I covered the origin of corn spirit in my last piece, American Whiskey’s early days. Treat this current article as a supplement to the mashbill. Will rum of the corn come up again? It must. But only because cane spirit helps to tell the full story of American drinking. This piece will be significantly shorter with many quote dumps (and added context) to round out the learnings on “America’s Native Spirit.” A bunch of pictures at the end to help those who need to see it to believe it.

Hell, let’s start with a quote right now –

“It should therefore become the particular aim of the American distiller to make a spirit purely American, entirely the produce of our own country; and if the pure, unadulterated grain spirit cannot be rendered sufficiently palatable to those tastes, that are vitiated by the use of French brandy or Jamaican rum, let us search our own woods for an article to give it taste sufficiently pleasant for these depraved appetites.” — Harrison Hall, The Distiller, 1818

Translation: we need to make our own juice using our domestic agricultural materials, and if our booze doesn’t taste as good as “French brandy or Jamaican rum,” then we need to try harder.

Historical references to whiskey, in relation to “brandy” and “rum” (the original indulgences), are incredibly mundane to the initiated, though I acknowledge that those references will read surprising to most. To share another example, the man donning our hundreds uttered grape-spirit and “rum” references as well, very explicitly I’ll add –

“First, for making good wine of our own wild Grapes. Secondly, for raising Madeira Wine in [this] province. Thirdly, for the Improvement of our Corn Spirits, so as they may be preferable to Rum. And this seems very material; for as we raise more Corn than the English West-India Islands can take off, and since we cannot now well sell it to the foreign Islands, what can we do with the Overplus better, than to turn it into Spirit, and thereby lessen the Demand for West-India Rum, which our Grain will not pay for?” — Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac

A 1620 attempt at naming the “father” of bourbon.

One George Thorpe, Esq. –

But stating that bourbon, even in a primitive or inchoate form, did not exist before acquiring its moniker is a bit like saying America did not exist prior to the Declaration of Independence. There’s always something there beforehand, and such things warrant not only mention but the credit they deserve. Which is why we’re not only going to slap a birthday on bourbon a good century and a half before conventional estimates, we’re also going to file our own version of a historical paternity suit—and make the controversial claim that the real father of our national spirit was not some philandering frontiersman or seductive Scots-Irish fellow, but an educated English gentleman by the name of Captain George Thorpe, Esq.

On December 19, 1620—the date of birth we’re going to stamp, although not without some controversy, on bourbon’s birth certificate—George Thorpe wrote the following in a letter to his buddy John Smyth of Nibley, with original seventeenth-century syntax preserved for effect: “Wee have found a waie to make soe good drink of Indian corne I have divers times refused to drinke good stronge English beare and chose to drink that.” – George Thorpe, Esq.

Crowgey also notes this exchange in his book. However, where Huckelbridge’s analysis misses the mark for me is that I’m fairly certain the discourse is centered around a beverage closer to corn beer and not corn whiskey.

By 1620, one of the colonists could write to a friend in England that they were making a drink from Indian corn which he preferred to English beer. — Crowgey

To be fair to Huckelbridge, he does affirm that we should acknowledge George Thorpe as a worthy predecessor rather than scrutinize the “good drink of Indian corne” as a firm whiskey stance. Put simply: everything starts somewhere, regardless of how rudimentary those initial steps.

A Pre-American Revolution reminder of Rum’s importance.

1770 is a particularly great year to analyze, given the economic history recordkeeping for that particular season (see this piece for reference) –

By 1770, the 140-some rum distilleries of the colonies were producing more than five million gallons of rum on their own, and importing another four million from the Caribbean. Some estimates put the average amount consumed by an adult male of that era at three pints a week. Rum, it seemed, had become the American drink, thanks to its colonial master an ocean away. And as long as the cheap rum kept coming, America, although not entirely content with British rule, was at least willing to suffer it. Why tinker around making whiskey, when rum could be had for next to nothing? A good question, and one that several hundred thousand redcoats were soon to answer.

But as we know, the newly minted nation ripped this historical sheet of paper to shreds in 1776. As Huckelbridge funnily notes, the American colonists went on to battle “intoxication without representation.”

The Scots-Irish are coming: from one land to another, constantly.

