'Enslaved by Rum'- How integral was Caribbean rum to the building of the British Empire (Particularly the slave trade)

beginning of distilling and alcohol
1. ancient and historic distilling
  1. Cottage productions
    1. Similar to Africans pre slavery?
  2. Alembics- Alexandrians were using a distillation alembic or still device in the third century AD
  3. The "Mongolian still"- Freeze distillation
  4. School of Salerno, southern Italy- 12th century
  5. Fractional distillation developed by Tadeo Alderotti in the 13th century.
    1. written in code to promote secrecy
  6. "burned water" (brandy) was first mentioned in the records of the County of Katzenelnbogen in Germany 1437,
    1. served in a tall, narrow glass called a Goderulffe.
  7. medicinal elixirs
    1. use of distilling (particularly whiskey) spread through medieval monasteries, largely for medicinal purposes, such as the treatment of colic and smallpox
      1. monasteries as a way of tracing spread of distillation?
    2. Black Death.
  8. pre-distilled rum
    1. Development of fermented drinks produced from sugarcane juice is believed to have first occurred either in ancient India or China
    2. Marco Polo also recorded a 14th-century account of a "very good wine of sugar" that was offered to him in what is modern-day Iran.[2]
    3. Plantation slaves first discovered molasses, a byproduct of the sugar refining process, can be fermented into alcohol
    4. Tradition suggests rum first originated on the island of Barbados. However, in the decade of the 1620s, rum production was recorded in Brazil.
2. Industrialisation of distillation
  1. social implications
    1. Leads to massive dependance on alcohol
    2. Luxury goods such a brandy are hugely expensive
    3. Gin becomes drink of the masses
      1. 'Mothers Ruin"
  2. At what point did rum become so industrialised as to make such a large link with west Africa?
Betty's Hope
1. The Codringtons
  1. 'Empire family'
  2. Slaving and trading
2. The Process
  1. the equiptment
    1. where did it come from
    2. materials
      1. where from
    3. continuous still?
3. typical rum distillery?
  1. same layouts as others on Martinique and Barbados?
4. The Slaves
  1. The Codrington collection, 1704-1898
    1. C/WI/COD
The Navy
1. sailors kept happy with rum/grog
  1. keeps them able to fight
  2. an army marches on its stomach, a navy sails on rum
  3. sailors conquer with rum- rum the conquerer?
  4. Grog
    1. Following Britain's conquest of Jamaica in 1655, a half pint or "2 gills" of rum gradually replaced beer and brandy as the drink of choice
      1. rum was mixed with water
      2. Due to the subsequent illness and disciplinary problems,
      3. diluted its effects and accelerated its spoilage, preventing hoarding of the allowance
2. sailors pretty much slaves themselves
3. Rum drinking culture
4. Naval law
  1. 17th century the daily drink ration for English sailors was a gallon of beer.
    1. difficulty in storing the large quantities of liquid
  2. Rum rationing
    1. 1655- half pint of rum was made equivalent
    2. drunkenness on board naval vessels increasingly became a problem and the ration was formalised in naval regulations by Admiral Edward Vernon in 1740
    3. larger British "Imperial" pint of rum mixed with one quart of water and issued in two servings, before noon and after the end of the working day
    4. became part of the official regulations of the Royal Navy in 1756 and lasted for more than two centuries. This gives a ratio of 4:1 (water:rum)
    5. Admiral Edward Vernon ("Old Grog")
      1. 1740 order that his sailors' rum should be diluted with water. 1740, citrus juice (usually lemon or lime juice) was added to cut down on the foulness of the water.
      2. also reduced scurvy though this was not realised till James Lind in 1747
      3. calling the new drink "grog" after Vernon's nickname "Old Grog", attributed to his habitual wearing of a grogram coat.
    6. continued until "Black Tot Day" on 31 July 1970
      1. social aspects?
  3. mutinies over lack of rum?
5. Protecting against Interlopers
  1. In govenrment's interest to remove them
  2. losing out on duties
  3. also protecting from pirates
Contemporary views
1. of alcohol consumption
2. of slaves within the slave trade
3. was alcoholism a creation of the contemporary authors
4. desire to make africans look barbaric and in need of European help.
