A Distilled History of Gin

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. We got an email from listener Jessica a couple of weeks ago, and this email set in part quote my email tonight is to ask something on the lighter side. I was enjoying my Gin and Tonic after dinner and had the thought of I wonder if Holly and Tracy ever did an episode about GIN. So I went to the website to try and search the archives low and behold. That doesn't seem to be possible in the current I Heart Radio format. So is there an episode about Gin in the archives? How would I go about bringing it up? So, to answer half the question, the best way to find old episodes of our podcast at this point is to google the topic along with the words stuff you Missed in History Class as part of your search. And I know that sounds weird, but that's also how I was doing it with the old website. Other search engines like Duck Duck Go and Being did not used to work as well for this, but they have caught up since the last time I had checked. Nowadays, they're more consistently bringing up the episode if there is one as the top search result, although sometimes it's on another platform rather than our website, which is fine. All goes into the same bucket of listening. This would not have worked when Jessica sent this email, though, because at that point there was no episode on Jin. But there's about to be one. It's this one recording right now might not be quite as light as as Jessica was thinking when requesting the topic, though there's always surprise horror in history. So Jin as we know it today is a distilled alcoholic bevery edge, made from grain and flavored with botanicals, particularly juniper berries. Juniper is an evergreen shrub in the cypress family, and they're at least sixty different juniper species growing all over the Northern hemisphere. Those berries are not what you would think of like berry you can pick from a tree in nausch On. They are actually small, fleshy cones rather than any kind of juicy looking delicious berry. Yeah, column berries, but they're really tiny little cones. Every part of the juniper plant has been used for medicinal and religious and culinary purposes. For pretty much all of recorded history, anywhere it grows or anywhere it's it's been in reasonable trading distance. Starts with ancient Egyptian texts that describe the use of juniper and mummification recipes. John Burgundy's Plague Treatise, which is written in thirteen sixty five, recommends burning juniper branches to drive bad and disease from the home. Juniper was also one of the fragrant substances that was stuffed up into the beaks of plague doctor masks in the seventeenth century. The first alcohols made with juniper were also meant for medicinal or alchemical use. This is something it shares with the history of vodkast same thing. Most of the most and most uh Some of the earliest mentions of this date back to the middle of the eleventh century in the writing of Benedictine monks living in Salerno, Italy, as well as the nearby medical school known as Scola Medicina Solana. Medical texts from this period described a tonic that's made from distilled wine infused with juniper berries. Eventually, people started combining juniper with alcohol to make a beverage rather than a medicine or an alchemical potion. In Finland, suck Ti, which as like an ale like beer that's flavored with juniper instead of hops, has been around since about the twelfth century, and central Europe Borovichka, also called juniper brandy, has been made since at least the fifteenth century. Today it's popular in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and then there are similar beverages and other Slavic countries as well that I'll have this juniper flavor to them. But the beverage that comes up most often as a predecessor to jin is the Dutch spirit univ That's a term that comes from the Dutch word for juniper. As is the case with most food origin stories, the specifics on who first created univor are not totally clear. The credit often goes to chemist and physician Francisca Silva's also known as Francois de la Boi or Sylvia's de la Boi. However, though Francisca Sylvia's was born in sixteen fourteen, and some of the accounts of the creation of Your Neighbor put this development in fifteen seventy two, so well before his birth, time traveler Yes it is possible that people have conflated two different people who had similar names, both of whom worked at the University of Leiden. One was an apothecary named Silvius Debouve in the sixteenth century, and the other was Francisca Silvius, who was a professor of medicine in the seventeenth century. It is just as likely, though, that no one person can get the soul credit for creating this drink regardless. Dutch distiller Lucas Bulls was established in fifteen seventy five and describes itself as the world's oldest distilled spirits brand. By six two, Bulls was supplying spirits to the Dutch East India Company, known as the v o C as it's abbreviated from Dutch. By the middle of the seventeenth century, v O C sailors were getting your neighbor in their rations, and soon the v O C was carrying your neighbor anywhere the Dutch were trading, including to what is now Indonesia. When the Dutch established the settlement of New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan, they introduced your neighbor to North America as well. Today, your neighbor is sometimes known as Hollands and some people call it Dutch gin, but it's really its own distinct beverage. Gin has