| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Rum Punch and Revolution: Taverngoing and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia. By Peter Thompson. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. x, 265 pp. Cloth, $42.50, isbn 0-8122-3459-6. Paper, $18.50, isbn 0-8122-1664-4.)

In a moment of utopian yearning, William Penn decided to ban taverns altogether from his colony of Pennsylvania. More realistically, he later drafted strict regulations to curtail their influence. Peter Thompson shows that regulation and reform suffered further revision over the course of the eighteenth century under pressure of robust tavern talk and behavior. Judgments of behavior to ascertain status and virtue, the "small politics of everyday life," expanded into judgments of state. Considering all the evidence together, this core argument is sound. 1

From a collection of caves carved out of riverbanks, the number of taverns increased to 153 legal establishments by 1767, an incidence of one for every 173 residents. Indeed, the density of public houses became comparable to that in Old World cities. Two chapters on the licensing and operation of taverns show how little profit publicans could expect to wrest under a policy that set maximum prices for drink. Tavern keepers sought to sell to all comers rather than to cultivate a particular clientele. The author exploits ledger books carefully with rich results, and a survey of public houses for the purpose of billeting in 1756 provides further detail as to the cramped dimensions of these public spaces. . . .

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