  1. Slavery helps africans
  2. Genesis 9; 20-25 used as a christian rationale to justify the enslavement of africans
    1. St Clair Drake, 1987-90, 2; 16-23
5. "a profane fluid"
  1. evoked to amplify the insidiousness of European slave trading
6. Modern attitudes about the vulgarity of alcoholic beverages have helped magnify the evils of the slave trade.
7. Temperance Movement
  1. 1730's attempt to curb drinking
  2. high taxes, strict license laws and neighbourhood informers
    1. warner and ivis, 1999
  3. Capuchin friar Theobald Matthew in Ireland 1830's
  4. Missionaries in Africa, Australia, the Caribbean and the Pacific condemned alcohol us and colonial offices passed legislation to eradicate its use
    1. Langton 1993
    2. Marshall, 1976
    3. Marshall and Marshall 1975, 1979
    4. Smith 2005; 168-93
    5. Akyeampong, 1996; 25-26
  5. Overturning previously views on the medical uses of alcohol
    1. Dr. Benjamin Rush 1790
  6. 18th amendment 1919 america banned recriational alcohol use
8. Makes impartial study of alcohol impossible
Pre Slavery West African Traditions
1. fermented drinks
  1. palm wines
2. Social
  1. Portuguese traveler Valentim Fernandes (1506-1510:16-18) described the availability of numerous types of locally made wine in the Senegal region, including wine made from honey, grains, and palm sap. According to Fernandes, the Wolofs, a partially Muslim group from the Senegal region, "are drunkards who derive great pleasure from our wine."
  2. In 1570, Portuguese missionary Baltasar Alfonso noted that the people of Luanda drank walo, a beer made from fermented grain, and, in 1648, Portuguese missionary Jean-François de Rome described beer brewed from flour among the Kongo
    1. (cited in Curto 1996:57-59).
  3. Portuguese missionary Filippo Pigafetta (1591:123) wrote that, at Luanda, "palm...grows here from which oil, wine, vinegar, fruits, and bread are all extracted."
  4. Africans valued imported alcoholic beverages for their newness, especially distilled spirits, which were much more concentrated, or "hot," than their usual fermented drinks. African elites also viewed foreign alcohol as a way to confirm status.
3. Religion- "Closer to the Ancestors"
  1. use of rum/alcohol within african rites and religion
    1. voodoo
    2. Dahomey
    3. Ashanti
      1. Akan Religion
      2. "Even the annual slaughter must be supplemented by almost daily murder; whatever action however trivial is performed by the King it must dutifully be reported to his sire in the shadowy realm. A victim, almost always a war captive, is chosen-the message is de- livered to him-an intoxicating draught of rum follows it, and he is despatched to Hades in the best of humours."
      3. Gibson, 1903; 48
      4. All Akans participate in daily prayer, which includes the pouring of libations as an offering to both the ancestors who are buried in the land and to the gods who are everywhere
      5. Olson, James Stuart (1996). The peoples of Africa: an ethnohistorical dictionary
      6. Celebrated status of palm wine
      7. Akyeampong, 1996; 25-26
      8. folktales warn of dangers of drunkenness
    4. Oyo Empire
    5. Ewe people
      1. Agbekor
      2. ancient dance once known as Atamga
      3. ar dance, and the oath in question was an oath taken by the ancestors before going into battle
      4. libations poured before and after
  2. symbolic
    1. Arada women played a central role in beer brewing (Bosman 1705:392).
  3. All important aspects of life
    1. during traditional marriage ceremony, when a child is born and funeral ceremony
    2. during installment of Kings, Queens, Chiefs libation is poured
    3. Rites of passage illustrated the conception of life as a progression from the spirit world, through the living world, and back into the spiritual world. Naming, puberty, marriage, and funeral ceremonies represented different epochal stages in life's journey. The human perception of the relative intimacy of the spiritual and living worlds associated with each phase was reflected in a minimal or profuse use of alcohol.
      1. (Akyeampong 1997:30)
  4. homage to the ancestors
    1. The physical and spiritual worlds are closely aligned in Akan, Igbo, Kongo, and Arada religions, as well as the religions of many other West and West Central African groups.
