August 31, 2017

Sasges, Gerard, Imperial Intoxication: Alcohol and the Making of Colonial Indochina, Hawaii: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017

Imperial Intoxication provides a unique window on Indochina between 1860 and 1939. It illuminates the contradictory mix of modern and archaic, power and impotence, civil bureaucracy and military occupation that characterized colonial rule. It highlights the role Indochinese played in shaping the monopoly, whether as reformers or factory workers, illegal distillers or the agents sent to arrest them. And it links these long-ago stories to global processes that continue to play out today.