Conclusions

Abstract

The single most pertinent impression from the preceding survey is the bewildering variety of situations. Even the quickest of glances at the evidence reveals heterogeneous local conditions and the fundamental ambivalence of public houses: the disruptive as well as integrative function of alcohol consumption and the combination of a ‘mass school for crime’ with indispensable socio-economic services.¹ Scholarly judgements have tended to lean towards one of the two poles, that is the threatening quality of drinking establishments on the one hand (the view of most ‘classic’ studies in the field), and their stabilizing function on the other (a more recent tendency).² This book emphasizes the infinite versatility of tavern space, which was never predetermined or inherently biased, but always the result of momentary social construction. Public houses provided open stages for all kinds of interactions, with idiosyncratic outcomes depending on the premises, period, agents, functions and situations involved. The dynamic quality of these sites excited and worried contemporaries in equal measure. To describe them as ‘the great facilitators’ of early modern social exchange seems to be the only meaningful generalization.