In the early 1920s both the USA and the Soviets had forms of state  
prohibition while Gandhi called for prohibition in India.  A few of  
the leaders in Mexico's revolutionary government favored prohibition  
too.  In other countries less drastic restrictions on the sale of  
alcohol became law or at least were discussed.

On Dec 23, 2006, at 8:54 PM, Robin G W Room wrote:

> Carolyn --
>    It sounds like a good paper to me.
>    It was the period when alcohol and drugs were being pushed apart  
> again
> conceptually.  See David Courtwright's "Mr. ATOD's wild ride",
> http://historyofalcoholanddrugs.typepad.com/SHADv20n1xCourtwright.pdf
>    Since you are in Geneva ...
>    You might think of doing something about what the League of  
> Nations did
> about alcohol in Africa. The Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye  
> committed the
> signatories further to a ban on selling spirits to indigenous  
> people in much of
> Africa, first adopted under the Brussles General Act of 1889.  To  
> my knowledge
> no historian has ever looked at this beyond the work Lynn Pan did  
> for her
> little monograph on Alcohol in Colonial Africa and a chapter in  
> Bruun, Rexed &
> Pan, The Gentlemen's Club.  Yet there would have been actions for  
> the League to
> supervise, at least in the newly mandated territories, and perhaps  
> they looked
> beyond them, too.  There must be stuff in the League of Nsations  
> archives about
> this.  (Justin Willis, in his book on alcohol in East Africa, notes  
> that the
> British colonial authorities wree still worrying about complying  
> with the anti-
> spirits treaties in the 1950s.)
>    Another resource not far from you is the International Council  
> on Alcohol &
> Addictions, which has its office in Lausanne. ([log in to unmask];  
> Rupert
> Schildboeck)  ICAA was the secretariat of the old temperance  
> congresses.
> However, I believe all their library has now gone to a German  
> library, and I'm
> not sure what the situation is on archives.
>      Robin
>
> On 2006-12-23, at 16:12, David Fahey wrote:
>> With the permission of Carolyn N Biltoft, I post a query originally
>> sent to me.
>>
>> The title of my paper is "Conspicuous Abstention: alcohol in the
>> inter-war global economy."   Essentially my thesis is that as much as
>> the inter-war period is often defined as a moment in which the
>> tendency towards "conspicuous consumption" crystallizes on a mass
>> scale, we might understand the movements to limit, prohibit, or
>> "abstain" from the consumption of alcohol equally as as a
>> political/cultural symbol as well as an economic strategy in the
>> inter-war world order. I mostly work from published sources now,  
>> but i
>> am in Geneva Switzerland on a Gallatin Fellowship and in addition to
>> doing my dissertation research [on a different topic] in the  
>> League of
>> Nations Archives, I am also taking notes on anything related to
>> international economic conferences, anti-alcohol campaigns, and  
>> liquor
>> traffic more generally.  So my questions are A.) do you think this is
>> a viable article and B.) do you know of any other archival sources
>> which i must look at...for instance do you know where the papers of
>> the world prohibition federation etc. are located?   I hope you don't
>> mind me asking you!  I so admire your work and your wisdom on H-world
>> more generally.  I would be so greatful for any advice/insight you
>> could give me. Thank you.
>>
>> Carolyn N. Biltoft
>> <[log in to unmask]>