The Contradictions of “Civilizing” Consumption: Colonial Wine and Race in Britain’s Nineteenth-Century Imperial Project

ABSTRACTThis article will consider the discourse of wine as a “civilizing tool” in Britain’s imperial project, specifically in South Australia and Cape Colony. Historically, wine was recollected as a symbol of Greco-Roman civility, reified as the lifeblood of Christ, romanticized as the superiority of Southern European regions, and reimagined as a promoter of nineteenth-century Victorian sensibility. Beyond moral “improvement,” wine was also seen as a method to improve physical health. The vine was depicted as a safe, stable, and highly civilized enterprise, with far-reaching consequences. In the violent spaces of wine farms and colonial canteens, this intersected with racialized conceptions of colonized persons needing to be “improved” (and ultimately, controlled) through wine consumption. The networks which connected the global temperance movement often crossed with colonial conversations on race, health, and consumption. The interest in policing consumption of indigenous populations combined with a cultural of paying workers in alcohol, illustrated that along racial lines, accessibility to this desired state of “civilization” was unattainable.KEYWORDS: Winecivilizing missionempireraceconsumption Notes1. “The Paris Exhibition,” 61.2. Bayly, Imperial Meridian.3. Regan-Lefebvre, Imperial Wine, 7.4. Magee and Thompson, Empire and Globalisation, 58.5. See Bourdieu, Distinction.6. Ibid., 6.7. Ludington, The Politics of Wine in Britain, 9.8. McIntyre, First Vintage, 8.9. Hannickel, Empire of Vines, 128.10. White, Blood of the Colony.11. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize, 1.12. See Regan-Lefebvre, Imperial Wine.13. Donald Denoon placed Australia and South Africa in a comparative context in his 1983 work, Settler Capitalism. While I do not compare South Africa and Australia with the four other settler capitalist “societies,” as Denoon does, I do chart their connections to the “British world” and broader “winegrowing world.” Unlike Denoon, who examines these settler societies within a field of “white studies,” this article employs a comparative approach to integrate perspectives of white and nonwhite historical actors involved across the empire. See Denoon, Settler Capitalism. For other comparative histories of South Africa and Australia, see Dunstan, Southern Worlds, Dane Kennedy, The Last Blank Spaces, and Etherington, Mapping Colonial Conquest.14. For examples of these historical comparisons, see “Australia Not Yet ‘Played Out,’” 170, “The British Wine Duties,” 2; and Lowcay, “Viticulture: Cape Colony and South Australia,” 42. Hahn, Viticulture in South Africa, NLSA, 22. “Report of the Select Committee on Improvement of the Wine Industry,” CCP 1/2/2/1/32-A.6 1884, WCARS,vii. Hardy, A Vigneron Abroad, 10. Letter No. 2: From Agent General Sir Charles Mills to Honourable Commissioner of Crown Lands and Public Works, November 21, 1883, in “Papers and Correspondence on the Subject of Development of the Wine Industry and the Improvement of Viticulture in the Colony” (Cape Town: W.A. Richards & Sons, 1884) CCP 4/19/9–9, WCARS, 4.15. Colonial Charles James Napier stated in 1835, that the colonization of South Australia “[would] be a model by which to correct our system of Colonial Government” and be “protected against the mass of hardened vice” that accompanied the prior convict colonies, in Napier, Colonization: Particularly in Southern Australia, 2, 10–11.16. Hingley, Roman Officers and English Gentlemen, 30.17. Kumar, The Making of English National Identity, x.18. Phillips, Alcohol: A History, 41.19. Kirk, Grape Culture, 3.20. Henderson, The History of Ancient and Modern Wines, 2.21. Ibid., 347.22. Ludington, The Politics of Wine in Britain, 242.23. McMullen, Handbook of wines, 237.24. Suttor, The Culture of the Grape Vine.25. Unwin, Wine and the Vine, 7–8.26. Phillips, Alcohol: A History, 89.27. Thomas Searle, “The liquor problem of South Africa,” Address delivered to the Annual Assembly Thursday October 10, 1907, CPT General Collection, AZP.1994–69, NLSA, 92.28. See Phillips, Wine: A social and cultural history, 65–93. For the relationship between missionaries, empire, and wine see: Caruso, “Turn this Water into Wine;” Byam, “New Wine in a Very Old Bottle;” and Birmingham Empire in Africa.29. Searle, “The liquor problem of South Africa,” 3.30. Williams, “Slaves, Workers, and Wine,” 898–902.31. Busby, Manual of Plain Directions, 12.32. Ibid.33. Griffith, “The Vine and Its Culture.”34. Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia, 2:30.35. Ibid.36. Kelly, The Vine in Australia, 16.37. Denman, The Vine and Its Fruit, 218.38. Ludington, The Politics of Wine in Britain, 237.39. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize, 1.40. Letter from Thomas Lack to Henry Goulburn Esq., December 18, 1812, GH 1/8–53, WCARS, 101.41. Madras Despatches, Military, February 26, 1823, British Library, India Office Records IOR E/4/927, 819–822.42. “The Wine Question,” 2.43. Dubow, A Commonwealth of Knowledge, 24.44. See Rappaport, “Sacred and Useful Pleasures.”45. Levi, On the wine trade and wine duties, 18.46. Hands, Drinking in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, 4, 16.47. “Wine as a National Beverage,” reprint from Muskett, “Book of Diet,” 50.48. See this explored in American context in Hannickel’s Empire of Vines.49. Busby, Manual of Plain Directions, 15–16.50. Unwin, Wine and the Vine, 8.51. The term Colored is a distinct racial identity in South Africa, originating in the nineteenth century, which according to Mohamed Adhikari, was both “a product of European racist ideology which … cast people deemed to be of mixed racial origin as a distinct, stigmatized social stratum between the dominant white minority and the African majority,” and also “the product of its bearers, who … were primarily responsible for articulating the identity and subsequently determining its form and content.” See Mohamed Adhikari, “Introduction: Predicaments of Marginality,” ix. Adhikari writes that the Colored identity emerged during the period of British colonialism after 1834, where a “heterogeneous black laboring class at the Cape started integrating more rapidly and developing an incipient collective identity based on a common socioeconomic status and shared culture.” This identity “consisted overwhelmingly of a downtrodden laboring class of African and Asian origin variously referred to as half-castes, bastards, Cape Boys, off-whites, or coloreds,” as well as subgroups like Malays, Griquas, and “Hottentots,” xi.52. Paul Nugent, “The Temperance Movement and Wine Farmers at the Cape,” 343.53. Ibid.54. Beckwith, Practical Notes on Wine, 104.55. Druitt, Report on the Cheap wines.56. Ibid., 4.57. Rosenberg, “Transnational Currents in a Shrinking World,” 953.58. See Letter from P.L. Cloete to John Pringle Esq., June 2, 1810, in Copies of Letters received at the EIC Agency at the Cape of Good Hope, Factory Records for the Cape of Good Hope, India Office Records, IOR G/9/11, British Library, and Letter addressed to William Ramsay, October 4, 1808, in Letters from the EIC Agent at the Cape of Good Hope to the Secretary of the East India Company and enclosures, Factory Records, Cape of Good Hope, Vol. 7, India Office Records IOR G/9/7, British Library.59. He is referring to Bruintjieshoogte Pass [Brown’s Height Pass] which is located in the Karoo, between Pearston and Somerset East, in the Eastern Cape Colony.60. Campbell, Travels in South Africa, 167.61. Ibid., viii.62. “Father Blazes,” PRG 1361/30/5, SLSA.63. Bleasdale, “Pure Native Wine,” 18.64. Norrie, “Wine and Health Through the Ages,” 150.65. Ibid.66. “The Adelaide Wine Co. Ltd., Chateau Tanunda,” 1901, South Australiana Pamphlets: 663.2, SLSA.67. “The Eastern Trade,” 202.68. “Martin’s Red Quinine Wine,” 42.69. T.C. Cornell, “The Wine Industry and Model Public Houses,” 251–52.70. Colonial Wine Farmer’s and Wine Merchants Association, December 14, 1907, CPT General Collection AZP.1998–9, NLSA, 2. For more on this, see