British Edition of Rum - April 2008
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The New Statesman, for which I wrote over 20 years ago, is known in Britain as the Staggers.. appropriate for a rum review! Rumpundit Books After the sugar rushPublished 08 May 2008
Rum: a Social and Sociable History
Rum is the “demon” beverage favoured by pirates, slavers, buccaneers and, as the French historian Alain Huetz de Lemp once declared, “all the vagabonds who scoured the New World”. The Nation correspondent Ian Williams’s micro-historical journey looks beyond this reputation to uncover a heady past at the very heart of world trade. From its Caribbean-Creole origins to its significance in Castro’s Cuba, Williams traces the drink’s biography with a connoisseur’s nose for a striking anecdote. The Kennedy dynasty made its fortunes “supplying Yankee thirsts during Prohibition”, while America’s Pilgrim Fathers were “a bunch of weird cultists” who thought nothing of waylaying a Quaker ship for its cargo’s value “in rum and sugar”. But its darkest secret is its importance to the transatlantic slave trade. Rum was a “double enslaver”: it both depended “on the toil of slaves to make” and was “the main trade item to buy slaves in West Africa”. The Sugar Rush, as malicious and as maddening as the Gold Rush, pioneered the Middle Passage to the Americas. There, rum’s high market value helped to justify the use of an “industrial-scale” slave force. Williams’s headlong dive into “rumbalia” is an overproof treat. Rum:A Social and Sociable HistoryIan WilliamsPaperback Original Imprint: Nation Books Extent: 340 pages Format: Paperback, 210 x 140mm ISBN 13: 978-15602-5891-9 Price: £9.99 Publication: 1st April 2008 Subject: History BIC code: HBB Market rights: |
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A spirited history of the drink that shaped the modern world
Rum shaped the modern world. The drink, and the molasses that it was made from, was to the eighteenth century world what oil is to the present. In this sweeping history of the world’s most popular spirit, Ian Williams takes us across space and time, from the origins of rum in the plantations of
Williams reminds us that rum is the quintessentially British drink, invented by thirsty British colonists in
From rum being the moving spirit for the tax-dodging smuggling colonists of America to declare independence, up to the trade wars between the Bacardi family and Fidel Castro, Williams shows that rum, while remaining quintessentially British, has helped shape the modern world in many surprising ways, not least providing the essential liquidity in every sense for the development of Atlantic trade.
About the author: British ex-pat Ian Williams lives in
Perseus Running Press, 69–70
w Tel: 020 7353 7771 w Fax: 020 7353 7786
Distribution: Grantham Book Services
w UK Fax: +44 (0)1476 541061 w Email: orders@gbs.tbs-ltd.co.uk
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(Glad to have expanded his vocabulary! Rumpundit. )
Rum - A Social and Sociable History by Ian Williams
Alan G. Scott
Level: Basic PLUS
I have a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry and have worked as an environmental laboratory technician, a laboratory manager in an industrial lab, and a quality …
Rum, NOT money, makes the world go ’round. That is the clear, simple, double-distilled message of Ian Williams’s very tongue-in-cheek work on the delicious spirit. It’s interesting how one can skew history by focusing on one aspect, viewing it through rum-soaked goggles and thereby turning history on its keg…er, head.
All the American text books will have to be re-written. For example, the American Revolution, dubbed the War of Independence by the British Williams, was not fought for freedom from English rule. It was to protest the high tariffs that the sugar lobby in London forced the crown into imposing on the colonies for rum, sugar and molasses imports and exports.
The Boston Tea Party wasn’t to protest taxation on tea, or any other form of rebellion. “It was really all about the rum.” (pg 166)
Paul Revere stopped at a tavern and threw back a few snorts of rum before setting off on his famous midnight ride. (pg 172)
Williams could not help but take a few shots (no pun intended) of George Washington, who according to the author loved rum SO much, he named his historic home after the man who introduced grog to the navy, Vice Admiral Vernon. By the way, the anniversary of that momentous occasion of the order for grog, August 21, 1740 is just a few short months away. You had better start planning for the big holiday now!
A few days before that, however, is the big bash for Black Tot Day, the day the Admiralty abolished the grog rationing, July 31, 1970.
Williams has other writing credits to his name, but his style of prose makes this book a difficult read. I had to re-read many complex and compound sentences to understand them. He drops in names, perhaps once, with no introduction or follow-up. The reader who may not have been exposed to as many annals of history as Williams is left wondering who he’s talking about and why they were included. He digresses often, although I’m (so) sure the logic in these tangents made perfect sense to him and his editor.
He loves to throw in terms like “eleemosynary efforts”, “Panglossianly optimistic” and “scofflawlishness”. Wow. Flowery language. Yawn.
Stephen King once wrote the road to hell is paved with adverbs. That’s all I’m saying.
It’s hard to tell if Williams was taking himself seriously with this book, but the reader should not. Rum is worth a look or at least one to keep on the shelf as a reference guide to other references on rum in history.
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