The colonial molasses trade occurred throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the European colonies in the Americas. Molasses was a major trading product in the Americas, being produced by enslaved Africans on sugar plantations on European colonies. The good was a major import for the British North American colonies, which used molasses to produce rum, especially distilleries in New England. The finished product was then exported to Europe as part of the triangular trade.
Sugarcane grows in hot, humid climates. After landing in the Canary Islands, Christopher Columbus brought sugarcane to the Caribbean during his second voyage to the Americas, in 1493. During the eighteenth century, sugar-refining methods at the time produced much more molasses to sugar than they do today. It was estimated that "as much as three parts molasses was produced to four parts sugar, and on an average it was estimated that the ratio of molasses to sugar was about one to two."[1] This molasses was either used for table use or in the production of rum.
To make rum, sugarcane juice is fermented with yeast and water and then distilled in copper pot stills. The liquor was given the name rum in 1672, likely after the English slang word rumballion which meant clamor.[2] Sugar plantation owners in the Caribbean often sold rum on discount to the naval ships so that they would spend more time close to the islands, providing protection from pirates. Rum also gained popularity in Britain as English ships brought the liquor from America across the Atlantic.
Economic significance
The triangular trade.
In the 18th century, New England became one of the leading rum producers in the world. It was the colonies’ only commodity that could be produced in large quantities by non-English powers and sold to the English. The French West Indies had a large supply of molasses at this time, but the area was lacking in lumber, cheese, and flour. These products were the main exports of the North American colonies, which led to a very secure business relationship between the two areas.
Molasses was important in triangular trade. In the triangular trade, slave traders from New England would bring rum to Africa, and in return, they would purchase enslaved Africans. The enslaved cargo was then brought to the West Indies and sold to sugarcane plantations to harvest the sugar for molasses. Molasses was then brought from the West Indies to the colonies and sold to rum producers.
Problems with demand
The molasses trade experienced many problems in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Throughout this period, there was often never enough demand to meet the large supply of molasses that was continuing to increase. Neither England nor France had much of a market for molasses. England imported molasses mostly in the form of rum, but that was usually coming from the colonies at this time. The French islands in the West Indies were prohibited from shipping rum to France with regard to France's market for brandy.[3] In the last decades of the eighteenth century, imports of French rum were at an all-time low. To combat this problem, many English planters on the islands developed their own local distilleries in order to deal with the large surplus of molasses. There were no specific restrictions on the English islands, so they were able to profit from the disposal. By the 1650s, many plantations on the islands had their own distilleries and were exporting rum to the mainland colonies. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, rum production was rising rapidly.
Dutch threat to the monopoly
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Dutch possessions in the West Indies began to encourage trade with the islands and New England. Several bills were to be prepared in order to hinder Dutch trade with colonies, but none of them were passed. By 1715, Boston and many other colonial areas were importing around one hundred thousand gallons of molasses from the Dutch annually.[4]New York was also importing large amounts of foreign molasses compared to English. At the same time, French imports of molasses to the colonies were also growing. This combination of importing foreign product to the English colonies caused England a lot of agitation in the years to come.
When the trading of molasses first began, it was unrestrained, apart from small local taxes. The colonies began to prefer French molasses to British because of the price difference. French policy provided incredibly cheap prices, and the British could no longer compete. In order to control the molasses trade with the English colonies, the Parliament of Great Britain decided to place high taxes on any molasses that was shipped from a foreign power to the colonies in North America. The Molasses Act of 1733 imposed a fee of six pence per gallon on foreign molasses.[5] This act was meant to force the colonies into buying molasses from the British or stop producing rum in North America. Many, however, say that the Molasses Act was put in place to destroy New England’s rum industry. Contrary to Parliament’s plans, the colonies first protested this act. They soon realized that instead of complying with the new Molasses Act, it would be much easier for them to just ignore the new prohibitive taxes and smuggle molasses from the West Indies. Many ports collected about half of the legal duty that must have been imported to their harbors. This was clear in Massachusetts where it "...imported legally less than half as much molasses and rum as it exported..."[6] These illicit operations would continue for several decades. Had the Molasses Act succeeded in its purpose, New England rum production would have been destroyed.
Sugar Act of 1764
After the French and Indian War, the British tried once again to impose strict policy on trading goods that benefited the colonies. In 1764, the new British prime minister, George Grenville pressed the Sugar Act to revive what the Molasses Act had failed to do. The colonies once again protested this act and succeeded in lowering the tax, but the penalties and fines angered the colonies still. Although the act was only in place for two years, it was much more successful in its goals than the previous Molasses Act. Smuggling, however, was still very common. This was proven by the fact that annually, the British West Indies exported about a million gallons of molasses to the colonies.[7] After the Sugar Act was instated, exports fell in the coming years, according to records. On the other hand, mainland rum production rose during those years. The Sugar Act was later repealed in 1766, and a penny-per-gallon tax was placed on British and foreign molasses imports. This law marked the first large-scale legal importation of rum and molasses, but smuggling still continued.
