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Rum Culture of Jamaica
| Article
# : |
17156 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1990 |
2,515 Words |
| Author
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Angelo Costanzo
Angelo Costanzo is professor of English at Shippensburg
University. He specializes in slave narrative biography. A
related article, "Living Under Mongibello," appeared in the
May 1990 issue of The World & I. |
During Christopher Columbus' third voyage to the New World, the explorer planted sugarcane on the island of Hispaniola. Subsequently, colonists found that a pleasing and intoxicating drink could be made from distilling fermented meleza (molasses), the sticky brown residue from the cane. They named the resulting drink aquardiente de cana (literally "liquor from cane"); but later the British called it by the botanical name for sugarcane, sacchrum, a term that English sailors soon shortened to "rum.”
Today, few people realize that the production and use of Jamaican rum can be traced to the numerous slave plantations that developed on the island in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After British ousted the Spanish and took control of Jamaica in 1655 (for a Great Britain controlled by Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan Commonwealth), they introduced the rum distillation process to the island, set up sugar plantations, and started the importation of kidnapped Africans to work as slaves on the sugarcane fields. Subsequently, Jamaica became the first place in the New World to process sugarcane into rum for commercial purposes and soon four hundred active plantations were established.
It might seem ironic that British Puritans were responsible for the island's dependence on sugar and rum. The sober-minded Puritans were very much against the idea that men and women should enjoy any of the material and sensual pleasures of life. However, it is now known that they were accustomed to drinking moderate amounts of alcoholic beverages.
Once sugarcane became the chief agricultural crop grown on the Caribbean island, and the slave trade had provided the manpower required for harvesting and processing cane into rum, Jamaica became strongly dependent on the plantation system for its economic life. Even today, sugar and rum enterprises account for a large part of the island's financial resources. While the old plantation reliance on forced labor ceased in 1838, when slavery was abolished in the British West Indies, most of the other production methods established in the early days have persisted. Today Jamaica is one of the most important rum-producing nations in the world. The government stringently supervises the lengthy and time-honored production process, with bonded aging from four to twenty years required. These rums vary from light, white, and clear, to gold and dark blends. By law, nothing can be added to Jamaican rum except local water, and only sugar-based coloring is allowed.
As might be expected in a country that boasts of
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