evolved over time, which we will get to, but it generally starts with a neutral spirit made from a grain which is flavored with botanicals including juniper But your Neighbor typically goes through a two or even three step process. It starts with a fermented grain mash which is distilled into a malt wine, and then that is distilled again with botanicals including juniper berries, and the result of this process is a clear, malted grain based spirit. It's typically consumed by itself from a tulip shaped glass. I In my experience, most people mix gin with other stuff most of the time. That's not so much the case with the Neighbor. There's also an official appellasion door Gene coltrole or an AOC for your Neighbor. Legally true, your Neighbor can only be made in Holland, Belgium and very specific regions of France and Germany. While you Neighbor and Jin are distinctly different drinks, there was probably a progression from Dutch neighbor to British jin You neighbor was introduced into Britain sometime during the seventeenth century, and there are several possibilities for exactly when. One is that during the Anglo Dutch Wars, which started in sixteen fifty two, it made its way. Another is after the restoration of Charles the Second, he spent some time in the Hague before returning to the British throne in sixteen sixty. Probably the most common explanation is that you Neiver's popularity in Britain really started with the Glorious Revolution and King James the Second was deposed and succeeded by William the Third, also known as William of Orange stadholder of the Netherlands. William ruled with his wife Mary, who was James's daughter. Regardless of exactly when or how it was introduced, after Niavor made its way into Britain, English speakers morphed its name into Geneva or Jennifer, and then shortened that to jin Yeah, because the neighbor has spelled g e n e v er, so if you're reading it on a page as an English speaker, it looks like it's Jennifer. So since common juniper as native to the UK. There were already culinary and medicinal uses for it well before univor was introduced, and in written accounts from the seventeenth century, it's not always totally clear exactly what people are describing, whether it's Dutch neighbor or a local British beverage or a medicinal preparation made from alcohol and juniper. For example, past podcast subjects Samuel Peeps described feeling unwell in his diary entry from October fourth, sixteen sixty three. Peeps was chronically ill. He had recurring bladder stones, and over the next few days his diary entries describe him as being in pain and constipated and experiencing painful urination. Then, on October tenth, he writes about making himself go into his office where he met with Sir John Men's, Comptroller of the Navy, and Sir William Batten, Surveyor of the Navy. He said of their conversation quote, Sir je Men's and Sir W. Batten did advise me to take some juniper water, and Sir W. Batton sent to his lady for some for me strong water made of juniper. Well, Peeps does describe starting to feel better over the next couple of days. He had also tried some other treatments. So it's not a clear whether this strong water made of juniper, whether it was your neighbor or gin or or something else, was effective or not. So while there's some uncertainty and some overlap here, jin definitely became a lot more popular in Britain during William and Mary's reign. And it was not just because William was Dutch and would have brought a Dutch influence to things. It's also because of things like wars and laws, and we'll get to that after a sponsor break. Soon after William and Mary came to the throne of the United Kingdom, they declared war on France. This was part of the Nine Years War which started in six and then Parliament passed the Trade with France Act of that band all trade with France and that put an end to all of the imports of French wine and French brandy. In sixteen ninety, Parliament pass the Act for Encouraging the Distilling of Brandy and Spirits from Corn, the set of duty of eight shillings per gallon on quote strong waters brandy Aqua vita and spirits from the Channel Islands, and it decreed that any liquors found to have been grown or manufactured in French territory would be destroyed. At this point, the British beer industry was regulated and taxed, but you didn't need a license to sell jim, so this law meant that locally made spirits distilled from green were the cheapest alcoholic beverage available. It also helped create more demand for British grown grain, since pretty much every grain was lumped into the category of corn, so this law helped boost the price of grain to the benefit of British landowners by encouraging people to use it to make alcohol. The UK also already had its own distilling guild that was the Worshipful Company of Distillers STA, published in sixteen thirty eight. The guild initially had a monopoly on distilling in the area around London, and the number of distilleries in the Kingdom really grew in the last half of the seventeenth century thanks to its influence. So by the time this law was passed encouraging the distilling of brandy and spirits from corn, the UK was pretty ready for it. These spirits were really all over the place in terms of their quality and ingredients and what type of alcohol we would actually describe them as today. But by the early eighteenth century, one in particular was becoming prominent, and that was Jin. The first written use of the word Jin in the G I N form in English