultural ties, notably the transatlantic link between the United States and Britain and the imperial ties of the Commonwealth to spread their messages, TSI have similarly utilised existing networks to grow internationally.42 Within the drug and alcohol treatment and education circles, the Australian FebFast is the foundational TSI. Having noted the success of both FebFast and Dry July’s first public campaigns in 2008, Life Education, an Australian charity promoting healthy living education programmes for children, founded Ocsober, in time for October of that same year.43 FebFast was also the first TSI to generate an international spin-off. FebFast New

228 Julie Robert Zealand, run in support of the New Zealand Drug Foundation, began as a loosely allied campaign of its Australian inspiration in 2011 but was ultimately abandoned in December 2015.44 In that interval, after the expansion to New Zealand, Dry January came into being and the campaign that would ultimately become Canada’s Défi 28 jours allied itself with the Fondation Jean Lapointe. Although all three TSI claim origins independent of one another they share a common model of being in-house fundraisers for alcohol and drug prevention and treatment organisations, a situation that suggests a unity of operational strategy if not of inspiration. The spread of TSI within the international network of cancer charities is more directly traceable to Dry July and its influence. The campaign, which began in Sydney and launched publicly in 2008 expanded to New Zealand in 2012 using the same fundraising model: an independent foundation serving as a clearing-house to make grants to other charitable interests.45 Dry July is also credited as having inspired both Cancer Research UK’s Dryathlon, which launched in December 2012 in time for a January 2013 event, and Macmillan Cancer Support’s Go Sober (for October), which is an official partner of the Australian Dry July initiative.46 Unlike the Australian and New Zealand versions, the British adaptations of the campaign were incorporated into established, national cancer charities as fundraisers. A small amount of local adaptation was also employed in the shift from the Southern to the Northern hemisphere, as a mid-summer period of sobriety (in July) would have met with significant popular resistance, even for the worthiest of causes. As new TSI have emerged, they are likely to have been inspired by both the freely circulating ideas for TSI-style experiences and the formal fundraising apparatuses that have developed around such campaigns. The Irish Heart Foundation accordingly launched On The Dry for January 2015 as a campaign derivative of earlier examples, even somewhat replicating Dry January’s logo, a cup of tea adorned with cocktail garnishes (including the iconic umbrella), in its visual branding.47 In the American context, journalist John Ore claims to have quietly begun the practice of what he dubbed Drynuary in 2005, although he concedes that interest in it began to accrue mostly once Dry January had launched in the UK.48 The Drynuary designation remains a generic one unaffiliated with any particular campaign or cause, although Dryuary (note the absence of the n) commenced in 2015 as a fundraiser for alcohol self-help group Moderation Management, whose programme has always included an initial month-long period of abstinence before returning to moderate drinking.49 As more TSI have emerged, often in the same national context where they vie for limited charity dollars and publicity, tensions between them have also arisen. In the UK, this has given rise to Dry January organisers criticising the organisations behind Dryathlon (Cancer Research UK) and Go Sober (Macmillan Cancer Support) for undermining the public health message and their parent charities siphoning money away from the much smaller Alcohol

Transnational neo-temperance 229 50

Concern organisation. TSI that are aligned with drug and alcohol support organisations have tended to stress change of health- and alcohol-related behaviour in their public communications.51 By contrast, those affiliated with cancer charities have typically placed greater emphasis on the fundraising elements of their campaigns.52 Dry July has even gone so far as to remove any mention of improved health, wellbeing and alcohol awareness for participants from their mission statement between the 2013 and 2015 campaigns.53 This has resulted in greater elements of gamification in their advice to participants about fundraising, as well as communication strategies that seek to distance them from any accusation of moralising, being anti-alcohol or even from mentioning the relationship between drinking and cancer.54

TSI: temperance reinvented As the example of Dry July shows, TSI have not always been keen to be associated with the lingering image of temperance prevalent in most English-speaking societies. The reputation of the temperance movement, often erroneously understood in the singular, centres on its most extreme forms, which championed both total personal abstinence and state-imposed prohibition. As Virginia Berridge prefaces her report on the potential lessons for twenty-first-century policymakers from the temperance campaigns of the past, “most people associate it with outdated attitudes, rigid moralism, narrow religion and an uncompromising attitude towards the consumption of drink”.55 Anti-temperance attitudes, epitomised in Australia by the maligned and ridiculed figure of the “wowser”, are thus never far from TSI and are guarded against.56 TSI, however, have capitalised on many of the legacies of temperance, including their international philanthropic networks, their mustering of both medical and economic arguments, the utility of public commitments, and even some of their lesser-known forms of involvement to create popular campaigns. Although temperance movements are well understood in local and national contexts, groups such as the International Order of Good Templars, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the World Prohibition Federation, all of which came to prominence in the latter part of the nineteenth century, exemplify the transnational reach of temperance.57 The bulk of the membership in such organisations was located in the United States, the UK and, to a lesser extent, the settler colonies of the Commonwealth such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada (mostly among its English, not French-speaking populations). As a result, English came to serve as a lingua franca for their print cultures (newspapers, journals, pamphlets) and biennial conferences, the networks through which “like-minded individuals openly exchanged temperancerelated ideas, information, and innovations”.58 Historians have accordingly been critical of the movement’s pretensions to true internationalism, noting how cultural differences, especially in the wine-drinking regions of Southern

230 Julie Robert Europe, generally saw abstinence and prohibition-oriented temperance societies fail to make inroads in these areas.59 Despite having crossed borders, TSI operate in a similarly restricted pattern of internationalisation. Their reach is largely limited to affluent English-speaking contexts and the non-English language campaigns, such as the Montreal-based Défi 28 jours (which nonetheless operates fully bilingually in French and English) and the Finnish Tipaton Tamikuu, are notable linguistic exceptions to the Anglo-dominant rule. Reactions to TSI in places such as France also replicate the poor reception temperance campaigners received. French media commentary on Dry January and the premise of a dry month tends to frame them as something of a health fad at best and, at worst, a crutch for societies (unlike their own) too prone to alcoholic excess.60 Claims to temperance internationalism and worldwide adherence, whatever the reality, were nonetheless central for the organisation and the movement as a whole insofar as these assertions legitimised the cause and allowed it to transcend purely local concerns.61 TSI by contrast remain quiet about the transnational character of their initiatives. The grassroots origin stories occupy pride of place on campaign websites, the most visible public presence they have, and even affiliated campaigns, such as Go Sober and Dry July in Australia and New Zealand, have relegated discussions of their partnerships to industry-insider publications and seldom read annual reports.62 These silences likely owe a great deal to the strategic importance of being seen to address local concerns. Donors to philanthropic causes tend to prefer national and especially local concerns.63 Consequently, there is a monetary incentive for TSI to emphasise their grassroots origins and local rather than global impact. As a result, TSI have increasingly allowed participants to channel their fundraising to local causes. Dry July, for instance, moved to allow participants to nominate a hospital or cancer centre of their choice to receive the proceeds of their individual fundraising efforts.64 Dry January also recently changed its policy so that participants could select a particular charity to split the proceeds of their fundraising with parent organisation Alcohol Concern.65 This capacity for more directed giving aligns with broader trends in the philanthropic sector where donors wish to exert greater control over their gifts.66 There is also the expectation that changing the drinking culture towards one of moderation, a goal for many TSI, would have an impact at a local level, for instance through a decrease in anti-social behaviour in one’s immediate environment. Although the temperance myth is one of religiosity and moral arguments, the movement had a strong scientific component that is often forgotten. Specialised temperance groups, among them the Scientific Temperance Federation and the International Temperance Bureau, were particularly active in this regard, especially in promoting temperance education.67 Groups such as the WCTU also routinely advanced medical and economic arguments for abstinence and prohibition.68 The national tenor of temperance organisations

