The invention of rum : creating the quintessential Atlantic commodity / Jordan B. Smith.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Smith, Jordan B. (Jordan Buchanan), Author.

Series:

Early American studies http://id.loc.gov/resources/hubs/b6297cdf-3c7a-24d8-f45d-c318977c5e31

Early American studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rum industry--History--17th century.

Rum industry.

Rum industry--History--18th century.

Distilling industries--Atlantic Ocean Region--History--17th century.

Distilling industries.

Distilling industries--Atlantic Ocean Region--History--18th century.

Sugar plantations--Atlantic Ocean Region--History--17th century.

Sugar plantations.

Sugar plantations--Atlantic Ocean Region--History--18th century.

Transatlantic slave trade--17th century--History.

Transatlantic slave trade.

Transatlantic slave trade--18th century--History.

Enslaved persons--Commerce--Atlantic Ocean Region--History--17th century.

Enslaved persons.

Enslaved persons--Commerce--Atlantic Ocean Region--History--18th century.

Atlantic Ocean Region--Commerce--History--17th century.

Atlantic Ocean Region.

Atlantic Ocean Region--Commerce--History--18th century.

Enslaved persons--Atlantic Ocean Region--History--17th century.

Distilling industries--History.

Rum industry--History.

Physical Description:

viii, 308 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2025]

Summary:

"It was strong. It was cheap. It was ubiquitous. Fermented and distilled from the refuse of sugar production, rum emerged in the seventeenth-century Caribbean as a new commodity in the world. To conjure something desirable from waste, the makers, movers, and drinkers of rum arrived at its essential qualities through cross-cultural experimentation and exchange. Those profiting most from the sale of rum also relied on plantation slavery, devoured natural resources, and overlooked the physiological effects of overconsumption in their pursuit of profit. Focusing on the lived experiences of British colonists, Indigenous people, and enslaved Africans, The Invention of Rum shows how the people who were engaged in making and consuming this new commodity created a new means of profit that remade the Atlantic world. Jordan B. Smith guides readers from the fledgling sugar plantations and urban distilleries where new types of alcohol sprung forth to the ships and garrisons, trading posts, and refined tables where denizens of the Atlantic world devoured it. Smith follows enslaved laborers in the Caribbean as they experimented with fermentation, Londoners caught up in the Gin Craze, colonial distillers in North America, and the imperial officials and sailors connecting these places. This was a world flooded by rum. Based on extensive archival research in the Caribbean, North America, and Britain, The Invention of Rum narrates the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century history of one of the Atlantic world's most ubiquitous items. Smith casts this everyday good as both a crucial example of negotiation between Europeans, Africans, and Americans and a harbinger of modernity, connecting its early history to the current global market. It is a revealing history of how individuals throughout the Atlantic world encountered--and helped to build--rapidly shifting societies and economies."-- Publisher's description.

Contents:

Introduction. A world of rum

Part I. The "invention" of rum

Promise and perils of a new commodity

Circulating ideas in a world of rum

Part II. Extraction. Slavery and the work of making rum

Rum's environmental costs

Manufacturing demand and supplying slavers

Part III. Connection and conflict. Whose profits?

Defining rum by challenging slavery

Epilogue. Global-Caribbean legacies of an Atlantic history.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

9781512828184

1512828181

9781512828191

151282819X

OCLC:

1458995612

Publisher Number:

CIPO000262268