In Under the Influence, Ross Fitzgerald and Trevor L. Jordan look at Australian history and contemporary life through the lens of alcohol use in the community. ‘How a community or nation handles alcohol may be a strong indicator of its collective character’, they suggest. While seeking evidence for this, they throw up some fascinating material.

There was briefly a possibility that New South Wales would be settled as a dry colony; Lord Sydney had wanted this. However, the First Fleet sailors were entitled under British naval law to rum rations, so large quantities came with them or were picked up en route. Rum soon became the surrogate currency. After that, alcohol was firmly entrenched in Australian life.

The ‘Rum Rebellion’ is described at length, and ‘in the end, the events directly precipitating [it] had nothing to do with rum at all’. It was really a clash of personalities and power between Bligh and Macarthur, though several of the fringe players seem to have spent much of their time inebriated. This angle on history is not radically revisionist, but it is convincingly demonstrated. On the other hand, the Northern Territory Administrator, John Gilruth, was run out of Darwin in 1918 simply on the basis of booze. He had prohibited the unloading of 700 cases of Melbourne Bitter for consumption during the Christmas period, something the Territorians would not tolerate.