Alcohol, Violence, and Disorder in Traditional Europe by A. Lynn Martin;

Author:A. Lynn Martin; [A. Lynn Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History/Europe/Western
ISBN: 9781931112963
Publisher: PennStateUP
Published: 2012-01-18T06:00:00+00:00

__________

Much of the material on disorderly persons mirrors similar material from the previous chapter on disorderly places. This is most obvious in the sections devoted to young people; the concerns about the behavior of youth that prompted authorities to prosecute keepers of drinking establishments were almost identical to the drunken disorderly conduct of students, apprentices, and servants. This is not at all surprising, but the point that needs emphasizing is the disorder inherent in many alehouses and taverns regardless of the inebriation of their customers. Even in this chapter on drunken disorder alehouses and taverns had major roles, and if all the incidents involving them were removed, the chapter would be very short indeed. In other words, drunkenness per se seems much less a cause of disorder than its venues. In addition to this point is the ambiguous role of drunkenness in causing disorder. When giving testimony at a court case, a constable who raided an alehouse could be certain of the venue of a particular offense, but his judgment on the inebriation of the offender could elude such certainty. Defendants could plead drunkenness in an attempt to mitigate punishments, and plaintiffs could charge them with drunkenness in an attempt to blacken their reputations. If all the incidents involving false pleadings and false allegations were removed from this chapter, how long would it be?

Similarly if all the material concerning England were removed from these two chapters, the remaining material on France and especially Italy would not make even a short chapter. This is mainly a function of the sources; English historians have given considerable attention to legal sources to document their work on various aspects of English social history, so the anecdotal and qualitative evidence from English sources is valuable in establishing trends and patterns. One such pattern involves those who could be considered alcoholics; many of those prosecuted in courts suffered from alcohol dependency. Hidden among many of these were probably cases of what anthropologists term “despair drinking,” or what Jerome Blum describes as the hopeless and desperate drinking by the oppressed masses. Above all else the trends and patterns demonstrate the concerns of the political, religious, and economic elite. One of the foremost of these concerns was the disorderly conduct of apprentices and servants due to fears about the loosening ties of social discipline. Scolds could interrupt the social harmony of neighborhoods, parishes, and villages, while the profanation of the Sabbath and instances of sacrilege could threaten the entire community with divine wrath. The patriarchal ideology of this elite is evident from the fears about drinking women. Despite the valuable anecdotal evidence from English sources, the quantitative data for the three English counties demonstrate, as they do in the previous chapter, that the level of drunken disorder was low. Nonetheless, the problems of disorderly places and disorderly persons seem more acute in England than in the other countries. If this was actually the case, the reason might be found among the attitudes of the elite who were the ones defining disorder and prosecuting disorderly offenders.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.