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In Public Houses: Drink and the Revolution of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts. - book reviews
Journal of Social History, Fall, 1997 by Mark Edward Lender
David Conroy has written a fascinating and important book. In Public Houses takes a novel look at one of colonial America's best known institutions, the tavern. Taverns were central to much of early social history, especially in the New England and Middle Colonies, and historians reasonably have given them considerable attention. Indeed, many scholars have long seen drinking and its contexts as social markers, reflecting and interacting with their social surroundings. Conroy, however, in an interesting mixture of social, political, and cultural history, has expanded this perspective and shed some genuinely new light on the significance of drinking establishments. In so doing, he has added a great deal to our understanding of the importance of drink and its institutional settings in the transformation of colonial social relationships and politics over the eighteenth century.
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The focus of In Public Houses is tavern life in Massachusetts, especially in and around Boston. It was in the Massachusetts capital that taverns were most numerous and controversial and, importantly, pertinent licensing and other records most available. Conroy offers a richly detailed look at the tavern long familiar to historians: an institution deeply fixed in colonial life, a place of rest and refreshment, a place for social interactions of all kinds, and often the site of official local functions. Bostonians, as well as most colonials when they could, attended the tavern as religiously as they attended church. Yet in this reality lay the source of considerable controversy, a protracted and often subtle social conflict at the heart of In Public Places.
Conroy does a wonderful job of explaining why the popularity of public houses eventually drew the suspicions and then the fire of the colonial elite. Puritan clergy and their social allies did their best to place restrictions on the activities and numbers of taverns, and their motives stemmed from concerns beyond the sins of drunkenness and related bar-room behavior. At a more fundamental level, elites also feared the growth of a popular culture increasingly at odds with Puritan mores, and they saw the tavern as the institution at the center of the matter. Moreover, as the author points out, they were right. Taverns allowed a forum for popular discussion of public issues, the distribution of early handbills and newspapers, and an exchange of ideas that took place without elite oversight. This phenomenon became even more pronounced as colonial society became more complex and Boston produced a variety of taverns catering to many different social groups. It became as difficult to police what people were saying and thinking as it was to control what they drank, a situation society's betters found profoundly unsettling.
Embedded in popular culture, public houses gradually assumed a social and political importance sufficient to counter Puritan and other elite assaults. Taverners, for example, became influential constituents, and selectmen and other local officials had to take them - and, indirectly, their patrons - seriously no matter what the elite of the colony or Boston thought. The public also valued the ownership of even small public houses as means of providing employment and lessening the need for public assistance to the poor. Many women, especially widows who might otherwise have faced poverty, ran successful taverns. For many poor and middling colonials, the tavern trade opened the way for social participation on terms that much of society accepted and valued; and thus Conroy is fully convincing when he concludes that tavern life played a vital role in altering power relationships among colonials.
The extent to which taverns fostered a "revolution in authority" became most evident with the approach of the Revolution. Popular culture had accepted the tavern as an essential aspect of community life, and very few outside of elite circles questioned the propriety of operating or patronizing a public house. Tavern meeting rooms were prime locations for political discourse; Massachusetts taverners held many important political posts, and even militia outfits routinely used taverns as gathering points. As the author put it, "tavern haunting," far from being a "blight on the social and political landscape," became "a vehicle for necessary political vigilance." The taverns became an indispensable part of the information network that kept Whigs informed and organized. Royal government eventually distrusted the goings-on in the taverns as deeply as any member of the old Puritan clergy, and with every reason.
Institutional histories, like biographies, often claim too much on the part of their protagonists. To his credit, the author never falls into this trap. His argument on behalf of the influence of the tavern is subtle, and he depicts trends developing unevenly over more than a century. Nor does he ignore some of the problematic aspects of tavern life, including untoward drinking behavior, as social concerns. Drink and drink sellers would remain lightning rods for a variety of social critics. Yet Conroy is compelling in his finding that Massachusetts' public houses were a significant part of the social and cultural changes that shaped the Bay Colony as it moved from colonial to independent status and, more significantly, as elite rule adjusted to the rise of a vibrant popular culture. Conroy's solid research effort and fine writing provide an extra measure of confidence in his excellent book.
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