Between 1717 and 1775, the peak period of immigration, perhaps as many as a quarter of a million of these border people left the English colonies of Scotland and Ireland for the English colonies in America, coming at a rate of more than five thousand a year. Some stayed on the Eastern Seaboard, but many more set off for the hinterlands of Pennsylvania and Virginia, where the land they craved was still available for the taking. And American Independence—an event in which their long rifles and anti-English sentiment had played no small part—opened up even more land in Kentucky and Tennessee, frontiers that had previously been made off-limits by the British. The Scots-Irish packed their mules and wagons, headed down the famous Wilderness Trail, and poured through the previously infamous Cumberland Gap, a pass made passable by Daniel Boone himself. Cabins were built, crops were planted, and trusty old stills were fired anew. Which brings us back to the matter at hand: bourbon whiskey.

Backwoods whiskey production commences in a new location (Kentucky). The author makes clear that rye whiskey (in the contemporary sense), or “Monongahela” (in the back-then sense), was produced in “Pennsylvania where many Scots-Irish initially set up camp before the opening of Kentucky.” Rye is, of course, an “Old World grain,” so those Europeans who fled were simply working with what they were used to. Or, as most immigrants do, recreate home away from home.

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Civil War and whiskey.

“I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.” — Abraham Lincoln (a native of the Bluegrass State)

As mentioned in the Crowgey piece, I maintain low expectations for historically rigorous analysis surrounding chattel slavery and its consequences for American Whiskey’s earliest days. And so it was here as it was there; I don’t say this to project negative sentiments. Only to say that it is a fairly predictable outcome that, unfortunately, keeps the rigorous reader wanting.

But Huckelbridge does a good job showcasing the inflationary consequences of war as it relates to the brown juice –

A gallon of good-quality whiskey in the winter of 1860 would have run the secession-minded Southerner a mere twenty-five cents. By 1863, that same gallon of spirits would break his bank at a whopping thirty-five dollars. And it wasn’t just aged rye and smuggled bourbon that yielded to the immutable laws of supply and demand—even the rough stuff shot through the roof.

Some of that “rough stuff” went by names such as “Popskull,” which Popcaan would approve of, and “Nockum Stiff,” which is one of the more quintessential Southern epithets I’ve come across. One misstep I believe the author made was concluding that the Civil War led to the death of the small timer (farmer-distiller) in favor of those more enterprising. It is more complete to say that there was less competition post-War, so those still around – those who were able to adapt – had the good fortune of not having as many people to compete with. Nonetheless, it is a very apt point to highlight the emergence of today’s notable names out of a treacherous time –

What had formerly been an industry of small-timers seeking to make a little profit from leftover grain became, as a result of that winnowing process, a legitimate and serious business enterprise, led by the likes of D. M. Beam & Company, H. Wathen, Early Times, and J. W. Dant—names easily recognizable to the bourbon connoisseur today. And driven by postbellum opportunities, a scrappy new crop of entrepreneurial-minded candidates stepped to the distilling plate and took their swings, including an ambitious teenage boy left parentless and penniless by the war, just south of the Kentucky state line in Tennessee; his full name was Jasper Newton Daniel, but most of the folks around the way just called him Jack.

Whiskey in a country on the up-and-up.

The author notes that the “Gilded Age,” generally recognized as the years between 1870 and 1900, is a critical period to understand whiskey’s inflection point in the nation. The Gilded Age is when many of our modern-day cultural drinking scrutiny practices took form. Namely, the urge to know “what the hell is in the bottle?” Huckelbridge captures the story not often told around why regulatory pressures and the three-tier system developed: yes, to prevent monopolistic pressures from developing, which I’m not sure we necessarily accomplished, but also to prevent the mafioso-style undercutting of government tax profits. This is all in addition to, of course, protecting the producers.

In the late 1800s, the “Whiskey Ring” scandal was all the rage. Whiskey makers in St. Louis, New Orleans, Chicago, and Cincinnati sold lots of booze under the government’s nose –

The debacle that followed—complete with hired spies, deadly gangsters, warehouse brawls, and even secret telegrams from a shadowy figure code-named Sylph—would tarnish the reputation of the president [Grant] and that of the United States government as a whole, at a time when both were increasingly assumed to be in the pocket of big business.

The foremost and most press-worthy of the whiskey scams of the Gilded Age were those that occurred on a broad, financial scale, generally involving collusion of some form between the government bodies that regulated whiskey distilling and the distillers themselves.

