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This chapter focuses on multinational corporations and global markets for alcohol, since this is the most rapidly expanding sector of the alcohol industry and the most politically powerful. However, more than half of the world's alcohol supply still falls outside the scope of the multinational producers, in the hands of ‘informal’ home producers — often of traditional beverages — and local producers of industrialized traditional beverages and ‘international’-style beverages. Those sectors are also briefly discussed, emphasizing relationships and common interests in the sale of alcohol as the alcohol industry consolidates on a global basis.

This chapter discusses the history of alcohol in the Middle Ages. Between 1000 and 1500, the growth of urban administrations, the consolidation of church power, and changes in the economic and commercial structures of Europe brought about many important changes in the place of alcohol in European society and culture. Among the most significant lies in the origins of an alcohol industry, with the beginnings of concentration of ownership in brewing and long-distance trade in both beer and wine. Overall production increased, and the commentaries on excessive drinking might lead us to believe that consumption also increased.

This chapter considers the fateful final attempt by the CCB to introduce nationwide state purchase of the liquor trade. At this point, Britain came within a whisker of having a nationalised drinks industry, including all pubs, clubs and breweries. The Board failed in this endeavour and this inability to enact state purchase marks the nadir of the Board’s power. Its political capital, which had been plentiful early in the war, had been spent. From now on the work of the Board was tainted by association with a highly controversial scheme, representative in some eyes of the worst traits of tyrannical state interference. The CCB was thus damaged and henceforth had to face increased criticism. Moreover, while moderate licensing proposals were henceforth seen as acceptable larger, more ambitious CCB schemes, were deemed unworkable. The CCB was increasingly disliked and its continued intrusion in the social lives of the British public, when armament production had come to terms with the demands of war, was increasingly resented. The clock was ticking for the CCB and the end of the war brought an increasing number of calls for an end to its existence.

This chapter discusses the incremental improvements of Dublin in luminosity. The chapter notes that the Irish capital entered the age of gas lighting in the 1820s (although Dublin in 1825 was ahead of most big cities outside Britain), and gas installation was underway in Drogheda, Cork, Waterford and Limerick's Newtown Pery. But as high streets became brighter, many houses in older neighbourhoods, particularly in the southern cities, were darkened. The chapter examines its specific cause — the window tax, an old and unpopular levy in England, which had been introduced into Ireland in 1799 as a wartime measure. It then turns to analyze post-war complaints about taxation, and highlight the most tangible legacy of the post-war crisis in Dublin — the Mendicity Institution, which established to document, clothe, feed and employ able-bodied beggars on the capital's streets. The chapter illustrates the Irish manufacture of cotton, and the economic future of southern and western cities in terms of food processing and alcohol production.