Part B: What is Rum? (2/3)
Rum is the birthright, but let’s unpack the centuries-long inheritance of sugarcane and its child
If you have not read Part A, I recommend doing so before reading Part B.
PART B — Historical.
“What we gon do right here is go back…way back…back into time…” — #classic
“Sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum) originated in Melanesia, most probably in New Guinea, from the wild species Saccharum robustum. Indigenous peoples of the area selected sweet, soft forms of Saccharum robustum for chewing and eventually these developed into Saccharum officinarum.” —
“From about 8000 B.C. on, people migrated from New Guinea to several Pacific Islands, taking a cultivated form of sugarcane with them. It later reached Indonesia, the Philippines and Northern India. By 400 B.C., crude sugar was developed. Cane culture spread slowly, reaching Persia by 500 A.D. Because of the Islamic Holy War, the Arabs brought sugarcane to Egypt, which they had conquered. They built plantations and stone mills. Around 710 A.D., the Egyptians developed clarification, crystallization and refining. Sugarcane spread westward across northern Africa and into southern Spain and Sicily. The first large shipment of sugar reached England in 1319. Sugarcane reached the Canary Islands in 1420, from whence Columbus introduced it to the New World in 1493. From Santo Domingo cane culture spread across the New World. It reached Louisiana in the late 1700s.” —
And for this, we show respect to the OGs of the plant. A spirited people, I’m sure, responsible for the raw material that eventually allowed the world to have rum.
From B.C. to now, there is too much time to cover. Historians, please continue to write those books. I’ll read them. Instead, I’ll rifle through this as thoroughly and comprehensively as possible. Rum is a distilled spirit. We’ll understand what that means in the “Technical” part ©. But you can have a fermented (comes before distillation) sugarcane spirit that is still an alcoholic beverage. Because of this, there are predecessor sugarcane spirits predating rum (distillation) production, no doubt from a technology standpoint (i.e., not having the know-how, exposure, or hardware to distill spirits). Examples:
- Guarapo (which can loosely translate to sugarcane juice in Spanish) — sugarcane spirit with origins dating back to the 1500s, across certain countries in today’s Latin America; was very popular with a) indigenous people who came in contact with sugarcane introduced by the Spanish, and b) the enslaved who made the beverage clandestinely (). Today, there are festivals dedicated to Guarapo and indigenous heritage.
- Sīdhu (Śīdhu) — a sugarcane “wine” of ancient and early Medieval India —
- Batavia Arrack — primarily sugarcane molasses and red rice cake fermented spirit from Jakarta, Indonesia. The Dutch controlled Indonesia for over 300 years. Batavia is, therefore, the colonial name given to the port (Jakarta). The naming convention for the beverage, still popular today, has remained. “The trade in arrack was entirely in the hands of the Dutch VOC [Dutch East India Company]. Virtually all arrack exported to Europe arrived in Rotterdam or Amsterdam…There are records which suggest that British traders started buying arrack from the Chinese distillers as long ago as 1634, while a Danish explorer describes seeing a huge number o[f] arrack distilleries on Java in 1673.” —
Rum “geeks” will be wide-eyed right now because they recognize the name E. & A. Scheer Amsterdam (Holland). Yes, the same E&A Scheer that has “.” This Dutch company remains the preeminent sourcer, blender, and (bulk) exporter of Rums, Cachaças, and Batavia Arracks (that they buy from distilleries) around the world…well, world, Brazil, and Indonesia.
I highlight the three spirits above only to note that rum wasn’t a happy accident. Precedent fermented sugarcane spirits, imperial conquest, enslavement, capitalistic endeavors, and how to sustain it all came together to birth rum. Now, I mentioned the Madeirans earlier vis-à-vis the Bajans waving the ‘we started this rum thing’ flag. Let’s revisit. But first, where is Madeira?
This island territory is about 1000 km from the European continent, southwest of Lisbon, only 500 km from the west coast of the African continent, and about 450 km north of the Canary Islands. It lies on the African plate, between 30° and 33° north latitude (almost the same latitude as Casablanca). Currently, the main accesses to Madeira and Porto Santo are, respectively, Madeira International Airport, in Santa Cruz, and Porto Santo Airport. The journey by plane from Lisbon takes approximately 90 minutes.” —
I only included those last two sentences because I should have been there since yesterday.
And it goes something like this (sources: + + )
— > 1419, the Portuguese “discovered” Madeira, and in 1425, sugarcane was introduced by the Portuguese by way of Sicily. SICILY?! So, the Sicilians had sugarcane before the Portuguese? Checks out given the shared histories of Persians, Arab empire(s), Mediterranean(s), and Sicilians. “By 900, the cane was being grown in Arab Sicily.”
— > 1466, through the rest of the century, sugarcane and the necessary technology allowed them to begin rum production. This may have been a rudimentary form of rum, but the Madeirans claim they are the head honchos.