There was very little regulation at the time, so the “Whiskey Ring” (and others) manipulated tax loopholes, speculated, and severely exploited anything else under the ‘white-collar’ crime bucket. Additionally, people cut corners on the production of whiskey – caramel coloring & additives – which further incensed producers and the government (firstly), and then consumers. The latter group would come around to the former group’s frustration because harmful chemicals/agents were mixed into the “whiskey” being produced, which often had fatal consequences.

On bad booze –

“Producers cannot afford to wait so long a time, and there being no demand from consumers for the newly distilled liquors, they are obliged to dispose of their product to what we in this country call Compounders, or Rectifiers, and in France Fabricants, or (vulgarly) empoisonneurs, which means poisoners.” — Leonard Monzert (19th century)

Again –

“Looking to add an artificial bead to your ersatz booze? Try “sweet oil and sulphuric acid.” Want your whiskey a little more astringent? “Cream of tartar, acetic acid, acetic ether” can all do the trick. If the spirit’s too sallow, a little “burnt sugar” and “black tea boiled thirty minutes” should suffice, and if it’s that good old “bed-bug flavor” you’re after—whatever the hell that is—good Sir Monzert suggests adding “a few drops of strong ammonia in a barrel of liquor.”

Even distributors were not to be trusted, since they too tampered with or mislabeled the liquid prior to it hitting the shelves (if the economic incentive was strong enough) –

For the sake of efficiency, whiskey makers became highly reliant on these sorts of regional distributors—Old Jordan bourbon was handled by W. H. Thomas & Son in Louisville, and Cedar Brook bourbon was the sole province of James Levy & Bro. in Cincinnati—and once the whiskey was under their control, what actually became of it was anyone’s guess.

Given the state and rigidity of American Whiskey rules today, we know that the above was cleaned up and straightened out, ushering in a new age of authenticity. From the government’s perspective, the age of making sure that he will get his cut no matter what!

Much left unsaid, which is simply encouragement.

One, to pick up the book.

Two, it is a friendly read because Huckelbridge takes a witty/humorous approach to telling the bourbon tale, which I find easiest for most to digest.

Three, he goes on a tear to describe the period from Prohibition (“The Noble Experiment”) right up to the 21^st century. Well worth the time.

Before we wrap, I want to satisfy the itch of the corn whiskey enthusiast among us who have a penchant for detail surrounding the historical names behind the many expressions and/or distilleries that pay homage to those figures today.

Exhibit A: Edmund Haynes Taylor and his fight against the whiskey bandits of the day.

One of the first true bourbon aristocrats, he would run seven different distilleries over his career, including such famous tipples as Old Crow, Old Pepper, Old Taylor, and Old Fire Copper—all highly respected bourbons at that time. His greatest accomplishment was bringing to bourbon the concept of branding, imbuing each label with a character of its own. Whereas Dr. James C. Crow had made bourbon commercially viable through scientific innovation, Taylor furthered that legacy by making it marketable in a highly competitive whiskey field. No friend to the indifferent methods of the Whiskey Trust and their ilk, he would lament the arrival of “carelessly made whiskeys, whose aim is quantity and whose objective is mere chaffing for cheapness,” and bemoan how “the quality recedes as the cheapness advances. . . . The ancient Bourbon flavor has departed.”

Exhibit B: Whiskey advertising, Bottled-in-Bond, and the turn of the 20th century.

All of which changed with E. H. Taylor. He invoked the unique qualities of fine Kentucky bourbon in the new forms of advertisements and pamphlets he produced, and he purposefully promoted his brands by name, with distinct marketing strategies for each. He even went so far as to establish his Old Taylor distillery as a legitimate tourist attraction and vehicle for public relations, complete with reception rooms, a Roman-columned springhouse, and a medieval castle. To what end? Well, to lend each of his brands a sense of quality and distinction that the inferior whiskeys produced by the industrial distilleries of the Midwest were lacking. And thanks to the political connections he accrued in the process, he would prove instrumental in the passage of two of the most important, preventative, and ultimately restorative acts of legislation of that era. The combined efforts of bourbon whiskey’s three most prominent champions of the era—Brown, Sherley, and Taylor—culminated in the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897, and the Pure Food and Drug Act that passed less than a decade later. The former established a government-certified seal of authenticity for packaged whiskey, and allowed bourbon to be readily “bottled and marketed in store windows with stamped assurance that its contents were as the snappily designed labels claimed. The latter, perhaps even more significantly, at last defined what constituted real bourbon, and officially differentiated it from its cheaper blended competition. Thanks to the aggressive lobbying and ardent testimony of Kentucky’s bourbon leadership, their cherished product at last had government protection guarding its integrity and guaranteeing its good name. Gone were the days of low-quality knockoffs claiming to be Kentucky’s finest, and barrels with unknown chemicals sloshing within—Uncle Sam had at last stopped counting his money bags, and finally got back to the business of doling out justice. This was the birth of the Progressive Era in America, one of political activism and social reform, born from a national desire to rub off the phony gold spray paint of the Gilded Age and get back to something honest and real. The American Spirit, having at last reconciled its industrial growth spurt with the moral integrity it had so nearly lost, was almost ready for the twentieth century.

