A People’s History of Rum
Rum has had its ups and downs in the last 400 years. Through wildly different cocktails and contexts, the spirit has come in and out of fashion, then come into fashion again and again. In Europe’s Caribbean colonies, plantation owners first sipped the stuff, overseeing their slaves from shaded verandas. Then, American tourists ordered mojitos in the mobbed-up clubs of Batista’s Havana while Hemingway downed his daiquiris at El Floridita. Around the same time, Mad Men types traded their suits for Hawaiian shirts and guzzled pool-sized mai tais with their mistresses in hundreds of bamboo-draped bars.
It’s true: rum is among the finest things in life, and the rich have drunk plenty. But along with the world’s wealthy elite, working folks love their rationed grog. Really, rum emerged and evolved–moreover, it continues to exist–through the efforts and innovations of laborers. And outside grand plantation houses, far from ritzy beachfront resorts, those same laborers were among the first people to enjoy rum. Together with an eclectic mix of troublemakers, thirsty workers have drained the bulk of history’s rum barrels. With this in mind, our newest bottle–Dani’s Tavern Rum–is a throwback to the spirit’s days as a base in blue-collar beverages, when rum was the drink of choice for sailors and subsistence farmers, pirates and revolutionaries.
Drink Up, Me Hardies!
When a lot of people picture historical rum-drinkers, they imagine Captain Jack Sparrow and company–eyepatched, peg-legged pirates staggering into helpless towns, plundering and pillaging with wisecracking parrots perched on their shoulders. The stereotype of rum-drunk pirates was solidified in fiction, long after the Golden Age of Piracy, in Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 novel Treasure Island. But Caribbean piracy’s heyday in the 17th and 18th centuries really did coincide with the early days of rum, and intrepid buccaneers were happy to relieve merchant vessels of their alcoholic cargo. Infamous pirate havens like Port Royal, Jamaica, were littered with taverns where delinquent seamen delighted in the island’s newest export.
Real-life pirates were guilty of greed and ghastly violence, but the scope of their crimes can hardly compare to the ruling colonial system, which was built on theft, murder, and enslavement. By breaking from that system, the diverse population of pirates–many of them former slaves and indentured servants–presented a freer alternative to life on the islands’ brutal sugar plantations. It was thieving pirates’ threat to commerce, rather than any violent assaults, that most upset colonial authorities, and seafaring outlaws laughingly downed boatloads of rum while dodging the inevitable crackdowns on piracy.
Up Spirits!
Beyond pirates, sanctioned sailors also guzzled their share of rum. As British colonies like Jamaica and Barbados started producing the spirit, the Royal Navy bought rum in bulk and stocked their notorious fleet with booze. Because naval vessels were often crewed by poor men and criminals strong-armed into service, maintaining morale was a critical challenge for officers on ships with miserable conditions; regular swigs of liquor kept the low-status crewmen subdued. By 1731, every Royal Navy sailor was issued an official “tot” of rum, a high-proof ration up to half a pint per day. Though Admiral Edward Vernon’s 1740 campaign against “The Formidable Dragon” (drunkenness) quickly diluted rum rations, the rum’s proof was only reduced to a sturdy 109, and the tot tradition continued for centuries.
Through the years, rum was shrewdly used to placate crews in a powerful navy–a force that was key to building Britain’s vast and violent empire. But for any one powerless, mistreated sailor, rum rations appeared as a rare comfort. Compared to the floggings and backbreaking labor, the daily tot was a nice change of pace, improved by the same Admiral Vernon advising that rum should be mixed with lime and sugar. Following an officer’s cry of “Up Spirits!” sailors would gather, collect their rations, and toss back the proto-daiquiris. The ritual was so welcome and so precious to members of the Royal Navy that rum rations continued until 1970, when cheekily mournful sailors donned black armbands and bid farewell to free liquor on July 31, which they dubbed Black Tot Day.
Give Me Rum or Give Me Death!
But just as rum was made a part of Britain's sea-based war machine, the spirit also fueled dissent. In the leadup to 1776, New England taverns were crowded with colonists of different classes–subsistence farmers, merchants, and lawyers alike. Initially, these transplants from the British Isles had made a familiar liquor: whiskey. But as the first New Englanders narrowly survived that region’s harsh conditions, the grains used in whiskey (corn, barley, rye, etc.) were needed as food. Turning to their Caribbean counterparts, New England colonists imported molasses, a cheap and bountiful byproduct of sugar refining. With molasses, whiskey distillers switched to making rum, and the spirit soon flooded New England taverns–boozy centers of local life, which rivaled churches as the region’s most essential meeting places. (A Massachusetts law required at least one tavern for every town!) Though their rum lacked the refined flavors of older island spirits, New England barkeeps covered imperfections by fixing early cocktails, mixing rum with sugar, citrus, and spices. These rum-filled drinks flowed in taverns where future militiamen and Founders gathered and shared their grievances, honing their treasonous critiques of the Crown.
Later, when drunken talk in taverns turned to political violence, rum was a driving force behind the fighting. First, when colonial merchants bought cheaper molasses from islands under French control, the Parliament in London passed the Molasses and Sugar Acts, taxing imports and forcing merchants to, again, buy from the British West Indies. United across the Thirteen Colonies, from Maine to Georgia, protesting merchants persuaded authorities to repeal the tax by 1766. Though these efforts were peaceful, the colonists’ conspiracy set a precedent for more radical acts of rebellion, and less than a decade later, the Revolution was underway. On the eve of war, before his fabled Midnight Ride alerted militias to British forces’ imminent attack, Paul Revere reportedly stopped at a distillery, and the spy drank rum on the road out of Boston. Then, just as sailors in the British Royal Navy were guaranteed their daily tot, the soldiers in Washington’s Continental Army were bolstered by daily rum rations. Facing British cannonfire and freezing to death at Valley Forge, the soldiers who fought for independence were largely common farmers and craftsmen. So, before Coca-Cola or Anheuser-Busch, rum was the official drink of rank-and-file Patriots–actual working people, who joined to defeat an imperial behemoth. With their sacrifices, the American Revolution was among the first successful challenges to British colonial rule, and it practically ran on rum.
What Is to Be Done?
What followed the American victory over Britain was far from ideal. Headed by aristocrats and career politicians, the Constitutional Convention and resulting U.S. government quickly abandoned the promises of freedom and equal rights that had spurred so many people to join the fight for independence. Rum’s popularity waned, meanwhile, as newly nationalistic Americans wanted whiskey, a spirit distilled from homegrown grains. With the 19th-century temperance movement’s undue emphasis on the “Demon Rum,” domestic rum production almost completely ceased.
Still, none of these setbacks were permanent. In the centuries since 1776, rum has had further successes in the States, and the spirit’s popularity is soaring at present, reaching record heights worldwide. More importantly, the battle for justice in America is ongoing, continuing from struggles that–like rum–are older than the nation itself. Amid fights for civil and economic rights, plenty of working-class heroes, martyrs, and movements have preferred other intoxicants to rum. But given rum’s centrality to both historic triumphs and crimes, Chicago Cane Cooperative’s commitment to positive change through a model of worker ownership is–we believe–appropriately premised on rum. In particular, our new Tavern Rum is a tribute to all those working people who make and love the spirit, especially those who’ve stood up to oppression. Like the Revolutionaries before you, we hope you’ll head to your local tavern–one of Chicago’s delightfully dingy dive bars–enjoy a pour of CCC rum, and share in the kinds of conversations that demand to be had and heard around the world.