Overview
The Gin Craze described several decades of a trend of “rotgut gin” being consumed in increasingly large quantities by the English populace. From Carl Erik Fisher’s book The Urge: Our History of Addiction (2022), gin consumption doubled from 1700 to 1720 and then again by 1729. 1743 had six times the levels of 1700. The term “gin” was popularized during this period as a shorthand for “geneva”, which was, contrary to the name suggests, a Dutch drink soldiers used before battle. The British English speakers botched it in translation; it was originally “jenever” but they mistook it for “Geneva”, as in the city in Switzerland.