Exhibit C: Jack Daniel illegally skirting Prohibition, and the general state of ‘do whatever is necessary.’ Jim Beam and Old Crow make appearances.

“Jack Daniel’s. Prohibition came to Tennessee a solid decade before the rest of the country, but rather than buckle and submit, the company simply skipped town and moved the distillery to St. Louis. When the law finally caught up with them there, they teamed up with none other than George Remus and his Kentucky Drug Company, who helped them to circumvent the government lockdown on their warehouses via a secret network of hoses and pipes that emptied right into waiting tanker trucks; the government inspectors were slow to catch on because the empty barrels had been filled with booze-scented water as a clever form of decoy. Pulling off the massive caper involved an unprecedented amount of bribery, causing Remus to later remark, “A few men have tried to corner the wheat market, only to find there is too much wheat in the world. I tried to corner the graft market, but learned there isn’t enough money in the world to buy up all the officials who demand a share.” And do you remember Old Crow? The brand continued to make fine Kentucky bourbon, although not in Kentucky; the American Medicinal Spirits Company opened an outpost in Canada and “and recruited Guy Beam, one of the Beam family’s best distillers, to make it there. Once aged and tasted for quality, the Old Crow could be smuggled right back in across the border and sold to Americans, just as it had been for nearly a century.

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One of the best ways to understand a timeframe, certainly from the 1900s onward, is to indulge artists – be it musicians, painters, writers, whoever – and how they discussed the motions of their days. Sentiments on whiskey fit the bill –

“During the prohibition period, you could always buy good whiskey from somebody in the Cotton Club. They used to have what they called Chicken Cock. It was in a bottle in a can, and the can was sealed. It cost something like ten to fourteen dollars a pint. That was when I used to drink whiskey as though it were water. It seemed so weak to me after the twenty-one-year-old corn we had been accustomed to drinking down in Virginia. That was strong enough to move a train. . . .” – Duke Ellington

That closes my chapter on talking about corn whiskey (for now). I’ll pour a glass of some good stuff this weekend. Cheers.

Just remember,

in all that you do, please, don’t ever stop reading.

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Postscript.

A barrage of images to showcase and substantiate the history.

I know what you’re thinking: how dare I talk about another spirit? Rest assured, rum is #1. However, I’ll never balk at a glass of corn whiskey, preferably of the high rye variety.

My taste preferences aside, what we are here to do is dig into the patriotic notion that bourbon is “America’s Native Spirit.” Generally, I’m okay with this sentiment insofar as products that instill national pride are a great thing. Give the people something to cherish and rally around, I will never argue against that.

Historically, however, singling out one beverage in a country this large is a bit myopic and incomplete. Fair warning: I’m going to gently tear that singular piece of paper up and reassemble it. The goal is not to be a contrarian. Instead, I want to help us shy away from accepting easy and simple narratives. Nothing worth its historical stripes/respect can be so easily simplified, though simplification is an easier way to inspire pride, create a tribe, and sell products.

In other words, I hope for a future where the American drinker realizes that there is more than one “Native” beverage, and we should have a pari passu nature to us about them. In highlighting “more than one,” my intention is not to orient you to rum more so than any other beverage.

I care more about opening eyes to the breadth of alcohols consumed in America’s earliest days. On average, it seems like we’ve been shoved into a language corner that’s only educated us to understand whiskey from a few decades before Prohibition, and then post-Prohibition. If the average person can quote historical whiskey truths from the Postbellum to Reconstruction era, you’re lucky. Antebellum era, you hit the jackpot. Early colonial days, they probably wrote a book about the beverage.

