A History of French Rum - French Planters and American Smugglers -Part 3

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The French Caribbean islands, and especially Saint-Domingue (Present day Haiti), in the 1700s became the greatest producers of sugar in the world. Therefore, due to all the sugar they produced, they  produced also huge quantities of molasses, and French planters didn’t know what to do with it. Unlike British planters, they could not turn most of their molasses into rum.

The 1713’s Royal Declaration banning the production and trade of rum was (more or less) enforced in metropolitan France, thus closing the great domestic market to rum. But in the Colonies the situation was different. The ban on distilling was completely unrealistic. Thousands of miles away from France, the Royal Authorities lacked both the force and the will to enforce it.

See the letter by the Governor Blénac and the Intendant Mithon of Saint-Domingue to the Navy Minister on the 20 July 1715:

“It [guildive] is absolutely essential for home usage for the dressing wounds and ulcers which the Negroes, and especially newcomers to Guinea, are very prone to. Practitioners find it better and a higher quality for cleansing wounds than eau-de-vie from wine for these sorts of aches and pain. It is still very useful for their health when they have been soaked by the rain during work. The masters who care for their Negroes give them each a drink when they return which protects from colds and rheumatism they would pick up without this precaution. It is clear that a considerable dwelling consumes three and four barrels a year for these indispensable uses”

French Planters used  rum to feed and treat their slaves and could de facto export it to French Canada, to Africa, where it was traded off for slaves, and to other foreign countries. But they all were little markets for all the rum they could produce, so the overwhelming bulk of molasses was left unused. Understandably, rather than throw them away, French planters were only too happy to sell their molasses on the cheap to the only people who were keen to buy it, the North American merchants. Soon the French Caribbean Islands became a very important trade partner of the British Continental Colonies.

In exchange for their molasses, French planters wanted mainly food for their many slaves and Americans easily supplied them with the fish which their seas had an abundance of and which, being destined to slaves, was often second-rate, or as they said then, “damaged”, but also with rice and flour. Every tourist will notice that this exchange with food coming from the North is at the basis of Caribbean cuisine even now. And then the Americans sold staves to make barrels, timber to build everything, more timber to use as fuel, work horses etc. In short, all that was needed by Plantations so specialized in sugar production that they produced nothing else. It was a perfect trade where the two parties involved sold what they had in excess and, for them, of lesser value while buying what they needed most and could not produce themselves.

There was only a problem: both the French and British Crowns prohibited that trade. According to Mercantilist principles, the colonies had to trade only with the mother country, not with foreigners. Prior to 1717, almost constant warfare had prevented the effective application of the initial Colbertian edicts, but the Lettres patentes of 1717 codified the French mercantilist trade policy known as l’Exclusif forbidding French colonists to trade with  foreigners. French settlers protested, revolted, and obtained a few modifications, but first and foremost they resorted massively to smuggling, which the authorities de facto tolerated.

‘Smuggling’ makes us think of vessels slipping into little, hidden coves in the dark of the night, of dodgy men who unload precious goods furtively, while others, well-armed, keep watch lest soldiers and customs officials should arrive. Very romantic and exciting. And in fact the marketing of rum is full of poetic labels and haunts whose names recall this romantic vision. I regret to disappoint my readers, but the smuggling of French Caribbean molasses into the British Continental Colonies was mostly prosaic paperwork, a lot of it. By forging certificates, French molasses was “naturalized” as British; many ships arrived at colonial ports loaded with foreign molasses and other foreign goods, but officially only “to receive orders” from their owners; other merchants did pay the regular duty, but only on the thin layer of goods covering the huge remaining cargo which friendly customs officers pretended not so see; and so on. Finally, after a seizure, customs officers often chose to avoid going to trial and to “compound” with the merchant that was restored in full possession of his property after the payment of a little part of the value of the seized goods.

Smuggling didn’t spare metropolitan France either, as there were several attempts to mitigate the Declaration of 1713. In France, though, these attempts were met with strenuous opposition from those whose interests were threatened.

