Composition 3

ALCOHOL.

Editors: John Merriman and Jay Winter

The production and consumption of alcoholic beverages have been characteristic features of European societies for centuries. Europe is the origin of beverage forms known the world over: distilled beverages such as gin, vodka, scotch, and cognac; wines that include champagne, Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Chianti; and beer styles such as lager, stout, and ale. Indeed, Europe has been the fount of the global flow of alcohol over the last several centuries, having exported both the taste for alcohol through worldwide emigration and colonization and the means of production through advanced knowledge of commercial viti-culture, brewing, and distilling. Indigenous forms of alcohol have survived throughout the world together with these imported—and sometimes imposed—traditions, but nearly everywhere these European beverages and their many cousins, with their familiar brand names, have been associated with affluence, upward mobility, and a Western cultural outlook. The global market for alcoholic beverages totals about 780 billion dollars, and western European consumption accounts for 280 billion dollars, more than a third of the total. If alcohol is a factor in the global economy, it is also a factor in global health. The World Health Organization estimated for the year 2000 that alcohol consumption was a major factor in the global burden of disease, a measure of premature deaths and disability. Alcohol-related death and disability accounted for about 10 percent of the global burden of disease in developed countries, making it the third most important risk.

CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS 

Alcohol, of course, is no ordinary commodity. Its special character is recognized in myth and layers of symbolic association and cultural meaning that are not far below the surface even in the early twenty-first century. For the ancient Greeks, alcohol was an extraordinary gift of the gods, bestowed on humanity by Dionysus. Wine has played an important symbolic role in both Christian and Jewish rituals and traditions, and alcohol is closely linked to secular rituals of reciprocity and trust. Glimpses of this archaeology of meaning may still be seen—in toasts at dinner parties among family and friends; in the rituals of drinking together to concludePage 42  |  Top of Article

FIGURE 1 Comprehensiveness and strictness of alcohol policies 1950 and 2000 SOURCE: Osterberg and Karlson, 2002, Figures 2.1 and 2.2.

important business dealings; in elaborate wedding ceremonies, which combine the convivial blessing of the couple and the sealing of the marriage contract; in the practice of alternate treating that confirms equality of status and solidifies social ties; and in the drinking bouts of young men—comrades in arms, teammates, fraternity brothers, or workmates—who test their ability to stand up to alcohol's powers, and thereby draw a circle of shared experience and trust around themselves.

Alcohol's duality as a food-drug is the foundation of its special cultural significance. Alcoholic beverages provide calories and refreshment; they nourish but also produce bodily harm. Alcohol is also an intoxicant—a source of pleasure and release but also of danger and disorder. Every society that has known the benefits of alcohol has also known its costs. For that reason, alcohol consumption is always closely regulated, both by formal institutional sanctions and, perhaps more importantly, by informal social controls that enforce standards of decorum through peer pressure, gossip, and ostracism. Together, they define who can drink, when they can drink, with whom they can drink, and how they should behave.

Over time, alcohol has become available in increasing quantities to more and more people in European societies and around the world. The democratization of access to alcohol accelerated rapidly in European societies beginning in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The intersection of the spread of rising wages and growing concentrations of people in towns and cities with the commercialization and industrialization of alcohol production and distribution made alcohol consumption more affordable, more frequent, and more visible. As a result, the discussion of the causes, consequences, and control of popular drinking behavior became a major public issue in the industrializing societies of Europe and North America. Led by middle-class Protestant reformers, temperance advocates in all these societies eschewed alcohol themselves and advocated greater controls on the drinking of others, particularly of the working men whose drinking, often boisterous and public, seemed a threat to the middle-classPage 43  |  Top of Article

FIGURE 2 Change in comprehensiveness and strictness of alcohol policies, 1950–2000 SOURCE: Osterberg and Karlson, 2002, Figures 2.1 and 2.2.

values of self-discipline, thrift, and domesticity upon which economic prosperity and social order were thought to depend. For the people doing the drinking, on the other hand, the consumption of alcohol was a first form of modern consumer satisfaction and a focal point for their leisure-time activities and limited opportunities for relaxation and socializing outside of work.

American prohibition in the 1920s was undoubtedly the global culmination and most extreme manifestation of the antialcohol sentiment that characterized leading sectors of Western societies in the nineteenth century. Its failure, and the collapse of the utopian expectations that had accompanied the "noble experiment," also put a definitive end to any remaining grand designs for comprehensive alcohol reform in Europe. In the early 2000s alcohol consumption is a fully integrated part of the modern consumer economy in ways that would have been unimaginable at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the battle against alcohol was about to be won. The notion that alcohol consumption is a fundamental obstacle to social integration and progress has almost universally been replaced by an acceptance of alcoholic beverages as part of the good life that Western economic development promised in the first place. Shaped by modern advertising, marketing, and packaging techniques, alcohol consumption is thoroughly normalized and domesticated, a part of home life as well as public social life. From an economic standpoint, the production and distribution of alcohol and associated hospitality businesses make significant contributions to local and national economies. Despite long-term trends toward consolidation of ownership and production, the alcoholic beverages business remains relatively disaggregated and local compared to other global commodities. Producers and distributors are part of the social fabric of any local, regional, or national community and constitute one set of interests the state must balance in formulating alcohol policy.

