Maori and Alcohol: A Reconsidered History Mancall, Peter C.; Robertson, Paul; Huriwai, Terry
Australian and New Zealand journal of psychiatry,
February 2000, Volume:
34, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Objective: To document aspects of the history of alcohol use among Maori, with a particular focus on the period from 1840 to 1872 and to identify potential use of this knowledge in the development of ...strategies for the prevention and treatment of alcohol-related harm among Maori in contemporary New Zealand.
Method: A survey of the surviving documentation about alcohol in nineteenth-century New Zealand; materials were predominantly drawn from the writings of pakeha (non-Maori) missionaries, officials and travellers, as well as available statistical records.
Results: Analysis of early written historical records suggests significant variation in the response of Maori to the introduction of alcohol in different parts of New Zealand during the period following European contact.
Conclusions: One stereotype that has arisen suggests Maori have been incapable of and/or unable to manage the production and use of alcohol. On the other hand, another commonly held belief has been that Maori supported abstinence or ‘resisted alcohol’ because they recognised its ‘ruinous nature’ and because it was contrary to traditional custom and practices. Historical information indicates that the Maori response to the introduction of alcohol was in fact diverse and for much of the nineteenth century alcohol was non-problematic for many Maori. This reinterpretation of the historical record can potentially empower contemporary Maori to take greater responsibility for the use of alcohol. It also challenges the negativity of the stereotypes generated by historical misinformation.
Based on data from probate inventories we construct and analyze an annual time series of slave prices for South Carolina from 1722 to 1809. Comparison of South Carolina slave prices with those in ...other parts of the Western Hemisphere and the relationship between slave prices and slave imports indicate that while the long-run supply of slaves was highly elastic, over periods of one to two decades the supply curve was upward sloping. Comparison of our slave price series with an index of agricultural export prices indicates that labor productivity growth in agriculture was modest over the eighteenth century.
After the Seven Years’ War, the English realized that they had won the battle for control of North America. They had vanquished the French, their traditional foe, and for the time being felt little ...hostility toward Spanish colonizers to their south. Not since Elizabethan times had they had an opportunity to define what their relations with Indians should be without regard for the programs of other European colonizers. The end of hostilities offered colonists an opportunity to do what many claimed they had wanted to do much earlier: quit the liquor trade altogether. Rather than do so, however, many traders
Costs Mancall, Peter C
Deadly Medicine,
07/2018
Book Chapter
Whatever path liquor purveyors took to haul their wares to Indian drinkers, the binges that typically followed revealed a remarkable similarity of drinking practices among the diverse inhabitants of ...Indian country. By failing to rein in inebriates, Indian communities throughout the eastern woodlands found themselves forced to cope with often daunting challenges. In alcohol’s empire, Indians suffered.
The documentary record of the social costs of alcohol is vast. Evidence of Indian drinking and of the problems it created appears in colonial statutes, travelers’ accounts, traders’ ledgers, missionaries’ diaries, and treaty negotiations, to name only the most prominent locations. Yet the
PROLOGUE Mancall, Peter C
Deadly Medicine,
07/2018
Book Chapter
Jean Bossu, a French traveler in the Mississippi Valley in the mid-eighteenth century, thought he had found a cure for Indian drunkenness. While visiting a group of Illinois, he recorded in his ...journal how he turned one man away from his drinking. The story reveals the arrogance with which many colonists viewed Indian drinkers and provides us with a case study of an Indian who could not control his thirst for alcohol, a person who today would be called an alcoholic.
Bossu wrote about the man, whom he never named, in hisTravels, published in 1771, noting that he had
