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20 people you didn't know where Prohibitionists

20 people you didn’t know were Prohibitionists

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.

King Khama

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Full name: Khama III

Lived: c. 1837-21 February 1923

Nationality: Bamagwato, Bechuanaland (Botswana)

Occupation: kgosi (king)

As Cecil Rhodes and the British South Africa Company were busily colonizing much of Southern Africa in the 1890s, they increasingly clashed with native tribal leaders, who protested that the European colonists used liquor to subjugate their people and swindle their land. In 1895, the most outspoken of these leaders—King Khama III of Bechuanaland (present-day Botswana)—along with chiefs Bathoen and Sebele, traveled to Great Britain and succeeded in swaying both British public opinion and the government of Queen Victoria to recognize their sovereignty and their local prohibitions against the white liquor trade. By becoming a protectorate under the Crown, rather than being forcibly assimilated into Rhodes’ exploitative Company, Bechuanaland would remain a “dry” island of native sovereignty in a region of white alco-colonialism. The visit of the three kings to Britain is commemorated on the Bank of Botswana’s 100 Pula note.

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