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]>
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