| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Taverns and Drinking in Early America. By Sharon V. Salinger. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. xiv, 309 pp. $42.00, ISBN 0-8018-6878-5.)

Sharon V. Salinger's study argues that, while taverns were as important public spaces as churches in colonial America, they were not as inclusive (where all ranks of people comfortably came together) as we have previously supposed. Tavern "culture" often reinforced the class, ethnic, racial, and gender divisions of colonial society. She also argues that the colonial elite—those who drafted legislation, handed out tavern licenses, and enforced the laws—were ambivalent about taverns: they drank there themselves, handed out licenses fairly routinely and appreciated the revenue they gained from doing it, yet feared the disorder associated with communal drinking (especially drinking among mariners, servants, slaves, and others who frequented the taverns of the laboring classes in the port cities). Finally, she suggests that, however regionally distinctive colonial America was, tavern culture was pretty much the same everywhere—in South Carolina as in Massachusetts, in port cities as in rural areas.

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