The Invention of Rum: Creating the Quintessential Atlantic Commodity

A complex history of rum, from its production to its consumption, and from its origins in the Caribbean to its impact on the Atlantic world

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. 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 ...