Page 192 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

alexander the great 77

entangled in the commercial networks of the wider world, Further Reading
and as alcoholic drinks became more varied and more Austin, G. A. (1985). Alcohol in Western society from antiquity to 1800:
A chronological history. Santa Barbara, CA.: ABC-Clio.
available, the controls on consumption that had operated
Christian, D. (1990). Living water:Vodka and Russian society on the eve
in most communities began to break down. Often, too, of emancipation. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.
mind-altering substances, including alcohol, were intro- Courtwright, D. T. (2001). Forces of habit: Drugs and the making of the
modern world. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
duced to communities with no experience of their use, Duby, G. (1974). The early growth of the European economy:Warriors and
often with devastating results. From North America to peasants from the seventh to the twelfth century (H. B. Clarke,Trans.).
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Siberia and the Pacific Islands, European traders found
Fernández-Armesto, F. (2002). Near a thousand tables: A history of food.
that alcoholic drinks had peculiar potency in societies New York: Free Press.
unused to them and rapidly created new forms of addic- Harrison, B. (1971). Drink and the Victorians: The temperance question
in England, 1815–1872. London: Faber & Faber.
tion and dependence. Though their use often proved Heath, D. B., & Cooper, A. M. (1981). Alcohol use and world cultures: A
extremely destructive to traditional cultural norms, mer- comprehensive bibliography of anthropological sources. Toronto,
Canada: Addiction Research Foundation.
chants and officials continued to supply them because
Jung, C. G. (1975). Letters (G. Adler, Ed. & A. Jaffe, Trans.). Princeton,
they provided such powerful commercial and political NJ: Princeton University Press.
leverage.Alcohol played as potent a role as guns and dis- Lucia, S. P. (Ed.). (1963). Alcohol and civilization. New York: McGraw
Hill.
eases in the building of European colonial empires. Roueché, B. (1960). The neutral spirit: A portrait of alcohol. Boston: Lit-
Because of alcohol’s damaging effects, states have tle, Brown.
Sherratt,A. (1997). Economy and society in prehistoric Europe: Changing
played an increasingly important role in its regulation.Yet
perspectives. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
states have also earned significant revenues from the Tannahill, R. (1989). Food in history (Rev. ed.). New York: Crown.
increasing trade in alcohol and other psychoactive sub-
stances. And it is this deeply ambiguous relationship
between modern states and the trade in alcoholic drinks
that explains why most modern states have been torn
between prohibition (in vain attempts to maintain pub- Alexander
lic order) and the sale of alcoholic drinks (in the hope of
controlling consumption while simultaneously generating the Great
significant revenues). In Russia in the nineteenth century, (356–323 bce)
close to 40 percent of government revenues came from King of Macedonia
the sale of alcoholic drinks, which was enough to pay
most of the expenses of the army that made Russia a he thirteen-year reign of Alexander III of Macedon
great power. In nineteenth-century England, alcohol gen- T(336–323 BCE) fundamentally changed the political
erated a similar share of government revenue. Indeed, and cultural structure of ancient southwestern Asia.The
most modern states have depended on revenues from Persian empire, which had ruled the vast region from the
mind-altering substances of some kind, so it is no won- Mediterranean to the borders of India, disappeared in
der that no modern state has succeeded in entirely ban- 330 BCE as the result of Alexander’s conquests, replaced
ning their consumption. On the contrary, alcoholic drinks by a new multistate system dominated by Macedonians
have now spread around the entire world, so that today and Greeks. The region’s center of gravity shifted west-
they may be the most widely traded and most widely con- ward from its ancient focus in Mesopotamia and south-
sumed of all mind-altering substances. western Iran to the shores of the Mediterranean and
Greece, and Greek culture replaced the ancient cunei-
David Christian
form tradition as the culture of its elite. At the same time
See also Drugs diplomatic and commercial ties were established that