Note: Bourbon’s designation as “America’s Native Spirit” (or distinctive spirit of the United States) was legally recognized by Congress on May 4, 1964. For a beverage to be bourbon, it must follow these guidelines: (a) Made in the United States (not just Kentucky); (b) Made from a mash bill with no less than 51% corn; (c) The distillate must be aged in new, charred oak barrels (no used barrels); (d) The unaged spirit coming off the still can be no higher than 160 proof (80% ABV); (e) That pre-barrel spirit must be proofed down to no more than 125 proof (62.5% ABV) before placed into the new, charred oak barrel (e.g., can’t take the 160 proof from (d) and put it into a barrel); (f) You can’t bottle the final product at anything less than 80 proof (40% ABV); and (g) No additives are allowed (flavoring, coloring, etc.). While you’ll find these rules in every corner of Bourbon-land internet, here’s a list from Great Jones (NYC). Special mention is necessary for Bottled-in-Bond Bourbon specifications, which carry an extra set of rules that pay homage to the late-1800s legislation. If you’re interested in those details, check out the American Distilling Institute’s article.

Let’s take the historically accurate walk down American Whiskey lane.

Spoiler: rum will show up.

First things first, etymology.

The word “Bourbon” is VERY French and likely has a pronunciation closer to (Boh-buhn). “Bourbon” is not any old throwaway French word, quite the opposite. The eponymous French dynasty, otherwise known as the House of Bourbon, “provided reigning Kings of France from 1589 to 1792 and from 1814 to 1830, after which another Bourbon reigned as king of the French until 1848…” (source: Britannica). Importantly, the lineage traces back to “Louis I, duc de Bourbon from 1327 to 1342,” and is therefore one of the more important European ruling dynasties (i.e., descendants were kings/queens of Spain, Naples, Sicily, Etruria, and Lucca).

The popular historical narrative on why French words show up throughout America stems from France’s economic & military assistance in helping us get from under London’s boot (American Independence). As a thank-you, we named stuff after them (short list of examples):

• L’Enfant Plaza (Washington, DC)

• Paris, Arkansas

• Paris, KENTUCKY

• Bourbon County, KENTUCKY

• LOUISVILLE (I mean, come on!), Kentucky

The origin of this word, insofar as it pertains to usage in the United States, dates from the Revolutionary War and the invaluable assistance rendered by the French, whose ruling house at the time was that of Bourbon. For a number of years the assignment of French names to the new towns and counties of the Kentucky area was prompted by what Lewis Collins termed “the plenitude of good feeling which then existed toward that nation.” – Crowgey, Kentucky Bourbon: The Early Years Of Whiskeymaking

This aspect of American Whiskey is largely de-emphasized. But I can’t help but think about the irony: “America’s Native Spirit” does not have an English name. The nomenclature feels peculiar in a more ‘first-world problem’ sort of way. All in all, given that the French take provenance and alcohol so seriously, I also can’t help but feel that this is a bit of a francophone victory since our brown juice is rooted firmly in their history. Practically speaking, the average Bourbon drinker either does not know this about our corn whiskey or simply would not care (which I understand, too).

Note: For more on the Bourbon & America connection, see my write-up on “Reconstruction in the Cane Fields: From Slavery to Free Labor in Louisiana’s Sugar Parishes 1862—1880.” You can imagine that the former French territory of Louisiana and the word “Bourbon” have a more tangible relationship than Kentucky does.

On to the book!

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Kentucky Bourbon: The Early Years Of Whiskeymaking

Let’s get right to it –

For the sake of sentiment and romantic tradition, it would be pleasant to record that a full-blown bourbon whiskey industry emerged from the limestone-layered soil of Kentucky at this time. However, the facts do not bear this out. The evidence suggests that, despite the taste of the early settlers for spirits, there was no such institution as a distinctive frontier beverage. The first few years of settlement were conspicuous for the introduction and use of a considerable variety of fruit and of grains other than the indigenous Indian corn. Accordingly, the distiller discriminated little in his choice of raw material and there was a corresponding lack of bias on the part of the consumer.

Furthermore, variations of “indigenous Indian corn” whiskey were “manufactured in America as early as 1682.” