Even within historical alcohol studies writers often work as if they had no
neighbors.  At least in the USA, wine history is written with little
attention to other alcoholic drinks.  At least in the UK, brewery and
public house history is written with little attention to sobriety
movements.  Of course, in vast parts of the world (for instance, India)
alcohol history barely exists, something that I discovered in the course of
writing an article on Gandhi and alcohol.  My point is that different
people define their fields differently.  Likely some historians would be
baffled to be told that they worked within the field of historical alcohol
studies as much as they would if told that they worked wtihin historical
alcohol and other drugs studies.  In other words, historical alcohol
studies is a concept that exists for only a few folk.

At 02:24 PM 8/25/2004, you wrote:
>Not an interloper -- and of course no one wants to ignore drugs while
>working on alcohol (see my own THIS STRANGE ILLNESS: ALCOHOLISM AND BILL W
>as an example) or vice versa.  A fruitful interchange between drug
>historians and alcohol historians is a very good thing.  A blending of the
>disciplines is a little more questionable in value (in my view), but of
>course the outcome may show my doubts were not warranted.  -- JL
>-------------- Original message --------------
>
> > Dear All,
> >
> > As one of the interlopers from 'drugs history' I thought it worth briefly
> > addressing Jared's concerns. I think that the engagement of the history of
> > drugs with the history of alcohol is an important one, not least of all so
> > that we can discover for sure whether any of the boundaries between the
> two
> > that Jared is so concerned to preserve are in fact important or
> > justified. In other words, I am sure that while there is a impulse to
> > identify ways in which the subject areas 'cross-fertilise' , there is
> > similarly an interest in the ways in which they do not.
> >
> > Indeed, I also think it worth pointing out that there are obvious merits
> > and outcomes from making the ADHG a broad church. I would find it silly to
> > ignore! alcohol issues in my own work on cannabis in the UK as it was
> > temperance campaigners who had cut their teeth on alcohol campaigns that
> > pursued cannabis at various times in Parliament in the nineteenth
> > century. However, it would probably be unnecessary for someone studying
> > alcohol use in thirteenth century Scotland to worry much about the use of
> > cannabis/opium etc as they were virtually unknown, let alone available. I
> > am sure that the ADHG community will be big enough to allow us all to keep
> > company that we find immediately interesting, while allowing us to eye the
> > whole range of perspectives on alchol and drugs from across societies and
> > periods.
> >
> > cheers,
> >
> > Jim.
> > __________________________________________________
> > Dr James Mills
> > ESRC Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer
> > Department of History
> > University of Strathclyde > 16 Richmond St
> > Glasgow G1 1XQ
> > 0141 548 2206 > [log in to unmask]
> > http://www.strath.ac.uk/Departments/History/mills.htm