    2. Ancestors, spirits, and deities played an active role in the daily lives of the living.
    3. the Akan considered alcohol a sacred fluid that "bridged the gap between the physical and spiritual worlds."
      1. Akyeampong (1997:21)
  5. alcohol was "everywhere called for."
    1. English slave trader John Atkins (cited in Craton, Walvin, and Wright 1976:28)
  6. As early as the eleventh century, Al-Bakri of Cordoba referred to "intoxicating drinks" served at the burial of the king of the ancient kingdom of Ghana
    1. (cited in Pan 1975:20-21).
  7. Oral traditions collected in the late nineteenth century intimate a long history of palm wine use in the Gold Coast dating back to the Asante's initial migration into the region in the early sixteenth century
    1. (cited in Akyeampong 1997:27).
  8. Foreign spirits were integrated into traditional West and West Central African cultural festivals, such as the Igbo yam festival, Akan odwira festival, and Ga homowo festival
    1. (Bosman 1705:158-159; Akyeampong 1997:40-41; Field 1937:22-24,47-56).
  9. Rum useful for revelations, libations and divination augury
    1. Libations highlight the way alcohol unites the physical and spiritual worlds.
    2. prayer accompanied and punctuated by the pouring of alcohol (Akyeampong 1997:5n24).
    3. in order to seek favor from ancestral spirits and deities
    4. Libations protected the community from evil, propitiated angry spirits, and accelerated an individual's recovery from illness. Libations, therefore, created a path to a spiritual world that secured community needs.
      1. (Bosman 1705:151; Barbot 1746:314).
    5. In 1602, slave trader Pieter de Marees (1602:42-43) described an Akan drinking occasion in which the first drops of palm wine were poured on the ground in reverence for the ancestors.
  10. The physiological effect of alcohol, as with sleep deprivation, fasting, and other mind altering activities, was a medium, which helped induce interaction with the spiritual world.
Focus areas
1. Possible records or excavation areas
  1. Komenda
    1. Cabess
  2. The Ashanti
    1. effective strategy and an early adoption of European Firearms,
  3. Contemporary records
    1. Venture Smith
      1. purchased in Africa purchased by Robertson Mumford for four gallons of rum plus a piece of calico.
      2. A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America, Related by Himself.
      3. probably originally from somewhere in what is now Ghana, Togo, or Benin
    2. Royal African Company of Merchants.
      1. K.G.Davies 1957 The Royal African Company vol 1- Royal African Company exports by commodity and value.
      2. Monoply
      3. Protected by crown
    3. B. Martin and M. Spurrell (eds.), The Journal of a Slave Trader (John Newton) 1750-1754 (London: The Epworth Press, 1962)
    4. Kew Archives
      1. Colonial Office records
      2. Patent Rolls in C 66.
      3. Information relating to goods imported to and exported from Africa can be found in the duty ledgers, accounts and correspondence of the African companies
      4. T 70
      5. Account of English sugar plantations CO 1/22 no 20
      6. Examples of Barbadian slave laws CO 30/2
      7. Ships registered as slave traders in 1696
      8. from 1786 in BT 6/191-193 and BT 107 (indexes in BT 111)
      9. Admiralty Passes
      10. ADM 7.
      11. had to be obtained rom the Admiralty
      12. Port Books
      13. At the port, the master of the ship had to provide the collector of customs with a written list of the cargo to calculate duty.
      14. E 190
      15. customs out ports are in CUST series
      16. duty ledgers are in T 70/349-356
      17. The master also lodged a muster with the collector of customs on the ship's return, some of these can now be found in BT 98 (for example the muster of the Otter in BT 98/68 no 127)
      18. Board of Customs (CUST 3 and CUST 17), the Board of Trade (CO 388 to CO 391), the Treasury (T 1), and in the Port Books (E 190).