When the colonies gained their independence, they were freed from these restraints, but their trade with the British West Indies restricted. Although the law was later changed to allow direct importation of molasses to New England, the Navigation Acts hindered American shipping until around 1830. By the end of the colonial period, "only about one-sixteenth of the molasses imported to the mainland came from the British sugar islands."[8]
Other uses of molasses
Outside of the rum distillery, the most important use of molasses was its use in brewingbeer. Molasses beer was said to be cheaper, easier to make, and less alcoholic than commercial beer. This came in handy for people who lacked access to purified drinking water. Molasses became a very important part of family diets and cooking purposes at this time.
Although the colonial rum industry was very successful in the eighteenth century, whiskey would soon become its largest competitor. Molasses, however, was also used in the colonies for kitchen purposes, such as for baked beans, brown bread, Indian pudding, pie, and soft drinks. Molasses were also used for curing meat and pickling fish, and for medicinal purposes.
At the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812, the Americans used barrels of molasses, among other items, as hasty barricades to provide cover from the advancing British. Chapel, Charles Edward, The Boy's Book of Rifles, Coward-McCann, Inc., New York, 1948, page 15.
New England rum
The rum industry in the colonies was limited to the middle colonies and New England.
Massachusetts and Rhode Island together made up three-quarters of the mainland's domestic rum exports by the end of the colonial period. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Massachusetts supported sixty-three distilleries, which accounted annually for about 700,000 gallons.[9] Rhode Island supported around thirty distilleries, and after the Sugar Act was repealed, produced about 500,000 gallons of rum annually.[10]
Other colonies, such as Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania also had rum distilleries, but they operated on local terms and did not participate in the large-scale exportation of rum that Massachusetts and Rhode Island were involved in. South of Pennsylvania, there was little interest in rum distillation, as distilleries were very expensive and difficult to build.
The Danish West Indies or Danish Virgin Islands or Danish Antilles were a Danish colony in the Caribbean, consisting of the islands of Saint Thomas with 32 square miles (83 km2); Saint John with 19 square miles (49 km2); and Saint Croix with 84 square miles (220 km2). The islands have belonged to the United States as the Virgin Islands since they were purchased in 1917. Water Island was part of the Danish West Indies until 1905, when the Danish state sold it to the East Asiatic Company, a private shipping company.
The Navigation Acts, or more broadly the Acts of Trade and Navigation, were a long series of English laws that developed, promoted, and regulated English ships, shipping, trade, and commerce with other countries and with its own colonies. The laws also regulated England's fisheries and restricted foreign—including Scottish and Irish—participation in its colonial trade. While based on earlier precedents, they were first enacted in 1651 under the Commonwealth.
Triangular trade or triangle trade is trade between three ports or regions. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come. It has been used to offset trade imbalances between different regions.
The Sugar Act 1764 or Sugar Act 1763, also known as the American Revenue Act 1764 or the American Duties Act, was a revenue-raising act passed by the Parliament of Great Britain on 5 April 1764. The preamble to the act stated: "it is expedient that new provisions and regulations should be established for improving the revenue of this Kingdom ... and ... it is just and necessary that a revenue should be raised ... for defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the same." The earlier Molasses Act 1733, which had imposed a tax of six pence per gallon of molasses, had never been effectively collected due to colonial evasion. By reducing the rate by half and increasing measures to enforce the tax, Parliament hoped that the tax would actually be collected. These incidents increased the colonists' concerns about the intent of the British Parliament and helped the growing movement that became the American Revolution.
Sugar plantations in the Caribbean were a major part of the economy of the islands in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Most Caribbean islands were covered with sugar cane fields and mills for refining the crop. The main source of labor, until the abolition of chattel slavery, was enslaved Africans. After the abolition of slavery, indentured laborers from India, China, Portugal and other places were brought to the Caribbean to work in the sugar industry. These plantations produced 80 to 90 percent of the sugar consumed in Western Europe, later supplanted by European-grown sugar beet.
Tafia is a drink similar to rum made from sugarcane juice. It is typically unaged whereas rum is typically aged in wooden barrels to reduce the level of fusel. Most of the fusel is absorbed in the first two years. Premium rums are aged for a longer period, incidentally increasing the evaporation of ethanol.