Transnational neo-temperance 231 in France was also strongly medical and scientific in nature, often inflected with Lamarckian eugenic thinking.69 Scientific temperance was understood in broad terms. It sought not only to inform the population about alcohol’s effects on individual and population health – the facets of the enterprise that would most resonate with contemporary observers’ concerns – but also to understand alcohol’s social and economic effects through lenses that would now be understood as scientific.70 Education was central to the mission, for although temperance campaigners embraced moral suasion arguments, “they were confident that, since sin was due to ignorance, knowledge would turn men from vice to virtue”.71 Educational objectives were also accompanied by calls to action, notably to lobby the state to fund the treatment of people with alcohol problems and to promote temperance education.72 Scientific temperance is most fully redeployed in the ways that TSI use both medical and economic arguments to highlight the effects of alcohol and use these points to influence drinking behaviour. To avoid being labelled censorious or moralising, however, they have often employed a light touch when doing so. The Défi 28 jours and Dry January websites for instance feature calculators in which participants can input their estimated weekly consumption of beer, wine and spirits to determine both the financial and caloric costs of their usual drinking habits.73 In the case of the Montreal-based initiative, the results of the calculation are expressed as relatable in-kind units: the number of tickets to Montreal Canadiens’ hockey games that could be bought and how many servings of the infamous artery-clogging, post-drinking snack of poutine could be consumed for an equivalent amount of alcohol. Without veering into health moralism, these calculators serve an educative purpose and function as part of a rational choice model to change behaviours, a version of the scientific reasoning that medical temperance campaigners argued would prove to be decisively influential.74 Health, more so than economics, has proven to be a major motivator for TSI participants and thus a focus for TSI discourse. Dry July’s Australian website, which previously touted the pleasures of drinking for sacrificedriven fundraising purposes, included a Wellbeing section with diet, exercise and relaxation tips in 2014 in an apparent move to cater to the wishes of participants who were increasingly swayed by healthy living motivations.75 The Wellbeing micro-site attracted more web traffic than the main website.76 The story of Dry January founder Emily Robinson’s training for an endurance sporting event links temporary sobriety and improved physical capacity.77 The branding strategy of Dryathlon plays up the associations with sport and sporting charity challenges. Its website features “Dryathletes” in athletic gear, connoting both the health benefits of exercise and the kudos that tends to accrue for those who undertake a sports-based charity fundraiser.78 FebFast, one of the TSI that most accentuates health outcomes (a logic confirmed by its now equally prominent campaign

232 Julie Robert revolving around sugar) uses participant testimonials to suggest that a month off alcohol will improve everything from skin complexion to workplace productivity.79 While for many temperance organisations, health and other scientific arguments were important but subordinate to the persistent and central concerns of morality and social order, TSI have overwhelmingly elevated health to the preeminent position. The #AlcoholFreeFor40 Lenten TSI, which is organised by registered dietician and newspaper columnist Molly Kimball, even encouraged participants to do before-and-after medical tests consisting of seven separate blood tests to prove the health benefits of temporary sobriety.80 This is largely due to the increasing importance that many Western societies have attached to health, a concept that has become, in Robert Crawford’s estimation, a super-value.81 Following neoliberal currents of individualised responsibility, health is often interpreted by TSI as personal and physiological health – sleep, digestion, weight, hepatic function, energy levels – and less as population or public health, especially concerning matters such as the aggregated population level impacts of alcohol consumption. Some groups such as Alcohol Concern, which Berridge likens to temperance organisations insofar as its main aim is to change drinking cultures, stand apart from this trend, often in confrontational ways, to take the matter of alcohol education among participants more seriously and not subordinate this objective to fundraising and a wider wellbeing agenda.82 The focus on the treatment of those affected by alcohol dependence is a less-recognised part of scientific temperance and has also been taken up by TSI. While temperance organisations mostly lobbied the government to assume such functions, TSI operate in a neoliberal climate of increasing privatisation of social services.83 They have thus become more directly involved in care for individuals who abuse alcohol and other drugs. Both FebFast and the Défi 28 jours serve as in-house fundraisers for drug and alcohol education and treatment services. They fuse the educational and activist elements of scientific temperance by using embodied forms of philanthropic engagement to raise money in support of these endeavours and to create experiential or kinaesthetic empathy among participants for the clients of these services. As Défi participant and promoter Anne Lise argues on her blog, the 28 days of the February campaign correspond to the maximum length of stay at the Maison Jean Lapointe rehabilitation facility.84 Interviews with FebFast participants also revealed a sense of empathy with the beneficiaries of their fundraising, youth with addictions. As 34-year-old “Karen” noted, “I just don’t think there’s enough done in the public arena to make people aware of what our youth are going through”.85 TSI participants pledge sobriety for only a month while members of temperance organisations have traditionally had to foreswear alcohol for longer, even permanently. Nevertheless, both TSI and temperance campaigns have recognised the value of public commitment. For some

Transnational neo-temperance 233 temperance movements, the pledge was a catalyst for adherents. As Eriksen frames it, taking the pledge was deciding “to begin the task of personal improvement within the religious framework provided by the [temperance] organisation”.86 In many cases though, it proved to be more symbolic than practical. For example, for many who took the pledge of the Irish Total Abstinence Society headed by Father Theobald Mathew, the vow was less of a binding commitment than a declaration of hopeful intent.87 Records from Finnish temperance organisations that required lifelong pledges of total abstinence tellingly reveal patterns of expelling (and subsequently readmitting) their members for drinking.88 TSI campaigns demand monetary and “moral” commitment. They require participants to make an initial donation that doubles as a registration fee. The pledge is less likely to be forgotten or taken for granted, as there is already a financial as well as a moral commitment. The highly public digital platforms on which TSI operate encourage participants to share their commitment with others in their social networks and to solicit donations from them. When these donations come, they create implicit contracts between participants and donors, for as research with TSI participants has shown, the participants feel a greater obligation to abstain lest they disappoint their sponsors and fail to deliver upon their promised full month of sobriety.89 Failure to live up to one’s commitment, a scenario that temperance histories indicate to be highly probable, are also framed financially, for most TSI offer purchasable reprieves from sobriety in the form of Golden Tickets, Time Out Passes or similarlystyled payment exemptions.90 Dry January, the TSI most committed to public health outcomes and demanding a full month of abstinence, does not offer such exceptions and has condemned other British TSI for what it perceives to be their prioritisation of fundraising over the educative objectives.91 The imbrication of fundraising and initiatives aimed at changing the drinking culture are evidence of the ways in which TSI operationalise alcoholic abstinence. While many temperance organisations in the AngloAmerican and Commonwealth traditions connected projects such as women’s suffrage to temperance activities, temperance generally remained the core objective.92 Temperance traditions in Northern Europe by contrast have long histories of using temperance activity as a political tool. Prescribed periods of total abstinence or partial abstinence in the form of bans on spirits consumption, for instance, were called for and acted upon in both Finland and Germany. From the 1870s, alcohol boycotts came into use in Finland as a form of radical protest among factory workers. The practice spread and gained popularity, such that in 1898 approximately 70,000 Finnish workers pledged to drink no distilled alcohol for at least a year.93 Members of the German Social Democratic Party similarly called for a schnapps boycott in 1909 as a form of protest against new taxation regimes that sought to levy higher taxes on beer and spirits.94 These precedents of episodic sobriety, which Sulkunen cites as important aspects in the development of nationalism and political consciousness for an

234 Julie Robert expanding working class, may help to explain why the TSI model first took root in Finland. The drinking strikes and boycotts, with their high rates of attrition, also highlighted the practical concern of feasibility for groups that would seek to use abstinence or temperance as a means for achieving other objectives.

Conclusion A 2005 Joseph Rowntree Foundation report argued that current policy objectives concerning alcohol might benefit from looking to the temperance movement for lessons on education, scientific messaging, the role of individual action and international cooperation.95 While TSI were then virtually unknown, the report proved prescient. Begun as individual responses to concerns about drinking cultures and in recognition of the important social and cultural role that alcohol plays, one that could be leveraged for sacrifice-driven fundraising purposes, TSI have transformed themselves from novel yet isolated campaigns to major events, with fundraisers operating on three continents. The success of early TSI in Australia was, following in the international models of the temperance tradition, replicated in many other countries in the English-speaking world. While third sector networks of charitable and community organisations provided some of the infrastructure for the dissemination of the TSI model, participants were instrumental in publicising the central idea of a month of sobriety as a way “to do good”, both for oneself and for others. Where TSI used the convenience of webbased platforms to recruit local participants and build their presence on social media, these tools also facilitated the internationalisation of these campaigns. Although each TSI operates according to a different mix of priorities focused on personal health, cultural change and philanthropy, they have all framed alcohol as both a potentially problematic product and one that is central to many people’s lives: so central in fact that to forego it is considered to be a genuine sacrifice that comes or, with fundraising objectives in mind, should come, at great cost. Launched in settings where public responsibilities, both financial and social, have been privatised and responsibility for one’s health has become as great a civic responsibility as community and philanthropic engagement, TSI have emerged as convenient campaigns through which participants may fulfil these responsibilities. Thanks to the social media-driven ways in which TSI operate, participants are also widely recognised as doing so. Just as temperance campaigners left archives of information for historians to use in the writing of temperance history, so TSI also have left traces of their genesis and growth. TSI are neoliberal and networked campaigns that function as twenty-first-century neo-temperance movements, complete with local cultural adaptations and varied strategic emphases. With the unpopular and

Transnational neo-temperance 235 stereotypical image of temperance as the cautionary tale to be avoided, TSI have managed to appeal to publics wary of the temperance ideology, but not unreceptive to its core tenets of wanting to temporarily stem the flow of alcohol and change drinking cultures as a matter of personal and social importance.

