Drink and democracy : alcohol and the political imaginary in colonial Australia / Matthew Allen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Allen, Matthew (Historian and criminologist), author.

Series:

Intoxicating histories ; 12.

Intoxicating histories ; 12

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Drinking of alcoholic beverages--Political aspects--Australia--New South Wales--History--19th century.

Drinking of alcoholic beverages.

Drinking of alcoholic beverages--Social aspects--Australia--New South Wales--History--19th century.

Intoxication--Australia--New South Wales--History--19th century.

Intoxication.

Temperance--Australia--New South Wales--History--19th century.

Temperance.

Democracy--Australia--New South Wales--History--19th century.

Democracy.

New South Wales--Social life and customs--19th century.

New South Wales.

Physical Description:

xii, 292 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2025]

Summary:

"The nineteenth-century spread of democracy in Britain and its colonies coincided with an increase in alcohol consumption and in celebratory public dinners with rounds of toasts. British colonists raised their glasses to salute the Crown in rituals that asserted fraternal equality and political authority. Yet these ceremonies were reserved for gentlemen, leaving others - notably women and Indigenous people - on the political margins. Drink and Democracy traces the development of democratic ideas in New South Wales through the history of public drinking and temperance. As the colony transformed from a convict autocracy to a liberal democracy, Matthew Allen argues, public drinking practices shaped the character of the emerging political order. The ritual of toasting was a symbolic display of restraint - drunkenness without loss of self-control - that embodied the claim to citizenship of white male settlers. Yet the performative sobriety of the temperance movement was also democratic, a display of respectability that politicized its supporters around a rival vision of responsible citizenship. Drink was a way to police the limits of the political realm. The stigma of female drunkenness worked to exclude women from the public sphere, while perceptions of heavy drinking among Aboriginal people cast them as lacking self-control and hence unworthy of political rights. Drink and Democracy reveals that long before the introduction of the franchise, colonists in Australia imagined themselves as citizens. Yet even as democracy expanded, drink marked its limits. Matthew Allen is senior lecturer in historical criminology at the University of New England."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

A Necessary Evil Alcohol in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Politics in Colonial New South Wales, 1788-1860

Drunken Freedom and Fraternity:The Political Meaning of Popular Drinking

Toasting and Dining: The Politics of Public Drinking in the British World

Public Dinners and the Political Imaginary in New South Wales

The Temperance Movement Persuasion and Compulsion

Imagining a Sober Public Temperance as a Democratic Ideal

Drinking as a Gendered Performance

Drunken Savagery: Imagining Aboriginal Drunkenness.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Allen, Matthew (Historian and criminologist) Drink and democracy.

ISBN:

9780228024743

0228024749

OCLC:

1461996379

Publisher Number:

90101995170

CIPO000221303