Nugent, “The Temperance Movement.”71. Cape Wine Commission and Lord Blyth’s report on Cape Wine Industry, June 2, 1909, AGR 498 C.67, WCARS, 3.72. See Brady, Teaching “Proper” Drinking?, 6.73. McIntyre, “Bannelong Sat Down to Dinner,” 13.74. “The Aborigines,” 1.75. Westgarth, Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria, 14.76. Trollope, Australia and New Zealand, 1:72.77. Brady, Teaching “Proper” Drinking?, xvii.78. See Hernández, City of Inmates; and Mancall, Deadly Medicine.79. J.M. Orpen, “Natives, Drink, Labour; Our Duty,” papers reprinted from the East London Daily Despatch on “Natives and Liquor,” opening address from a public meeting, September 10, 1910, A1984–12: CPT General Collection, NLSA, 11.80. Nugent, “The Temperance Movement and Wine Farmers at the Cape,” 346.81. “Yarra Yarra” was the English-assigned label for the Wurundjeri tribe, as they were geographically located near the Yarra River and River Valley.82. See Oil Paint and Ochre and also Wettenhall, William Barak. For his painting, see William Barak (1820s–1903), Samuel de Pury’s vineyard, c. 1898, Watercolour, at the State Library of Victoria, reproduced from the Musée d’ethnographie, Neuchâtel MEN V. 1238.83. Comettant, In the Land of Kangaroos and Gold Mines, 92.84. Ibid., 93.85. Macpherson, My Experiences in Australia, 206.86. Langton, “Rum, seduction, and death,” 92.87. London, “The ‘dop’ system, alcohol abuse and social control,” 1408.88. Scully, The Bouquet of Freedom, 55.89. Although there are many examples within the Reports of the Protector of Slaves, Izaack, an immigrant laborer from Mozambique was brutally lashed 25 times with a cat-o-nine tails by Stellenbosch farmer Jacob Isaac de Milliers “for having been drunk and also for neglect of duty.” See Reports from the Protector of Slaves, Cape Colony, Jan-June 1830, CO 53/50, National Archives Kew, 219. This is not unlike the case of Maart, a 54-year-old male laborer enslaved to Lieutenant John Roderick Steel of Rondebosch. Maart reported that he had received a blow with a chopper (which he produced) from his master on the forehead because he was not expeditious enough in the performance of the work … Mr. Steel stated that on last evening Maart went to cut wood and got drunk, that no person struck him at all, but that appears on seeing the condition which he was in, told him that he was a drunken dog upon which he went away from the house. Case dismissed.” See Reports from the Protector of Slaves, Cape Colony Jan-June 1831, CO 53/52, National Archives Kew, 54–55.90. “Cape of Good Hope Labour Commission Minutes of Evidence and Minutes of Proceedings, February-April 1893,” Vol. 1, CCP 4/19/18, WCARS, 287.91. “Return of Wages &c.,” 2.92. Cape of Good Hope Report, 101–103.93. Scully, The Bouquet of Freedom, 55.94. Nugent, “Modernity, Tradition, and Intoxication,” 137. For a clear historical example of this, see also Starke Brothers Account Books, 1895–1909, BCS291, UCT Special Collections.95. Ambler and Crush, “Alcohol in Southern African Labor History,” 18.96. Colonial Wine Farmer’s and Wine Merchants Association, December 14, 1907, CPT General Collection AZP.1998–9, NLSA, 2.97. “Committee nominated by the Western Province Board of Horticulture to inquire into Wine and Brandy Industry of the Cape Colony, 1905,” 55. For evidence of his indebted laborers, see Starke Brothers Winery Account Books, 1895–1909, BCS291, UCT Special Collections.98. Cape of Good Hope Report of the Liquor Laws Commission 1889–1890, 561.99. Ibid., 597.100. Ibid., 562.101. Beckwith, Practical Notes on Wine, 59–60.102. Vizetelly, The wines of the world characterized and classed, 177.103. Regan-Lefebvre, Imperial Wine, 79.Additional informationNotes on contributorsChelsea DavisChelsea Davis is currently an Assistant Professor of British History at Missouri State University. She received her Doctorate in History from The George Washington University in 2021 and is currently writing her manuscript entitled, “The Empire and the Aphid: Phylloxera, Science, and Race in Britain’s Wine Industries, 1860-1910.”