Notes 1 M. Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity, 2015; and J. Uldam and A. Vestergaard, eds. Civic Engagement and Social Media: Political Participation Beyond Protest. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 2 Dry July, “Homepage”; and YouGov, New Year’s Resolutions Survey. 3 For more on how Australian TSI eventuated from public concern about alcohol, see J. Robert, “Temporary Sobriety Initiatives: Emergence, Possibilities and Con­ straints,” Continuum 30, no. 6 (2016): 646–658. 4 V. Berridge, V., Temperance: Its History and Impact on Current and Future Alco­ hol Policy. London: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2005. 5 J. Woiak, “‘A Medical Cromwell to Depose King Alcohol’: Medical Scientists, Temperance Reformers, and the Alcohol Problem in Britain,” Histoire sociale/ Social History 27, no. 54 (1994): 337–365. 6 R. Crawford, “Health as a Meaningful Social Practice,” Health 10, no. 4 (2006): 401–420. 7 FebFast, FebFast Annual Report 2008/2009, i. 8 Studies undertaken with either direct or indirect TSI involvement include R.O. de Visser, E. Robinson, and R. Bond, “Voluntary Temporary Abstinence from Alcohol During ‘Dry January’ and Subsequent Alcohol Use,” Health Psychology 35, no. 3 (2016): 281–289; H. Cherrier and L. Gurrieri, “Anticonsumption Choices Per­ formed in a Drinking Culture: Normative Struggles and Repairs,” Journal of Macromarketing 33, no. 3 (2013): 232–244; J. Robert, “Temporary Sobriety Initia­ tives as Public Pedagogy: Windows of Opportunity for Embodied Learning,” Health 20, no. 4 (2015): 413–429; M.-L. Fry, “Rethinking Social Marketing: Towards a Sociality of Consumption,” Journal of Social Marketing 4, no. 3 (2014): 210–222; B. Hamley and N. Carah, One Sunday at a Time: Evaluating Hello Sunday Morning. Brisbane: Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education and Hello Sunday Morning, 2012; N. Carah, C. Meurk, and W. Hall, “Profiling Hello Sunday Morning: Who are the Participants?” International Journal of Drug Policy 26 (2015): 214–216. and T. Hillgrove and L. Thomson, Evaluation of the Impact of FebFast Participation. Final Report. Carlton: Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth), 2012. 9 de Visser, Robinson and Bond, “Voluntary Temporary Abstinence from Alcohol”. 10 J. Cabezas and R. Bataller, “Alcoholic Liver Disease: New UK Alcohol Guidelines and Dry January: Enough to Give Up Boozing?” Nature Reviews: Gastroenterology and Hepatology 13 (2016): 191–192; and G. Mehta, S. Macdonald, J. Maurice, S. Al-Khatib, S. Piao, M. Rosselli, and D. Nair, “Short Term Abstinence from Alco­ hol Improves Insulin Resistance and Fatty Liver Phenotype in Moderate Drinkers.” Paper presented at the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease, San Francisco, November 16, 2015. 11 Cherrier and Gurrieri, “Social Marketing as a System of Interaction”; M.-L. Fry, “Discourses of Consumer’s Alcohol Resistant Identities,” Journal of Nonprofit and Public Sector Marketing 23, no. 4 (2011): 348–366; Fry, “Rethinking Social

236 Julie Robert

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14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

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Marketing”; Carah, Meurk and Hall, “Profiling Hello Sunday Morning”; and Hamley and Carah, One Sunday at a Time. Robert, “Temporary Sobriety Initiatives as Public Pedagogy”; and Cherrier and Gurrieri, “Anticonsumption Choices”. “Analysis: The Three Dry Campaigns – Compare and Contrast,” from Third Sector (October 28 2014; accessed September 19 2017). www.thirdsector.co.uk/analysis­ three-dry-campaigns-compare-contrast/fundraising/article/1317844; and S. Chapman, “Cancer Research UK’s Dryathlon: I Wish I’d Thought of That – Case Studies,” from SOFII (Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration) 2015 (accessed September 20 2017). http://sofii.org/case-study/cancer-research-uks-dryathlon. A notable exception to this trend is Robert’s 2016 study of the near simultaneous emergence of the Australian campaigns: see Robert, “Temporary Sobriety Initiatives: Emergence”. H. Yeomans, “New Year, New You: a qualitative study of Dry January, self-formation and positive regulation,” Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy 26, no. 6 (2019): 460–468. R. Varamäki, “Alcohol-free January” from Innovative Projects: Deutsche Hauptstelle fuer Suchtfragen. I. Sulkunen, History of the Finnish Temperance Movement: Temperance as a Civic Religion. Translated by M. Hall. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990. Varamäki, Alcohol-free January, 2. L. Cook, “European Press Review – 22/01/2012” from Radio France Internation­ ale (January 22 2012; accessed September 30 2017). http://en.rfi.fr/europe/ 20120122-european-press-review Tipaton Tammikuu, “Tipaton Tammikuu” (accessed September 26 2017). www. tipaton.fi Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope, 7. FebFast, Financial Report for the Year Ended 30 June 2008, Melbourne: FebFast, 2008, 2. YSAS (Youth Substance Abuse Service), YSAS Annual Report 2010–2011. Fitzroy, Vic: YSAS Pty Ltd, 2011, 2. Dry July, Dry July Annual Report 2009. Sydney: Dry July Foundation, 2009, 5. Ibid. Ibid. For more on these circumstances, see Robert, “Temporary Sobriety Initiatives: Emergence”. J. Friedland, Eatymology: The Dictionary of Modern Gastronomy. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2015, 116. BBC. “Detoxing in January is Futile, Says Liver Charity,” from BBC Health (January 1 2012; accessed September 26 2017). www.bbc.com/news/health­ 16354472 Kimball, M., “No Booze for 40 Days: Take This Challenge to See Health Benefits of Popular Lenten Sacrifice,” in The Times-Picayune (January 19 2016; accessed October 5 2017). www.nola.com/healthy-eating/2016/01/give_up_alcohol_for_lent. html J. Robert, “Practices and Rationales of Embodied Philanthropy,” International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing (2017); J. L. Jacobson, “Moustachioed Men and Marathon Moms: The Marketing of Cancer Philan­ thropy.” MA Thesis, Wilfrid Laurier University, 2010; S. King, Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

Transnational neo-temperance 237 31 Dry January “Our Story” (accessed January 12 2020). https://alcoholchange.org. uk/get-involved/campaigns/dry-january/about-dry-january/the-dry-january-story 32 Dry January, “Our Story”. 33 Défi 28 jours, “Notre Cause” (accessed September 20 2017). http://defi28jours. com/notre-cause/. Fondation Jean Lapointe, “Défi les 28 jours les plus longs de ta vie” (accessed November 5 2015). http://fondationjeanlapointe.org/evenements/defi-les-28-jours­ les-plus-longs-de-ta-vie/ J.-S. Chouinard, “Défi 28 jours: 4 Keys To Success,” from Adviso.ca (May 7 2014; accessed September 20 2017). www.adviso.ca/en/blog/2014/05/07/4-elements­ succes-28-jours-les-longs-ta-vie-2/. J.-S. Chouinard and A. Théorêt-Poupart, “Soberary – Les 28 jours les plus longs de ta vie” (Public Event Invitation) from Facebook (January 25 2013; accessed September 22 2017). www.facebook.com/events/135458343283685/ 34 Chouinard, “Défi 28 jours”. 35 Chouinard and Théorêt-Poupart, “Soberary – les 28 jours”. 36 Chouinard, “Défi 28 jours”. 37 D.K. Simonton, “Multiple Discovery and Invention: Zeitgeist, Genius, or Chance,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, no. 9 (1979): 1603–1616. 38 See, in particular, “Chapter 16: New Technologies” in W. Scaife, M. McGregorLowndes, J. Barraket, and W. Burns, Giving Australia 2016: Literature Review. Brisbane: The Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies, Queensland University of Technology, Centre for Social Impact Swinburne University of Technology and the Centre for Corporate Public Affairs, 2016. 39 Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope. 40 B. Breeze and W. Scaife, “Encouraging Generosity: The Practice and Organization of Fund-Raising across Nations.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Global Philanthropy, edited by P. Wiepking and F. Handy, 570–596. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 41 Chapman, “Cancer Research UK’s Dryathlon”. 42 M.L. Schrad, “The Transnational Temperance Community.” In Transnational Communities: Shaping Global Economic Governance, edited by M.-L. Djelic and S. Quack, 255–281. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 257. 43 Ocsober, “Homepage” (accessed December 21 2016). www.ocsober.com.au/ 44 NZ Drug Foundation, “Five Wonderful Years of FebFast NZ” (December 4 2015; accessed September 18 2017). www.drugfoundation.org.nz/news-media­ and-events/five-wonderful-years-of-febfast/ 45 Dry July New Zealand, Dry July NZ Trust Annual Report 2013–14. Auckland: Dry July NZ Trust, 2014. 46 “Analysis: The Three Dry Campaigns”. 47 On The Dry. “Official Twitter Feed” (created December 15 2014; accessed September 18 2017). https://twitter.com/onthedryIE?lang=en 48 J. Ore, “Why I’ve Given Up Alcohol During ‘Drynuary’ For Ten Years Running,” from Business Insider (December 31 2015; accessed September 26 2017). www. businessinsider.com/drynuary-no-alcohol-in-january-2015-12/?r=AU&IR=T 49 Moderation Management, “What is Moderation Management?” (accessed November 24 2016). www.moderation.org/about_mm/whatismm.html. Moderation Management, “Why Dryuary?” (accessed November 24 2016). http://dryuary.org/wp/why-dryuary/ 50 “Analysis: The Three Dry Campaigns”. 51 FebFast, “Why It’s Good For You” (accessed October 1 2013). http://febfast.org. au/whyitsgoodforyou/. Ocsober, “Homepage”; and Dry January, “Homepage” (accessed November 5 2015). www.dryjanuary.org.uk/.

