Overview

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.

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9783030416461

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“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)

Author Information

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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