Global Temperance and the Balkans

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

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2. Introduction: Temperance and the Palimpsest of Global History

   • Nikolay Kamenov

   Pages 1-17

3. A Global Imaginaire: Fighting Alcohol Around the World

   • Nikolay Kamenov

   Pages 19-58

4. Missionaries: The Rise and Fall of Protestant Temperance in the Balkans

   • Nikolay Kamenov

   Pages 59-98

5. Scientists: Degeneration, Eugenics and the Scientific Approach to Alcoholism in Interwar Bulgaria

   • Nikolay Kamenov

   Pages 99-134

6. The Youth Temperance Movement

   • Nikolay Kamenov

   Pages 135-160

7. Socialists: The Politics of Temperance

   • Nikolay Kamenov

   Pages 161-194

8. Visual Histories: Intermediality in Temperance Campaigns

   • Nikolay Kamenov

   Pages 195-212

9. Conclusion

   • Nikolay Kamenov

   Pages 213-217

10. Back Matter

    Pages 219-223

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This book examines the local manifestation of the global temperance movement in the Balkans. It argues that regional histories of social movements in the modern period could not be sufficiently understood in isolation. Moreover, the book argues that broad transformations of social movements – for example, the power centers associated with moral/religious temperance and the later, scientifically based anti-alcohol campaigns – are more easily identifiable through a detailed regional study. For this purpose, the book begins by sketching the historical development as well as the main historiographical themes surrounding the worldwide temperance movement. The book then zooms in on the movement in the Balkans and Bulgaria in particular. American missionaries founded the temperance movement in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. The interwar period, however, witnessed the proliferation of new, professional organizations. The book discusses the various branches as well as their international and political affiliations, showing that the anti-alcohol reform movement was one of the most important social movements in the region.

• Alcohol
• Drinking
• Bulgaria
• Missionaries
• Social hygiene
• Political activism
• Nationalism
• International networks
• Psychoactive
• Drugs
• Modern societies

“In his excellent and important new book, Nikolay Kamenov uses the imagery of the palimpsest to puzzle through the impact of the global temperance movement in Bulgaria. ... The temperance movement in Bulgaria proved a resilient space for thinking ... . This is Kamenov’s most important contribution, highlighting the role that the international temperance movement shaped local imaginaires as a civic space where new futures emerged.” (Christofer Scarboro and Wilkes-Barre, Comparativ -Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung, Vol. 33 (1), 2023)

• The Graduate Institute Geneva, Genève, Switzerland

  Nikolay Kamenov

Nikolay Kamenov holds a doctoral degree from the ETH Zürich, Switzerland. Between 2015 and 2019, he worked on a postdoctoral research project on the global history of cooperatives at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, the first results of which were published in the Journal of Global History and the Journal of Asian Studies. 

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