Investigating the Importance of Collective Alcohol Production and Consumption: The Case of the 19th Century American Utopian Communities
As highlighted by Guarneri (1994) or McKanan (2007), intentional communities, such as Fourierist, German-Christian or Icarian communities, as utopian alternatives had participated paradoxically to the modernization of America. Icarians or Inspirationnists (Amana, Iowa) were renowned for their specific contribution to the agricultural development of vineyards in Illinois, Iowa and eventually in California. Success of grape culture in southwestern Iowa were attribute to the Icarian and Amana Influences (Hine 1983, Peragine 2019). Furthermore, as one can see in the cash books of the communities, the alcohol production was of key importance for the economic success of these communities, even if their founders (e.g. E. Cabet for Icarian Communities) promote moderation and temperance (Kesten 1993). As contemporary landmarks of utopian communities, the oldest vineyard in Illinois (Baxter Vineyard) has been the propriety of an Icarian family since its inception in the mid-nineteenth century, the biggest craft brewery in operation in Iowa had been founded in the Amana Colonies.
On the one hand, numerous works had been developed on the social and economic history of Bier and Wine in Monastery Communites (e.g. Poelmans & Swimmen 2011). However to our knowledge, no research had tried to address the specific issues of utopian communities, even if at the economic and organizational level, these communities share a striking number of similarities. On the other hand few studies if any (one exception is Peradigne 2019) dedicated to the history of brewing and wine-making hardly mention the importance of the utopian communities.
Therefore our communication, based on the access to various primary resources (minutes of general meetings, cash books and ledger, private collections of letters) thanks to the support of the French Icarian Colony Foundation and the Center for Communal Studies (University of Southern Indiana, USA), will try to fill this gap by investigating the cultural, sociological and economic importance of alcohol production in the Utopian Communities (icarian, fourierist and german christian) of the 19th century and addressing the following dimensions:the importance of country of origin traditions, the relations between homebrewing and product marketing and the consequential internal communities disputes.