      19. Records of the slave ship Eliza
      20. BT 98/69, no 264; ADM 7/122 f.101; ADM 7/804; CO 33/23
      21. Papers from the vice-Admirality Court at Sierra Leone (1808-1817)
      22. HCA 49/97
      23. Records of the slave ship Henriqueta (later renamed the Black Joke and used to capture illegal slavers)
      24. ADM 51/3466; FO 84/66 f.203-209; FO 315/65/60; FO 315/31; ADM 1/1; ADM 1/74
      25. collectors of customs were responsible for looking after liberated Africans
      26. 'Commission of Enquiry into the state of captured Negroes in the West Indies, 1821-1830'
      27. (CO 318/81-98)
      28. There are few records relating to the Middle Passage because the voyages were private ventures
      29. T 70
      30. Importation of slaves into British colonies between 1814 and 1822
      31. T 71
      32. Slave Rebellions
      33. Bussa's Rebellion in Barbados in 1816 (CO 28/85) and the last great rebellion in Jamaica over Christmas 1831 and the New Year 1832 (CO 137/184).
      34. http://slaverebellion.org/index.php?page=african-insurrections
      35. Cut off Samuel Martin's head
      36. http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/?p=9529
      37. Records of Plantations
      38. Plantations in Antigua CO 700/Antigua2
      39. Martin v Bothall - account of stock including slaves J 90/399
      40. Blenheim and Cranbrooke plantation accounts WO 9/48
      41. The Codrington collection, 1704-1898
      42. C/WI/COD
    5. Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading with Africa
      1. National Archives in the T 70
    6. Merseyside Maritime Museum.
    7. The British Library - records of the East India Company
    8. Mundus - missionary records in Africa
    9. Hakluyt Society - records of 16th and 17th century trading voyages with Africans
    10. the Falconbergh
      1. trips between Antigua and Cape Coast
      2. Davies, 1999; 190
      3. T. 70/61-2, T. 70/964-52
  4. Forts along the coasts
    1. A. W. Lawrence, Cape, 1967 Fortified Trade Posts. London: Jonathan
    2. Cape Coast Castle
      1. Ghana
      2. 1664 conquered by the English
      3. extensively rebuilt in the late 18th century by the Committee of Merchants
      4. became the seat of the colonial Government of the British Gold Coast.
      5. St. Clair, William (2006) The Grand Slave Emporium: Cape Coast Castle and the British slave trade. London: Profile Books
Slavery
1. Slavers- Possible contemporary evidence
  1. Royal African Company
    1. Originally known as the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa
    2. Held the monopoly in Britain on gold, ivory and slave trading from 1662
      1. King received half of the proceeds and the company half
    3. help of the army and navy it established forts on the West African coast
      1. Cape Coast Castle
    4. was responsible for seizing any English ships that attempted to operate in violation of their monopoly
    5. The company fell heavily into debt in 1667 during the war with the Netherlands
    6. creation in 1668, to start 1 January 1669, of the Gambia Adventurers
      1. separately subscribed and granted a ten year license for African trade north of the Bight of Benin.
    7. 1672, the company re-emerged, re-structured and with a new Royal Charter, as the new Royal African Company
    8. Broader Charter
      1. included the right to set up forts, factories, maintain troops and to exercise martial law in West Africa, in pursuit of trade in gold, silver and slaves
    9. Between 1672 and 1689 it transported around 90,000-100,000 slaves
    10. From 1694 until 1700, the company was a major participant in the Komenda Wars in the port city Komenda in the Eguafo Kingdom in modern-day Ghana. The company allied with a merchant prince named John Cabess and various neighboring African kingdoms to depose the king of Eguafo and permanently establish a fort and factory in Komenda
    11. 1689, it acknowledged that it had lost its monopoly with the end of royal power in the Glorious Revolution.
    12. End of the Monopoly opened up the trade and was advantageous for merchants in Bristol
    13. successor was the African Company of Merchants.