238 Julie Robert 52 Dry July, “About” (accessed January 15, 2015). http://au.dryjuly.com/about. Go Sober, “About Go Sober” (accessed December 21 2016). www.gosober.org. uk/about. Dryathlon, “Homepage” (accessed January 12 2020). /www.cancerresearchuk.org/ get-involved/do-your-own-fundraising/dryathlon. A curious but recent exception has been Ocsober, which in its 2017 campaign set an ambitious target of $AUD700 for donations for each participant, a significant turnaround in their rhetoric, which had previously focused on alcohol awareness messaging, and a major point of contrast with campaigns such as Dry January which only recently introduced fundraising. See Life Education Australia, “Ocsober – How to Raise $700” (accessed October 5 2017). www.ocsober.com.au/ how-to-raise-700/ 53 Dry July, Dry July 2013/2014 Annual Report. Sydney: Dry July Foundation, 2014. Dry July, Dry July 2014/2015 Annual Report. Sydney: Dry July Foundation, 2015. Dry July, Dry July 2015/2016 Annual Report, Sydney: Dry July Foundation, 2016. 54 Dry July, “The Dry July Campaign” (accessed January 12 2020). www.dryjuly. com/about Dryathlon, “Willpower Test” (accessed November 25 2016).www.cancerre searchuk.org/support-us/find-an-event/charity-challenges/dryathlon/willpower-test 55 Berridge, Temperance: Its History and Impact. 56 Room, R., “The Long Reaction Against the Wowser: The Prehistory of Alcohol Deregulation in Australia,” Health Sociology Review 19, no. 2 (2010): 151–163. 57 For a sampling of relevant work focusing on the international aspects of temper­ ance see: Schrad, “The Transnational Temperance Community”; I. Tyrrell, Woman’s World, Woman’s Empire: The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in International Perspective, 1880–1930. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991; D.M. Fahey, “Temperance Internationalism: Guy Hayler and the World Prohibition Federation,” The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs 20 (2006): 247–275; J.S. Blocker, D.M. Fahey, and I.R. Tyrrell, eds., Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History: A Global Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC CLIO, 2003. 58 Schrad, “The Transnational Temperance Community”, 263. Schrad nonetheless argues that French and German, the languages of the European aristocracy, were displaced as the dominant languages of the temperance movement as it became a more middle and working class cause toward the end of the nineteenth century. 59 Tyrrell, Woman’s World, Woman’s Empire, 63–64; and Schrad, “The Trans­ national Temperance Community”. 60 J.-L. Cassely, “Le ‘Dry January’ est-il une bonne tradition pour arrêter de boire?” from Slate.Fr (January 5 2017; accessed September 29 2017). www.slate. fr/story/133409/dry-january-bonne-tradition-arreter-boire. Korda, R., “Pourquoi la résolution de ne pas boire d’alcool en janvier fonc­ tionne-t-elle si bien?” from Slate.fr (January 13 2016, September 29 2016). www. slate.fr/story/112383/cool-quantifiable-succes-dry-january. For more on French perceptions of the British as problematic drinkers, see J. Robert, “Oppositional Symbolic Values of Language Display, or The Case of ‘English’ Drinking in France,” Social Semiotics 24, no. 2 (2014): 209–224. 61 S. Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 62 “Analysis: The Three Dry Campaigns”; and Dry July New Zealand, Annual Report 2013–14. 63 R.L. Payton and M.P. Moody. Understanding Philanthropy: Its Meaning and Mission. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2008, 41. 64 Dry July, “Our Beneficiaries”.

Transnational neo-temperance 239 65 M. May, “Dry January Campaign Opens Up to Other Charities Through Virgin Money Giving,” from UK Fundraising (November 2 2016; accessed February 2 2017). https://fundraising.co.uk/2016/11/02/dry-january-campaign-opens-charities­ virgin-money-giving/#.WJLLoedrVKZ. Dry January, “Fundraising” (accessed November 25 2016). www.alcoholcon cern.org.uk/Pages/Site/dry-january/Category/fundraising 66 Payton and Moody, Understanding Philanthropy; and A.M. Eikenberry, Giving Circles: Philanthropy, Voluntary Association, and Democracy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. 67 Woiak, “A Medical Cromwell”; and J. Edman, “Temperance and Modernity: Alcohol Consumption as a Collective Problem, 1885–1913,” Journal of Social History 49, no. 1 (2015): 20–52. 68 Tyrrell, Woman’s World, Woman’s Empire, 51–53. 69 P.E. Prestwich, “French Workers and the Temperance Movement,” International Review of Social History 25, no. 1 (1980): 35–52. 70 Berridge, Temperance: Its History and Impact. 71 J.A. Krout, The Origins of Prohibition. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925, 125; and Edman, “Temperance and Modernity”. 72 Berridge, Temperance: Its History and Impact, 21; and Tyrrell, Woman’s World, Woman’s Empire, 51–53. 73 Fondation Jean Lapointe, “Défi les 28 jours”; and Dry January, “Homepage”. 74 Woiak, “A Medical Cromwell”, 343. 75 Dry July, “Wellbeing!”, (Sydney: Dry July, 2014). Robert, “Temporary Sobriety Initiatives: Emergence”. 76 Dry July, 2014/2015 Annual Report, 6. 77 Dry January, “Our Story”. 78 Dryathlon, “Homepage”; and R. Taylor and T. Shanka, “Cause For Event: NotFor-Profit Marketing Through Participant Sports Events,” Journal of Marketing Management 24, no. 9–10 (2008): 945–958. 79 FebFast, “Why It’s Good For You”; FebFast, “Fast-Quotes” (accessed January 14 2015). http://febfast.org.au/fast-quotes/ 80 Kimball, “No Booze for 40 Days”. 81 Crawford, “Health as a Meaningful Social Practice”. 82 “Analysis: The Three Dry Campaigns”. 83 Robert, “Temporary Sobriety Initiatives: Emergence”; and Yeomans, “The Rise and Rise of Dry January”. 84 Anne Lise, “Défi 28 jours: On commence l’année 2014 par une bonne action!,” post to Montreal Addicts: Curieuses, gourmandes, rêveuses (Janury 18 2014; accessed September 30, 2017). http://montreal-addicts.com/defi-28-jours-jean­ lapointe/ 85 Interview by Julie Robert with “Karen” (name changed), Melbourne, 29 March 2014. 86 Sidsel Eriksen, “Drunken Danes and Sober Swedes?”, Religious Revivalism and the Temperance Movements as Keys to Danish and Swedish Folk Cultures. DISCO II Conference on Continuity and Discontinuity in the Scandinavian Democratisation Process, Kungälv, Sweden, Department of History, Gothenburg University, 55–99. “Language and the Construction of Class Identities: The Struggle for Discursive Power in Social Organisation: Scandinavia and Germany After 1800”, 66. 87 Bretherton, G., “Against the Flowing Tide: Whiskey and Temperance in the Making of Modern Ireland.” In Drinking: Behavior and Belief in Modern History, edited by S. Barrows and R. Room, 147–164. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, 158–159. 88 Sulkunen, History of the Finnish Temperance Movement, 98–99, 211.

240 Julie Robert 89 Cherrier and Gurrieri, “Anticonsumption Choices”, 238–239; and Robert, “Temporary Sobriety Initiatives as Public Pedagogy”. 90 Dry July, “The Dry July Campaign”; and FebFast, “FAQ”. 91 “Analysis: The Three Dry Campaigns”. 92 Tyrrell, Woman’s World, Woman’s Empire, 224–225. 93 Sulkunen, History of the Finnish Temperance Movement, 206. 94 J.S. Roberts, “Drink and the Labour Movement: The Schnaps Boycott of 1909.” In The German Working Class 1888–1933: The Politics of Everyday Life, edited by R.J. Evans, 80–107. London: Croom Helm, 1982. 95 Berridge, Temperance: Its History and Impact.

