Alcohol and Drugs History Society

Introducing Chinese tea to India (book review)

Adrian Higgins, in Washington Post, March 28, 2010), reviewing Sarah Rose, For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History.  In fact, it was a Scotsman Robert Fortune (1812-1880) who smuggled tea plants out of China to create tea plantations in India.

Origins of Indian tea (aricle)

Andrew B. Liu, "The Birth of a Noble Tea Country; or the Geography of Colonial Capital and the Origins of indian Tea," Journal of Historical Sociology 23/1(March 2010).

India's capital shifting from whiskey to beer and vodka

Long known as a whiskey-drinking city, Delhi has shifted to beer and vodka. For more, see here.

Indian pale ale: an icon of empire (working paper)

An abstract and the full paper (Commodities of Empire Working Papers #13) of Alan Pryor (University of Essex), "Indian Pale Ale: An Icon of Empire," is available here.

Merchants of inebriation (conference papers)

World History Association conference, Salem, Massachusetts, June 25-28, 2009.

session, Merchants of Inebriation: The Global Distribution of Alcoholic Beverages

Jai Kharbanda (Queen Mary College, University of London), Algave-based Drinks in Mexico and Abroad after the Conquest

Malcolm Purinton (independent scholar), Colonial Beer: The Birth of India Pale Ale

Connie R. Hudgeons (Albuqueque high school), Inbibing History: Two Lessons about Beverages in World Trade

Drink and drugs revenue in South Asia (article)

Marc Jason Gilbert, "Empire and Excise: Drugs and Drink Revenue and the Fate of States in South Asia," in James H. Mills and Patricia Barton, eds., Drugs and Empires: Essays in Modern Imperialism and Intoxication, 1500-1930 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007): 116-141.

Opium as a household remedy in India? (article)

Amar Farooqui, "Opium as a Household Remedy in Nineteenth-Century Western India?," Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison, eds., The Social History of Health and Medicine in Colonial India (London: Routledge, 2009): 229-237.

Cow urine as a soft drink

According to the (London) Times, the Cow Protection Department of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) will soon market cow urine as a soft drink.  It will be called gau jal, the Sanskrit for "cow water." For more, see here.

Opium in 1838 (book review)

Hephzibah Anderson reviews Amitav Ghosh's novel Sea of Poppies here.

Sea of Poppies (another book review)

In the (South Africa) Times, Michael Titlestad reviews Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies. For the review, see here.