Invented over centuries as different groups of people from the americas, europe, and africa converged and combined his experiences. Why rum . What is interesting about rum is it is ubiquitous. It is something, we look at the example of George Washingtons mount vernon, everybody is drinking rum. It is served on washingtons table. Martha washington says rum may always be had. It is being imported from a distillery locally in alexandria, virginia and also from the caribbean. It is having an internal economy bringing in workers who get their wages in rum. Enslaved people receive rum for anything from childbirth to rescuing a cow. It is one of these moments where you can see how different groups of people we dont always think of interacting around an item part of everyday life. Where and when is it invented . I argue in the book it is invented in barbados in the early to mid17th century when europeans from england and scotland and native people from south america and africans arrived in barbados within about 18 months of each other. It is a moment when people want alcohol. All of those individuals were used to having alcohol. They are far removed from where they had lived previously. Certain alcohols dont travel well over the atlantic ocean. And so there are people interested in making alcohol, with some experience making alcohol. There are new products they experiment with, fermenting to turn sugar into alcohol. Some of the equipment is necessary to make rum arrived on the island for different purposes. There is experimentation, drawing in different groups of people and in a couple of decades, they are producing a number of different beverages from bananas and plums, which becomes rum. I argue it is invented in barbados and reinvented as a commodity but also the knowledge to make that commodity travels from barbados to other parts of the caribbean and north america, england and scotland. What are they using . When the native people are brought, they bring sugarcane. The base ingredient for rum is the waste product of sugar. That is the base ingredient. How is it made . You would take whatever waste product you had, we are talking about sugarcane that might have been damaged, eaten by rats, or the molasses that is taken out of the sugar as it is turned into granular sugar. They are taking all of these waste products together and mixing them together with water, yeast, allowing the fermentation process to take place for two weeks as the sugar becomes alcohol and then they are put in a close topper where you can check most of the alcohol to create a more concentrated beverage. Who is drinking it . Again, everybody. It is consumed on plantations. On, producers are the consumers. That is important because it suggests when we figure out why rum gained the quality it does, whoever is making it is also thinking about what they want to consume and what properties they want. It is being traded locally. Smaller plantations may not have a distillery. It is being traded to africa as part of the slave trade. Alcohol is the secondmost traded item in the transatlantic slave trade. It becomes a part of the european trade with the native people. Just about everybody, including people who are children today would have been drinking rum in large quantities. Is it a lucrative commodity . The thing that might differentiate rum from beer or wine or brandy and whiskey is that it is valueadded. You are able to harness the waste product of sugar production and turn it into run. It increased the value of sugar production. It is very lucrative. Beyond just making money, it encourages industrialists in north america to centralize production. When you look at documents from that time, or in your research, how much are people paying for or trading for to get rum and in what quantities . It depends. Individuals might go to a backcountry tavern and buy a small quantity of rum for personal consumption. How much would that cost . Cents. Pennies. Again, you could get a little bit of rum for very little money. There is a lot of variety. This is in an era where as people are trying to invent rum is, they experiment with aging, experiment with different qualities and types of product. It also depends on, rum from the caribbean ended up being more valuable than rum in america. Describe the evolution of who is making it and where does it go from there . In the larger book project i document how rum merges from the margins of society in barbados as the cultivation is in hand. Native people, enslaved africans start experimenting with alcohol production. Early on, it is not a commodity yet. There is room for individuals to experiment with making it. It becomes a commodity. It becomes incredibly lucrative. Plantation owners and enslavers start to corral the process. Eventually requiring enslaved individuals to carry out the fieldwork associated with ramah production. Associated with rum production. It becomes over time the work becomes concentrated in the hands of enslaved individuals. The process and credit given to inventors is given to enslavers rather than the actual bodies and minds. Where does it get exported and why . Anywhere a british ship is going, rum is going with it. A lot of rum, and also the knowledge of how to produce, is being circulated between the caribbean, north america, and britain. Later on in the 18th century, you also see rum in south