was in seventeen thirteen from the Infernal Congress or News from Below, being a letter from Dick Estcourt, the late famous comedian, to the Spectator. It read, quote, being fatigued with Touchen's impudence, I took a turn in the Prato and drunk a dram of royal gin with the Duchess of Portsmouth, who has a little brandy shop here. Jen was also really quickly becoming notorious. In seventeen fourteen, Bernard Mandeville published The Fable of the Bees or Private Vices Public Benefits. In this book, he made the argument that various vices, many of which were widely criticized and even condemned, actually contributed to some sort of public good. So here's how Mandeville described Jin. Quote nothing is more destructive, either in regard to the health or the vigilance and industry of the poor than the infamous liquor, the name of which derived from Juniper and Dutch, is now by frequent use, and the laconic spirit of the nation. From a word of meddling length shrunk into a monosyllable, intoxicating gin that charms the unactive, the desperate, and the crazy of either sex, and makes the starving lot hold his rags and nakedness with stupid indolence or banter, both in senseless laughter and more insipid jest. It is a fiery lake that sets the brain in flame, burns up the entrols, and scorches every part within, and at the same time a leaf of oblivion in which the wretch immersed drowns in most pinching cares and with his reason all anxious reflections on brats that cry for food, hard winters, frosts, and horrid empty home. I just wanted to shout out to Holly because this was written in the seventeen hundreds and and it was full of long essays that looked like F's and I missed one of the long essays when I was getting it into here. Holly corrected it on the fly. I did not have to go. It does not say the fame time, it should in fact say the same time. Uh I love things with long esses in them, but sometimes they can be challenging. Uh so. Vandeville went on to blame Gin for making men quarrelsome and violent and even causing murders, for breaking down people's constitutions, and for causing consumption and sudden death. But he says these are rare compared to quote loss of appetite, fevers, black and yellow jaundice, convulsions, stone and gravel, drops, ease, and luco phlegmasies. He also goes on at very great length about all the squalid conditions and areas that are home to establishments that sell spirits, and to all the social and economic ills that those establishments cause. But Mandeville then goes on to say, quote those who can enlarge their view and will give themselves the leisure of gazing on the prospect of concatenated events may in a hundred places see good spring up and pollulate from evil, as naturally as chickens do from eggs. The money that arises from the duties upon malt is a considerable part of the national revenue, and should no spirits be distilled from it. The public treasure would prodigiously suffer on that head. But if we would set in a true light the many advantages and large catalog of solid blessings that accrue from and are owing to the evil I treat off, we are to consider the rents that are received, the ground that is tilled, the tools that are made, the cattle that are employed, and above all the multitude of poor that are maintained by the variety of labor required in husbandry, in malting, in carriage, and distillation. Before we can have that product of malt, which we call low wines, and is but the beginning from which the various spirits are afterwards to be made. In other words, sure poor people were getting drunk and sometimes dying because of gin, but look at how much it was helping the economy. Needless to say, this book and the argument that Mandeville was making in it were highly controversial. Mandeville's description of gin as destructive was not controversial among the British elite, though in the early eighteenth century it was increasingly taken for granted that jin was uniquely dangerous and was leading to all kinds of problems. By about seventeen twenty, this had blossomed into a full on moral panic described as the gin craze or sometimes you'll see it as the gin epidemic, particularly in big cities like London, Portsmouth and Bristol. For about three decades, there was a huge focus on gin consumption and the damage it was purportedly doing and how they might stop it. Then to be cleared, jin did become a lot more popular in these years, and there was some real damage involved. Alcohol consumption carried the same health risks and eighteenth century that it does today. Over consumption and abuse still impacted people's lives and livelihoods. It also wasn't uncommon for liquor to be adulterated with other substances, including things like sulfur, as acid and turpentine, and there weren't really any age restrictions on drinking, so people of any age drank really at any time of the day, including parents using gin and other liquors to try to soothe their babies. Excessive drinking, and especially drinking too much gin in particular, also became associated with violence and crime. Records from London Central Criminal Court a K the Old Bailey include repeated references to jin. For example, a William Burrows, who was indicted for assault in seventeen thirty one, was described as having fallen quote into that dreadful society of gin drinkers, whores, thieves, housebreakers, street robbers, pickpockets, and the whole train of the most notable blackguards in and about London. James Baker, who was convicted of robberies in