American Rum 14: Guinea Rum
Between rum and the slavery of black Africans there has been a close connection from the beginnings of both. As we know, rum was born as a by-product of sugar processing, and the labor force of the great sugarcane plantations in the Americas was mainly made up of black slaves bought in Africa and their descendants. Moreover, the slaves themselves were among the first consumers of rum. It was customary in nearly all the plantations to make regular distributions of rum to the slaves. They were limited distributions, not enough to make them drunk, but slaves enjoyed them greatly, and they contributed to maintaining order and respect for hierarchies. Often, when the work was particularly hard or difficult, they were given an extra ration as a reward. Planters lived in a perpetual contradiction. On the one hand, rum made the slaves happier and more docile, it made them work harder and better accept their bondage. On the other, too much rum made them drunk, therefore unable to work and at times even rebellious and dangerous.
And yet, the drunkenness of the slaves was never a real moment of liberation, on the contrary it reasserted their condition of inferiority. As early as 1684, Thomas Tenison, later Archbishop of Canterbury, was well aware of that: “I am loath to be particular with you, Sir, in respect to Negro Men, and your plying of them with this destructive Liquor [Rum]; and that upon Sunday too, to very bad purpose: And tho’ your Intention herein be to perpetuate their Servetude, etc. the very Methods you take to do it, by such indulging of them in this excess of Drinking ”.
There was something profound in the relationship between slavery and rum, or better, between the brutalization of slavery and the brutalization of drunkenness: both deprived the individual of his rational faculties, his freedom of choice, his being fully a man, so they reinforce each other in a tragic vicious circle. The awareness of this relationship was, I believe, at the heart of the strong bond which historically existed between abolitionist movements, whose objective was to abolish slavery, and temperance movements, which in their turn wanted to limit, and often eliminate altogether, the consumption of Demon Rum.
As early as the end of XVII Century, even Boston merchants signed a Petition to Parliament to
put an end to the monopoly of the slave trade, allowing them to enter in it. Then, as time went by, the role of New England’s ships and merchants in the slave trade grew and their biggest item of trade was the New England Rum, of ten euphemized into ‘Guinea Rum’.
As we know, it was cheap and very strong. You could save space in the hold and hence transport costs, and then dilute it with local water. Let ’s see the order received by the captain of King George in 1764: “Make Yr Chief Trade with the Blacks and Little or none with the white people if possible to be avoided. Worter yr rum as much as possible and sell as much by short measure as you can”
Some years later, in 1773, the sloop Adventure, from Newport, Rhode Island, made a voyage to Africa with most of its cargo consisting of rum, Newport distilled rum. According to our much quoted Taussig, the chief purchase was slaves, tough a little pepper and some palm oil were obtained, and some golddust. Rum was the principal medium of payment. If the reader will compare the amount of rum expended as shown in the Trade Book with the amount which appears in the invoice already referred to, he will note an excess of rum sold over that shipped – about 500 gallons – which indicates that they were inclined to ‘worter’ their rum. And let’s see a letter written by a slaver capt. to his owners: “ I have repented a hundred times buying of them dry goods. Had we laid out two thousand pound in rum, bread and flour, it would have purchased more in value than all our dry goods.”
But how much did a slave cost? It is difficult today, at least for us non specialists, to realize the real value of the currency of the time. It becomes easier, and more terrible in its brutal simplicity, when the price of a human being is given in rum. Hugh Thomas in his book “The Slave Trade” writes: “ In 1755 Caleb Godfrey, a slave captain from Newport, Rhode Island, bought four men, three women, three girls, and one boy for 799 gallons of rum, two barrels of beef and one barrel of pork, together with some smaller items; and in 1767 Captain William Taylor, acting for Richard Brew of Cape Coast, bought male slaves at 130 gallons each, women at 110, and young girls at 80. By 1773 the price was higher: 210 to 220 gallons per slave was paid by the captain of Aaron Lopez’ Cleopatra.”
Marco Pierini
-Article written by Marco Pierini-
My name is Marco Pierini, I was born in 1954 in a little town in Tuscany (Italy) where a still live. I got a degree in Philosophy in Florence and I studied Political Science in Madrid, but my real passion has always been History. And 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. Then I discovered rum. With Francesco Rufini, I founded La Casa del Rum (The House of Rum),that runs a beach bar and selects and distributes Premium Rums in Italy, www.lacasadelrum.it. And finally I have returned back to my initial passion: History. But 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 flavors; it has a terrible and fascinating history, made of slaves and pirates, imperial fleets and revolutions. All this I try to cover in this column, in my FB profile, www.facebook/marco.pierini.3 and in my articles on the Italian webpage www.bartender.it