Index

Abbas, Ferhat 46, 55

Abd-al-Hafiz, Moulay 61–62, 69, 75, 78

Abdul-rahman ibn Hicham, Mawlay 63

absinthe 23–27, 31–37, 47, 69, 74

abstinence: being seen as un-French 29,

31; history of 3; as mark of civilisation

8, 27, 36; movements 32; Qingdao 146;

Quran 20, 37; and religion 3, 20–21;

Temporary Sobriety Initiatives (TSI)

221–240; see also prohibition;

temperance

ad-Dīn, Jalāl 5 Adenauer, Konrad 214

advertising: Löwenbräu 209–213, 216;

Qingdao 144, 145, 148; South Africa

133; Turkey 92–104, 107, 112–114

affordability of alcohol 52, 98

Afrikaners 125, 131

afrit 64

Aftalion, Fred 165

age of majority 53

aggression 2, 34, 149

Alavi, Seema 188

Albania 86

Alcohol and Drugs History Society 1

Alcohol Concern 230, 232

#AlcoholFreeFor40 225, 232

alcoholism: Algeria (19th century) 25–26;

India 199; Tangier (1912-1956) 71–72,

78; and temperance movements 232;

Turkey 105, 107, 108; and wine 32

alcohol-related health issues:

Alkoholfrage (alcohol question) 148,

153; beer 52; history of 1, 3; strong

alcohol versus wine 45; Tangier

(1912-1956) 71–72; temperance

movements 231–232; Temporary

Sobriety Initiatives (TSI) 221, 222,

228–229, 234; Turkey 105, 111

alembics 70

Algeria 20–43, 44–60

Alkoholfrage (alcohol question) 148, 153

altered states of consciousness 74, 76

Amylo process 160–179

Amylomyces Rouxii 168, 172, 173, 175

Anatolia 85, 91, 111

Anglo-Centrism 3

Anheuser-Busch 123, 209

anise 64, 74, 78, 84

anisettes 22, 25, 34, 69, 74

Annales de l’Institut Pasteur 168, 169

anthropology 6, 21, 162

anti-alcohol policies 3, 52, 87–88; see also

prohibition

anti-prohibitionism 110

Antwerp 174, 175

Apartheid 124

Appadurai, Arjun 204

arak 84

Arakie, E. 195

Armand, Adolphe 22

arrests for drunken behaviour 53, 76

artists 25, 27

assimilation by alcohol 22, 34, 35, 36

Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal 87, 92, 105,

110, 111

Atatürk Orman Çiftliği (AOC) 91–92,

93, 94

Augustin, Rupert 215

Australia 123, 124, 221, 222, 224–225,

227–230, 234

authenticity 205–206, 207, 210, 213,

215–216, 217

ayran 84, 107, 111

Bacchus 2, 67

bakalitos 68

bakkal 107, 113

242 Index barley malt 133, 218n17 bars/pubs: Bavarian beer 209; North Africa (1830-1956) 53–55; opening hours 47, 53, 67; political meetings 45–46; Qingdao 142, 144–145, 146, 147; Tangier (1912-1956) 67; taverns 67, 107, 144, 145; Turkey 107, 108, 113; working classes 68 Bavarian beer 127, 142, 143, 204–220 Bavarian Brewers’ Association (Bayerischer Brauerbund) 206–207, 208 Bavaria-und-St.-Pauli-Brauerei 206 beer: Bavarian beer culture 204–220; dark beer 65, 98, 127, 128, 144; German 65; golden lager beers 128, 131, 133; North Africa (1830-1956) 52–53; pale ales 127, 128; pilsner 65, 123–138, 144, 147, 207; Qingdao 142, 143, 144, 145, 147, 149, 151, 153; Tangier (1912-1956) 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70; tickey beer 128–129, 130; Tsingtao beer 139; Turkey 84–122 beer festivals 206 beer gardens 96, 104, 147, 213, 215 beet sugar 177 behavioural changes 149 Bektaş-ı Veli, Hacı 86 Bektaşism 86 Belgian alcohol 67 Benedict, Ruth 6 Benhabib, Seyla 187 Berbers 53, 64, 78 Bergot, Raoul 28 Bernard, François 65–66 Berridge, Virginia 229, 232 Bertherand, Émile-Louis 33 Bertholon, Lucien 21 Bey, Ali Şükrü 87, 88 Bey, Zeki 89 Bhabha, Homi 187–188 Bibliotheque Pratique du Colon 174 Bierfest 141–143 bierkellers 211–213, 217 Bilgin, Arif Şevket 105 binge drinking 223 biodiversity 162–163 biofuel 161, 163, 177 biopiracy 161–163, 171 bioprospecting 161–163 Birlas 197, 198 Boas, Franz 7 Boidin, A. 170, 171, 172, 173, 175

Bokobsa brothers 55 Bomonti Brothers 86, 92, 96 bonded warehouses 196 bootlegging 186–203 borders 189, 196, 198, 199 Bose, Sugata 188 bottle agencies 190 bottle shapes 98 Boujarra, Hacine 46 Boulard process 175 bourgeoisie 25 Bourguiba, Habib 46, 55 Bowles, Paul 70, 76–77 boza 85, 86 branding 209–210; see also advertising brandy/cognac 69, 74, 76, 77, 78, 169 breakfast wine 29 Breckenridge, Carol 187–188 breweries: modern brewing 126–129; North Africa (1830-1956) 52–53; Qingdao 144; South Africa 124–125, 126–129; Turkey 85, 86, 91 Brewers’ Journal 123, 133, 134 British Southern Africa 123–138 Budak, Mehmet 105, 107 Bunge, Gustav 148 Burroughs, William 73 Busch Bavarian 209, 210 cabaret bars 67–68, 75 cafés 67, 75, 76, 86, 127 cafés cantantes (Spanish cabarets) 68 cafés morunos 68 Calcutta 186–203 Çalışkan, Koray 110 Calmette, Albert 163, 167–169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 175 çamet 64 Canada 123, 190, 225, 226, 227, 229, 230, 231 Cannon Brewery, Watford 127 Cape Breweries 127–130 Cape Colony 124–125, 126, 128, 133, 134 capitalism 2, 96, 197, 198, 200, 216; see also neoliberalism carbonation processes 128 Carlsberg 123, 127, 165 Carnoy, E.-Henry 30 cartels 70 Casablanca 47, 48, 50, 54–55, 65, 76 Casablanca (film, Curtiz) 73 cassava 174, 175 caste 194–195

Index Castells, Manuel 224, 227 Castle Lager beer 130–131, 132 Ceballos, Leopoldo 70 Certeux, Alphonse 30 Chakrabarty, Dipesh 187–188 champagne 30–31, 33, 34, 61, 65, 66, 74 Chan, Margaret 110 charities 221, 223–231, 234 Charpentier, Octave 44 Charrier, Henri 71 “cheap spirits” 65 Chen Taosheng 160–161, 176, 178, 179 children 29 China 139–158, 186 “Chinese yeast” 159–185 Chouinard, Jean-Sébastien 226 Choukri, Mohammed 77–78 Christian communities: Algeria 31; prohibition 3; Qingdao 148, 153; Tangier (1912-1956) 63, 74; Turkey 85–86; wine as sacrament 85 cirrhosis 111 civilising goal of alcohol 27, 36, 143 Cloete’s brewery 128, 129, 130 Coen, Daniel 78 coffee 84, 107 coffee houses 90, 107 cognac/brandy 69, 74, 76, 77, 78, 169 Cold War 104, 105, 204, 214, 215 Collette, A. 170, 172, 173 colonialism: and absinthe 23–24, 25; Algeria 20–43; Amylo process 174–175; bioprospecting 162–163; British Southern Africa 123–138; Calcutta 186; and choice of drink 20, 34; coloniser/colonised dichotomy 34–35, 37; decolonisation 63–64, 196, 199; North Africa (1830-1956) 44–60; and prohibition generally 3; Qingdao 139–158; Tangier (1912-1956) 61–83 conflicts of interest 105 consumption taxes 69–70 convivial sociability 74 corporate sponsorship 108, 109, 113 cosmopolitanism 186–203 Crawford, Robert 232 crime 76, 77, 105, 148, 186, 188 Crowe, Thomas 128 Culturbrille (cultural lens or gaze) 7 culture, definition of 6–7 customs (duty) 64–65, 157n86, 191, 197, 198

