Conspectus

This book began by using examples of recent regulatory changes in France and Russia to highlight the existence of significant crossnational variations in how alcohol is understood and regulated. ‘Rational’ explanations of these variations, which root them in levels of consumption or harm, were found to be insufficient. Chapter One further described how England and Wales have a historically demonstrable proclivity for both acute and chronic forms of public anxiety about drinking and identified that, in several scenarios at least, these anxieties were unrelated or distant from measurable levels of consumption and/or harm. Contrary to popular belief, it was emphasised that drinking is not a new, worsening or uniquely British social problem. It was insisted, therefore, that public anxieties about alcohol and related forms of governance are not the simple or exclusive products of patterns of consumption and harm, and warrant empirical attention in their own right. The book thus set out to examine the formative development of public attitudes and regulation relating to alcohol in England and Wales as well as building on the work of historians and social scientists, to consider whether the temperance movement played any role in these respective historical developments. Put simply, it is now possible to say that the problematisation of alcohol in the 19th century decisively differentiated Britain, in attitudinal and legal terms, from more permissive France and more spirits-concerned Russia. But, additionally, the book has revealed much more about how we think about and regulate alcohol in England and Wales.

Public attitudes and alcohol regulation

Chapters Two, Three and Four became occupied largely with the development and impact of the British temperance movement. Chapter Two stretched across the 18th and first half of the 19th century and argued that the temperance movement, after its teetotal turn in the 1830s, must be viewed as something historically distinct from previous expressions of anxiety about alcohol. Earlier instances of public opprobrium relating to drinking tended to be lacking in organisation, occupied with spirits or drunkenness only, and chronologically sporadic or limited in geographic spread. Hunt stresses the importance of agency, target, tactics and discourse within a moral regulation movement.