Toasting democracy: the ‘national banquets’

During the 1850s, a series of mass public dinners were held in the newly ‘responsible’ Australasian colonies, broadly, to celebrate democracy. Hundreds of newly enfranchised men dined together, sometimes also witnessed by an audience of ladies, who watched, but neither dined nor drank. After eating, this model public celebrated the privilege of their citizenship in a series of hierarchical toasts that honoured specific men as individuals, and ‘the ladies’ as an ideal. I use these banquets to illustrate the arguments of my recently published monograph, Drink and Democracy, arguing that toasting rituals can help explain the political imaginary of colonial Australia.

Dr Matthew Allen is a Senior Lecturer in Historical Criminology at the University of New England. His research is concentrated on early New South Wales and its unique transition from a penal colony to a settler colonial democracy, and much of his work has focussed on using alcohol as a means to understand the political imaginary that underlay this transformation. He has just completed his first monograph: Drink and Democracy: Alcohol and the Political Imaginary in Colonial Australia (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025), https://www.mqup.ca/drink-and-democracy-products-9780228024743.php

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Enjoy interesting conversation along with good food and drink at Gardner's Inn, Blackheath, the oldest continuously licensed hotel still trading in the Blue Mountains. After the talk stay for a meal at one of the best Pub Food locations in the area; their Beef & Guinness Pot Pie is a signature treat.

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