243

Damm beer 66 dancers 26–27 Danish alcohol 97, 165 dark beer 65, 98, 127, 128, 144 date liquors 22 Dayı, İsmail 107 D’Aymeric, Marcailhou 25, 29 de Blida, Jean 25 de Galland, Charles 26 decolonisation 63–64, 196, 199 Défi 28 jours 226, 228, 230, 231, 232 denatured alcohol 167, 175, 180n3, 197 Dépêche tunisienne, La 52–53 diamond mining 131–132 Dikötter, Frank 151 diluted alcohol drinks 169 Dionysos 2 Diouf, Mamadou 188 Distillers Society of Deux-Sèvres 174 Doğruel, A. Suut 94, 95 Doğruel, Fatma 94, 95 Drinking Studies Network 1 drinking venues: legislation/decrees/ policies 45, 46–47; maps of locations 50–51; North Africa (1830-1956) 49, 53–55; opening hours 53, 67; Tangier (1912-1956) 67; Turkey 89, 90, 108; see also bars/pubs; cafés drunkenness: Algeria (19th century) 23; altered states of consciousness 74, 76; benign 32; North Africa (1830-1956) 53; Qingdao 142–143, 149; Quran 29–30; Tangier (1912-1956) 71; Turkey 86, 88, 89, 91, 111; and wine 32; see also intoxication “dry” areas 3, 54–55; see also prohib­ ition; temperance Dry January 221, 222, 223, 226, 228, 231, 233 Dry July 221, 224–225, 226, 227–228, 229, 230 Dryathlon 226, 231 Drynuary 228 Dupre, Emil 174, 175 Dutch alcohol 124–125, 208 Dutch Bavaria Brewery 208 eaux-de-vie 31, 66, 69, 70, 78 Efes Pilsen 96, 98–100, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 113, 114 Encyclopaedia Britannica 172 enlightenment, drinking to achieve 86 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip 110

244 Index Erhard, Ludwig 214, 215

Eriksen, Sidsel 233

ersatz alcohol 31

Essential Arts for the People’s

Welfare 164

essentialisation 4, 7

Estevez, William 191, 193

ethanol 65, 159, 160, 161, 177, 178,

179, 198

ethyl alcohol 70, 71, 191, 192, 196

ethylene 182n31 Eubulus 2

eugenics 88, 231

Euro-Centrism 3

European Court of Justice 208

excise duties 69–70, 128, 191, 196,

197, 198

Exploitation of the Works of Nature 164–165 export ale 128

exports: Bavarian beer 207, 208, 209, 216,

217; beer 52; Löwenbräu 206; South

Africa 128; wine 27, 48, 49–50, 55

Exposition Universelle de Paris in

1889 28

Faber, Felix 209–210, 211

Fallot, Ernest 25

families, advertising to 98

feast days 21

FebFast 221, 222, 223, 224, 226, 227–228,

231–232

Ferdinand Moreau, J.-M. 24–25

fermentation methods 161, 164, 165, 169

fermented milk drinks 85

festivals 108

Feydeau, Ernest 26

Fiebig, Max 148

fig liquors 22, 55, 64, 74

fines 89, 108

Finland 221, 223–224, 227, 230, 233, 234

Fire over Africa (1954) 75–76

First World War 166

Floridawasser 65

flotations 130

Fontaine, A. R. 168

fortified wine 70

Fortin d’Ivry, Th. 33

Foucault, M. 4

Fox, Kate 74

France: and the Amylo process 174;

colonialism in Algeria 20–43; colonialism in North Africa

(1930-1956) 44–60; colonialism in

Tangier 61–83; French exports to

Turkey 86; Temporary Sobriety

Initiatives (TSI) 230, 231

Freinademetz, Joseph 148

Fremlins Ltd 209, 210

French Indochina 163

Freud, Sigmund 7

Fry, Tinsley C. 211

Fuhrmann, Malte 86

Gaillard, Henri 61

Gariahat Whisky 186–203

Garnsey, Peter 116n8

Gasper & Co 194

gateway drugs 107

gender: advertising using gender norms

94–96; and colonialism 142–143;

Qingdao 142–143, 146, 151; see also

women

Georgeon, François 62

German Beer Cellars 206

German colonialism in China 139–158

German-American Chamber of

Commerce (GACC) 215

Germania Brewery 144, 147, 152

Germany: Bavarian beer culture 204–220;

German alcohol in Tangier 64, 65,

66, 74; Hamburg 65, 131, 133, 206,

207, 208; Munich 65, 127, 144, 204,

206, 207, 208, 217; and South Africa

124, 125–126, 127, 131–132;

temperance movements 233; see also

Bavarian beer

Gezi Park 110, 111, 114

Ghabrit, Khaddour ben 61

Gibraltar 62

gin 66, 68, 74, 76

glamorising alcohol 93–95

Glass, Charles 132

Glass, Mrs 132

Global Alcohol Policy Symposium 110

global health hazard 3

globalisation 187, 209, 216

Go Sober (for October) 226, 230

Göbel, Eva 219n36

gold mining 131, 132

golden lager beers 128, 131, 133

Goswami, Manu 197

gout 3

Granatstein, Charles 190, 193–194, 195

Great Depression 48, 49

Greek civilisations 2, 85

Index Green, W.J. 127 Grosse, Ernst 152 Grove, Otto 170, 171 Grove, Phil 224–225 Guénel, Annick 168 guesthouses 145 guilt 21 Guo Zhiliang 160–161, 178 Hamburg 65, 131, 133, 206, 207, 208 Hansen, Emil 165 “hard” versus “light” alcohol 69 hardaliye 116n12 Hartrich, Edwin 214 Hayden, Cori 162, 168, 171 health benefits of alcohol 2–3, 23, 27, 29, 31, 32, 95, 96 health problems caused by alcohol: Alkoholfrage (alcohol question) 148, 153; beer 52; history of 1; strong alcohol versus wine 45; Tangier (1912-1956) 71–72; temperance movements 231–232; Temporary Sobriety Initiatives (TSI) 221, 222, 228–229, 234; Turkey 105, 111; see also alcoholism; drunkenness healthy living and temperance 231–232 Healy, Fiona 224 Heineken 123, 209 Hello Sunday Morning 223 Herrick, Rufus 166–167 Holterbosch 213, 215 Homburg, Ernst 165 home, alcohol as taste of 144 home, drinking at 53, 68, 98 home brew 4 hops 125, 218n17 hotels 145, 209 Huang, H. T. 163, 164, 169 Hubert, Paul 174, 175 hypersensitivity to alcohol 33 idealised consumers 93 illegal trade 4, 46–47, 55, 70, 186–203 imitation products 169, 170, 186 immoderate drinking see over-consumption import taxes 69–70 imports: Algeria 27; Bavarian beer 208, 209, 210; Calcutta 197; Qingdao 144, 145, 147; South Africa 125, 130, 131, 133; Tangier (1912-1956) 64–66, 69–70; Turkey 86

245

incorporations 129–130, 134 India 186–203 industrial alcohol 165–167, 173, 175, 177, 179, 197 Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 175 industrially produced alcohol 180n3 infrastructure 91, 144 İnhisarlar İdaresi/TEKEL 90–91, 92, 94 intellectual property 162, 170, 171, 173, 207–208 international conferences on alcohol in Brussels 49 International Order of Good Templars 229 International Temperance Bureau 230–231 intoxication: altered states of consciousness 74, 76; banquets 152; for diplomatic purposes 61–62, 78; and lack of self-control 143; see also drunkenness investment 129–130, 133, 134, 193, 211 Ireland 223, 228 Irish Total Abstinence Society 233 Islamic communities: and alcohol generally 3–4, 85; alcohol introduced by colonisers to weaken 46; Algeria 20–43; cosmopolitanism 188; drinking integral to faith 86; legislation/decrees/ policies 46–47; North Africa (1830­ 1956) 53; prohibition 46, 62, 69, 85–86; sharia law 89; Tangier (1912-1956) 63, 64, 74; tea consumption 45; Turkey 85, 89, 108–109 Islamic Golden Age 4 Istanbul 86, 89 Italian alcohol 66 Jacobsen, J.C. 127 Japan 140, 142, 145, 175, 176, 178 Javanese spirits 192, 197, 198, 199 J.C. McLaughlin 209, 211, 213 Jewish communities: Algeria 22, 28; India 193–195; North Africa (1830-1956) 53; Tangier 63, 64, 65, 74, 78; trade in liquor 55, 64; Turkey 85; wine as sacrament 85 Jhani, Mohanlal 195 jiuqu (Chinese yeast) 159–185 Joseph, Charles 194 Joseph Rowntree Foundation 234 Josephine’s Mill 126

246 Index Journal of the Institute of Brewing 170,

171, 174

Jousset, Alfred 28

Kanowa, Asis 75

Kennedy, John F. 214, 215

Khan, Emir Faradj 31

Khayyám, Omar 1, 4

kif 74, 76, 77, 78

Kimball, Molly 232

Kızılot, Şükrü 110

koji 169, 175, 180n5

Kong Lingyi 152

kosher alcohol 55, 64

Krager, Frank 211, 213

Kroebel, Emma 148

Krüger, Karl 146

kumys 85

Kupferberg Gold 148–149

Kutay, Hazım 105, 107

kvass 116n12

La Cigogne 67

La Incógnita 68

Labelle, Marcelle 44–45 labelling 207–208; see also advertising Lafar, Franz 173–174 lager see beer; pilsner Lavoisier, Antoine 165

