• Introduction - Ambiguous power - What are you drinking? - I DRINK, SEX & VIOLENCE: THE NATURE OF POWER IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY EAST AFRICA Wild women & violent youths - Drinking authority - Chiefs & caravans II NATIVE LIQUOR, MONEY & THE COLONIAL STATE, c. 1900-60 Selling drink, 1900-60 - Native liquor & native authority, 1900-40 - Clubs & beerhalls, 1940-55 - Whisky in the club: 'intoxicating liquor', 1900-47 - III DRINK & DEVELOPMENT, c. 1950-90 'Beer is best': formal sector alcohol, 1947-90 - Traditional liquor & development, c. 1960-90 - 'Impure spirit': illicit distillation, health & power - IV DRINKING IN THE 1990s Beer wars & power drinks, 1990-9 - Crises of drinking & diversification - Appendices - Bibliography

This is a valuable work essential to anyone interested in the social history of East Africa. Willis presents a comprehensive survey of the social significance and effects of brewing, local alcohol consumption, and government policies toward alcohol in Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya. He presents a synthesis of most of the relevant available published and archival material related to alcohol along with information collected from interviews with African informants in one society in each of the three countries covered. ...This is an important and unconsidered field of research. Willis's excellent volume does much to rectify this neglect.