A few more words about the influence and limits to the influence of Brian
Harrison's DRINK & THE VICTORIANS (1971; 2nd ed, Keele UP, 1995).  In private
posts another participant at the Florida conference of a decade ago remembered
differently the answers by the people there to my question how Harrison had
affected them personally and another ATHG member noted the contrast between
Harrison's account of women and what scholars of the mid-1990s expect in
analysis and coverage and sympathy.  First, I got into the field of drink &
temperance nearly thirty years ago at a time when Harrison had published only
a short piece in HISTORY TODAY.  My May 1971 article in JOURNAL OF BRITISH
STUDIES went to press before DRINK & THE VICTORIANS was published.  Moreover,
my British research has not overlapped chronologically with Harrison's to any
significiant extent.  What brought me into the field was not Harrison but
rather the comparatively well researched history of North American temperance.
I was puzzled by the near silence of British historians.  On the basis of a few
references in Ensor's volume in the Oxford History of England I decided to  do
a quick book on the Licensing Act of 1904.  I soon discovered that that legis-
lation made no sense except in a larger context of late nineteenth and early
twentieth-century British history.  I started a book, THE  POLITICS OF DRINK,
that was in rough draft when I shifted to my work on the Good Templars.   (By
the way, I hope to return in a year or two to THE POLITICS OF DRINK, recon-
ceived as a comparative history of drink and temperance in Britain and the USA,
ca. 1870-1920.)  (2) I am enormously impressed with the work of Brian Harrison
(whom I have never met and do not know personally).  He gave legitimacy to the
historical study of drink and temperance for the United Kingdom and exploded
the widespread notion that the temperance movement was a North American phenom-
enon.  In addition, Harrison is one of the very few historians who have looked
at both drink and temperance.  (3) Yet I am surprised that Harrison's impact
seems to have been general and not specific.  Apparently no research students
at Oxford worked with him on temperance theses.  (I may be wrong about this,
but I know of no such Harrison-directed temperance theses.)  The acclaim that
his  DRINK & THE VICTORIANS received in 1971 made it difficult for other people
to publish books (or so I have been told   by people who had manuscripts
rejected).  This sense that Harrison had done what needed to be done may also
have discouraged thesis work in the 1970s.  And, of course, Harrison did not
remain in the field.  He moved onto other social history topics.
 
My question directed at ATHG subscribers who aren't modern British specialists:
Have you read Harrison?  Has he influenced your work in any definable fashion?
Or is he simply a bibliographical citation that "covers" England?  I ask this
as someone very interested in comparative history and who hopes that geographi-
cal specialists get ideas from people who study other countries.
 David Fahey (Miami Univ) [log in to unmask]