Le Roux, Hugues 25

legislation/decrees/policies: Bavarian beer

206–207; Calcutta 196; history of

alcohol studies 4, 5; local authority

alcohol restrictions 47, 54; North

Africa (1830-1956) 44, 45–47, 54;

Qingdao 143, 145, 149; Tangier

(1912-1956) 67, 69; Turkey 84, 85,

87–88, 105, 107, 109–113

Leibbrand, Lilli 146

Lemanski, Witold 40n50 Lent 225, 232

Leroux, Sylvère 28–29 Les annales coloniales 45

Letterstedt, Jacob 126–127, 128

Levinstein, Herbert 181n31 licensed premises 45–46, 54, 89,

107–108, 145

licensing 125, 186

Liebbrand, Lillie 149

lifestyles, marketing to 93

limited liability companies 130

liqueurs 89

liquor shops see shops selling alcohol

Lise, Anne 232

literature and poetry 75–76

Livet, Louis 20, 21

local authority alcohol restrictions 47, 54

logos 109, 113, 114

Loustaunau, Alphonse 23–24

low quality alcohol 74–75, 128

low-alcohol beers 92, 108, 128

Löwenbräu 204

lower castes 194

luxury products 68, 209

Lyautey, Hubert 46–47, 48, 61

Macdonald, Brett 224

machaquito 76

Mackenzie, Donald 74–75 Madrasi astrologer 194

mafia 70 mahia 64, 65, 74, 78

maize 174, 175

malt 133, 160, 163, 174–175, 191, 218n17

Malta 33

Manchukuo 186, 198

manzanilla 74

Mariendahl brewery 126, 127, 128

marketing: Bavarian beer 204–220; beer

in Turkey 92–104, 105; South Africa

129–130; sponsorships 108, 109, 113;

Temporary Sobriety Initiatives (TSI)

223; Turkey 91, 109

markets: for bootlegged alcohol 192–193;

creating new 46, 133; protectionism

207; South Africa 130–132, 133;

Tangier (1912-1956) 69

Martin, Dr A.-E.-Victor 30

Martini & Rossi 66

mastika 25

Mathew, Theobald 233

McCloy, John J. 213, 214

Meade, Fredrick 132–133 Meakin, Budgett 64, 68

medical discourses 2–3, 45, 231; see also

health problems caused by alcohol

Menderes, Adnan 96

Mensing, Rutgert 124–125 mental disorder 71–72, 78

mergers and acquisitions 129–130 methanol 180n3 methylated alcohol 197

Michler, Gordon 215

microorganisms 163–164, 165, 167,

170–171, 173, 175

Middle East and North Africa 4

Index migration 125–126, 130–132 minors, selling alcohol to 53

mint alcohols 69

mistelles 70

modernity, alcohol as feature of

64, 67, 85, 86

molasses 128, 174, 178, 191, 192

monopolies 88–92, 163, 168, 172

Monterey Bay Oktoberfest 211, 213

moonshine 4

moral discourses 148, 153, 229, 230–231,

232, 233

Morocco 44–60, 61–83 moscatel 77

Mosel 147

Moses, Robert 213, 214

mould 164, 167, 169,

171, 173, 175

Mozely, Dudley 210

Mukhuti, N. L. 193–194 Mullins, Gregg 73

multi-disciplinary methods 6

multi-packs 98, 101, 209

Munich 65, 127, 144, 204, 206, 207,

208, 217

Muslim communities see Islamic communities Naidu, C. N. 194

Natal Brewery Syndicate 132

national identity 46

nationalism: Algeria 31–32, 34;

bootlegged cosmopolitanism 196–199;

Calcutta 186–203; China 178; and

countries of origin 7–8; North Africa

(1830-1956) 46; Tangier 77; Temporary

Sobriety Initiatives (TSI) 233–234;

Turkey 87, 88

Nazi Germany 204, 215

Needham, Joseph 163

neoliberalism 187, 232, 234

neo-temperance 221–240

Neubaeur, M. 175

neurosis/psychosis 71

New York World’s Fair 213–215

New Yorker, The 78

New Zealand 227–228, 229, 230

non-alcoholic beer 108

“non-alcoholic” classification 89, 90, 104,

105, 107

North Africa 44–60; see also Algeria;

Tangier

247

Obst, Adolf 144

Ohlsson, Anders 127–129, 130, 133

Oktoberfest 206, 210, 211

On The Dry 223, 228

opening hours 47, 53, 67

opium 151

Ore, John 228

Orientalism 3

Osseo-Asare, Abena Dove 162, 167,

171, 178

Ottoman Empire 84, 85, 86–87, 90

outdoor drinking 30

ouzo 84

over-consumption: Algeria (19th century) 32; history of 3; Qingdao 146; and social class 33; Tangier (1912-1956) 71–72; see also drunkenness Owen, W. L. 175, 177

Özal, Turgut 104

packaging 98, 101; see also advertising;

labelling; multi-packs

pale ales 127, 128

palm wine 22

Pasin, Gonca 115n2 Pasteur, Louis 27, 165, 167

pasteurisation 164

pastis 84

patents 162, 163, 168, 170, 173, 198,

207, 208

Persia 4–5 Peters, Erica 167, 169

Pfeiffer, Moritz 147

pharmaceuticals 162

Phoenicians 28

phylloxera crisis 27, 48

pied-noir society 33

pilsner 65, 123–138, 144, 147, 207

Pilsner Urquell Brewery 207

Pinaud, Pierre 41n60, 45

plant knowledge 162

Poiré, Eugène 36

Poletti, Charles 214–215 police 53

policies/legislation/decrees: Bavarian beer

206–207; Calcutta 196; history of

alcohol studies 4, 5; local authority

alcohol restrictions 47, 54; North

Africa (1830-1956) 44, 45–47, 54;

Qingdao 143, 145, 149; Tangier

(1912-1956) 67, 69; Turkey 84, 85,

87–88, 105, 107, 109–113

248 Index political meetings 45

Pollock, Sheldon 187–188 Pontifex brewery designers 127, 129

Poole, Francis 73

“poor whites” 25, 27

Porot, Antoine 33

port 61, 68

port cities 54, 63, 64, 140

porters 127, 128

Portuguese alcohol 61, 66

post-colonialism 3, 5, 6–7, 162, 178

potato alcohol 64, 65

poverty 46, 148

“power fuel” 177

Premium Beer Sales 209–210 Prestwich, Patricia 27, 31, 32

price: Bavarian beer 209; beer in Turkey

92; champagne 31; Qingdao 144;

Turkey 110; wine 29, 49, 52

private bonded warehouses 196

Proebst, Carlo 206

prohibition: China 150; effect on alcohol

trade generally 88–89; First World War

45; Germany in Second World War

206; history of 3; Islamic communities

46, 62, 69; Quran 20–21, 29–30; South

Africa 136n38; Tangier (1912-1956) 68;

temperance movements 230; Turkey

84, 85, 87–89, 110, 112–113; USA 88;

see also temperance

Prokopp family 86

propaganda 94

prostitutes 26, 30, 52, 55, 105, 142

public disorder 149

public health: China 148; global

problems 2–3; versus individualised

health 232; Temporary Sobriety

Initiatives (TSI) 221, 228; Turkey 87,

109, 111

public spaces 89

pubs/bars: Bavarian beer 209; North

Africa (1830-1956) 53–55; opening

hours 47, 53, 67; political meetings

45–46; Qingdao 142, 144–145, 146,

147; Tangier (1912-1956) 67; taverns

67, 107, 144, 145; Turkey 107, 108,

113; working classes 68

Puig, Nuria 166

Qingdao 139–158, 207

quota systems 46, 54

Quran 4, 20–21, 29–30, 37

race 124

raisins 28, 64, 89

rakı 84, 87, 89–92, 102, 105, 107,

110, 111

Ramadan 53

Ramón Weil y Hermano 66

rape 149

rations of alcohol 23

Ravenez, Eugène-François 41n68 Raw, George Henry 132–133 Raynaud, Lucien 64, 67, 70–71, 72,

