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Alcohol: the Social Implications of the Rise and Consumption Early Modern Europe 1400-1789

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Alcohol: the Social Implications of the Rise and Consumption Early Modern Europe 1400-1789
Alcohol: The Social Implications of the Rise and Consumption
Early Modern Europe
1400-1789

Carissa Carlisle
His352
Meadows

"Swill", "grog", "firewater", and "liquid bread". There are many different terms associated with the word "alcohol". Alcohol has revolved and evolved around people 's lives for thousands of years. For early modern Europeans, alcohol had served several purposes, such as medicine by means of brandy as well as foodstuff, and as to why the drink had been the go-to drink. Because of this there have been various social and economic implications that came from the introduction and popularity of this spirit. Our understanding of alcohol has changed significantly in today 's time, but nonetheless, alcohol has always been a social issue within the world, specifically how it led to the social epidemic of alcoholism and changed social behavior for early modern Europeans from the early fifteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century. "[Water] was not always readily available and despite specific advice from doctors who claimed that one sort of water was preferable to another for a particular disease, people had to be content with what was on had: rain, river, fountain, cistern, well, barrel or a copper receptacle..." (Braudel, 227) Because of this, many believed it was safer (and in many cases this was true) to drink alcohol versus the unfiltered water that could carry parasites and diseases. In Europe, there were few sources of "safe" drinking water for people and in these instances, only the wealthy or noblemen could regularly afford it. "Whole towns- and very wealthy ones at that- were poorly supplied with water." (228) Major rivers, such as the Seine in the France, had certain areas that were better to drink from like the left bank, which was farther away from populated waste-dumping, whereas the water from the Thames river in London was not good at all. Alcohol, in all of its various forms, turned into the sensible or first


Bibliography: Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. The History of Liquor Licensing in England Principally from 1700 to 1830,. London: Longmans, Green and, 1903. Print. Braudel, Fernand. The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century Volume 1/. New York: Harper & Row, 1982. Print. Wiesner, Merry E. Early Modern Europe, 1450-1789. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. Print ----------------------- [1] G. Macaulay Trevelyan, History of England, 1943, p. 287, note I.
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