A History of French Rum. 2. The Sun King Against Rum

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                            A History of French Rum

                        2. The Sun King Against Rum

In previous articles, we have seen how in the French Caribbean rum was produced at least as early as the 1640s, that is at the same time, if not even a little earlier than in English Barbados. Next, with Jean-Baptiste Labat, we have learnt that, around 1700, French Caribbean plantations usually produced also noteworthy quantities of rum, with advanced techniques.

In 1670 and 1671 Colbert – the great minister of King Louis XIV - enacted three laws restricting trade to and from the French islands to Frenchmen. These laws formed the basis of French mercantilist trade policy and contributed to developing French trade and the economy in general. But to enact laws is often far easier than to really enforce them. French merchants were never able to supply the colonies with all the goods they needed and their products were often more expensive and of inferior quality than the products offered by Dutch and English merchants. Moreover, the Spanish, the British settlers of North America and other foreigners were eager to trade, illegally of course, with the French Caribbean planters. So smuggling was a constant feature of trade in the French Caribbean (indeed, all over the Atlantic world).

Therefore, the question is: why, after such a promising start, did French rum lag behind? Why in the XVIII century Great Britain and not France was by far the greatest producer and consumer of rum? Sugar was not lacking, indeed as early as the 1730s France became the first European exporter of sugar. 

To respond to this question, we have to deal, albeit in short, with Big History, that is with The Sun King. The long reign of Louis XIV (1643 – 1715), called Louis The Great or The Sun King, was a cornerstone in the history of France, and of Europe as well. Louis consolidated the State’s central power and modernized France, weakening the aristocracy and the many local powers. However, especially in the last decades of his reign, he dragged France into a long series of wars against nearly all the other European powers. Bloody and expensive wars often concluded with uncertain outcomes, if not with actual defeats. Some of Louis XIV’s wars: The War of Devolution (1667-1668); The Dutch War (1672-1678); The Nine Years’ War (1688-1697); The War of Spanish Succession (1701-1713).

France was the most densely populated, richest and powerful European country, but the burden of Louis XIV’s wars was too heavy even for her. “ In 1688 and 1689, France found itself at war with two great sea powers, England and the Dutch Republic, as well as the armies of the Austrian and Spanish Hapsburgs. The Nine Years’ War lasted until 1697. (Historians who look beyond the European campaigns prefer ‘The Nine Years’ War’ to the name ‘War of the League of Augsburg’; ‘King William’s War is also used in connection with colonial North America.) Although the colonial status quo ante prevailed at the Treaty of Ryswick, which ended the war in 1697, its terrible fiscal costs, in combination with economic difficulties and massive harvest failures, left France exhausted. Important naval defeats in the early 1690s signaled the demise of Colbert’s offensive blue water policy, and the French Caribbean colonies were left without significant support. In any case, the Royal Navy had not overcome infrastructure and logistic problems that would allow lengthy Caribbean cruises. Lack of facilities to under take repairs and local shortages of foodstuff were the two most serious problems.” (P.P. Boucher “France and the American Tropics …” 2008)

To put it simply, the enormous ambitions of the Sun King’s foreign policy greatly weakened France and probably prevented her from becoming the long-lasting European hegemonic power. And, getting back to rum, in those wars and in their upcoming consequences, lays the reason why French rum didn’t develop in the XVIII Century.

As often happens in our research, we’ll start from sugar.

According to R. L. Stein in his “The French Sugar Business in the Eighteenth Century ”, 1988, “The French refining industry may well have begun in Rouen in 1548, when ‘Pierre Dubosc, apothecary, signed a contract with Baltazar Sanchez, a Spanish subject, to learn from the latter in two years how to refine sugar and make jams.’ …In the mid-sixteenth century there were refiners if not refineries working in Rouen, Marseilles, and Bordeaux, although on a small scale.” Where was this sugar from? France, like the rest of Europe, had to rely mostly on Brazilian sugar for its growing needs. Later, in the second half of the 1600s, great quantities of muscovado [raw sugar] began to arrive in France from the newly settled French Caribbean and by the end of the century; France was suddenly self-sufficient in sugar. A large part of the imported muscovado was re-exported to Northern Europe, where Amsterdam and Hamburg were important centers of the sugar refining industry; the rest was refined in France for the domestic market and for export. All this occurred while Europe knew a massive surge in sugar consumption.

There also was another group of refineries operating in Old Regime France for a brief while, those in the French Caribbean. They were active in the latter part of the seventeenth century, having received strong encouragement from Colbert. Later these met with stiff opposition from metropolitan merchants and refiners. Eventually, the government began to discourage colonial refining.

Several sources suggest that with sugar, the consumption of rum had also begun to spread in France. Rum appeared in metropolitan France in two ways: the first was almost certainly the direct importation from the Caribbean of small amounts of rum produced on plantations such as those of Jean-Baptiste Labat, a phenomenon that mirrored the exchanges between the British West Indies and England through which rum became established as an important drink. The second way, perhaps an even more powerful threat that French rum posed to brandy, however, came from the sugar refineries established in the 1680s and 1690s in France itself, a result of Colbert’s deliberate attempts to encourage metropolitan refining. These refineries, constructed mainly along the Loire valley, began to produce significant quantities of sugar syrups and it was only natural for the refiners to ferment these syrups, then to distill a cane spirit and to sell it, doing so for the same economic reasons that motivated colonial planters: to turn a useless waste into the raw material of a profitable product.