seventeen thirty three, was described as quote one of them who frequented gin shops. Perhaps most horrifyingly, in seventeen thirty four, Judath Defour was convicted of murder after two witnesses testified that she had stripped her daughter Mary naked and left her in a field, and sold the baby's clothes to buy jim at the same time. Though most of the focus here, most of the concern was targeted at poor and working class people and what they were doing with their time and money. In seventeen seven, Daniel Defoe wrote about the after effects of the prohibition of trade with France and this increase in English distilling. He said, quote we find since these prohibitions very great quantities of brandy run by the arts of clandestine traders. But even that quantity is now much abated except in the north parts and the west parts, since the distillers have found out a way to hit the palette of the poor by their new fashioned compound waters called geneva, so that the common people seem not to value the French brandy as usual and even not to desire it. Efforts to curtail drinking, and especially gin drinking, were really rooted in upper class ideas of appropriate behavior and social standards and on quote, cleaning up the moral lives of the poor, rather than addressing any of the social or economic factors that might contribute to excessive drinking. Soon, gin was perceived as the cause of poverty and immorality, and it became symbolic of pretty much every vice and social ill. To combat all of this, Parliament passed a series of Gin Acts starting in seventeen twenty nine, and these used a range of strategies, including taxes and fines and licensing fees and other regulations to try to discourage gin sales and consumption. For example, in seventeen thirty three, it became illegal to sell spirits quote about the streets, in any wheelbarrow or upon the water in any ship, boat or vessel. Several versions of the Gin Act encouraged people to inform on others for illegally selling spirits. This was especially true after the passage of the seventeen thirty six Act, which did more to stoke illicit gin sales than to discourage people from doing it. Informers were paid half of the ten pound fine that was collected for violating the Act. At some point, this was lucrative enough that people basically became professional informers, often working in groups of two or three so they could back up each other's accounts when they reported someone's illicit business. Professional informers had to be strategic, though, People who couldn't afford to pay the fine were sentenced to two months of hard labor instead, and that meant that the informers would get nothing. Most informers also avoided reporting people from their own neighborhoods, since they faced retaliation and sometimes even physical violence, for getting local drinking establishments shut down. Their reputations in their own communities also weren't likely to recover if they reported somebody who knew and trusted them, but there was still a lot of retaliation. A law passed in seventeen thirty eight set a penalty of seven years transportation to the North American colonies for attacking an informer. By that point, there had been at least twelve thousand prosecutions for selling gin without a license, and these laws disproportionately affected women. Newly established gin houses were often more welcoming to women than pubs that sold beer were, especially when it came to single, working class women. So even though women weren't necessarily drinking more gin than men were, they were more visible than they had been. This was kind of new, so soon the drink was being more associated with women. Jen became known by nicknames like Ladies Delight, Mother Geneva, and Mother Jin. But at the same time, while only about a third of Britain's unlicensed gin sellers were women, at least half the people who faced charges for violating the gen X were women. Women also made up as much as three fourths of the people who were imprisoned because they could not afford to pay the fine. The gen Ax were deeply unpopular among poor and working class people, leading to riots in seventeen thirty seven. Trying to enforce the law was also expensive, and in the seventeen forties the Kingdom needed to put more money toward the War of the Austrian Succession. This was also happening in parallel with the Jacobite uprisings that we have covered on the show before, and there were fears that the Jacobites were stirring up discontent among working class people, using all of this furor over gin as a cover. On top of all these factors and shifts in the government's priorities, two of the biggest proponents of the Gin Acts died in the late seventeen thirties. One was Sir Joseph Checkal, Master of the Rolls, and the other was Edward Parker, who had run a professional informing ring that had accused at least fifteen hundred people of illegal activity. So, after all this, the wars and the Jacobites and the people dying, in seventeen forty three, Parliament repealed the act that had been passed in seventeen thirty six and replaced it with one that was more focused on regulating the industry that on trying to curtail it. So licenses became more affordable and the unlicensed gin trade started to wane. The war may have contributed to a decline in the illicit liquor trade as well. Some people who had been supporting themselves that way instead found work related to the war. A new style of beer was also introduced around this time. That would be porter, which started to become