Colonial Consumption: Alcohol, Medicine & Society in British India (360G-Wellcome-208333_Z_17_Z)

This project engages with the role of alcohol in colonial British India c. 1800-1947. It analyses the extent to which alcohol was embedded in medical, social and cultural discourses of colonial society, producing a range of conflicted and contradictory practices. Using archives such as the British Library and the National Library of Scotland, the project will focus on how alcohol remained a mainstay of colonial medicine, military routine, and Anglo-Indian culture throughout the British presence in South Asia, despite concerns over health. The project has three key goals. Firstly, to focus on the inconsistency with which drinking and intoxication were either criminalised or mitigated by medical expertise; by contrasting records relating to India and Britain, I will argue that colonial space itself was a dominant determining factor in decisions made by military and civil authorities whether to treat or punish excessive drinking. Secondly, to accumulate data that will enable academic and public-facing outputs related to the drinking cultures of colonial British society and British military forces during the C. 19th. Finally, this project will act as preparation for a Wellcome Seed Award application designed to compare and contrast attitudes to alcohol across the wider British Empire during the same period.