American Rum 3: The Most Flourishing Island

by ,

American Rum 3. The Most Flourishing Island

Our journey through the History of American Rum this month stops in Barbados. “Why?”. many will say, “What does Barbados have to do with the US? It does, and a lot. I’m just asking you to be patient and continue to read. 

Barbados is a small island, 21 miles long and 8 miles wide at its widest, for a total of 167 square miles. It has 280,000 inhabitants, a relatively developed economy and a lot of tourists from the US and Great Britain. It is a little, stable and peaceful country, and, for most of us, not easy to distinguish from the other Caribbean Islands. It is very difficult for us, to-day, to understand the relevance of Barbados in the XVII century and its strong relations with present-day US. Around 1650, Barbados was a big producer of sugar and therefore the richest colony of the rising British Empire: “ the most flourishing Island in all those American parts”, as a contemporary wrote. Far richer than the thirteen colonies! Just to give you an idea, the wealth deriving from sugar can be compared to the wealth given today by oil.

The profits made from sugar were so high that nearly all available land was devoted to sugarcane cultivation. As a consequence, Barbados had to import everything. Not only luxury goods for the élite of the planters, but also the daily food for the mass of the poor white farmhands and the slaves. Moreover, they needed plenty of timber for the buildings, the barrels and the fires necessary to process the sugar. And all the products had to be purchased in big quantities and at a low cost; it was unthinkable to get them from Europe.

Luckily there were the Mainland Colonies. They were much closer, covered with enormous forests, with large fertile fields and some of the richest fishing grounds in the world, the Grand Banks. From the very beginning, there was a flourishing trade between Barbados and the Mainland Colonies. Barbados bought dry fish, timber, flour and many other things.

The ties between Barbados and the future US were not only commercial. The young Englishmen who left for Barbados as indentured servants did so because they hoped to be able to buy a small piece of land at the end of their service. But the high profits from sugar caused the price of land to increase rapidly, and as early as 1650 it had become impossible to buy good land without having large amounts of money. Many decided to emigrate again and thousands went to the Mainland Colonies. Vessel traffic was intense, families and individuals were always on the go. Historians speak about a British America which stretched from Barbados in the South as far as Canada in the North. The central importance of plantations, the massive resort to slavery, the development of a local gentry of planters, possibly even the title of “President” for his ruler, are some of the distinctive features that the US owe also to those far-away, today almost forgotten ties with Barbados.

But back to trade – what did Barbados give in exchange for the many goods it bought from the colonies? Barbados offered letters of credit, which were used to buy from England the commodities the colonies needed: slaves, sugar, molasses (which was used at the beginning as a cheap sweetener) and rum.

In the colonies the winters were cold, the food dull, life hard. Spirits gave warmth, energy, merriment. The colonists tried to produce other alcoholic beverages too, but with little success or at excessively high prices. Rum, on the contrary, was available in great quantities and at a low price. As early as the middle of XVII century, when it was still unknown in England, the American colonists commonly drank rum. A lot of it.

As well as drink it, the colonists used rum as a trade commodity with the Indians, who loved it. They used it as a currency too, since money was scarce in the colonies. In short, rum was a sort of lubricant which oiled the wheels of economic and social life. So, someone soon had the idea that it was not really necessary to import it all from Barbados: it was possible to produce it locally too.

See you next month!

-Article written by Marco Pierini- 

My name is Marco Pierini, I own and run a small tourist business in my seaside town in Tuscany, Italy. A long time ago I got a degree in Philosophy in Florence, Italy, and I studied Political Science in Madrid, Spain. But my real passion has always been History. Through History I have always tried to know the world, and men. Life brought me to work in tour ism, event organization and vocational training. A few years ago I discovered rum and it was love at first sight.  Now, with my young business partner Francesco Rufini I run a bar on the beach, La Casa del Rum The House of Rum), and we distribute Premium Rums across Tuscany. And most of all, finally I have returned back to my initial passion: History. Only, now it is the History of Rum. 

Because Rum is not only a great distillate, it’s a world. Produced in scores of countries, by thousands of companies, with an extraordinary variety of aromas and flavours; it has a terrible and fascinating history, made of slaves and pirates, imperial fleets and revolutions. And it has a complicated, interesting present too, made of political and commercial wars, of big multinationals, but also of many small and medium sized enterprises that resist trivialization. I try to cover all of this in my Italian blog on Rum,  www.ilsecolodel rum.it