more popular and more affordable to working class people. The Gin Act of seventeen fifty one built on the one that had been passed in seventeen forty three. It increased the duty on gin and set a licensing fee of two pounds a year, and mandated that only respectable people were eligible for a license to sell spirits. Jin's popularity continued to wane in the UK after this, dropping from an estimated eight point five million gallons consumed in seventeen fifty one to five point nine million just a year later. You think of millions of gallons, it sounds like so much, but that's a huge drop off. It's it's a you know, spread out among a lot of people also drinking a lot. Like a lot of people drinking a lot for sure. Uh. There had been a huge number of pamphlets, sermons, works of art and the like during the Gin craze, and ironically, the one that's probably the most well known came out at the very end of this That was jin Lane by past podcast subject William Hogarth. And this was an engraving showing all of the evils of Gin, among other things, an extremely emaciated man with a cup and bottle in his hands, an inebriated woman whose child is falling over the railing of the stairs that she's sitting on, and a crowd of people having a melee in the background. It has the caption jin cursed fiend with fury, fraud makes human race a prey. It enters by a deadly draft and steals our life away, virtue and truth. Driven to despair, its rage compels to fly, but cherishes with hellish care, theft, murder, perjury, damned cup that on the vitals, praise that liquid fire contains, which madness to the heart conveys and rolls it through the veins. O Garth put out his engraving Beer Street as a companion to this one. This is a far more pleasant scene of people mostly just going about their lives and business. It's caption reads quote beer happy produce of our aisle con sinu e strength, impart and wearied with fatigue and toil, can cheer each manly heart labor and art upheld by the successfully advanced. We quoth thy balmy juice with glee and water, leave to France genius of health, thy grateful taste rivals the cup of Jove when warms each English generous breast with liberty and love, Oh William hogarth Beer good, Jin bad. In the words of William Hogarth, I also read some speculation that the reason that he put this out like really at the end of all this, when Jim's popularity was dropping really quickly, was that, thanks to the ends of earlier wars, there were suddenly a lot of unemployed sailors and others about, and that that made uh people worried once again about the specter of gin, Oh William hogarth Um. Obviously this was not the end of gin. So we're going to talk about what happened in Jin's history a little bit more after we pause for a sponsor break. In eighteenth century Britain, the drink that people were consuming and describing as gin was really all over the place in terms of what grain it was made of and how it was flavored, what it tasted like, whether it was adulterated with anything dangerous. Most of it was made in batches in pot stills, so there could even be a huge variation in quality from batch to batch, even when those batches were all made by the same distiller. In general, though, a lot of the flavorings that were added into it who were there to try to improve the taste of some generally poor quality alcohol. One of those flavorings was sugar, so the final beverage was sweeter than jin typically is today most of the time. And this sweeter, rougher jin became known as Old Tom, and there are several stories about where that name came from. One is that when the Gin Acts were in effect, Captain Dudley Bradstreet rented a house for the purpose of illicitly selling gin. He put a picture of an Old Tom cat on the outside, and customers would put their money in a drawer built into the wall and whisper a code word, and then their gin would be dispensed through a lead pipe that ran out through the wall from the inside of the house to the outside, and the customer would catch it in a cup. Well. I love this story. It may be apocryphal, and Old Tom may just be a weird name that cropped up. There are some places that still make old Tom gin as like a craft gin experience. Even though gin consumption dropped off pretty quickly after seventeen fifty one, the beverage did not go away entirely. Later on, in the eighteen twenties, a grain surplus combined with a reduction in the duties that were levied on spirits, and jin started to surge in popularity again. A new kind of drinking establishment also evolved around this time. That was the Gin Palace, which tended to be a brightly lit and heavily decorated space where people came to drink. In the mid eighteen twenties, thanks to all this jin consumption in Britain roughly doubled. This stoked a lot of the same concerns that had been part of the gin craze that happened about a hundred years earlier. In an eighteen thirty The Lancet published an article describing what they called gin liver. That's what we would know as cerrosis today. But efforts to reduce gin consumption in the early nineteenth century were focused less on making gin more expensive and more regulated, and more on making beer cheaper. This didn't have quite the intended effect though public houses serving beer became more popular among the working class, while more middle class people started to prefer gin served in a gin palace. Can't didn't really reduce the popularity of gin very much. It just sort of flipped which social classes preferred which drink. The