“You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.”
This is nation-state building according to Frank Zappa. It could well be that he was right: what is Ireland without Guinness, Mexico without Corona? The beverage has proved to be a surprisingly powerful emblem of nationalism and cultural identity. With such a long history and such enduring popularity, its narrative cannot be separated from the course of human development: beer helps define where we come from and who we are.
Beer Before Bread
Even in antiquity, beer built nations and cultures. In an interview, Patrick McGovern, scientific director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, told the HPR that beer “encouraged people to settle down, build temples and places, and then take care of grains to have enough beer to keep this going.” In other words, civilization owes a great debt to the human thirst for booze. McGovern’s thesis is not an outlandish one: the notion of “beer before bread”—that brewing, not baking, determined where ancient communities settled—is one advocated by master brewers and professors of psychiatry alike.
Why is beer so important? Contrary to common sense, the beverage appears to suit our diet well. As McGovern noted, “Fermented foods keep better and attract humans,” and our enzymes are capable of transforming that beer into energy. According to the archaeologist, “we are primed biologically to consume alcoholic beverages.” This may be why beer’s invention could even have preceded that of bread, sustaining humans as they settled in Mesopotamia and beyond. Yet another argument for the early adoption of beer is that fermentation occurs naturally, while the rise of bread requires quite a bit of human intervention.
Alcohol’s contribution to human societies began with its prominence in religious ceremonies, which heavily influenced ancient rulers. The role of beer and wine in the religions of old cannot be underestimated, and, according to McGovern, the beverages helped people understand their role in the universe— if only after inebriated introspection. More importantly, the archaeologist makes the link that “the tie between religion and rulers was very close … and it is often [left to] the rulers who had the expendable income and control to set up the production of the [alcoholic] beverages to build monumental structures.” His assertion seems plausible, especially given evidence that the great pyramids of Egypt were built on the backs of beer-fueled laborers. There, each worker “had a 5-liter allotment daily of beer,” and whether in Egypt or Peru or elsewhere, “rulers were taking key fermented beverages like beer or wine, and they were using it to bring the community together and do lots of extra work.” McGovern’s assertion that beer “is what encouraged to some extent, maybe to major extent, the rise of cities” is reasonable.
Yet alcohol did more than build cities—it also filled them and civilized them. McGovern likes to say that “beer is what makes us human.” He explains, “We can make a strong case that … humans use these beverages to encourage social interaction, to celebrate special ceremonies in the political realm, [and] that treaties or agreements are being discussed and signed off on and celebrated with alcoholic beverages.” Even our contemporary White House used its own honey ale to broker peace at the “Beer Summit” that addressed the controversy surrounding Henry Louis Gates’ 2009 arrest.
Perhaps that debt is why modern beers tip their hats to history and faith: Sam Adams is an American patriot and a lovely lager while Stella is both the Christmas star and a pilsner. There are beers named “Plead the Fifth,” “Commodore Perry,” “Lincoln’s Logger,” and “Roosevelt,” among many other patriotic and historical names. It’s difficult to determine how a government would exist sans alcohol, but far less a stretch to imagine the taste of beer before the invention of politics.
A Local Brew
Beer, out of all other alcoholic substances, has the unique ability to engender regional pride and cohesion. In part, beer is a result of geography. As Wesleyan government professor Peter Rutland told the HPR, until railcars and better technology became more prevalent, “beer was a very local product, and it could not be transported very far.” Since regional flavor was highly dependent upon local grains and flavorings, cultural identities were inextricably linked to specific brews. Moreover, grains and other beer components are staples that are often hardier and cheaper than wine grapes and other fruits. Montello points out that due to its combination of relatively low alcohol content and a flavor profile that matches far more food than wine does, “beer is the most popular alcoholic beverage in the world.”
In fact, choosing beer over wine is a deterministic stance for Catalonian revolutionaries. Craft brewers, in an effort to push back against the dominance of Spanish beer in the region, have chosen to expand beyond the region’s traditional cava to compete in the ring of lager and ale. By including uniquely Catalonian flavors in their blends these microbrewers are contributing, in their own way, to the secessionist movement in the area. Encouraging the Catalan people to forsake cheap Spanish beer is, like reclaiming dialect and land, a fiercely nationalistic action.
Beer’s locality also imbues it with a sense of heritage and tradition. The beverage speaks to an agrarian past of honest work and recreation, and it makes sense that particular groups will prefer their particular beer. Add to that the main drinking demographic, young men aflame with fervor for their country and their sports team, and therein lies the recipe for nationalism.