“The popularity of Madeira attracted explorers like Christopher Columbus to the island in 1478. He married the daughter of a plantation owner on Porto Santo and took some sugar cane plants with him on his voyage to the Caribbean. By the end of the 15th century, Madeira was the world’s greatest producer of sugar. However, with the commercialization of sugar cane in other regions, this economic cycle eventually ended. After the 17th century, as Portuguese sugar production was shifted to Brazil, São Tomé, Príncipe and elsewhere, Madeira’s era of white gold ended, to be replaced by a new commodity — wine.” —
That last quote is very important. It highlights a central theme of imperial economic motivations relative to the “heritage” drinks of the colonists. The nations that prioritized their wines, brandies, etc., are all, in some way, associated with hamstringing rum production in the colonies they dominated (pre-19th century or so) in favor of their wines, brandies, etc. This is why you’ll find that, in former British colonies, rum production often went unabated. In fact, production/exportation was highly promoted (read: kept the British coffers padded, gave them seafaring access to other potential conquests, etc.). However, this also gave those former British colonies, particularly the Caribbean islands, free runway to promote, profit from, and adopt rum as a signifier of national pride. There was no wrestling with “Oh, but the Spanish/French/Portuguese crown might tax us into oblivion or cut us off if we continue producing rum” (say this in a winey, baby voice…has a more dramatic impact).
Some challenge the Madeirans, not on the sugar, but maybe on the rum part, pointing to the Caribbean as the stomping ground.
“…evidence indicates the British island of Barbados and the French island of Martinique were the cradles, if not the birthplaces, of Caribbean rum.” —
“The earliest document to specifically use the term rum is a plantation deed recorded in Barbados in 1650, which identified Three Houses estate in St. Philip parish as having “four large mastics cisterns for liquor for Rum.” The name rum originated in the British Caribbean in the seventeenth century and derived from the English word rumbullion…Rumbullion was a word commonly used in Devonshire, England, to mean “a great tumult,” and it was probably meant to convey the volatile effects of excessive rum consumption on early colonists. Its origin reflects the large number of West Country English who settled Barbados in the early seventeenth century. By the early 1650s, rumbullion was shortened to rum…French and Spanish Caribbean adopted rum as the term for a distilled sugar-cane based alcohol, translating it to rhum and ron respectively.” —
Before the terminology rum, other phrases to describe the spirit abounded: kill-devil (Barbados), guildiverie (a rendition of kill-devil, a term used in the French islands), johncrow batty (Jamaica, a vulture’s butt), and I’m sure many more. And since the enslaved played a crucial role in showcasing that the “waste products” of cane could be turned into spirit, I’m reasonably convinced that kill-devil and johncrow batty were likely terms they derived as well. Seems unlikely that a high-browed elite planter would have a) credited the enslaved (or a white indentured servant, for that matter) with deriving the term or b) used this type of language vs. more “dignified” terminology. My speculations and attempt to connect dots. A beautiful thing about history is that you can always ask yourself (and the historian/interpreter), “How the hell do you know this is actually the case and not fabricated to fit the narrator’s aims?!”
At this point of the article, I’ve reasoned that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. Put differently, any further discussion from the potential origin point(s) I outlined will serve only to bias certain narratives of rum’s history against others. Do you think my not discussing Jamaica in the above stories isn’t going completely against my better judgment? Hurts my heart!
No doubt, I’ve showcased that I have a special interest in the least talked about aspects of its development (imperial conquest’s economic implications vis-à-vis rum, the inner workings of colonial plantation ecosystems, enslaved and indentured servant labor as fieldhands and distillers, clandestine production vs. out-in-the-open, profit margins and the correlation to intensity of the labor, etc.). But how could I reasonably cover rum and its paths from Dominica () to Louisiana, Hawaii to Cape Verde (), India to Boston? Tall task.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with focusing on (for instance) Navy rations, pirate stories, privateering, prohibition, and whatever other narrative people laser in on for their specific end goal. Especially when marketing a brand/product, you need to, as quickly as possible, get the consumer to understand, embrace, and regurgitate the associated narrative. Build community and network effects around your product. I recognize that. But one story, or even theme, to explain away something so deeply rooted ultimately leaves the consumer a) tunnel-visioned or b) wanting for more info. It becomes a game of ‘well, what about this and what about that.’ For instance –
“As of 1770, there were over 150 rum distilleries in New England alone, and the colonists, collectively, were importing 6.5 million gallons of West Indian molasses, and turning it into five million gallons of rum.” —
Don’t you have so many questions as to why rum was the OG American spirit?
Talking about the history of rum would be a long walk covering, I’m sure, upwards of 100+ countries’ histories with sugarcane and the spirit(s) that followed. The critical junctures at the outset we’ve covered. How it sprouted from those origins, I hope, takes you on a never-ending journey of curiosity and discovery. Doesn’t even have to be that deep. Use rum/sugarcane as an excuse to go see some other places.
Respectfully, some people spend their entire academic/professional lives covering the “True & Exact” history of rum for their specific country of origin. Because that is the level of commitment and the number of years it takes to tell the whole story (if possible). So…I’ll let them do their work. But I hope I served you well (enough) by giving you a broad taste of the ground zero.
Let’s talk about how it all comes together, from cane to glass.
And that we will do next week in Part C.
Cheers.