process of making gin also changed somewhat around this time. The column still was developed. Starting around eighteen twenty two, Irish distiller and NEAs Coffee refined this design and was awarded for a patent on his improved version in eighteen thirty. Unlike pots stills, which required distillers to make their wares in small batches, the columns still had run continually, and this made the final product a lot more consistent with generally better quality. Again, there are still plenty of distillers who work in small batches using pot stills today, but generally using more sophisticated techniques and more consistency than in the eighteenth century. The development of the column still also led to a new style of gin, London Dry, named for being made in London and for not being sweetened. Some of the distillers that were established around this time still exists today. For example, Charles tanker Ay established a distillery in the Bloomsbury neighborhood of London. In eighteen thirty Plymouth gin was evolving as well, sweeter and stronger than London dry, and available in a more potent navy strength for provisioning to the Royal Navy. There were still a lot of concerns about all the social issues associated with drinking, and specifically with drinking gin, though Charles Dickens started right about this and his sketches by Bass in eighteen thirty six. Unlike earlier writers from back in the seventeen hundreds, though Dickens didn't really frame jin as the cause of poverty. He was fond of jin himself, and instead he described over consumption and alcohol abuse as effects of poverty and poor living conditions. Quote Jim, Drinking is a great vice in England, but wretchedness and dirt are a greater And until you improve the homes of the poor, or persuade a half famished wretch not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery, with the pittance which divided among his family, would furnish a morsel of bread for each Gin shops will increase in number and splendor, just like William Hogarth had depicted jin Lane in the eighteenth century. Other artists depicted the dangers of alcohol in the nineteenth century, including George Cruikshank, who is sometimes called the modern Hogarths. Krukshanks satirical The Gin Shop shows a whole inebriated family in the shop, including children standing in a trap with death off to one side, and a cask of old tom shaped like a coffin. Unlike the eighteenth century movement that had mostly focused on spirits, the temperance movement that arose in the UK in the nineteenth century focused on the dangers of all alcohols, including beer. More London dry distillers were established in the middle of the nineteenth century, including Gilbie's in eighteen fifty seven and Beef Eater in eighteen sixty three. Distillers also started experimenting with different blends of botanicals in addition to the junipers, to give their products different flavor profiles. All kinds of gin based cocktails and mixed drinks evolved during the nineteenth century. Bidders were popularized in the UK around this time, particularly pay Shows and Angus Your a Biters Plymouth gin flavored with angister a biters became known as pink gin, which was both a popular beverage and a treatment to soothe the stomach and prevent seasickness. Here in the US you can buy various pink gins in bottles, some of which are this and some of which are not or pink for some other reason. Another nineteenth century innovation was the gimlet, combining gin and lime, and this probably arose from the use of lime juice to prevent scurvy amongst sailors. Sometimes this name is attributed to Sir Thomas Gimlets, the surgeon General of the Navy, although another idea is that it was named for the tool that was used to drill holes in the barrels that these liquids were stored in. That tool is also called a gimlet. The martini was introduced by about eighteen seventy, combining gin, vermouth, and garnish. This is also about when the gin and tonic made its debut. Chinchona bark has its own long long history as the source of medicine to treat recurring fevers. Quinine comes from Cinchona bark, and the British Royal Navy relied on it to treat malaria. Quinine was unpleasant to consume, though in eighteen seventy Schwepps introduced what it called Indian tonic water that was carbonated water infused with quinine. John Jacob Schwepp was not the first person to carbonate water, and Schwepps was not the first company to combine carbonated water and quinine. But Schwepps was the first company to produce carbonated water at an industrial scale and also to market this quinine tonic as a malaria preventative. Mixing tonic water with gin and serving that over ice became a popular way for people in tropical areas to get their doses of quinine. Tonic water, as it is produced today, has far less quinine in it does not really prevent our treat malaria at the currents proportions. Please do not count on on these things as medicine for yourself. Uh. This brings us to Jin's connections to colonialism. Anywhere the British Empire established a trade or started a colony, it introduced gin or made gin more widely available there than it had been before. Britain and other European powers also traded liquor for enslaved Africans during the Transatlantic slave trade. Overwhelmingly the people already living in these areas already had their own fermenting methods, and unless religious prohibitions on alcohol were in place, some of them were used to make beers, wines, or other alcoholic beverages in addition