'The drinking habits of our countrymen': European Alcohol Consumption and Colonial Power in British India

Drinking did not only play an important role in the social life of the Raj, it also provides a useful lens to look at the structure of British colonial presence in the Indian subcontinent and the ideological constructs designed to legitimise it. The article looks specifically at the patterns of alco...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of imperial and Commonwealth history 2012-09, Vol.40 (3), p.383-408
Main Author: Fischer-Tiné, Harald
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
19th century
20th century
Alcohol
Alcoholism
British Empire
Colonial history
Consumption
Drinkers
Europe
India
Morals
Political power
Temperance
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Summary:Drinking did not only play an important role in the social life of the Raj, it also provides a useful lens to look at the structure of British colonial presence in the Indian subcontinent and the ideological constructs designed to legitimise it. The article looks specifically at the patterns of alcohol consumption of the middle and lower social classes of Europeans in India during the period between the suppression of the 'Mutiny' and the outbreak of the First World War and analyses the problems they entailed for colonial administrators. Case studies of alcohol abuse among European pilots, sailors, planters and 'loafers' reveal the existence of multi-layered drinking codes and throw the class divisions existing in British India's 'white society' into stark relief. They also suggest that the drinking habits of 'low Europeans' in particular were seen as a vital threat to British rule as they debunked the myth of a British 'civilising mission' based on moral superiority and hence triggered various attempts by the colonial élites at inculcating virtues of temperance into the 'white subaltern' groups. [T]he drinking habits of our countrymen of all classes, are making a very injurious impression on the natives of India. 1 Than the loafer, the vagrant, the drunken uneducated or debased European, whose passions are under no control, and who is amenable to no public opinion, nothing can be more sad to the Christian and more alarming to the statesman. 2 Western Civilization, the greatest blot on which has been its drinking proclivities, has risen to condemn the habit on social and political grounds; and ... social workers in India and Calcutta may seek illumination from the Temperance events transpiring in Europe and America. 3
ISSN:0308-6534
1743-9329
DOI:10.1080/03086534.2012.712379