Speakeasies, rum runners, and backwoods fundamentalists railing about the ills of strong drink are just one small part of the global story of prohibition. The full story of prohibition—one you’ve probably never been told—is perhaps one of the most broad-based and successful transnational social movements of the modern era. The call for temperance motivated and aligned activists within progressive, social justice, labor rights, women’s rights, and indigenous rights movements advocating for communal self-protection against the corrupt and predatory “liquor machine” that had become rich off the misery and addictions of the poor around the world.
From the slums of South Asia, to the beerhalls of Central Europe, to the Native American reservations of the United States, discover 20 key figures from history that you didn’t know were prohibitionists.
Hjalmar Branting
Full name: Karl Hjalmar Branting
Lived: 23 November 1860-24 February 1925
Nationality: Sweden
Occupation: journalist, critic, politician
Social critic, founder of the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP), Nobel Peace Prize winner, and the world’s first social-democratic head of state, Hjalmar Branting was an outspoken opponent of the Swedish liquor trade that made a profit by keeping workers and peasants drunk and befuddled. Flexible and non-dogmatic, Branting made space within the SAP for both prohibitionists and non-prohibitionists. First as party leader, then Swedish Prime Minister, Branting took a keen interest in alcohol-control policies, such as the Gothenburg system of municipal dispensaries and the Bratt system of individual liquor rationing. In doing so, the profit motive was removed from the liquor trade, which lead to dramatic decreases in alcohol-related social harms without the typical upsurge in bootlegging and crime.
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