Let’s remember that for us, in our historic research, RUM means every distilled drink produced by the fermentation and then by the distillation of sugar cane products: juice, molasses, syrups etc. In 1600 and 1700-century France they called it in many ways: taffia, guildive, eau-de-vie de canne, rhum, rome etc. To understand the contemporary documents, it is also important to know that these terms were not used with absolute consistency. More about this in future articles.

From now on, this article is largely based on Bernie Mandelblatt’s two seminal essays: “Atlantic consumption of French Rum and Brandy …” (2011) and “L’alambique dans l’atlantique,...” (2012)

In the second half of the XVII century, the consumption of distilled beverages grew a lot all over Europe and European colonies. One of the reasons of this change in the consumers’ habits was surely the physical robustness of spirits. Their heightened alcohol content made them withstand the trials of long-haul sea voyages much better than beer or wine; accordingly, it became ideal merchandise for transatlantic voyages for trade of all kinds, as well as for consumption on board. Nevertheless, the distilled alcohol that flourished in the final decades of the seventeenth century, and became one of the most highly prized consumer goods within Europe as well as in the Atlantic world was, in fact, French brandy, not Caribbean rum. 

In time, though, French wine and brandy producers became worried about the competition of the new cheap and strong spirit. The outbreak of the first serious trade dispute between brandy and rum in the 1690s provides evidence that a transatlantic commercialization of the Caribbean product was indeed possible. That such a trade may exist should not surprise us: from the outset of the sugar industry in the French Caribbean, there was a transatlantic trade in sugar syrups, and it is likely that rum also circulated. However, the growing refining of Caribbean raw sugar in France inevitably produced its own derivatives: the now “mainland” syrups and rum. French sugar refiners then quickly found themselves as potential producers of a mainland rum and their petitions demonstrate that purely Franco-Caribbean, or mainland- colonial competition had changed in nature: the battle was no longer a geographical one but concerned the raw material. The eruption of a lively competition between rum and brandy clearly starts.

To make things worse, the European wars of the late XVII century constituted a cataclysm for the French wine and brandy export markets. England and the Dutch Republic were enemies of France during the War of the League of Augsburg and, as a result of the general English blockade; France lost the main market for its wines and brandy. During the war, and especially after the Peace of Ryswick in 1697, the measures taken by the English to prevent the restoration of French domination in the market were relatively effective. England imposed prohibitive tariffs on French wine and brandy and tried to substitute Portugal for France as the main supplier of these products.

The sudden disappearance of the English and Dutch outlets made the huge domestic market even more important for wine and brandy producers and therefore rum appeared as a dangerous threat. And not only rum, any distilled alcohol was considered to be a competitor, a commercial threat to both the domestic and the remaining export markets.

In March 1699, the Crown promulgated the first ban against rum: it was forbidden to bring it to Paris, under penalty of confiscation and a 1000 pounds fine.

The main justification of this ban was that rum was dangerous for the health of the consumers. The argument was vigorously contested by the sugar refiners of Orléans, Saumur, Angers and other cities of the Loire. The “creamy and sweet syrup [product of] Muscovado comes from the sugar cane that the Antilles provide us which is clean for making spirit ” declared the refiners. Their argument was based on two central points: on the one hand, cane spirit, made without the addition of health-damaging ingredients such as quicklime or alum, was healthy, and on the other hand, banning their trade risked depriving His Majesty of a huge profit by the duties on it. Moreover, the refiners observed that, even if the brandy was a much better-quality product,”... it would not follow that that syrup had to be condemned” and, in any way, it was destined for the “lowest people”, as in the Caribbean islands.

The War of the Spanish Succession was fought the following decade and it proved equally fatal to the French winegrowers because the English market remained closed; during the war the legal trade between France and its Caribbean colonies was disrupted by the British Navy and French settlers had to rely more than ever on smuggling to feed their slaves and to save their plantations. And they did it with a de facto tolerance of the French colonial authorities.

In 1710 the Crown launched an investigation conducted “in the different provinces of our Kingdom” that lasted three years. It was intended to examine the effects of any spirit that was not derived from the distillation of wine. The result of this investigation was the proclamation of the Royal Declaration of 1713. This Declaration prohibited the production and consumption of, and trade in, any drink distilled from an entire catalogue of substances anywhere in the kingdom (including the colonies). It reads:

“We have examined … the production, use and trade of brandy made from sugar syrups, molasses, grain, beer, lees or dregs, bassière [the dregs of nearly empty wine and cider barrels], marc de raisins, hydromel, cider, pear cider and other materials.… it is recognized that the production of these kinds of brandy is extremely detrimental to the trade in brandy made from wine, and in any case they all have negative effects on human health because of the quality of the ingredients that combine in each preparation. There is therefore an absolute need to forbid them …”

The two basic reasons for the ban, as in 1699, were the harm done to the brandy trade and the danger posed to the health of the consumer as a result of the new product.

The presence of an extensive range of metropolitan products – grain, less, beer, wine dregs,  hydromel, and apple and pear cider – indicates that brandy producers were at least as concerned with metropolitan competition for the valuable brandy market as with the rum coming from Caribbean planters, and, possibly, a great deal more.

The Royal Declaration prohibited the legal production and sale of French Caribbean rum, not only to the French and European markets but also to the growing American markets. However, the Royal Declaration of 1713 did not totally stop French rum production, in spite of its promoters’ wishes. Indeed, in France, the law was really enforced and both metropolitan rum production and French Caribbean rum importation virtually ended.

However, in the colonies the situation was very different, as we will see in the next article.

---Article written by Marco Pierini---