with Andrew Sola and Prof. Jordan B. Smith (Widener University)

In this episode, we discuss the rum industry in connection with grievances #16 and #17 in the Declaration of Independence:

“For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world”

“For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent”

Topics include the following:

-an explanation of rum production, from sugarcane to the finished product

-the origins of sugarcane and rum production in Barbados in the early 1600s

-the development of distilleries in the Colonies, particularly Massachusetts, in the late 1600s

-rum consumption in the Colonies by people in cities, slave traders, fishermen, and native Americans

-the use of rum as a form of payment in the triangular slave trade

-the imperial mercantilist competition between British rum and French brandy

-the moral and religious history of rum and alcohol consumption

-the Colonial activist movements that aimed to create political change, for example, by refusing to consume products made by enslaved people or by boycotting tea

-the Molasses Act of 1733 and the Sugar Act of 1763

-the rise of rum smuggling and the association between rum and piracy

-the deleted passage in the Declaration condemning slavery and its connection to the rum industry

-the state of the rum industry, slavery, and the abolition movement after the formation of the United States

-the development of the maple syrup industry as a moral alternative to the sugar and rum industry, which was driven by the immoral institution of slavery

Prof. Smith’s book can be found here:

The Invention of Rum: Creating the Quintessential Atlantic Commodity

His article in Commonplace can be found here:

Where’s the Pirate?

The cover image features a sugarcane plantation with a mill and enslaved people in Antigua.