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.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
Full name: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Lived: c. 1881-10 November 1938
Nationality: Turkey
Occupation: soldier, politician
Long before becoming the founding father of modern Turkey, the soldier Mustafa Kemal had developed a well-known addiction to the anise-flavored Turkish liquor known as raki. It would be surprising, then, to discover Kemal Atatürk among the ranks of global prohibitionists. Of course, it was not a question of personal temperament or taste, but of politics and economics. The liquor and wine industries in the Ottoman Empire and during European occupation after World War I directly enriched the European powers at the expense of Turkish wealth, health, and sobriety. As the military general Atatürk gradually beat back the Greek and British occupiers of Anatolia, the prohibition of the liquor trade by Turkey’s Grand National Assembly was expanded in step. Prohibition was only repealed once Turkish sovereignty was fully regained, and whatever financial benefit from the liquor trade would accrue to the Turkish state rather than foreign occupiers.
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