Prohibition: A Battle in America’s Last Culture War

This lecture will show how Prohibition in America animated and polarised those on both sides, and is best understood as part of an American culture war.

A lecture by Professor Gary Gerstle, Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge
28 January 2020 6:00pm UK Time
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/prohibition

The extraordinary effort to ban drink must be understood as part of an American culture war, one framed between the country and the city, between the native-born (white Protestants) and foreign-born (Catholics and Jews), between religion and science, between homogeneity and cosmopolitanism, and, of course, between ‘drys’ and ‘wets’. The lecture will show how Prohibition animated combatants on both sides, generating two Americas that were barely comprehensible to each other, and how the truce declared during depression and war would not last.

Видео Prohibition: A Battle in America’s Last Culture War канала Gresham College