Overview
- Provides the first in-depth study of drinking habits and the temperance movement in the Balkans from a global history perspective
- Shows how the missionaries, social hygienists and political activists involved in this region participated in and transformed global reform movements at the beginning of the twentieth century
- Analyses how global reform movements contributed to the formation of new national identities in the Balkans
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About this book
This book examines the local manifestation of the global temperance movement in the Balkans. It argues that regional histories of social movements in the modern period could not be sufficiently understood in isolation. Moreover, the book argues that broad transformations of social movements – for example, the power centers associated with moral/religious temperance and the later, scientifically based anti-alcohol campaigns – are more easily identifiable through a detailed regional study. For this purpose, the book begins by sketching the historical development as well as the main historiographical themes surrounding the worldwide temperance movement. The book then zooms in on the movement in the Balkans and Bulgaria in particular. American missionaries founded the temperance movement in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. The interwar period, however, witnessed the proliferation of new, professional organizations. The book discusses the various branches as well as their international and political affiliations, showing that the anti-alcohol reform movement was one of the most important social movements in the region.
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Keywords
Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Reviews
“For work outside the Anglosphere and the chronology of the American temperance movement, Nikolay Kamenov’s ‘Global Temperance and the Balkans’ is a worthy contribution. He does not spring to the other extreme of neglecting Anglo-American temperance but sets the local case in the context of reformers’ international ambitions. … The book is important in showing the impacts (and limitations) of the Protestant movement of the late 19th century.” (Ian Tyrrell, H-Soz-Kult, hsozkult.de, May 31, 2024)
“In his excellent and important new book, Nikolay Kamenov uses the imagery of the palimpsest to puzzle through the impact of the global temperance movement in Bulgaria. ... The temperance movement in Bulgaria proved a resilient space for thinking ... . This is Kamenov’s most important contribution, highlighting the role that the international temperance movement shaped local imaginaires as a civic space where new futures emerged.” (Christofer Scarboro and Wilkes-Barre, Comparativ -Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung, Vol. 33 (1), 2023)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Nikolay Kamenov holds a doctoral degree from the ETH Zürich, Switzerland. Between 2015 and 2019, he worked on a postdoctoral research project on the global history of cooperatives at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, the first results of which were published in the Journal of Global History and the Journal of Asian Studies.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Global Temperance and the Balkans
Book Subtitle: American Missionaries, Swiss Scientists and Bulgarian Socialists, 1870–1940
Authors: Nikolay Kamenov
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41644-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-41643-0Published: 25 June 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-41646-1Published: 25 June 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-41644-7Published: 24 June 2020
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: X, 223
Number of Illustrations: 16 b/w illustrations, 6 illustrations in colour
Topics: World History, Global and Transnational History, Russian, Soviet, and East European History, Modern History, Social History, History of Medicine