Whether it’s white rum, spiced rum, or dark rum, chances are there is a rum to tickle your fancy. You may know a lot about rum styles, but did you know about this spirit’s sordid past? Let’s dig into the crazy history of rum.
Farming Sugar Cane
The first record of fermenting sugar cane was around 350 BC in India. Like most other spirits, this fermented liquid was used for medicinal purposes. Then in the late 1400s, Christopher Columbus set out on an exploration. He came across a group of islands that were perfect for producing sugar cane. These islands were perfect because sunshine and water were in ample supply there. Unfortunately, there were not many people available to work on these new sugar farms. The lack of available workers resulted in the darker side of rum’s history, slavery. Slaves were the obvious and easy choice in ensuring that farms would be able to operate. Production increased massively during this time. Starting on islands such as the Azores, rum production spread to the Canary Islands and the Caribbean.
Growth in the production of sugar cane meant that the workforce of slaves also had to grow. African slavers took any form of payment from European colonists to supply slaves to them. The most common form of payment was alcohol. European colonists had easy access to beer and wine, so these beverages were the most logical method of payment. However, beer and wine did not travel well, especially on long ocean journeys. This led colonists to pay African slavers with brandy.
In the early 1600s, an expedition led by Richard Ligon resulted in European colonists discovering Barbados. The European colonists brought sugar cane expertise, farming equipment, slaves, and most importantly distillation to the Barbados. The sugar cane industry (like any industry) had waste. In the 17th century they realized that the sugar cane waste lying on the beaches was fermenting, and could be distilled. This realization led to the birth of rum.
The Evolution of Rum
Rum history has it that the drink was first named “kill devil” due to its high strength and disgusting taste. Despite its taste, rum became the drink of choice. The lower classes were stuck drinking it neat while the higher classes started to mix it with lime juice and sugar to make it more palatable.
While exporting sugar to India, some sailors mixed the rum with Indian spices, lime, sugar, and water to create the first punch (the Hindi word for 5). As rum developed throughout South America and the Caribbean, it developed the name Rumbullion or Rumbustion. Both terms meant upheaval or violent commotion – likely due to the effect this spirit had on those who drank it. Eventually, the name was shortened to rum, which is the modern-day name for this spirited drink.
Around this time, some 3,000 colonists were living in New England. These colonists were unaware of the drastic weather changes that occurred throughout the year which made it exceedingly difficult to produce wine and beer. These colonists resorted to distilling rum since rum was cheaper and much stronger than brandy. It was a win-win situation. At one point, rum accounted for 80% of New England’s exports.
Pirates in Rum History
Many people associate the history of rum with pirates, and this association with piracy began when British privateers began trading this valuable commodity. Some of the privateers became pirates, but their fondness for rum remained. It’s rumoured that pirates were the first to mix rum with gunpower to see if it would ignite. If it did not ignite that meant there was no alcohol in the rum. This rumour is false. Gunpowder and rum were first combined in England in the 1500s when the government levied higher taxes on booze that contained a higher percentage of alcohol. The alcohol content was determined via a rather crude test; the government would soak a gun pellet with alcohol and try to set fire to the gunpowder. These tests are the reason we have gunpower rum, which has to have a minimum abv of 57% to ignite.
The British Navy adopted rum as its drink of choice in 1655 when the British captured Jamaica and its sugar cane plantations, as well as the Spanish rum distilleries. Changing to rum allowed them to move away from drinking brandy which had to be bought from their arch enemy at the time, France. Rum was part of daily British naval life until 1970 when it became reserved for special occasions (Navy Reserve). Up until that time, sailors would have a tot of rum every day at noon (a tot being 1/8 of a pint or ~60mL).
By 1775 the average American was consuming 16 litres of rum per annum. Rum was having a substantial impact on the economy. This led England to introduce a tax on molasses from French colonized islands, New England’s primary source of molasses. This resulted in the Sugar Act in 1764. The new tax on molasses made it difficult and expensive to get ahold of, so the newly immigrated Irish and Scottish went inland where grain was readily available. The use of grain resulted in a decrease in rum consumption and an increase in whiskey production. Additionally, the Sugar Act was one of the tipping points for the start of the Revolutionary War. On October 19th, 1781, British General Charles Cornwallis surrendered his army to General George Washington and gave up any chance of winning the Revolutionary War. This meant that rum was back as the importation of molasses returned to normal.
Rumour has it…
In 1805, Horatio Nelson died during The Battle of Trafalgar. He was killed by a French sniper. The Navy preserved his body by placing it in a cognac cask. However, because they were drinking out of the casks, they got the cognac cask mixed up with the rum casks. By the time they got back to England the cognac cask with Nelson’s body was bone dry, hence how rum got its nickname, Nelson’s Blood. An interesting piece of rum history lore!
History of Rum During Prohibition
Rum made its mark in the United States during the Prohibition (1920-1933) due to rum runners and bootleggers. Rum runners snuck rum from the Bahamas into Florida, whereas bootleggers marked barrels with a crest or a name that was associated with the buyer. They would sail past and throw barrels overboard and let the tide take the barrels ashore. Bootleggers escaped easily as the coastline was over 5,000 miles long, and there were only 55 patrol boats. Even if they got caught it was not a problem as some of them had plane engines attached to their boats for an easy getaway.
The illegal rum trade caused the United States to reach out to the leader of the controlling nation at the time, the United Kingdom (UK), and ask them to put a stop to it. This resulted in an amazing quote from Winston Churchill,
“Prohibition is the affront of the whole history of mankind”
You may have heard of the term “rum row”, these were floating rum warehouses situated on the border from the waters of the United States and the Caribbean. These floating ships became the drop-off and pick-up points of rum casks. The rum casks often created a wall across the horizon. At night these rum casks were often described as “the floating city” because of all the lights.
One of the most famous rum runners was William McCoy, who spent the first three years of the Prohibition smuggling whisky and rum to Florida. At the time of his capture by coastguards he had a whole fleet of ships each making £15,000 each trip. That’s £650,000 in today’s money!
Rum in Recent Years
Most people nowadays associate rum as a cocktail spirit since it is the basis of some of the most flavoursome and famous cocktails. The most famous style of rum cocktails are Tiki drinks. Tiki drinks can be traced back to the 1930s when a man named Don Beach opened the first Tiki bar in Hollywood, California. The Polynesian culture Don experienced while travelling in the South Pacific inspired his Tiki bar. Fun fact: Tiki translates to the creation or the creator of man.
Rum appears to be growing in popularity with consumers. The Wine & Spirits Trade Association (WSTA) said there are signs the category is evolving. In total, UK consumers bought 35 million bottles of rum in the last recorded 12 months up to June 2019. This is worth £1 billion, a third of all liquor sales taking place in pubs, bars, and restaurants in the UK.
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