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Boston in New England, Intoxicant Town
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 May 2021
Abstract
This article explores the relationship between a distinctive early modern city, Boston, Massachusetts, and the dramatic expansion of the production and consumption of intoxicants in the emergent Atlantic world. In particular, it attempts to draw together two strands of Boston's history seldom considered together: its origins as an aspirational settlement of English puritans aiming to build a godly city, and the deep involvement of its merchants and consumers in the overseas trade in intoxicants – tobacco, sugar, rum, wine, coffee, tea, chocolate, and others. By considering the cultures of consumption associated with godliness alongside other clusters of consumption in which intoxicants also played a part, it attempts to open new avenues for thinking about the many ways in which new forms and objects of desire transformed the economy and material culture of early modernity.
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- Article
- Information
- The Historical Journal , Volume 65 , Special Issue 1: Intoxicants and Early Modern European Globalization , February 2022 , pp. 167 - 184
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
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38 A serious address to those who unnecessarily frequent the tavern, and often spend the evening in publick houses, by several ministers (Boston, MA, 1726), pp. 2, 10, 11.