112–113

red light districts 54–55 red streets/zones 110

Regnault, Henri 61

regulation see legislation/decrees/policies; prohibition Reinhard, Freidrich 144

Reisling 147

religion: and abstinence 3, 20–21, 53,

225; cosmopolitanism 188; and

prohibition 88; Qingdao 148, 151;

religious fanaticism 20–21; religious

opposition to alcohol 87; spiritual role

of alcohol 151; temperance movements

230–231, 233; Turkey 88; Western­ centrism 4; see also specific religious

communities

Remlinger, P. 42n81, 66–67, 69, 71, 72,

73, 74, 78

resilience to alcohol consumption 69

restaurants 145, 146, 151–152, 153, 211

rice wine 151, 167–169, 170–171, 179

rites of passage 74

Robinson, Emily 226, 231

Rochard, Jules 32

Roman period 2, 40n43, 85

Rouby (French doctor) 25–26, 29, 35

Roux, Émile 168

rum 26–27 Rūmī, Muhammad 5

running ales 128

Ruotte, Dr 31

Russa Distillery 190

SABMiller 123

Saint-Aulaire, Comte de 61, 62

Sait, Hajee Ismail 190, 194, 195

şalgam 116n12

Salouâ-Studer, Nina 69

Sambuca 84

samit 64

Index sanctions 89

Sasges, Gerard 167, 168–169, 170

Scandinavia 3

Schidrowitz, Philip 174

Schiebinger, Londa 162, 167, 168

Schladenhaufen, Werner 207

schnapps 64, 149, 233

science: in alcohol production 126–129,

130–131, 133, 134, 159–185; Gariahat

Whisky 190–191, 198–199; and

temperance 231

Scientific American 172

Scientific Temperance Federation 230–231 Scotch whisky 76, 186, 191

Second World War 49, 66, 84, 206

secret drinking 30

Sekt 147, 152

Şerefine Tayyip 111, 112

sharia law 89

Shen, Grace 178

sherry 68

shops selling alcohol: bakkal 107, 113;

North Africa (1830-1956) 53; Qingdao

143–144; Tangier 68, 70; Turkey 90,

107, 111, 113; see also drinking venues

Siau, R. L. 171

Sievert, José 71, 72, 73

Sisson, Marie-André-Victor 21–22, 35

Slavic societies 116n12 Smith, R.V. 128

smuggling 70, 188–189 social disintegration 45

social reformers 88

Société de la Brasserie de Tanger 67

Société des Brasseries du Maroc 52, 67

Société française des distilleries de

l’Indochine (SFDIC) 168–169, 170

Société frigorifique des brasseries de

Tunisie 52

Society for Consumer Research (Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung, GfK) 216–217 soft drinks 105

soldiers: over-consumption 33, 86;

Qingdao 139, 140, 144, 145, 146, 149;

rations of alcohol 23–25; South Africa

133; Turkey 86

solvents 166

songs 75

sorghum 160, 178

South Africa 123–138, 207

249

South African Breweries Ltd 126,

130–131, 132–133

South America 3

South Asia 3

Spain 33, 65–66, 67

sparkling wine 147, 148; see also

champagne

Spence, John 129

spirits/strong alcohol/liquor: bans of 89;

North Africa (1830-1956) 52–53;

South Africa 124; Tangier (1912-1956)

64, 65, 69, 70; temperance movements

233; Turkey 84; see also specific spirits

spiritual role of alcohol 151

sponsorships 108, 109, 113

state alcohol retailing 3

state monopolies 88–92, 96, 97

stouts 127, 128

sugar 159, 160, 165, 170–171, 173–174,

177, 191, 192, 197, 198, 199

Sulkunen, I. 233

super-values 232

Swedish brewing 127

sweet wine 29, 77

Swiss companies 86

Syria 176

tafsir 4

Tagliacozzo, Eric 188, 196, 197

Takamine, Jokichi 167

Tanera, Carl 144

Tangerian neurosis/psychosis 71–72,

73, 78

Tangier 61–83 tastemakers 204, 215, 217

taverns 67, 107, 144, 145; see also

bars/pubs

tax levies: Calcutta 198; history of 2;

North Africa (1830-1956) 49; Qingdao

151; South Africa 128; Tangier 69;

transnational neo-temperance 233;

Turkey 89, 110

tea 45, 68, 84, 107

Technical Mycology 173

technology: brewing 126–129, 130–131,

133, 134, 144; Gariahat Whisky

190–191, 198–199; Internet 226–227

teetotalism see abstinence TEKEL Genel Müdürlüğü 90–91, 93, 96,

97, 101, 109

temperance: history of 3; movements 227,

229, 232–234; transnational

250 Index neo-temperance 221–240; Turkey 84,

87–88; see also abstinence; prohibition

Temporary Sobriety Initiatives (TSI) 221–240 Thaalbi, Abdelaziz 46

That Man from Tangier 77

théism (tea addiction) 45

Théorêt-Poupart, Antoine 226

thick description 7

tickey beer 128–129, 130

tied house systems 129–130, 133

Tipaton Tammikuu (Dropless January)

223–224, 230

toasting 151

tobacco 68, 70, 90, 108, 109, 110

tolerance, levels of 33, 69, 70–71, 78, 152

tourism 108, 145, 217

trade in alcohol: China 168; colonial control of 46–47; Qingdao 143–144, 153; South Africa 125; Tangier (1912-1956) 64; Turkey 110; see also exports; imports; shops selling alcohol trademarks 208

translocal methods 6

Transvaal 131, 133

Travis, Anthony 165, 166

Triviño, Francisco 74

tropical medicine 148

tsikoudia 84

Tsingtao beer 139, 144, 152

Tsingtau-Club 147

Tsingtauer Neueste Nachrichten 144, 145,

148–149

Tuborg 97, 104, 105, 107, 209

Tunis 45, 51, 54–55

Tunisia 21, 44–60 Tunison, Burnell 167

Turkey 84–122 TV commercials 98, 105, 112

UK (United Kingdom): alcohol exports

66, 86, 123; Amylo process 174;

Bavarian beer 210, 211–213; industrial

alcohol 166; Löwenbräu 209;

temperance movements 229;

Temporary Sobriety Initiatives (TSI)

221, 224, 227, 233

underage drinking 53

Union of Bavarian Export Breweries

207, 208

unregistered bars/premises 55

upper classes: absinthe 26, 33; Algeria

(19th century) 26, 30–31, 34;

champagne 30–31, 33; India 194;

Qingdao 140–141, 145–146,

147, 151, 152; Tangier (1912-1956) 68

USA (United States of America):

Bavarian beer 208, 209, 210, 213–216;

bootlegging 191; Christian

fundamentalism in “dry” areas 3;

industrial alcohol 166–167; temperance

movements 229; Temporary Sobriety

Initiatives (TSI) 223, 225

Usman, Mazhar Osman 87

van Reibeeck, Jan 124, 125 Van Rhyn brewery 129–130 Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie

(VOC) 125

vermouth 66, 70

Vietnam 168, 169

Vignon, Louis 30, 36

vinegar 64, 69

vineyards 27–28 vins d’imitation 70

violence and aggression 2, 34, 149

Volksfest 142

von Hesse-Wartegg, Ernst 145

von Schoeler, Elisabeth 146, 147

Voskamp, Carl Johannes 150

Wang, Zuoyue 176

weapon, alcoholisation as 35, 36

Wei Yanshou 184n78 Weicker, Hans 148, 149

Western-centrism 3

whisky 66, 68, 69, 74, 76,

186–203

whisky-soda 147

Wilhelm, Richard 141, 151, 152

wine: Algeria 27–31, 34–36, 37; Anatolia

85; champagne 30–31, 33, 34, 61, 65,

66, 74; China 164, 167–168;

consumption statistics 49; fortified

wine 70; German 65; Islamic culture

4–5; North Africa (1830-1956) 44–60;

production 48–49; Qingdao 144, 145,

147, 149, 151, 152, 153; rice wine 151,

167–169, 170–171, 179; sacramental

85; South Africa 124; sparkling wine

147, 148; sweet wine 29, 77; Tangier

(1912-1956) 61, 64, 65–66, 69, 70, 77,

78; Turkey 85, 86, 87, 88, 89;

workforces 47

Wine Canon of North Hill 164

Wisdom Import Sales Co. 211

Index Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) 229, 230–231 women: absinthe 25, 26; advertising to 100, 102, 103; Algeria 25, 35; beer advertising in Turkey 94–96; Löwenbräu 215; North Africa (1830­ 1956) 52–53; Qingdao 146, 147, 151, 152; Tangier (1912-1956) 74; as victims of male drunkenness 35 working classes: absinthe 25–26, 27, 32–33; Alkoholfrage (alcohol question) 148; Bavarian beer 217; and colonialism 35, 37; Qingdao 140–141; Tangier (1912-1956) 66, 68; wine 30, 31 World Health Organization (WHO) 1, 2, 110

251

World’s Fair, New York 1964 213–216 Wunder Beer 211 Wunderbräu 209–210 yeast 125, 159–185, 218n17 Yeomans, Henry 223 Yeşilay (the “Green Crescent”) 87, 89, 105, 110 young people: advertising to 98, 102, 109; North Africa (1830-1956) 53; Turkey 104, 107, 109, 111; underage drinking 53 Zhu Yigong 164