ABSTRACT
The chapter shows how alcohol has played a fundamental role in the process of state formation, and the securing of monopoly of tax that the process of political centralisation is based on. Alcohol and other pyschoactive substances have been a critical source of revenue, with this declining over the course of modernity however, as economies become more advanced and complex. The impulse for generating revenue from alcohol has typically come from the cost of international competition. Alcohol, a particularly suitable good for taxation, has played a significant role in fostering the commercialisation of society, through acting as a stimulus to economic activity more generally, with drinking establishments serving as a nexus for early capitalism in particular. It has also been a major item of industry and trade itself. Drinking establishments also played an important and flexible infrastructure for public administration by the state. Thus, the chapter shows how alcohol has been a critical resource for centralising states.
