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Paul Nugent, Modernity, Tradition, and Intoxication: Comparative Lessons from South Africa and West Africa, Past & Present, Volume 222, Issue suppl_9, 2014, Pages 126–145, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtt032
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As a transient state of being, intoxication is inherently elusive. The imbibing subject often experiences a sense of euphoria and clarity of insight that is never fully recaptured the morning after. In that sense, drinking is much like dreaming: residual traces of the experience remain, but almost always in an incomplete and discontinuous manner. Recapturing the subjective experience of intoxication poses an even greater challenge for historians, given that most of the evidence tends to come from observers whose relationship to the state in question may be less than sympathetic. This is true of colonial Africa, where administrators, missionaries, and employers, as well as African proponents of Islamic orthodoxy, framed a public discourse that was broadly opposed to alcohol and frowned on open displays of drunkenness. By continuing to indulge as they saw fit, Africans made a statement of sorts, but one that needs to be decoded with nuance. On the whole, we know far more about what Europeans thought of African consumption than what the drinkers themselves did.
