Caribbean Rum: A Social and Economic History - Softcover

Smith, Prof. Frederick H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813033152 ISBN 13: 9780813033150

Publisher: University Press of Florida, 2008

Synopsis

"The most significant contribution to the history of Caribbean rum since John McCusker's Rum and the American Revolution. . . . It adds significantly to McCusker’s work by analyzing the Caribbean environment in greater depth and by bringing the story forward by two centuries."--Anthony P. Maingot, Florida International University

Christopher Columbus brought sugarcane to the New World on his second voyage. By 1520 commercial sugar production was underway in the Caribbean, along with the perfection of methods to ferment and distill alcohol from sugarcane to produce a new beverage that would have dramatic impact on the region. Caribbean Rum presents the fascinating cultural, economic, and ethnographic history of rum in the Caribbean from the colonial period to the present.

Drawing on data from historical archaeology and the economic history of the Caribbean, Frederick Smith explains why this industry arose in the islands, how attitudes toward alcohol consumption have impacted the people of the region, and how rum production evolved over 400 years from a small colonial activity to a multi-billion-dollar industry controlled by multinational corporations. He investigates the economic impact of Caribbean rum on many scales, including rum's contribution to sugarcane plantation revenues, its role in bolstering colonial and postcolonial economies, and its impact on Atlantic trade. Smith discusses the political and economic trends that determined the value of rum, especially war, competition from other alcohol industries, slavery and emancipation, temperance movements, and globalization.

 The book also examines the social and sacred uses of rum and identifies the forces that shaped alcohol use in the Caribbean. It shows how levels of drinking and drunken deportment reflected underlying social tensions, which were driven by the coercive exploitation of labor and set within a highly contentious hierarchy based on class, race, gender, religion, and ethnic identity, and how these tensions were magnified by epidemic disease, poor living conditions, natural disasters, international conflicts, and unstable food supplies.

About this title

About the Author:

Frederick H. Smith, assistant professor of anthropology at the College of William and Mary.

Review:

"Examines how the role of alcohol within the plantation system of the Caribbean has evolved since the sixteenth century.... Smith draws on documentary, archaeological, and ethnographic evidence from Africa, Europe, and the Americas.... Suitable for a variety of readers." - American Anthropologist "Delving into diverse topics, such as the physical environment of the rum still, the cultural use of alcohol in West African funeral rites, and rum's commercial history, Smith's interdisciplinary approach has provided historians of the Atlantic with a well-argued, eloquent examination of one of the Caribbean's transformative goods and of 'Captain Morgan's' drink of choice." - H-Net Reviews "Intellectually rich and deliciously complex.... Smith shows his undeniable talent as a researcher and story-teller as rum's multiple facets unfold from the very first page." - Journal of Latin American Geography"

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of Florida
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0813033152
• ISBN 13: 9780813033150
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 360