Muslims need to start drinking alcohol

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To be pedantic 1776 was the Declaration of Independence. The Acts of Union were 1707.

So it did exist if for 69 years.

I think people would trade with the natives and would offer whiskey for fur, baskets, etc. That was the later American settlers heading West though, rather than the British, but most of those settlers were of British descent ( a lot of them Scots, iirc - hence the whiskey and the Baptist/Presbyterian religion.) It's favourable economically to have your trading partner dependant on what you're trading with them. Obviously, the freak accident of Native Americans being prone to alcoholism couldn't be foreseen, but it probably didn't go unnoticed. The same thing happened in South America with some of the Amazon tribes, who were in fact already making their own type of alcohol in a lot of cases, but the colonisers were distilling rum and selling it to the natives in exchange for precious materials like rainforest medicines and rubber.

You're right that the addiction of the Aboriginal Australians perhaps wasn't deliberately caused - but I would argue the social isolation and discrimination against them was deliberate. As with ripping off natives to get precious materials, alcohol helped in getting the native Australians away from their land.

Alcohol isn't new but distilling something to drink is fairly new. Rum and whisky aren't as ancient as beer and wine (although whisky is at least Medieval and weaker versions of rum - sugar wine - are quite ancient, the distilled version of rum is only about 300 years old.)

That is kind of what I'm saying the social breakdown was a more important factor than the supply. As many ingenious cultures took mind altering substances for thousands of years.

Having lived in many former colonies British and Portuguese. I have heard all these colonial arguments before. Yes they had an impact, but some countries picked themselves off the ground and are now thriving.

I just think it is over simplistic to blame all these problems on British, and the previous culture weren't always wiped out.

Some people's idea of colonialism is British or European. They don't talk of the Islamic Emirates, Ottomans, Romans, Genghis Khan, etc. many, many examples, old and not so old.

Peoples' idea of slavery is the Western imperialism, not the stuff currently going on in the Arabian Peninsular, Africa, Asia, etc. It is not the human traffic, into out countries with gang from eastern Europe, Africa, Asia they are talkign about, .

In fact The British bought from African slave owners in some cases. Slavery was common place in Africa, and still prevalent in North Africa.

Don't get me wrong it was awful, I just think that the current generation is expected to feel guilty for something that wasn't their fault.

There have been several official apologies for colonialism. what does it actually mean all those years on? If it was still current that is a different matter.

The Indians smoked peace pipes. And my guess is that they probably consumed tobacco as a sacrament in certain ceremonial situations dictated by their culture. Likewise europeans had certain cultural rules for consuming alcohol. So when each race became exposed to the other race's vices niether race could handle it for cultural reasons. The whites all became chain smokers, and the Indians "chain drinkers'".

Then there are genetic issues: the Indians didnt have thousands of years of alcohol consumption to weed out the alcohol vulnerable as old world races had.

But oddly enough the discovery of america also impacted europe hard via alchohol use. The new food crops we got from the Indians:potatoes, and corn, could be turned into new forms of booze that never before existed in the old world.

The famous printmaker, Hogarth, portrayed the latest 'drug scourge' sweeping britian in his time: whiskey.

He portrayed a thriving town of shop keepers and tradesman- all pausing to enjoy the native british beers and ales before going back to productive work.

In the next frame the town is in ruins - woman are allowing babies to fall out of windows, and all of the men are passed out drunk on the streets -the infrastructure is collapsing- because of the 1700s' equivalent of crack cocaine- whiskey- has come to town!

Gin was the crack of its time. Hogarth's famous piece was about Gin not Whiskey.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_Lane

Gin was dirt cheap at the time.

I think Hogarth was depicting the effects of gin.

Both whisky and gin are native European drinks, anyway. You don't need corn to make whisky. You don't need potatoes to make vodka, either. It's just rum that relies on an exotic crop.

I think the rise of gin-related alcoholism in 18th cenutry England was the result of the increasing urbanisation and social alienation as a precursor to the industrial revolution. A lot of people were moving to London for work and finding all kinds of vices they wouldn't encounter in their village.

I'm not advocating that the current generation feel guilty. I'm British myself and I don't feel guilty. I was just putting forward an explanation as to why Uganda and Nigeria (and other former British colonies) have higher rates of alcohol use than other nearby countries.

As Anna Roseannadanna said "never mind"

Lol.

.

I can't stand these commercial spiced 'dark' Rums like Captain Morgan's, or the fact that most white rum sold is overproof, without being labeled as such.

As far as I'm concerned there are three types of rum: Navy, red/golden, and white.

If you want to mix, try white that is is not overproof, Wray and Nephew is a good company, they sell overproof (labelled) and standard white. Alternatively a light red rum.

Matured red rum is nice with ice, and a slice of lime.

There is a Jamaican fire water (technically not allowed to be classified as rum) called John Crow Batty (translated "Gay Vulture"), this is a banned import in most countries.

That is your hypothesis,on the other hand SA, SWA (Namibia), Ghana, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Botswana , Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho, Swaziland, have different rates.

This list is interesting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... onsumption

Uganda 10.93
Australia 9.89
Grenada 9.85
Nigeria 9.78
Guyana 7.50
South Africa 6.96
Sierra Leone 6.72
Barbados 6.41
Trinidad and Tobago 5.78
Botswana 4.96
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 4.94
Zimbabwe 4.08
Jamaica 3.50
Cook Islands 3.20
Gambia 2.40
Zambia 2.35
Ghana 1.47
Malawi 1.24

I don't think India and Indonesia have very much violence, but they don't consume very much alcohol. It's probably because radical Islam is likely to lead to violence, not the lack of alcohol.

Alcohol consumption seems to gravitate toward the temperate zone, and away from the equator. Uganda is high in elevation and is not as hot as its equatorial neighbors. But that still leaves Nigeria as a mystery. They do drink in the Congo, and in Brazil, but not as much as in either south africa or in Argentina to the south, nor as much as europeans, russians and americans do to the north.

The swath of islamic countries that stretch from morrocco to pakistan are almost white on the map. But so is India,burma and Bhutan (mostly nonmuslim).

The list shows that Israel is much higher than its muslim nieghbors (but oddly its lower than Bahrain), but even Israel's rate is tiny compared to European countries, and the USA.

Apparently folks in colder places like to knock it back more than folks in the tropics. And maybe there is something to the above suggestion that desert dehydration is a factor.

Not all of these figures are reliable anyway.

First because not all countries have the inclination or the resources to carry out the surveys, and also countries rarely record these things in the same way.

Makes sense. These places are also sometime sparsely populated and nomadic. How on earth do you survey?

These "dry" Islamic states aren't as dry as they pretend to be. It is just very hush, hush.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland didn't exist until 1801.

The Kingdom of Great Britain was formed in 1707.