The social context—and meaning—of drinking substantially changed over the course of the twentieth century. By the time of World War I, a transition was under way from the nineteenth-century era in which alcohol was widely considered an inferior consumer good associated with poverty and deprivation (even if a means of relief from them) to a world in which alcohol consumption was more universally recognized as a mark of affluence and drinking a means of partaking in a consumer society and demonstrating one's standing within it. The relative prosperity of the 1920s, and alcohol's association with the avant-garde, the Jazz Age, and the cosmopolitan life of the great European cities, helped change the tide. After World War II, alcohol consumption increased rapidly into the 1970s as European economies rebuilt and prospered.

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HISTORIOGRAPHY AND INTERPRETATIVE PARADIGMS 

While social observers have commented on European drinking habits for centuries, only since the 1970s have historians made alcohol a subject of sustained study. Beginning with Brian Harrison's Drink and the Victorians in 1971, historians have covered the major European countries, both explicating the history of alcohol production, consumption, and control as a subject in its own right and illuminating larger social, cultural, and political themes through the particularly revealing lens that alcohol provides. Their monographs have examined the role of alcohol in popular culture; the growth of the alcohol industry; the motives, methods, and accomplishments of temperance reformers; and the roles political parties and government agencies played in shaping alcohol policy. A substantial number of article-length studies extend and complement this work, and brief treatments of alcohol-related topics are more and more often included in wider studies as a means of illustrating particular issues in social and cultural history. The two-volume international encyclopedia Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History(2003) cites much of this literature. The Alcohol and Drugs History Society, founded in 1979 as the Alcohol and Temperance History Group, publishes the  Social History  of Alcohol and Drugs: An Interdisciplinary Journal (formerly The Social History of Alcohol Review) and maintains a useful Web site: http://historyofalcoholanddrugs.typepad.com .

Virtually all of this work by professional historians focuses on the nineteenth century (or earlier eras), with coverage typically ending with World War I. However, alcohol-related themes in twentieth-century Europe have received attention from other disciplines—sociology, public health, and medicine, for example—and much of this work does provide historical coverage, if not historical interpretation. Economic and business aspects of alcohol production, marketing, distribution, and consumption are also well documented.

Historians and policy analysts have distinguished three eras in modern efforts to conceptualize and manage the individual and social costs associated with alcohol consumption. The nineteenth century was the era of voluntary associations, the creation of temperance organizations, and the mobilization of middle-class sentiment in campaigns of public education about the dangers of alcohol and efforts to persuade legislatures and state agencies to tighten alcohol controls. Temperance reformers, of course, saw much more harm than good in alcohol, linking it to poverty, urban squalor, and a host of contemporary social problems. They operated with two complementary theories about the ultimate source of problems with alcohol. Many proponents of alcohol control believed that alcohol was inherently debilitating, a threat to all who consumed it; others emphasized the moral failings and weak character of those who drank to excess, flaws they saw in some social groups more than others. (Some socialists and trade-unionists offered an alternative view: that problem drinking was the result of capitalist labor conditions.) The substantial mobilization of social energies around the "drink question" largely ended with World War I. Europe had other preoccupations after the war, and the closely watched failure of American prohibition seemed to confirm that a political solution to the drink question could not be achieved.

After the end of this period of public mobilization, alcohol concerns were left primarily to experts in the health professions. As in the United States, the "disease concept of alcoholism" gained ascendancy. The predominant theory about the source of problems with alcohol no longer blamed alcohol itself or the moral failings of drinkers; experts pointed instead to a predisposition in some individuals—a disease—whose manifestation was an inability to control alcohol consumption. The focus shifted from public policy measures that might influence the drinking behavior of the whole population, or substantial segments of it, to individuals susceptible to drinking problems and their appropriate treatment. In extreme cases, as in Nazi eugenics policy, treatment could mean sterilization rather than individual rehabilitation. This basic paradigm for explaining and managing problems with alcohol carried into the post–World War II welfare state, which generously supported therapeutic interventions to manage individual problems with alcohol. Meanwhile, under prevailing liberal economic policies and with the lowering of trade barriers within Europe, the business of producing, marketing, and distributing alcoholic beverages expanded largely unchecked by government intervention, and European alcohol consumption increased rapidly.

