Global Temperance and the Balkans, 1st ed. 2020 American Missionaries, Swiss Scientists and Bulgarian Socialists, 1870–1940

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.

1 Introduction: Temperance and the Palimpsest of Global History.- 2 A Global Imaginaire: Fighting Alcohol around the World.- 3 Missionaries: The Rise and Fall of Protestant Temperance on the Balkans.- 4 Scientists: Degeneration, Eugenics and the Scientific Approach to Alcoholism in Interwar Bulgaria.- 5 The Youth Temperance Movement.- 6 Socialists: The Politics of Temperance.- 7 Visual Histories: Intermediality in Temperance Campaigns.- 8 Conclusion.

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. 

Provides the first in-depth study of drinking habits and the temperance movement in the Balkans from a global history perspective Shows how the missionaries, social hygienists and political activists involved in this region participated in and transformed global reform movements at the beginning of the twentieth century Analyses how global reform movements contributed to the formation of new national identities in the Balkans