“In July 1751, Jean-Baptiste Gastumeau, a merchant in La Rochelle, published a memoire of great vehemence aimed at protecting the trade in his city. … The municipality of La Rochelle had just seized a cargo of guildive (a variety of rum, also known as tafia) smuggled from Santo Domingo, and most likely destined for Guinea costs. Even if the producers of this guildive were themselves French, the product nevertheless constituted a serious economic threat insofar as it exhibited many similarities with a local product of fundamental importance: brandy. … In this eight-thousand-word memoire, Gastumeau presents a long series of arguments justifying the laws in force prohibiting the production and marketing of any alcohol distilled from sugar cane juice (or its derivatives) throughout the kingdom. His memoire also includes a series of attacks against those who wished to put an end to the bans in order to sell their products in a growing European market - that of distilled alcohol. For Gastumeau, and for all the others who have taken up these arguments, it was a struggle for the protection of the industry and trade in French brandy, which had become one of the pillars of the economy kingdom’s export market in the middle of the eighteenth century. The trade debates of the eighteenth century between the defenders of the French brandy industry and those of the French rum industry were extremely lively because of the importance of the markets – and profits – in question. These debates went far beyond the area of trade to address issues concerning the kingdom’s internal politics as well the colonies’ internal politics. “ (B. Mandelblatt   “L’alambique dans l’atlantique” 2012)

Gastumeau  continues “Lack of Spirits in France for the consumption of the Kingdom and the Foreigner? If this is the case, it is necessary to multiply the sources: to increase our wealth by deriving new ways of making the foreigner dependent on the state from our possessions. But if we have enough spirits  for all consumptions, if we fill all the uncorked bottles, and much beyond, if by manufacturing new spirits in America, we diminish the value of ours, if by doubling the quantity we do not increase the products, then the state earns nothing. There is no more to know than this; which of the two, the Mainland or the Colony, must be preferred for this manufacturing and this trade. ... [it is with molasses] a useless and superfluous material, which in no way interests his income, which he often throws away or makes his cattle to drink,  that the American planter makes his guildive. In France wine is the unique and forced product of our funds, it is the fruits of our lands, it is the income, it is the substance of the possessor who puts it in his Brandy.” However, in spite of Gastumeau, in 1752 the government allowed French merchants to place West Indian rum in bonded warehouses in French ports for shipment to Africa.

Now we have to deal a little with the Big History of European Powers and their Colonial Empires. To begin with, we must always remember a thing which was self-evident to the people of that age, but so difficult for us to really understand: all over the 1700s, the heart of the French and British colonial empires, and the center of their interest were the little Caribbean Sugar Islands and not the big colonies of Mainland North America.

In America, the decisive confrontation between France and Great Britain was the so-called French and Indian War, part of a more global war better known in Europe as The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). France was defeated, Great Britain conquered North America and India and became the undisputed leader in overseas colonization. Thus, France, which at the beginning of the war and during its first four years had held a dominant position over most of North America, disappeared from that continent as a political and military power.

During the War, the French Caribbean never interrupted the trade with the British Continental Colonies, officially the enemy, they simply had to face new complications and resort to new stratagems.

In the Caribbean, neutral ports were numerous; perhaps the most important, and certainly one of the most widely used for American trade, was the port of Monte Christi on the border of Spanish Hispaniola (present day Dominican Republic) and French Saint-Domingue (present day Haiti).

American ships could enter Monte Christi and legally buy molasses, sugar and rum because it was a neutral Spanish port. But it was well known that Spanish Hispaniola neither grew nor processed sugar cane and that the products came from the nearby French part of the island. The Spanish Governor went as far as to erect a sugar mill in his province, so that traders could at least swear that their molasses came from the Spanish half of the island.

Then there was the Flag of Truce. It was a pass, usually issued by a Governor of the British Colonies, enabling a ship to visit enemy ports for official purposes, most often prisoners’ exchange. Quite rightly, merchant vessels carrying prisoners under flag of truce were allowed to trade in French ports to cover their travel expense. Soon, an Armada of American ships sailed to the French Caribbean with only one or two prisoners on board, but a lot of goods in the hold. French prisoners became a valuable commodity and when there were no real prisoners some French-speaking colonial would do as well, so to be a prisoner often became a good job. Some prisoners “have been taken by our cruisers four times in less than two months” lamented Commodore John Moore, the British naval commander at Antigua.

Finally, “honest smugglers” simply continued to trade with the French as in peacetime, with greater risks, but also with greater profits.

In 1763, with the Peace Treaty, Britain obtained the recognition of its conquest of Canada, of the French Empire in North America except for Louisiana and Florida, but handed back to France, and to Spain, the Caribbean sugar islands that it had occupied during the war: British West Indian planters did not want dangerous competitors within the Empire. Despite this seemingly disproportionate loss of land, the French foreign minister deemed the treaty a victory because it secured the most profitable colonial domains, the sugar islands. The single island of Saint-Domingue was the world’s largest producer of sugar and was considered by some the most valuable province of France. It produced more sugar than all the British islands. After the war the trade between the French sugar islands and the British Continental Colonies was resumed.