  2. Society of Merchant Venturers
2. Caribbean Plantations
  1. Social
    1. Controlling technique
      1. Slave laws
      2. contemporary accounts
      3. Subjugation with rum
      4. ccasional efforts by colonial officials to restrict slave drinking
    2. Slave Laws and Regulations
      1. Kew- Examples of Barbadian slave laws CO 30/2
  2. slaves had easy access to rum and other alcoholic beverages
  3. creation of new African-oriented drinking practices
    1. combined the social and sacred alcohol-based traditions of diverse African ethnic groups
    2. helped foster slave spirituality and promote group identity
3. Slave religion
  1. rum as a way of linking to ancestors at home in Africa
    1. Africans and African slaves maintained cultural links across the Atlantic
  2. resistance technique
4. In West Africa- Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ghana and Benin
  1. politics
    1. The 'interlopers'
      1. Not quite pirates
      2. Developed the early Rum-for-slave trade in the early 1700s
      3. Improvised trade due to their illegal nature
      4. forced to improvise
      5. Illicit British traders in West Africa
      6. Forcing down prices
      7. Davies, 1999; 114-116
      8. Kew- 70/16, fos. 49, 80; T. 70/80, fo.23
      9. Interlopers respected as leaders in West Indies
      10. Davis, 1999; 116
      11. Means of forcing down the Company's prices
      12. Leading assault on hated Royal African Company monopoly
      13. Davis, 1999; 116
      14. Popularity was such that the company would be unlikely to obtain a favourable verdict from a jury in a common law court.
      15. Davis, 1999; 116
      16. T. 70/1, fo 17d.
      17. 1682 interloper awarded £1,627 for vessel seized by the company in Jamaica
      18. T. 70/16, fo. 38
      19. T.70/169, fos. 7d-8d
      20. Davis, 1999; 116
      21. St George (interloper vessel) seized in Jamaica in 1676 by a technicality
      22. meant that it was hard to prosecute for infringing on the monopoly
      23. often prosecuted for false entry under the Acts of Trade instead
      24. T. 70/10, fo. 29d; T. 70/12, fo. 6.
      25. often run by plantation owners
      26. Codrington
      27. V. T. Harlow, 1928; 11
      28. Kew T. 70/10, fo. 6D.
      29. majority were normal traders
      30. difficult to measure
      31. false reports to customs
      32. slaves landed at places other than ports
    2. Started as Brandy trade
      1. Rum less expensive and equally efficacious
    3. buying chief loyalty
      1. ethnographics- still occurs in many areas
      2. Schnapps to Ashanti chieftains
      3. Ashanti aligned themselves with the Dutch to limit British influence
      4. Like Native Americans in earlier connections of america
      5. Smith, 2008; 47
      6. Smith, 2008; 54
      7. Ortiz, 1947; 25
      8. Williams, 44; 78
      9. gift giving
      10. slave traders were expected to provide alcoholic beverages to all those involved in the securing slaves
      11. Smith; undated ca. 2001
      12. William Bosman of Dutch West India Company - regulations that the ship's captain make daily presentations of brandy to the King and the principal traders (cited in Postma 1990:365)
      13. Their design at first was only to draw off the Blacks from trading with Portugueses; but those having once found the sweet, could never be broke of it, tho' the Portugueses were actually expelled from all the places of trade they had been possessed of on the coast; but it became an inviolable custom for all Europeans. (Barbot 1746:260)
      14. Dashee, dassy, and bizy became standard terms along the African coasts for gifts of alcohol dispensed prior to trading (Atkins 1735 cited in Craton, Walvin, and Wright 1976:32; Barbot 1746:142; Rodney 1970:180).
      15. the African trader "never cares to treat with dry Lips."
      16. Atkins (1735 cited in Craton, Walvin, and Wright 1976:32
      17. Africans at Whydah were great lovers of strong liquors, who expected their dassy, and "he that intends to Trade here, must humour them herein, or he shall not get one Tooth [elephant tusk]."
      18. Bosman (1705:404)
      19. Gift giving, which often involved elaborate rules, was implemented to appease state leaders and integrate even peripheral African social groups into the Atlantic trade (Thornton 1992:66-67).
      20. rum "was always the cargo for the slaver's return trip, for with it slaves were bought, local chieftains bribed, and the African tribes corrupted and weakened."
      21. Fernando Ortiz (1947:25),
      22. Rum was an essential part of the cargo of the slave ship, particularly the colonial American slave ship. No slave trader could afford to dispense with a cargo of rum. It was profitable to spread the taste for liquor on the coast. The Negro dealers were plied with it, were induced to drink till they lost their reason, and then the bargain was struck.
