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The Origin of Rum - A Quest, Part 6: The Forgotten Empire
Pernambuco, BrazilA Dutch West India Company Outpost From Joan Blaeu’s masterpiece, the Atlas maior, siue,Cosmographia Blauiana (Amsterdam, 1662), volume II , maps of America.A sugar plantation in Dutch-held Pernambuco, Brazil, circa 1640.Based upon a drawing by Frans Post. The scene is idyllic, but the work was done mostly by African slaves.
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Marco Pierini
Marco Pierini, Rum Historian
The Origin of Rum - A Quest, Part 6: The Forgotten Empire
Present day Holland is quite a nice country. Civilized, tolerant, rich, peaceful: European civilization at its best. Few remember that in XVII century Holland built a vast colonial empire with sword and fire. While at home they were fighting a long, bloody war of independence against the Spanish armies, the Dutch threw themselves into the conquest of the seas. In Asia they overwhelmed the Portuguese and secured the control of the Indian Ocean and of the spice trade. In Africa they built for tresses and trading posts along the coast and they became the main slave traders. In America they were the first to colonize Manhattan, occupied several Caribbean islands and some mainland territories and they almost monopolized the trade among the English colonies and between the colonies and Europe. Their merchant fleet was by far the largest in the world and Amsterdam was the center of world trade and finance. And of sugar refining.
At the beginning of XVII century, Holland was the most modern and technologically advanced country in all Europe. In those years, the Dutch were the pioneers of commercial distillation on a large scale. The very word brandy is thought to derive from the Dutch gebrande wijn, which meant, basically, burnt wine. In 1624 the Dutch West India Company occupied the coastal region of Pernambuco, now Recife, in Brazil, great producer of sugar. The Company made great investments, bringing from Holland men, capital, technical skills and equipment.
Therefore, when the English settlers from Barbados went to Pernambuco, they met the Dutch there. In the next decade the Portuguese struck back and regained the lost ground, forcing the Dutch to leave Brazil and relocate to Barbados, Martinique and the Caribbean. Dutch were the foreigners who time and time again taught the English settlers the difficult and expensive art of sugar production. Besides Ligon, we have numerous accounts of the key role played by the Dutch in the development of the Sugar Revolution in Barbados (and Martinique). They lent the capital, taught the know how, sold the slaves and the equipment; finally, they shipped the sugar to Europe. We know that the English set up a technically advanced sugar industry in Barbados on the basis of the earlier Dutch experience in Brazil. We can safely infer that the same thing happened for that accessory of the sugar industry represented by the distillation of the byproducts of sugar.
This may explain Ligon’s reticence too. During the years of the Sugar Revolution, Holland and England were friends and allies, both Protestant countries fighting against Catholic Spain. But when in 1657 Ligon wrote his book, things had changed. The Navigation Act of 1651 had banned Dutch ships from English ports and soon afterwards the first Anglo-Dutch war had broken out. Suffice it to say that it was expedient to over look the Dutch contribution to the origin of sugar production.
To sum up: for a century Brazil had been the biggest producer of sugar in the world. In Brazilian plantations from the beginning a fermented beverage made from sugarcane had been produced and drunk on a massive scale. Someone there, during that long century, had perhaps already had some experience of distillation. Then the Dutch came. They had the knowledge, the technical skills, the equipment, the capital, the mentality. And in Brazil they also had the raw material in abundance. It is reasonable to think that it is them who upped the level towards real large scale commercial production of the new beverage.
My hypothesis is that the commercial distillation on a large scale of that by-product of sugarcane which today we call rum was started by Dutch settlers in Brazil during the first decades of XVII century. The origin of rum, therefore, is to be found in Brazil. Rum was born in Brazil, but it grew up in Barbados, and thence it has conquered the world.
Our Quest is over. Maybe.
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My name is Marco Pierini, I own and run a small tourist business in my seaside town in Tuscany, Italy. A long time ago I got a degree in Philosophy in Florence, Italy, and I studied Political Science in Madrid, Spain. But my real passion has always been History. Through History I have always tried to know the world, and men. Life brought me to work in tourism, event organization and vocational training. A few years ago I discovered rum and it was love at first sight. Now, with my young business partner Francesco Rufini I run a bar on the beach, La Casa del Rum (The House of Rum), and we distribute Premium Rums across Tuscany.
And most of all, finally I have returned back to my initial passion: History. Only, now it is the History of Rum.
Because Rum is not only a great distillate, it’s a world. Produced in scores of countries, by thousands of companies, with an extraordinary variety of aromas and flavours; it has a terrible and fascinating history, made of slaves and pirates, imperial fleets and revolutions. And it has a complicated, interesting present too, made of political and commercial wars, of big multinationals, but also of many small and mediumsized enterprises that resist trivialization.
I try to cover all of this in my Italian blog on Rum, www.ilsecolodel rum.it