Slavery in the British and French Caribbean refers to slavery in the parts of the Caribbean dominated by France or the British Empire.
Engenho is a colonial-era Portuguese term for a sugar cane mill and the associated facilities. In Spanish-speaking countries such as Cuba and Puerto Rico, they are called ingenios. Both words mean engine. The word engenho usually only referred to the mill, but it could also describe the area as a whole including land, a mill, the people who farmed and who had a knowledge of sugar production, and a crop of sugar cane. A large estate was required because of the massive amount of labor needed to yield refined sugar, molasses, or rum from raw sugar cane. These estates were prevalent in Brazil, Cuba, Dominican Republic, and other countries in the Caribbean. Today, Brazil is still one of the world's major producers of sugar.
The Molasses Act 1733 was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain that imposed a tax of six pence per gallon on imports of molasses from non-British colonies. Parliament created the act largely at the insistence of large plantation owners in the British West Indies. The Act was passed not to raise revenue but to regulate trade by making British products cheaper than those from the French West Indies. The Act greatly affected the significant colonial molasses trade.
The cuisine of the Thirteen Colonies includes the foods, bread, eating habits, and cooking methods of the Colonial United States.
Rum is a liquor made by fermenting and then distilling sugarcane molasses or sugarcane juice. The distillate, a clear liquid, is often aged in barrels of oak. Rum originated in the Caribbean in the 17th century, but today it is produced in nearly every major sugar-producing region of the world, such as the Philippines, where Tanduay Distillers, the largest producer of rum worldwide, has its headquarters.
The history of sugar has five main phases:
The extraction of sugar cane juice from the sugarcane plant, and the subsequent domestication of the plant in tropical India and Southeast Asia sometime around 4,000 BC.
The invention of manufacture of cane sugar granules from sugarcane juice in India a little over two thousand years ago, followed by improvements in refining the crystal granules in India in the early centuries AD.
The spread of cultivation and manufacture of cane sugar to the medieval Islamic world together with some improvements in production methods.
The spread of cultivation and manufacture of cane sugar to the West Indies and tropical parts of the Americas beginning in the 16th century, followed by more intensive improvements in production in the 17th through 19th centuries in that part of the world.
The development of beet sugar, high-fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Proto-globalization or early modern globalization is a period of the history of globalization roughly spanning the years between 1500 and 1800, following the period of archaic globalization. First introduced by historians A. G. Hopkins and Christopher Bayly, the term describes the phase of increasing trade links and cultural exchange that characterized the period immediately preceding the advent of so-called "modern globalization" in the 19th century.
Rhum agricole is the French term for sugarcane juice rum, a style of rum originally distilled in the French Caribbean islands from freshly squeezed sugarcane juice rather than molasses. Rhum is the term that typically distinguishes it in French-speaking locales from the rum made with molasses in other parts of the West Indies.
The Crown Colony of Jamaica and Dependencies was a British colony from 1655, when it was captured by the English Protectorate from the Spanish Empire. Jamaica became a British colony from 1707 and a Crown colony in 1866. The Colony was primarily used for sugarcane production, and experienced many slave rebellions over the course of British rule. Jamaica was granted independence in 1962.
Black Barbadians or Afro-Barbadians are Barbadians of entirely or predominantly African descent.
Francisco de Arango y Parreño (1765–1837) was a Cuban planter and intellectual. He helped to oversee colonial Cuba's transformation into a major sugar and coffee producer in the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century.
The London Society of West India Planters and Merchants was an organization established to represent the views of the British West Indian plantocracy, i.e. the ruling class who owned and ran the slave-based plantations in what is now the Caribbean. The organization played a major role in resisting the abolition of the slave trade and that of slavery itself.
The West India Interest lobbied on behalf of the Caribbean sugar trade in Britain during the late eighteenth century.
The first Leith Sugar House was established in 1677 by Robert Douglas and partners. Between 1667 and 1701 four sugar boiling and rum-distilling enterprises were established in Scotland, three in Glasgow and one in Leith. The financial success of the Leith Sugar house in the seventeenth and eighteenth century demonstrates Edinburgh's economic connection to the Atlantic economy and enslaved labour.
References
McCusker, John J.Rum and the American Revolution: The Rum Trade and the Balance of Payments of the Thirteen Continental Colonies. New York: Garland, 1989.
"Molasses Trade." Dictionary of American History. 2003.
Ostrander, Gilman M. "The Colonial Molasses Trade." Agricultural History. 2nd ed. Vol. 30. Winter Park: Agricultural History Society, 1956. 77-84. Via JSTOR.org
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