“You know how much weevil me find in the cornmeal. And that bad rum him sell. Mix with water,” (15).
Rum is first mentioned in 1650 in records from Barbados. The drink was originally called called “kill-devil” or “rumbullion”, and by 1670s the name had been shortened to rum. The first “distillation of rum in the Caribbean took place on the sugarcane plantations there in the 17th century” (Wikipedia). Enslaved people at the plantation realized that molasses could be fermented into alcohol, and with distillation and purification, the first modern rums were created. Rum’s history is rooted in the American colonies’ slave trade. Enslaved people were taken “from Africa and traded to the West Indies for molasses; the molasses was made into rum in New England; and the rum was then traded to Africa” for more enslaved people (Britannica). The heavy, oldest type of rum is produced in Jamaica, Barbados, and Guyana, and produced from molasses.
Watering down alcohol is a common practice to increase the volume of drinks, but watered down rum actually has a name: grog. Merriam-Webster describes grog as a “liquor (such as rum) cut with water and now often served hot with lemon juice and sugar sometimes added.” It actually originated in the 18th century when an English admiral, who wore a cloak made of grogran fabric, ordered that the sailors in the Royal Navy be served diluted rum instead for their daily ration of rum (“Grog”).
“Grog.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grog.
“Rum.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/topic/rum-liquor.
“Rum.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Nov. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rum.
Thank you for this incredibly interesting genealogy of rum, or kill-devil as it was called – I had no idea that the process of making rum was originally developed by enslaved people on plantations in the Caribbean. It’s rather astounding to see how an alcohol that seems today so intrinsic a part of many cuisines was first created by people trapped in the harsh and unforgiving conditions of slavery, and sadly unsurprising that their innovations were then capitalized upon by their oppressors and led to further subjugation in the name of profit. I thought it was very important that you pointed out the near-circular nature of the slave trade’s interactions with the molasses and rum trades, as this kind of circulation comprised a system by which the slaveholders and merchants could profit in tandem by stealing and making use of the creations of the very people they were treating as lesser than human.