Abstract
AbstractThis paper surveys historical geographies of drinking places designed for the consumption of alcohol between about 1850 and 1950, covering work published in English on sites in Europe, Russia, the Americas, and parts of Britain's empire. Five key aspects of drinking places are identified. The paper first considers them as significant social spaces associated with positive conceptions of both the public sphere and public space before exploring the ways in which drink became a spatial problem for contemporary observers, both in terms of their internal design and layout, and in their arrangements and concentrations in space. Histories and historical geographies of workers and patrons in these sites then suggest that the spatial problems associated with drink might also be classed, gendered, racialized, and sexualized. The last two sections of the paper review work on aspects of drinking places shared across many different social and geographical contexts: licensing and the provision of highly regulated ‘improved' sites for the consumption of alcohol. Similarities across many different contexts may reflect common social patterns or the development of shared strategies for reform. The conclusion suggests a few areas that might be developed.
Highlights
This paper surveys historical geographies of drinking places between about 1850 and 1950, exclusively focusing on sites intended for the consumption of alcohol in Europe, Russia, the Americas, and parts of Britain's empire and Commonwealth, though it is restricted to work in English
Growing interest in these sites over the last 10 or 20 years reflects an increasingly visible interdisciplinary field that we might call “drinking studies,” after the UK research network of that name1. While this field covers many themes, this paper concentrates on drinking places themselves: their locations and internal spaces, their patrons and staff, the way that these places and people were framed as problems, and the strategies adopted to manage them
In other colonial contexts, licensing and prohibition were tools of both administration and “development.” In 1917, the British took over the production, sale, and consumption of all alcohol in Uganda, banning ebirabo, off‐sales and public drinking in the Buganda kingdom (Willis, 2002)
Summary
This paper surveys historical geographies of drinking places between about 1850 and 1950, exclusively focusing on sites intended for the consumption of alcohol in Europe, Russia, the Americas, and parts of Britain's empire and Commonwealth, though it is restricted to work in English. Moving on to consider histories and historical geographies of workers and patrons further complicates claims for them as “good places,” as inclusiveness often involved exclusions, suggesting that the spatial problems associated with drink might be classed, gendered, racialized, and sexualized.
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