Alcohol, Violence, and Disorder in Traditional Europe (review)

There is much that is interesting about this book. Lynn A. Martin has collected a vast array of material from a wide geographical and chronological spread and this gives a vivid and complex picture of the problem that he sets out to explore. Taking as his starting point modern studies that demonstrate uncertain links between consumption of alcohol and violence and not assuming a physiological response to ingestion of alcohol, Martin sets out to question if there was a link between alcohol and violence in ‘traditional’ Europe (1300–1700, England, France, and Italy) using an anthropological approach. This is an admirable and ambitious aim.

Martin amply demonstrates that most studies of violence and society in early modern Europe do not devote enough space to the role of alcohol while undoubtedly assuming a connection between the consumption of alcohol and violence. Alcohol, Violence, and Disorder then examines the views of moralists who firmly believed that alcohol did lead to disorder and violence. Detailed chapters follow on the types and consumption of alcohol and the place of alcohol in recreation and celebration. The two chapters on violence and disorder associated with alcohol consumption and venues that sold alcohol are based on published court records, primarily from England. His final substantive chapter examines various regulations that aimed, with limited success, to put limits on the sale and consumption of alcohol because of the belief that it was associated with antisocial behaviour.

In his conclusion, Martin equates the divergent pieces of evidence that he has presented to the pieces of a jigsaw that do not necessarily fit together. In an attempt to impose some order on his findings, he divides his findings into four elements of the puzzle in turn: the agent (alcohol); the host (primarily young men); the environment (alehouses and celebrations); and observers (moralists/lawmakers). He then concludes that it was not consumption of alcohol that led to violent behaviour, and if anything violent behaviour, particularly among men, was linked to questions of masculine honour.

There are several factors of his methodology and approach that provoke more questions than answers. While an approach covering 400 years and a very wide geographical area presents possibilities for analysis of incremental change and continuities over time, it also has inherent weaknesses that are understated. Were community attitudes and perceptions to drinking and violence really static over such a long period? Although Martin acknowledges the importance of the point of view of the ‘observer’, there remain unanswered questions about the meanings that different community members placed on violence and the role of alcohol in that violence. If moralizing elites sermonized about the evils of alcohol, did that mean that they had different understandings of honour, violence, and disorder than did the crowds that they addressed? Were the views of the individuals in these crowds uniform? Martin includes evidence about men and women as both perpetrators and victims of alcohol associated violence yet again there remain unanswered questions about the different ways that men and women might have understood and interpreted the role of alcohol in that violence.

In his conclusions about the importance of masculine honour in understanding interpersonal violence, the meaning of honour is under analysed. Was this concept of honour the same in all the communities under study – from thirteenth-century England to seventeenth-century Italy? Concepts of masculine honour were important, as many of the studies that Martin has relied upon argue, but a stronger case needs to be made that its meanings were as static as is suggested here.

The questions Martin raises about the history of the understandings of violence are important. He has combed published source collections and the work of other historians for many fragments of evidence and his findings provide intriguing challenges to scholars of violence and disorder in early modern European communities. Whether his conclusions will stand up to detailed, localized archival research...