      23. (Williams 1944:78)
    4. Rum a form of currency exchange
    5. African slavers
      1. the Portuguese had learned in the mid-1400's that if they wanted slaves it cost less to buy slaves from Africans than it did to attempt to capture them on their own.
      2. Thomas and Bean, 1974; 900
      3. Once at the coast, the slaves were bartered to either to sea captains or to European representatives.
      4. Thomas and Bean, 1974; 900
    6. Barbados-Gambia link
    7. "Between 1703 and 1709 thirty one ships were dispatched from Jamaica, Barbados and Antigua, carrying Rum to Cape Coast Castle and returning with negroes." Davis, 1999; 191
  2. Imports
    1. American rum, Dutch gin, French brandy, and Portuguese wine together made up a substantial fraction of African imports.
      1. Thomas and Bean, 1974; 901
    2. foreign imported goods that were used to purchase slaves.
    3. mix in the cargo match the preferences of the slave dealers at the planned site of trade. Some- times the lack of some single commodity which was in high demand could be a serious handicap.
      1. Thomas and Bean, 1974; 901
    4. wide selection of European manufactured goods which combined to constitute the largest portion of slavers' cargoes
      1. Thomas and Bean, 1974; 902
    5. A cargo outbound from Europe would consist of an assortment of goods chosen to fit the most recent information about consumer tastes at its destination.
      1. Thomas and Bean, 1974; 902
    6. Rum traded as part of larger trading packages
    7. David Eltis and Lawrence Jennings (1988:948) estimated that in the decade of the 1680s, alcohol represented 12.5% of West African imports
    8. In the 1720s, brandy was reported to be one of the principal commodities imported by the French at the slave trading port at Whydah and documents of the Dutch Middelburgsche Commercie Compagnie show that more than 10 percent of trading packages consisted of alcoholic beverages
      1. (Saugera 1995:247; Law 1991:202; Postma 1990:104).
    9. By the late eighteenth century, slave traders from New England and Brazil were each annually exporting about 300,000 gallons of rum to West and West Central Africa
      1. (Pan 1975:8; Williams 1944:80; McCusker 1989:492-497; Curto 1996).
    10. Obviously those areas of West and West Central Africa with the greatest amount of direct trade with rum making regions, such as Angola and the Gold Coast, had greater access to inexpensive rum.
    11. Eltis (2000:301) estimated that, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Gold Coast, which carried on a considerable amount of direct trade with rum-laden British American traders, received 48,000 gallons of rum annually.
      1. African states, like those on the Gold Coast, usually contained 20,000-30,000 people suggesting a relatively high rate of per capita rum consumption (Thornton 1992:105).
    12. seldom performed in the early years of the Royal African Company
      1. Davies, 99; 190
    13. (Klein Middle passage 1978 129notes) The basic commodities imported into [West Africa] from the West Indies in 1768 and 1769 were, in order of inportance, rum, sugar, molasses and coffee. In previous years these four products accounted for 97% of the total value of goods in this trade and 96% in the following year. . Of these products, rum was the key comoditiy, accounting for 72% and 70% respectively in these two years.
  3. was there any change in the socio-political atmosphere post slave trade that could be put to the lack of social lubricant?
    1. Is it possible to divide the two themes?
  4. John Cabess
    1. (1640s-1722) a prominent African trader in the port city of Komenda, part of the Eguafo Kingdom, in modern-day Ghana
    2. major British ally and was a major supplier to the British Royal African Company. As a trader, he became a primary economic and political force in the coastal region in the early 1700s, playing an active role in the Komenda Wars, the rise of the Ashanti Empire, the expansion of British involvement in West Africa, and the beginnings of large-scale Atlantic slave trade.
  5. British areas of slavery- 'warehouses' for the African Slave Trade
    1. Sierra Leone
    2. Senegambia Francophone-Anglophone balance
  6. http://fax.libs.uga.edu/HT857xA1/stamenu.html
  7. Exports
    1. Ships involved in the colonial trade were first required to be registered in 1696
Bristol
1. Bristol and Liverpool became major ports through fitting out slave ships and handling the cargoes they brought back. Between 1700 and 1800, Liverpool's population rose from 5000 to 78,000.
