HST31026 - The World of Intoxicants in Early Modern Europe

HST31026: The World of Intoxicants in Early Modern England

40 credits (semesters 1 and 2)

Module Leader: TBC (2024-25)

Module Summary

Intoxicants were a key feature of early modern societies. This is as true for ‘old’ world alcohols like wine, beer, ale, and other fermented drinks as it is for ‘new’ intoxicants like opiates, tobacco, sugar, caffeines, chocolate, and distilled liquors that began to enter European diets after 1600 from the Levant, the Americas, and Asia. Focusing on intoxicants in England, this module considers a) the ongoing importance and, indeed, increasing significance of alcohols to culture, society, and economy over the course of the seventeenth century and b) the introduction and popularisation of new intoxicants over the same period.

Introductory reading:

David Courtwright, Forces of habit. Drugs and the making of the modern world (2002)

Jordan Goodman and Andrew Sherratt, eds., Consuming habits. Drugs in history and anthropology (1995)

Phil Withington and Angela McShane, eds., Cultures of intoxication (1995)

Module Aims

This module aims to:

• Introduce students to the methodological approaches, opportunities and challenges associated with studying intoxicants and intoxication in the past.

• Help students to understand and evaluate historiographical debates about cultural and socio-economic change in the early modern period.

• Acquaint students with a range of textual, visual, material, archival and digital primary sources (popular print, legal and taxation records, governmental records, diaries and correspondence) produced in England during the seventeenth century

• Train students to analyse primary sources critically, and to deploy them when engaging in academic debates.

• Introduce students to key historiographical concepts and theories in which intoxicants are implicated, such as consumerism and addiction, and encourage them to reflect critically on their relevance to the period.

• Help students to articulate their thoughts clearly in writing and speech.

Teaching

The module will be taught in twice-weekly two-hour seminars and each week will have a theme to unify the two seminars. Seminars will focus on discussion of relevant events and historiography: students will be assigned reading in advance and this will be supplemented with mini-lectures on key events, historiography, and theoretical models employed by historians when approaching the topic. This will provide students with the requisite knowledge to demonstrate command of the topic in their examinations. The seminars will also concentrate on in depth discussion of primary source material.

Assessment

Please see this page for further information about assessment. 

Selected Reading

• To Follow.

Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of the unit, a candidate will...

• Demonstrate a broad knowledge of early modern intoxicants – their production, traffic, consumption, regulation, and representation

• Evaluate current historiographical debates concerning early modern societies, in particular relating to consumerism, tastes, addiction, and manners 

• Critically interpret written and visual sources, and identify their significance for historical debates 

• Develop the research skills to identify and analyse appropriate primary sources in response to a research question

• Have developed their ability to create and express written and oral arguments.