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Drank en drugs in de achttiende eeuw
Veranderende consumptiepatronen
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: De Achttiende Eeuw, Volume 56, Issue 2024, Oct 2024, p. 45 - 56
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- 01 Oct 2024
Abstract
Although the concept of ‘drugs’ was unknown in the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic, the consumption of psychoactive substances was part of the diet. Consumption patterns shifted significantly during the century. Alcohol was consumed increasingly in the form of jenever (geneva) and wine rather than beer, snuff tobacco became popular alongside pipe smoking, the popularity of coffee and tea continued to grow and opium was an essential medicine. Criticism and ridiculization of these new consumer fashions grew at the same time as concerns about dependence on them. A distinct and elaborated concept of addiction didn’t exist. The argument of some historians that this eighteenth-century ‘psychoactive revolution’ led to the dissemination of more ‘civilized’ and ‘bourgeois’ modes of behaviour remains questionable.