Difference between revisions of "Taverns"

Revision as of 07:45, June 14, 2009

Taverns, or public houses (in England and Australia, pubs) serving food, beer and rum, performed a major social and communications role in many countries.

North America

Colonial

Taverns were essential for colonial Americans, especially in the South where towns hardly existed. In the taverns the colonists learned current crop prices, arranged trades, heard newspapers read aloud, and discovered business opportunities and the latest betting odds on the upcoming horse races. For most rural Americans the tavern was the chief link to the greater world, playing a role much like the city marketplace in Europe and Latin America.

In the colonial era, about two-thirds of the taverns were operated by women--especially widows. Local magistrates--who had to award a license before a tavern could operate--preferred widows who knew the business and might otherwise be impoverished and become a charge to the county.^[1]

Taverns absorbed leisure hours and games were provided--always decks of cards, perhaps a billiards table. Horse races often began and ended at taverns, as did militia-training exercises. Cockfights were popular. At upscale taverns the gentry had private rooms or even organized a club. When politics was in season, political talk filled the taverns.

Larger taverns provided rooms for travelers, especially in county seats that housed the county court.

Taverns served multiple functions on the Southern colonial frontier. Society in Rowan County, North Carolina, was divided along lines of ethnicity, gender, race, and class, but in taverns the boundaries often overlapped, as diverse groups were brought together at nearby tables. Consumerism in the backcountry was limited not by ideology or culture but by distance from markets and poor transportation. The increasing variety of drinks served and the development of clubs indicates that genteel culture spread rapidly from London to the periphery of the English world.^[2]

New York City

Perhaps the most famous American tavern is Fraunces Tavern, corner of Broad and Pearl streets in lower Manhattan. Originally built as a residence in 1719, it was opened as a tavern by Samuel Fraunces, a West Indian black, in 1762, and became a popular gathering place. Fraunces Tavern was the site of merchants' meetings on the post-1763 taxes, plots by the Sons of Liberty, entertainments for British and Loyalist officers during the Revolution. In its Long Room, on Dec. 4, 1783, General George Washington said farewell to his officers. It is still in operation--and is the oldest building in the city.

Kaplan (1995) reports an escalation of tavern violence in antebellum New York City as a manifestation of a developing working-class male identity. This was due to the rapid growth of taverns, and their roles as centers of working-class social life. Brawling fostered a male identity that was centered on physical courage, independence, and class pride. Irish and German influences contributed to the violence, as did racial and ethnic prejudice. Sexual assaults against women increased because women were working in factories and more exposed to these dangers in the city. Women were regarded as depersonalized objects, and gang rapes were viewed as a form of male bonding.^[3]

Portsmouth, NH

Between 1697 and 1756 Elizabeth Harvey, followed by her daughter-in-law Ann Harvey Slayton, operated a successful tavern in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Their careers reveal the public acceptance of female management and authority within the confines of the tavern. Under Harvey, the tavern became a mail stop and began hosting General Assembly and executive committee meetings After Slayton took over, the tavern held town meetings, supplied necessities to the poor for which the town gave reimbursement, and provided accommodations for the provincial government, courts, and legislative committees.

Germania

In Germania (the German-American districts of cities) a beer culture flourished in 19th-century America. Germans operated nearly all the nations brewries, and demand was high until prohibition arrived in 1920. German immigrants acquired a reputation rivaling the Irish for heavy drinking and alcohol-associated violence. By the late 19th century family-oriented beer gardens provided all day recreation on Sundays. German newspapers promoted temperance but not abstinence. From the German perspective the issue was less the ill effects of alcohol than its benefits in promoting social life. For American Germans, the pub stood alongside the church as one of the two pillars of German social and spiritual life.

Ontario

Despite efforts by social reformers to regulate taverns in Ontario, Canada, physical violence linked to drinking was common. Indeed, 19th-century masculinity, derived from earlier models of fur traders in the region, was often predicated on feats of strength and stamina and on skill in fighting. Taverns were the most common public gathering place for males of the working class and thus the site of frequent confrontations. Men's honor and men's bodies, socially and historically linked, found public, and often destructive, expression in the tavern setting.^[4]

Further reading

North American

• Conroy, David W. In Public Houses: Drink and the Revolution of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts (1995)
• Lemasters, E. E. Blue-Collar Aristocrats: Life-Styles at a Working Class Tavern. (1975) in Wisconsin in the 1970s.
• McBurney, Margaret and Byers, Mary. Tavern in the Town: Early Inns and Taverns of Ontario. (1987). 259 pp.
• Mancall, Peter C. "'The Art Of Getting Drunk' in Colonial Massachusetts." Reviews in American History 1996 24(3): 383-388. 0048-7511
• Meacham, Sarah Hand. "Keeping the Trade: The Persistence of Tavernkeeping among Middling Women in Colonial Virginia," Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2005, pp. 140-163 in Project MUSE
• Rice, Kim. Early American Taverns: For the Entertainment of Friends and Strangers (1983),
• Salinger, Sharon V. Taverns and Drinking in Early America (2002)
• Thompson, Peter. Rum Punch and Revolution: Taverngoing and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia (1999)

references

1. ↑ Tavern licenses were assigned to men, but both magistrates and license applicants knew that the tavern itself would be run by the petitioner's wife or daughter.
2. ↑ Thorp, Daniel B. Taverns and Tavern Culture on the Southern Colonial Frontier: Rowan County, North Carolina, 1753-1776. Journal of Southern History 1996 62(4): 661-688. 0022-4642
3. ↑ Michael Kaplan, "New York City Tavern Violence and the Creation of a Working-Class Male Identity." Journal of the Early Republic 1995 15(4): 591-617. in JSTOR; online free
4. ↑ Kevin B. Wamsley, and Robert S. Kossuth, "Fighting it out in Nineteenth-Century Upper Canada/Canada West: Masculinities And Physical Challenges in the Tavern." Journal of Sport History 2000 27(3): 405-430. 0094-1700