Drink and Democracy: Alcohol and the Political Imaginary in Colonial Australia

The nineteenth-century spread of democracy in Britain and its colonies coincided with an increase in alcohol consumption and in celebratory public dinners with rounds of toasts. British colonists raised their glasses to salute the Crown in rituals that asserted fraternal equality and political authority. Yet these ceremonies were reserved for gentlemen, leaving others – notably women and Indigenous people – on the political margins.

Drink and Democracy traces the development of democratic id...