Pépin Lecture Series - Globalization in a Glass with Malcom Purinton

Malcolm F. Purinton is a Food and World historian whose work focuses primarily on the sociocultural relationships of empire, trade, and technology in the history of beer and brewing. His first book Globalization in a Glass: The Rise of Pilsner Beer through Technology, Taste, and Empire (Bloomsbury Academic Press, Food History Series, 2023) examines the development and spread of this light golden lager beer and how it became the only truly global style of beer.

He is also the author of a chapter on the history of European beer in nineteenth century South Africa in “Alcohol Flows Across Cultures: Drinking Cultures in Transnational and Comparative Perspective” (Routledge) and has a regular column on the Boston beer scene with the northeast beer periodical, Yankee Brew News.

In highlighting the evolution of consumer tastes through changing hierarchical relationships between the British metropole and colonies, as well as the evolution of business organizations and practices, Globalization in a Glass contributes to ongoing debates about globalization, empire, and trade. It argues that, despite the might and power of the British Empire as a colonizing force, the effects of globalization, imperial trade networks, and colonial migration led to the domination of the most popular Continental European style of beer, the Pilsner, over British-style ales.

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