Eight scholars were commissioned to contribute the essays on the role of alcohol in the lives of Europeans during the quarter-millennium of 1500-1750 known as the “early modern period” that comprise this copious and eloquent volume of cultural history.
B. Ann Tlusty, editor of the collection, contributes a scene-setting introduction and a chapter on “Medicine and Health” in which she debunks some common assumptions about beer and wine consumption, including the notion that widespread water pollution drove people to alcohol as the safer alternative.
“Most people throughout the early modern period drank well water regularly, and the poor drank little else,” she points out. Alcohol was mostly enjoyed as a gift from God.
Other chapters review the consumption, production, regulation, trade, sexuality and gender, religion and representation of alcohol during the sixteenth through to the late eighteenth century.