Alcohol and Drugs History Society

Family-owned Madeira wine company (book)

Marcus Binney, The Blandys of Madeira, 1811-2011 (Frances Lincoln, forthcoming 2011).

Alcohol on Madeira (book and article)

from José C. Curto on ADHS listserv in response to my question about recent non-English publications:

For the Island of Madeira, check out: Maria de Lurdes de F. Ferraz, “O vinho da Madeira no século XVIII: produção e mercados internacionais," in Actas do I Colóquio Internacional de História da Madeira 1986. Funchal, 1990. Vol. 2, p. 935 965; and, especially, Alberto Vieira, ed. História do Vinho da Madeira: Documentos e Textos. Funchal, 1993.

Starbucks scales back US growth slightly

Starbucks reported that the number of its American customers declined by 1% in the fourth quarter of 2006 and that it has reduced by a hundred the number of its planned new stores in the USA. This still means 2500 new stores in the USA in 2008 and 900 new ones elsewhere, including its first in Argentina and Portugal. For more, see here. Some analysts blamed price increases. Similar drinks could be found for a dollar less at McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts, for instance. For more, see here.

Multinationals and the Portuguese alcohol industry (article)

Teresa de Silva Lopes, "Competing with Multinationals: Strategies of the Portuguese Alcohol Industry," Business History Review 79/3 (2005): 559-585.

Portuguese-Brazilian alcohol trade in Africa (book review)

Timothy D. Walker's favorable review of José C. Curto, Enslaving Spirits: The Portuguese–Brazilian Alcohol Trade at Luanda and its Hinterland, c. 1550–1830, in Social History of Medicine 19/2 (August 2006): 373-375.

Portugal makes 'record' drug haul

Portuguese police have made what they say is the largest ever single seizure of cocaine in Europe.

Eight-thousand kilograms (17,600 lbs) of unadulterated cocaine, split into more than 300 separate bundles, was discovered.

Most of the drug was at a warehouse in the southern Algarve region but some was in a lorry that was already transporting it north. Seven Spanish citizens - six men and one woman - have been detained.

The BBC reports.

Brandy and Port Wine, c. 1650-1908 (Book)

Norman R. Bennett, That Indispensible Article: Brandy and Port Wine. c.1650-1908 [Portuguese title, Grupo de Estudos de História da Viticultura Duriense e do Vinho do Porto] (Universidad do Porto, 2005). The English and Portuguese versions are bound together. Bennett is emeritus professor of history, Boston University.

Drug cartels using African connections

CNN reports (27 July 2005) from Dakar, Senegal that South American drug cartels are moving their logistics bases to West Africa, lured by lax policing in an unstable region and the presence of small, underground criminal groups, United Nations experts say. Drug cartels are increasingly using West Africa as a hub for smuggling, working with criminal networks from the region who market cannabis, cocaine and heroin in Europe and North America, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Read more here.

Europe (bibliography)

Behre, K.E. “The History of Beer Additives in Europe: A Review.” Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 8:1 (June 1, 1999), 35-48.

These citations originally appeared in recent “Current Literature” sections of The Social History of Alcohol Review. Jon Miller and David Fahey compiled and edited them. They were also available on the Alcohol and Drugs History Society’s old website, http://athg.org.

Landsteiner, Erich. “The Crisis of Wine Production in Late Sixteenth-Century Central Europe: Climatic Causes and Economic Consequences.” Climatic Change 43:1 (1999), 323-334.

Goodman, Jordan. “Jordan Excitantia: Or, How Enlightenment Europe Took to Soft Drugs.” In J. Goodman et al, eds., Consuming Habits: Drugs in History and Anthropology (New York: Routledge, 1995), 126-147.

Price, Jacob M. “Tobacco Use and Tobacco Taxation: A Battle of Interests in Early Modern Europe.” In J. Goodman et al, eds., Consuming Habits: Drugs in History and Anthropology (New York: Routledge, 1995), 165-185.

Smith, Woodruff D. “From Coffeehouse to Parlour: The Consumption of Coffee, Tea and Sugar in North-Western Europe in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” In J. Goodman et al, eds., Consuming Habits: Drugs in History and Anthropology (New York: Routledge, 1995), 148-165.

Gourvish, T.R. “Concentration, Diversity and Firm Strategy in European Brewing, 1945-1990.” In R.G. Wilson and T.R. Gourvish, eds., The Dynamics of the International Brewing Industry since 1800 (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 80-92.

Alcohol In Caribbean Slave Societies

An essay by Frederick H. Smith, entitled "Spirits And Spirituality: Alcohol In Caribbean Slave Societies," can be found here.