2. Liverpool
3. British merchants and companies
  1. Berry Brothers and Rudd?
  2. Edward Colston
    1. partner in a sugar refinery in St. Peter's Churchyard; shipping sugar from St. Kitts
  3. Thomas Daniel & Sons, Bristol
    1. Traded for the Codringtons
    2. Accounts of sales of sugar at Bristol, 1785-1846.
      1. C/WI/COD/127:
Extra social aspects
1. part of massive luxury goods trade
  1. Guns, cloth etc
  2. the Transatlantic Slave Trade provided many jobs for people back in Britain. Many people worked in factories which sold their goods to West Africa. These goods would then be traded for enslaved Africans.
    1. Birmingham had over 4000 gun-makers, with 100,000 guns a year going to slave-traders.
    2. Factories were set up with money made from the Slave Trade. Many trades-people bought a share in a slave ship. Slave labour also made goods, such as sugar, more affordable for people living in Britain.
  3. Textiles from Yorkshire and Lancashire were bought by slave-captains to barter with.
  4. One half of the textiles produced in Manchester were exported to Africa and half to the West Indies.
  5. Huge industrial plants were built to refine the imported raw sugar.
  6. Production of the glassware was needed to bottle rum.
2. profits gained from chattel slavery helped to finance the Industrial Revolution
3. "national" drinks of Europe: jenever (Belgium and the Netherlands), gin (England), Schnaps (Germany), grappa (Italy), horilka (Ukraine), akvavit/snaps (Scandinavia), vodka (Russia and Poland), ouzo (Greece), rakia (the Balkans), and poitín (Ireland).
4. continuous still in the 19th century
5. Rum consumption- variations
  1. navy grog
  2. bumbo
    1. pirates
6. Australia's Rum Rebellion
  1. Rum Rebellion of 1808 was the only successful armed takeover of government in Australia's history.
  2. Bligh stopped Macarthur from cheaply distributing large quantities of rum into the Corps
  3. even if the rebellion was not about rum it gives a view of the social preoccupations of the period
    1. keen to blame alcohol for all the problems in the world. Howitt took Bligh's side and invented the phrase Rum Rebellion, and it has stuck ever since.
7. the Sugar Act in 1764 may have even helped cause the American Revolution.
  1. Tannahill, Reay (1973). Food in History. Stein and Day
8. High levels of drunkenness link to high levels of social anxiety
  1. Donald Horton 1943
  2. often high in hunter gatherer societies
    1. HRAF
      1. Human Relation Area Files
    2. allowed them to periodically release aggressive impulses brought about by instability of the food supply
      1. Barry 1975
      2. Donald Horton 1943
      3. Bacon et al. 1965
      4. McClelland et al. 1972
    3. Excessive drinking is common in societies whose belief system includes malicious or unpredictable gods or ancestral spirits that cause random arbitrary danger and commit acts of violence
      1. James Schaefer 1976
'Fuel for Empire'
1. how did rum influence the building of Empire
2. Slave trade building block for the Industrial Revolution
3. Agricultural Revolution
  1. available labour
  2. machinery
4. increase of revenue
Sugar
1. why the Brits were in Caribbean with slaves
2. rum was a waste product of sugar production originally given to / used by slaves
  1. run off from the molasses boiling product given to slaves and fermented
Other Themes
1. East America
  1. Boston rum production
  2. prohibition
  3. Nelson and the rum-runners
2. Illicit rum trades
  1. Cornish smugglers
3. prostitution
4. Moral issues
5. Medicinal
  1. and a great embarrassment to us. How|ever, we went on with the culture of the land. We used to make fires every night all around us, to keep off wild beasts, which, as soon as it was dark, set up a most hideous roaring. Our habitation being far up in the woods, we frequently saw different kinds of animals; but none of them ever hurt us, except poisonous snakes, the bite of which the Doctor used to cure by giving to the patient as soon as possible, about half a tumbler of strong rum, with a good deal of Cayenne pepper in it. In this manner he cured two natives and one of his own slaves. The Indians were exceedingly fond of the Doctor, and they had good reason for it; for I believe they never had such an useful man amongst them.
    1. Olaudah Equiano
      1. Page 188