asia and australia. Rum is always on these ships. Sometimes as a trade item. What impact does this industry have on the colonies . It becomes one of the Largest Industries in north american cities. By 1770, there are about 140 distilleries throughout the british colonies. All the way from georgia, to new hampshire, even canada. This is a type of production, a larger scale of production that brings slavery that resembles plantation slavery from the caribbean. To places like boston, new york, philadelphia. What do you mean by that . The way the distilleries work in the northern cities, they would have as many as eight or 10 enslaved people working in them. They were supervised by a distillery. That is different than other industries as far as shipbuilding or making iron where the workers tended to work alongside each other. It is one of the larger uses of industrial slavery in the north. What impact does it have on slavery and the institution . The production of rum has several influences. It is one of the most frequently traded items in the slave trade. It shows the connection between places like boston and newport, rhode island and this trade in human beings. It encourages the movement of an enslaved body. I document in the book cases where individual enslaved people are moved against their will from plantations in barbados to boston where they are valued. I tell the story of a man in 1730 who is removed from barbados and carried around in boston and advertised as an expert in rum production, or making the barrels. This is a powerful reminder of how slavery was not just taking a physical body. It was also taking the mind. It tells us something about the intellectual slavery where individuals are producing knowledge. They are producing expertise that adds value. Was that person worth more because of his expertise . Yes. There are other complications that make it harder but in general i have looked at the sorts of plantation records to understand how they value skilled workers. I find that enslaved distillers or those who made the barrels to carry rum were often valued higher than other enslaved people. When did you develop your interest in the history of rum . Even as an undergraduate student when i was falling in love with history i thought alcohol was a way to think about how a variety of people interact. It was so ubiquitous in society. Initially i was interested in how it was consumed. I spent some time working at mount vernon, they have a distillery. It was part of efforts to make different types of alcohol and it was hard work. Sometimes it did not go as planned. This suggested there was information and expertise that individuals in the 18th century and enslaved individuals must have had that we took for granted. It caused me to rethink the part of the alcohol process, the production and what that might tell us about the history of the Atlantic World and how we think about expertise. So you are making run the way people were doing it. Initially, whiskey, and then i had a chance to make rum as well. Again, it is inspired by how it was done, not exactly how it was done, but the physical process raised questions that went nicely with how i was learning about how we talk about industries and work in early america. And when you say it didnt turn out the way you expected, did you taste bad rum . I just remember when we didnt know how to mix our fermented batches, and we came in one morning and the floor was covered in foam. We had time to reflect as we were cleaning up the foam that had developed because of something that wasnt really written in the distillation guides in the 18 century, but people enslaved, distillers, and higher distillers would have known from their experience. What do you think people should know about the learning history by doing history . I thinkwe have to it can really add to our understanding of the materiality of certain processes, what it anys to create alcohol or sort of commodity. I think that can be valuable. I think we also have to be mindful that when we kind of use that technique, we are never going to be able to replicate of 18th, nor do we want to. It will never be the same. I cant experience things tied up in slavery or something else, but i can learn from momentarily of the with the schools people in the past who might have worked with them. Thank you. Thank you. Announcer this is American History tv, on cspan3, where each weekend, we feature 48 hours of programs exploring our nations past. Announcer the house will be in order. For 40 years, cspan has been provided america providing america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, supreme court, and Public Policy events from washington, d. C. And around the country, so you can make up your own mind. Created by cable in 1979, cspan is brought to you by your local cable and satellite provider. Cspan, your unfiltered view of government. Announcer this weekend, American History tv is joining our buckeye broadband Cable Partners to showcase the history of toledo, ohio. Watch more video from the cities on our current tour, visit cspan. Org citiestour. We continue with our look at toledo. In the barbeau district, they called it the snake on the lake because it is very gin gerrymandered. Our district skirts the entire southern rim of lake erie. Toledo is the glass city. We have companies that range from normal glass