The Rum Historian
A Tale of Rum
5. Britain
Marco Pierini
As we have seen in the 3° article of this series – St. Christophe - in the French Caribbean rum was made at least as early as the 1640s, that is at the same time, if not even a little earlier than in English Barbados. Half a century later, round 1700, French Caribbean plantations produced noteworthy quantities of rum, with advanced techniques. Therefore, the question is: why, after such a promising start, did French rum lag behind? Why in the XVIII century was Great Britain and not France by far the greatest producer and consumer of rum? Sugar was not lacking, indeed as early as the 1730s France became the first European exporter of sugar. Let’s see.
In the 1600s, the consumption of spirits grew a lot all over Europe and the European colonies. Nevertheless, the distilled alcohol that flourished then and became one of the most highly prized consumer goods within Europe as well as in the Atlantic world, was, in fact, French brandy, not Caribbean rum. But at the end of the century French rum production grew much and soon the French wine and brandy lobby became worried about the competition of the new spirit; possibly it was not so good as brandy, but it was very strong and very cheap. The competition was not only in the Colonies: actually, in the 1690s French sugar refiners became important producers of a mainland rum and a tough competition between rum and brandy clearly started also in metropolitan France. To make bad things worse, because of the European wars of the late 1600s, France lost the main markets for its wines and brandy: England and the Dutch Republic. These losses made the huge domestic market even more important for wine and brandy producers. Not only rum, indeed any distilled alcohol was a competitor, a commercial threat to both the domestic and the remaining export markets. The wine and brandy lobby pressured the Crown and in 1713 a Royal Declaration prohibited the production and consumption of, and trade in, any drink distilled from an entire catalogue of substances anywhere in the kingdom, including sugar, syrups and molasses: Game Over for French Rum.
Britain dealt with the new beverage in an entirely different way than France. In the British Isles, vines did not grow and it was impossible to produce wine and brandy. On the other hand, Britons drank heavily, they had always done. For centuries, they had imported expensive wine and brandy mainly from France and Spain. But since 1689 France became a powerful and long-standing enemy, so to enrich its coffers was getting more and more intolerable. An alternative to wine was easily found by signing trade agreements with Portugal, and Portuguese wine mostly replaced French wine, thanks also to the British fondness for sweetness. But the upper classes were fond of French Brandy and didn’t want to do without it, while the poor drank gin, a lot of it. Gin was produced in Britain, but it was made from grain, necessary to make bread, the staple diet of the lower classes; so the great production of gin risked causing famine and riots.
So, instead of forbidding or limiting the production and exports of rum, the British government promoted it in all possible ways, encouraging consumers to drink rum to replace gin and brandy. Rum was a perfect commodity. It was entirely produced in the British colonies by British labor and capital, and transported by British ships, so the wealth spent to buy it stayed at home. Moreover, Rum was not made from precious grain, but from molasses, an almost useless by-product of sugar production, available in huge quantities at cheap prices. It was therefore the perfect beverage to replace both brandy and gin.
To achieve this, it was necessary to develop consumption, which meant persuading British people to change their tastes and habits. It was not easy. Barbados rum (later also Jamaica rum) was massively exported to North America Mainland Colonies, smuggled into the Spanish empire and used as a trading commodity to buy slaves in Africa; it started to be distributed to sailors and soldiers in the West Indies too, but Britons at home were not acquainted with rum, to the point that Daniel Defoe, in his Moll Flanders published in 1722, felt obliged to explain to his readers what rum was: “However, I called a servant, and got him a little glass of rum (which is the usual dram of that country), for he was just fainting away”.
Gin was a relatively easier target. It was massively consumed by the lower classes and the full rigors of the law could be used without hesitations. Actually, it seems that excessive consumption of gin was a veritable social scourge, undermining the physical and moral health of the working classes and jeopardizing the Nation, and a huge tide of opinion mounted against the so-called “Gin Craze”. To have an idea of how contemporaries saw the situation, suffice to look at the famous print Gin Lane made by William Hogarth in 1751. Physicians, moralists and social reformers pushed Parliament to pass the so-called Gin Acts, imposing duties and limits to production and sale. Those measures were successful, to the point that by the second half of the century the Gin Craze was effectively over. Not only law, also scientific “evidence” was used to condemn gin and promote rum. In 1760 an anonymous wrote: “Gin is vastly more destructive to the Human Frame than the Sugar Spirit.” Then, our author prescribed rum as a cure for lack of appetite and other illnesses, maintaining that rum was highly recommended for “weak and depraved appetites and digestions, and in many other distempers of the declining sort” and, after citing long recommendations of authoritative doctors, he concluded: “Gin is a spirit too fiery, acrid, and inflaming for inward Use – But … Rum is a spirit so mild, balsamic, and benign, that if it’s properly used and at-tempered it may be made highly useful, both for the Relief and Regalement of Human Nature.”
British upperclasses
Brandy was a different matter; it was consumed by the British upper classes that must be treated with more delicacy. The government imposed heavy duties and also sometimes prohibited importation, but the price was not a major problem for brandy drinkers and moreover smuggling thrived, so brandy consumption went on as usual. In addition, the upper classes did not like rum at all: it was rough, crude, not refined enough and anyway it was too cheap. Legal measures were not enough, a full-fledged campaign was needed to improve the very image of rum, to make it worthy of the upper classes. The lobby of the West Indies planters, Parliament, the Government and British officials in general joined forces to devise what today we would call a massive promotional campaign to boost rum consumption, and they got it right. Here are some simple figures: in 1697, England and Wales imported (legally) only 22 gallons of rum. In 1710 the gallons were already 22.000 and in 1733 500.000! As of 1741, rum imports regularly overtook those of brandy.
How did they succeed? With the help of science and medicine, or a sort of? British good society was very concerned with wellness and health, both of body and mind. Modern scientific medicine was only beginning and the air, the climate, food, drinks, habits, were being studied with great dedication to protect and improve people’s health and well-being. For example, it is in this century that spa treatments and the use of sea bathing for therapeutic purposes became widespread. So, in order to spur the consumption of rum, it was presented as something healthy and useful for the well-being of the people in contrast to unhealthy brandy. Just two examples. As early as 1690 a Dalby Thomas, an advocate for British Caribbean sugar interests, writes: “ [Rum is] more wholesome for the body, which is observed by the long living of those in the Colonies that are great drinkers of rum, which is the spirit we made of molasses, and the short living of those that are great drinkers of brandy in those parts.” And even in 1770 when rum imports had been surpassing those of brandy for decades, a Robert Dossie, physician, wrote: “The drinking of rum in moderation is more salutary, and in excess much less hurtful, than the drinking of Brandy”. Pages and pages of medical evidence, chemical dissertations, pseudo-scientific experiments followed.
And yet, maybe all the efforts of the lobbies would not have been sufficient to promote rum consumption had it not been for the great success, as far as I know totally spontaneous, of PUNCH.
“Boy, bring a bowl of China here,
Fill it with water cool and clear:
Decanter with Jamaica right
And spoon of silver, clean and bright.
Sugar twice-fin’d in piece cut,
Knife, sieve and glass in order put,
Bring forth the fragrant fruit and then,
We’re happy till the clock strikes ten”
This ode to Punch - written by Benjamin Franklin in 1737 when he was still a loyal subject of the British Empire - is a wonderful example of the culture and the joy of Punch in the XVIII century. In the British social life of the XVIII Century Punch was a constant presence and the literature of the time is full of references to it. For instance, Henry Fielding has a prison chaplain say “If we must drink, let us have a Bowl of Punch – a Liquor I rather prefer, as it is nowhere spoken against in Scripture.” And the famous journalist Ned Ward opined that Punch “if composed of good ingredients, and prepared with true judgment, exceeds all the simple, potable products in the universe.” It was consumed in great quantities, both cold and hot, and with all kinds of spirits, citrus, spices and whatever else caught the fancy of those making it. Punch was drunk at parties, balls and weddings and every kind of social event, where women also could drink it. Moreover, usually a group of friends, often organized in a Club, gathered for a long night of revels around the Flowing Bowl, as it was called by its devotees. Here, a real culture of Punch developed, which brought together a great number of Gentlemen, adult and well-off. And women? No, respectable ladies were debarred from these night-long reunions, only non-respectable women were sometimes admitted. This kind of party was well captured by William Hogarth in his famous “A Modern Midnight Conversation”.
To make Punch, in India they used mostly Arrak, a spirit largely drunk all over Asia, distilled from different raw materials, including sugarcane. In Britain, they first used Brandy, but soon Rum became the spirit most often used in the concoction of Punch, maybe because from that time they realized that rum is excellent for any kind of mixology. Anyway, its massive use to make Punch greatly improved the image of rum because Punch was expensive. Citrus fruits were very expensive and often not easy to find. Just as expensive were spices, among which nutmeg was the most highly valued. Moreover, Punch had to be prepared every time in great quantity, so as to allow a large group of people attending a social gathering to enjoy it. Finally, the very vessel, the bowl, was expensive. It was often made of the best porcelain from China, or of silver, and became more and more elaborately decorated, embellished with precious metals and decorative motifs. Precisely because it was expensive, the British upper classes considered Punch worthy of them. Last, but not least, fruit and spices masked the aroma and taste of rum. Therefore rum lost its bad reputation as a spirit of low quality, suitable only for soldiers, sailors and people of low class, and started to be known and appreciated also by the “better sort”, that is, good society.
Finally, let’s not forget that, as well as promoting rum consumption among the general public, the British Authorities decided to include rum in the rations of soldiers and sailors. We talked about it at length last year, on the 50th anniversary of Black Tot Day, and there is no need to go over that again. Here it is enough to remember that the fat contracts of the State spurred the planters to produce great quantities of rum, while soldiers and sailors, who had got used to drinking it in service, continued to drink it once returned to civilian life, thus contributing greatly to its widespread use at home. To sum up, while at the beginning of 1700 rum was almost unknown in metropolitan Great Britain, by the end of the century the British Empire was the first producer and consumer of rum in the word, Britons considered it a sign of national identity, and abroad rum was deemed a typical British Spirit.