Abstract
French authors in the nineteenth century assumed that before the colonial conquest of the Maghreb, all Muslims in the region had abstained from alcohol. As a consequence, they were both surprised at and fascinated by the alcohol consumption of the colonised Muslims in the Maghreb, which they interpreted as an irreversible break with Islam (i.e. turning drinkers into apostates) and a necessary consequence of the spread of French colonialism. Some French authors even tentatively interpreted alcohol-drinking Muslims as showing signs of assimilating French culture and thus – in the colonial worldview – advancing in civilisation, while others regretted both their loss of abstinence as well as their alleged taste for particularly strong forms of alcohol, such as absinthe.
This article will focus on the consumption of champagne. The French discourse on Muslim champagne drinkers focused on often ridiculed “justifications”, allegedly reported to French settlers and travellers in the Maghreb, through which Muslims “explained” why the consumption of champagne – as it was only “gazouz”, i.e. lemonade – did not constitute a transgression of one of the most visible of Islamic laws. These colonial descriptions of wine-abstaining, champagne-consuming Muslims offers an insight into how differences were created between coloniser and colonised, between civilised and primitive, and how the consumption of the same drink did not necessarily lead to a shared experience.
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Supplementary Material
The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/asia-2019-0004).
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Inhaltsverzeichnis – Table des Matières – Contents
- Natural Constraints to Cultural Relativism Example: Ricci’s Pacific-Centered World Maps
- It Is Only Gazouz: Muslims and Champagne in the Colonial Maghreb
- Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784–1817) – der Basler Orientreisende malgré lui und sein Besuch bei den Drusen im Gebiet des Mont-Liban
- Unfertige Studien 6: Der Brudermord des Kain aus theologischer Sicht
- Glocalization Narratives in Indian Literature and Cinema: An Introduction
- Becoming a Crorepati: From Glocal TV Game to Grobal Fiction
- Early ‘Glocalization’ in Indian Cinema: An Analysis of Films of Dada Saheb Phalke and Himanshu Rai
- Charulata 2011: Dramatizing the Glocal
- Seeing Kolkata: Globalization and the Changing Context of the Narrative of Bengali-ness in Two Contemporary Films
- A Queer Lack of Success. Discourses on Same-sex Love and Neoliberalism in the Hindi Novel Paṃkhvālī Nāv by Paṃkaj Biṣṭ
- Modern Durgas Fighting against the Demons of Globalization
- From Topophilia to Despair. Kashinath Singh’s Banaras Trilogy
- Book Reviews – Buchbesprechungen – Comptes Rendus
- Robyn Creswell: City of Beginnings: Poetic Modernism in Beirut
- Ebrey, Patricia Buckley and Huang, Shih-shan Susan: Visual and Material Cultures in Middle Period China
- Zaman, Muhammad Qasim: Islam in Pakistan: A History
- Ahrens, Tobias: Kampō. Einführung in die japanische Pflanzenheilkunde in 25 Fragen und Antworten
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Inhaltsverzeichnis – Table des Matières – Contents
- Natural Constraints to Cultural Relativism Example: Ricci’s Pacific-Centered World Maps
- It Is Only Gazouz: Muslims and Champagne in the Colonial Maghreb
- Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784–1817) – der Basler Orientreisende malgré lui und sein Besuch bei den Drusen im Gebiet des Mont-Liban
- Unfertige Studien 6: Der Brudermord des Kain aus theologischer Sicht
- Glocalization Narratives in Indian Literature and Cinema: An Introduction
- Becoming a Crorepati: From Glocal TV Game to Grobal Fiction
- Early ‘Glocalization’ in Indian Cinema: An Analysis of Films of Dada Saheb Phalke and Himanshu Rai
- Charulata 2011: Dramatizing the Glocal
- Seeing Kolkata: Globalization and the Changing Context of the Narrative of Bengali-ness in Two Contemporary Films
- A Queer Lack of Success. Discourses on Same-sex Love and Neoliberalism in the Hindi Novel Paṃkhvālī Nāv by Paṃkaj Biṣṭ
- Modern Durgas Fighting against the Demons of Globalization
- From Topophilia to Despair. Kashinath Singh’s Banaras Trilogy
- Book Reviews – Buchbesprechungen – Comptes Rendus
- Robyn Creswell: City of Beginnings: Poetic Modernism in Beirut
- Ebrey, Patricia Buckley and Huang, Shih-shan Susan: Visual and Material Cultures in Middle Period China
- Zaman, Muhammad Qasim: Islam in Pakistan: A History
- Ahrens, Tobias: Kampō. Einführung in die japanische Pflanzenheilkunde in 25 Fragen und Antworten