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Even though debates about alcohol have not had the place on the social and political agenda they occupied before World War I, European societies have continued to adjust social policies regarding alcohol to balance the often conflicting interests between individual rights and social consequences, between economic benefits and social costs. In a survey of the evolution of alcohol control policies in fifteen western European countries since 1950, Esa Österberg and Thomas Karlson found a pattern of increasing government engagement. They developed a twenty-point rating scale to evaluate the strictness of formal alcohol controls in each society, considering such matters as drinking age, hours of distribution, marketing restrictions, excise taxes, drunk-driving laws, and educational initiatives.

Figure 1 compares the 2000 rating score to the 1950 rating score for each country in the study. The chart is ordered from left to right from the currently least restrictive (Austria) to the currently most restrictive (Norway). The three Scandinavian countries have had the most restrictive policies over the entire period, though they have become marginally less restrictive. Every other country has become more restrictive over the last half century, with thePage 46  |  Top of Article

FIGURE 4 Consumption trends for three groups of countries* *Greece from 1961 onwards.

biggest changes among the wine-producing countries (France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain)—these are also the areas where per capita consumption has declined the most. Figure 2 shows the total change in the rating scale for each country over the fifty-year study period.

Although increased social attention to alcohol issues is evident in these trends, the forms of state involvement in the alcohol realm have been changing, with fewer direct controls on production and retail—and hence consumer freedom—and more efforts to control outcomes through education programs and the regulation of drinking and driving. The effect has been less to limit supply and consumer choice than to educate consumers about responsible drinking and to set clearer limits on socially accepted behavior.

TRENDS AND NATIONAL VARIATIONS IN ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION 

In the fifteen European societies covered in the European Comparative Alcohol Study (2002), aggregate per capita consumption rose rapidly and steadily from 1950 to the late 1970s, with a total increase of more than 50 percent, from the equivalent of approximately eight liters of 100 percent alcohol per capita to slightly more than twelve. Since the late 1970s, per capita consumption has been in a gradual and unabated decline, falling from more than twelve to approximately eleven liters per capita by 1995. The overall growth is clearly associated with Europe's economic recovery, the spread of consumer values, and growing purchasing power. The gradual decline is associated with moderating influences associated with increasing awareness of alcohol's risks, the growing popularity of health and fitness as part of consumer culture, the marketing of newer, nonalcoholic beverages, and the breakdown—particularly in the wine-drinking cultures—of the close-knit traditional family, whose mealtimes together almost invariably involved alcohol consumption. Figure 3 provides a comparative profile of per capita consumption in the ECAS study countries.

Europe is often divided according to predominant beverage preference into wine-drinking, beer-drinking, and spirits-drinking regions. These preferences are rooted in national productionPage 47  |  Top of Article

FIGURE 5 Trends in the recorded consumption of alcohol 1950–1995 for the traditionally wine-drinking countries* *Greece (1961–1995): 1961–1975 only beer and wine, and from 1976 also spirits. Portugal: 1950–1959 only wine, 1960–1963 wine and beer. 1964_1995 also spirits. Spain: 1950–1961 only wine and beer. 1962–1995 also spirits.

patterns, relative taxation and price, and longstanding consumer preferences, especially among the older generations. Among younger consumers, especially young professionals, these traditional patterns hold less sway. While these regional differences have receded in importance, they continue to be evident. In the 1950s consumption in seven of the fifteen study countries was dominated by a single beverage type that accounted for 75 percent or more of total consumption; by the 1990s, only one country (Italy) fit that description. Still, if the differences are less pronounced, they remain important. In the 1990s, a single beverage type accounted for 50 percent or more of total consumption in twelve of the fifteen study countries. Figure 4 depicts aggregate consumption trends in each of the three consumption groups.

The wine-producing and -consuming countries share a Mediterranean climate, a Catholic heritage, and drinking traditions that are deeply entwined in everyday life, especially at mealtimes. In general, per capita consumption is highest in these countries, and drinking is an everyday occurrence. Women are more likely to consume alcohol regularly than in other regions, but even in the wine-drinking countries they drink much less often and consume smaller quantities than men. Young people are acculturated to drinking practices and behavioral expectations gradually and from an early age within extended family circles. Only recently have minimum drinking ages been established, generally sixteen. (In Italy and Spain, there is no age limit if a young person is accompanied by an adult.) Virtually all adults consume alcohol on occasion, if not daily, and very few people abstain from alcohol completely. It is in these countries, however, that per capita consumption has been declining, particularly in France, as awareness of the health risks of alcohol consumption has begun to balance appreciation for its benefits, especially among younger consumers. Overall, per capita consumption in the wine-drinking countries was fairly stable from 1950 through the late 1970s at an average of about sixteen liters of 100 percent alcohol per capita aged fifteen and over; consumption has fallenPage 48  |  Top of Article