to being used to preserve foods. But stronger distilled spirits were often a new innovation, and this led to some of the same societal and health issues that Britain had already witten Nets starting in the eighteenth century, combined with the same paternalistic attitudes about how working or poorer people were spending their time, but now a lot of those attitudes were also threaded through with racism. Colonial officials often had a lot of concerns as local people developed their own distilling practices and lumped everything that they were making under the umbrella of gin, regardless of what was actually being used. So as one example in Nigeria, British officials described locally made distilled palm wine as gin, even though did not have the ingredients that were commonly used to make gin. So we haven't really talked about the United States at all, Although jin did exist in the US, Americans tended to prefer both beer and whiskey to gin, but when prohibition went into effect in nineteen twenty, ilicit gin became a bit more popular. Jin was easier to make than many other spirits since it did not need to be aged, and since the juniper could help disguise the flavor of roughly made alcohol. The terms radiator gin and bathtub gin arose during this time, although bathtub gin was probably meant to describe the dirtiness of the bootleg gin rather than it actually being made in a bathtub. Yeah, the idea of it really being made in bathtubs sort of came about in film depictions of prohibition from later on, rather than how people using it. We're using it at the time. In the early twentieth century, jin's popularity started to wane in a lot of the world. When it came to distilled spirits and their popularity, Jin was really overtaken by vodka, but especially in the United States, attitudes towards drinking also started to shift. Alcoholics Anonymous was established in Nive, and by nineteen fifty the organization had grown large enough to hold its first international convention. The popularity of the quote three martini lunch rose and fell over the course of the mid twentieth century, with Jimmy Carter criticizing that practice when he ran for president in ninety six. Over time, Jin and drinks made with Jin started to be seen as pretty passe. However, again, if you live in the modern world, you know jim didn't go away. Uh, there's really been a resurgence in gin and its popularity more recently. Some people mark jin's resurgence as starting with the introduction of Bombay sapphire in others credit Scottish distillers William Grant and Sons, which introduced Hendrix Jin, and over the last couple of decades there's been a big focus on small batch craft distillers experimenting with botanical blends to come up with their own flavorings and seasonal gin's in the like. In the global gin market was valued at fourteen point oh three billion dollars, with European consumers making up about half of that market share. Yes, Jin a lot of variety in gin nowadays. If if we did not mention your favorite gin or your favorite Jin drink, UH, don't feel personally left out. I haven't mentioned my favorite ones either. Do you have listener mail that may or may not involve Jim. I do. I do have listener mail. Even though we started off this episode with mail, We're gonna read some more mail. This is from Page Page Route. Dear Tracy and Holly. I've been an avid listener of your podcast since February, and I've sent you a few emails expressing my thanks. This is the first time I've had something relevant to contribute. I was flipping through my National Geographic magazine the other day and came across an article titled Eating the Problem about chefs turning invasive species into food. To my delight, kudzoo was included. I immediately went back and listened to your episode about the vine that ate the South. In recent years, kad zoo has been served pickled, fried, dried, fermented, and even as a pesto. This is not the only invasive species getting the restaurant treatment. Chefs have also turned to cooking up lion fish, feral hogs, and Asian carp Although eating these creatures will not completely eradicate them, it is a way to reduce their land cover. Additionally, you mentioned Japanese not weed in your episode as well, which we have several patches of near our house. Every time we pass them, my mom, who was a gardener, remarks on how hard it is to kill and how it is spreading like crazy. Hopefully not weed will not end up taking over the north like Kudzo did the South, but it is quite difficult to get rid of. Thank you so much for your wonderful podcast. I look forward to my bus rides each day as they give me a chance to listen to your latest episode. I'm including a picture of my pug, Ruthy as well. She loves the show almost as much as I do. You keep up with the wonderful work, best Page. Ruthie is such a cute pug. Look at this um. I just liked this email this morning, and also making kunzy pesto reminded me of how uh we get most of our vegetables from our farmer's market, and the farm that we get our carrots from sells the carrots with all their tops still attached, and we have made carrot top pesto a bunch of times. It's been quite yummy. So thanks Page for this note. If you'd like to send us an email about this or any other podcasts for a history podcast at i heart radio dot com and we're all over social media at missed in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you can subscribe to our show on I heart radio app and anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.