In 1762 French Planters had handed over Martinique to the British, who had already occupied Guadalupe. They stayed on only one year leaving behind a benefit: the improvement of the quality of rum. According to Guy Josa in “Les industries du sucre et du rhum a la Martinique” 1931, rum “was made with so little care in the small number of guildiveries in the colony that the foreigner refused to purchase it most of the time. After the capture of the island, private individuals from the English colonies who came to the dwellings informed the owners of their method which gave much liked rum. They did not reheat their “rum” and made guildive and sweets at the same time. A considerable number of rum distilleries were then established in towns and houses.”

After the return of Martinique to France, this improved rum production drew the attention of the Juges and Conseils of Nantes who sent a memorial to the  Minister, asking him to grant permission to establish  storage facilities for rum in France. They claimed that the Declaration of 1713 made no sense any more: rum was not harmful for human health, as witness the health situation in Normandy and Brittany, where it was consumed aplenty (and legally) and did not compete with  indigenous spirits, since spirits had to be imported from  Spain and Portugal.

In 1763 the French Crown proclaimed some “Free Ports” in the Caribbean. “From then on, importation of lumber, food, and horses from the North American colonies was freely permitted, provided that the traffickers of these products received sugar, molasses, and rum as payment. … the establishment of ‘free ports’ was the beginning of the legal dismantling of the European trade monopoly in the West Indies. From then on, the notion that free trade was more convenient for all gradually spread … promoted by an otherwise conflicting set of actors, which included the European liberal philosopher of the Enlightenment, the colonial governors who were constantly struggling to keep their colonists well supplied, and the colonists themselves, whether or not they were involved in contraband.” (F. Moya Pons “History of the Caribbean” 2007)

“Items of Goods which Foreigners shall be permitted to transport, unload and have brought into each French colony in exchange for syrups and Tafia only, shall consist solely of live oxen, live pigs, sheep, kids, planks of all kinds, jugs, paving stones, masts, edging, Indian or Spanish corn, oats, bran, staves, barrel rings or hoops for barrels, shingles and roofing tiles for houses, bricks, tiles for earthenware and faience for fireplaces or for tiles, carved stone, carriages or cabriolets, wheels for cars and carts, cabinets, large and small English desks, rice, peas and vegetables, and green fruits of all kinds”. Four months later, it is even allowed foreign vessels to take to the Windward Islands, via the warehouse on St. Lucia, the goods they want, except cotton, coffee and sugars. Intercolonial exchanges remained forbidden.” (M. Lange  “Le rhum au milieu du XVIIIème siècle: une lutte entre les Colonies et la Métropole” 2018)

Not without opposition, though. Let us see  a memorial written in 1764 against the attempts of refiners to soften up the prohibition: “As this strong liquor is cheap, the Blacks make use of it, when their misery does not allow them to intoxicate themselves with a more satisfying drink. If the need to derive from the proceeds of their work, if the divine & human laws did not order to ensure their preservation, perhaps it would be an act of humanity to let them hasten the end of their sentences by its use.  But at least it is indisputable that one cannot apologize for wanting to spread this poison in our lands & in our climates where the inhabitants, truly men, enjoy the favors of mankind.“

The pressures to liberalize the trade of rum continued. “A Memoir of the King dated 31 March 1776, to encourage the planters to establish guildiveries, declared the slaves employed at these establishments exempt from all capitation rights. A Ministerial Dispatch dated 1 June 1777, permitted the temporary admission of syrups and tafias to France, provided they were destined for export afterwards. Finally, the law of 8 Floreal Year X [28 April 1802] authorized the entry of tafias for consumption from French colonies, for an entry fee of 10 francs per hectoliter. The importation of foreign rums was prohibited. However, those taken from the enemy by warships or armed vessels shall be delivered for consumption at a rate of 40% ad valorem. (Decree from 24 June 1808). Despite official opposition, rum had acquired right of city in France towards the end of the 18th century.” (D. Kervégant “Rhum et eaux-de-vie de canne” 1946)

But when, at long last, the French Planters were finally free (or better, almost free) to sell their rum in great quantities, they realized that the majority of consumers did not want it, because its quality was very bad, much worse than that of the British competing rum. They didn’t give up, though, and with the help of science they tried to improve their product.

With some success, as we will see in the next article.

Marco Pierini