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My guess would be estimates of the size of the adult population, and the amount of alcoholic drinks produced and imported.
by scott_s 11y ago
My guess would be estimates of the size of the adult population, and the amount of alcoholic drinks produced and imported.
- benbreen 11y agoThat's right; estimates of imports of alcoholic drinks are actually fairly accurate because 18th century governments had a very strong financial incentive to keep track of them due to tariffs and special taxes. (I've studied that a bit myself in the context of shipments of medicinal drugs between Portugal and colonial Brazil). I would guess that estimates for domestic production within colonial North America are much more impressionistic though.