This book tells the unknown history of missionaries, social hygienists and political activists who campaigned against drinking in the Balkans. It argues that by doing so, they helped to constitute the modern Bulgarian nation. From their position at the European margins, these actors participated in and transformed the intersecting global currents of moral reform, social hygiene and political progressivism at the beginning of the twentieth century. Campaigns against alcohol and drugs provided a platform for a variety of political causes, ranging from women’s suffrage, to anti-colonial nationalism and anti-immigration mobilization. Based on a broad range of Bulgarian, English, German and French primary sources, the book provides a new perspective on both the troubled history of twentieth-century nationalism in the Balkans and the dynamics of global debates on the regulation on psychoactive substances in the modern world. It offers the first in-depth study of temperance movements in the Balkans, a region often seen as on the edges of Europe and civilization, while demonstrating its importance within global networks of activists and reformers.weiterlesen