Drinking and Toasting in Georgian Britain: Group Identities and Individual Agency

Abstract

Toasting was an omnipresent ritual in eighteenth-century Britain. It served to cement collective identities and politico-religious allegiances, but the efficacy of such ritual depended on peer-pressure, which could weigh heavily on the individual. There were strict rules bearing on gender and the exclusion of women. However, men from the élite classes kept some agency and played with constraints as can be seen in examples drawn among conservative social sets from the time of the French Revolution.