FIGURE 6 Trends in the recorded consumption of alcohol 1950–1995 for the traditionally beer-drinking countries

steadily since then, bottoming at twelve liters per capita in 1995, a 25 percent reduction. France dominates, with a long-term, steady decline from the mid-1960s level of twenty-five liters per capita to about fifteen liters per capita in 1995, a 40 percent reduction. Consumption has also fallen sharply in Italy, but only from the mid-1970s, when it stood at about nineteen liters per capita, decreasing to nine liters per capita in 1995, a 40 percent reduction. Figure 5 depicts the per capita consumption trend for each of the predominantly wine-drinking countries.

The predominantly beer-producing and -consuming countries include Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Wine has become more popular over time in these countries, but beer is still the predominant beverage, accounting for 50 percent or more of all beverage consumption in each nation. The post–World War II consumption curves of all these countries look very similar, with steadily rising consumption from 1950 to the early 1970s and essentially stable consumption thereafter. Average per capita consumption in the beer-drinking countries more than doubled from 1950 to the early 1970s, increasing from five to twelve liters per capita, where it essentially remained through the mid-1990s. Per capita consumption is highest in the Austria, followed closely by Germany. Figure 6 shows per capita consumption trends in each of the predominantly beer-consuming countries.

The classic spirits-consuming countries in the ECAS study are Finland, Norway, and Sweden. In all three countries, at least 50 percent of total consumption was in the form of spirits in the early 1950s, but by the mid-1990s the role of spirits had been reduced by half. Beer, and to a lesser extent wine, have played increasing roles in these societies. The general trend since World War II shows stable consumption in the 1950s and early 1960s at about four liters per capita, then a rapid rise from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, with consumption reaching more than seven liters per capita, a 75 percent increase, and remaining generally stable at that level through the mid-1990s. Norway and Sweden conform to this general pattern, while Finland appears to be a special case, with a doubling of consumption in the early 1970s, from four to eight liters per capita, and an increase to nearly ten liters per capita in the early 1990s before a period of declining consumption began.Page 49  |  Top of Article

FIGURE 7 Trends in the recorded consumption of alcohol 1950–1995 for the former spirits-drinking now beer-drinking countries

Figure 7 charts per capita consumption trends for the traditional spirits-consuming countries.

SUMMARY 

The production and consumption of alcoholic beverages have deep roots in European culture. Like all other societies that use alcohol, European societies have developed both formal institutional means and informal cultural norms to regulate the production and consumption of alcohol and to balance its benefits and risks. The nations of western Europe and North America experienced rapid changes in the availability of alcohol and the social context of drinking during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and alcohol consumption was a focal point in discussions about how to create an orderly society that would mitigate the social problems and social conflicts connected with rapid industrialization and urbanization. During the interwar years, discussions about alcohol were less prominently a part of debates about the major issues of the day, though of course every society had to continue its own form of regulatory watch over production and consumption. In general, however, alcohol issues moved from the public realm of policy debate to the private realm of therapeutic intervention in the lives of the most conspicuous problem drinkers. This shift of focus allowed the production and consumption of alcohol to gain an accepted role in the modern consumer economy, and especially after World War II the combination of rising prosperity, new marketing techniques, and older drinking traditions led to rapidly rising consumption—no longer associated with the grinding conditions of industrialization and urbanization but with the spread of middle-class lifestyles and consumer values and the integration of alcohol into the home. Of course all of these trends can be decomposed into many layers of continuities and innovations, regional variations, and differences according to gender, age, ethnicity, religion, and social class. More recently, a new consciousness of the global social consequences of relatively unconstrained alcohol has prompted increased government attention, within and across the countries of Europe, and the advance of public health perspectives to the forefront. Europe is no longer a growth market for alcoholic beverages, but neither is it a region where dramatic statePage 50  |  Top of Articleinterventions are likely. A modus vivendi has been struck among producers, consumers, and the state to createarealm for informed consumer choice within a framework that combines individual therapeutic interventions with public health perspectives to mitigate alcohol's associated risks. This is a Sisyphean labor, as the dialectic among production, consumption, and control is constantly evolving in every society that enjoys Dionysus'swonderful, terriblegift.

MLA

"Alcohol." Europe Since 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction, edited by John Merriman and Jay Winter, vol. 1, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006, pp. 41-50. Gale eBooks, https://link-gale-com.dcccd.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/CX3447000027/GVRL?u=txshracd2500&sid=GVRL&xid=8c95d50e. Accessed 21 Oct. 2019.