Even today, the socializing aspect of consuming ales and lagers is a building block for regional movements. Although building “beeramids” in fraternity houses is a far cry from constructing the edifices at Giza, both ancient Egyptian laborers and new pledge brothers rely on beer to bring them closer to their peers and build a communal identity.
National Fervor for Brewing
So, beer is regional. But is it national? It seems difficult to tell, given that “it’s very hard to measure nationalism, to isolate behavior which is nationalist,” according to Rutland. Montello, meanwhile, asserts that beers can correlate with regional or cultural identity, but national identity might be more of a stretch. On the other hand, in certain instances, McGovern believes that “with beer, or even with other distilled beverages, you can equate the beverage with the country.”
That certainly seems to be the case with smaller regions. The Catalonian microbrewers are one clear example, and the Palestinian Taybeh brand is another. The proprietors of the first and only Palestinian beer rely on alcohol-drenched social ties to promote a nationalistic agenda alongside their brew: part of their mission, as stated on the company website, is to brew “an excellent Palestinian beer while creating a nationalistic feeling.” While their efforts have been concentrated in a small, eponymous village, Taybeh seeks to expand beyond its region and increase its market share in Israel as well.
These anecdotes are not distinctive—each beer, in its own way, has a cultural origin story. So, too, does each beer feed off of regional, even national, popularity.
The Business of Booze
Evidence of how beer and nationalism interlink is most clear in how breweries market their products. Leanne White, senior lecturer of marketing at Victoria University and author of Wine and Identity, told the HPR, “Beer campaigns can be particularly effective when patriotism is used. These sorts of appeals—to nation and also to a state or a region—help set one brand apart from another.” For example, Molson launched one of the most successful advertisements of all time, not just for beer, by drawing on its country of origin. Its “I am Canadian” campaign took off in 2000 and spawned innumerable parodies, but it seemed quite clear that Molson was selling Canadian beer to Canadians. Although Molson has since merged with the American brand Coors, dropping the “I am Canadian” slogan in the process, it still leverages national pride as a clever marketing ploy. In honor of the Olympics, Molson set up a beer fridge in Sochi that only opened for Canadian passport holders, which, while not a good way to move volume, certainly drew mass media attention.
Nationalism is a lucrative strategy, and such tactics are not isolated to the west. In Asia, where German travelers introduced beer, a Laotian beer has taken on its own flavor. Beerlao dominates consumption in the country and the company reinvests in its nation, too, to the order of $32.5 million in 2005. While this may seem like a sign of true nationalism, Beerlao’s success was likely a result of a 40 percent tariff on foreign beers, and it seems that the brand relies on patriotic fervor to sell units.
Countries also heavily promote their national flavors for economic reasons, not just nationalistic ones. This is of course true of beverages other than beer. But succeeding internationally is even more essential than succeeding domestically, hence why Taybeh is looking toward Israel. Notes Rutland, “at this stage … it is more a commercial question than a question of political nationalism.” Part of the shift from regional identity to national merchandising may be due to the fact that, “In the late 20th century beer making became increasingly concentrated in international conglomerates, but national branding continued to be used.”
As a result, certain beer brands became indelibly linked to their countries, in accordance with McGovern’s suggestion that the two can be equated at times. White somewhat agrees, as “beer is all about connecting with the brand” and “people identify strongly with place.” Consequentially, consumers react with ire when “their” brands merge with or are acquired by foreigners. Japanese Asahi’s investment in Chinese Tsingtao, the Molson-Coors merger, and the acquisition of American Anheuser-Busch by Belgian InBev all led to significant outcry. According to White, “people like ‘ownership’ of their local brand,” just as they might feel belonging to the brand’s place of origin. In the case of beer, brands may leverage nationalism, but the people will also claim their stake.
Pints and Patriotism
It is clear that beer is helpful in defining what White calls place identity and can be an integral part of it. Far murkier, however, is how much ales, lambics, and lagers actually contribute to a national identity. While the emergent multinationals may have developed patriotic slogans out of marketing necessity, that link seems artificial and tenuous compared to secessionist or independence movements propelled, in part, by beer. The recent renaissance of craft brewing, especially in the United States, might test the hold that traditional “American” beers have on our national identity, splintering fandom into more regional blocks. Those trends will certainly be interesting to observe. In the meantime, crack open a brew—and think about how it made you human.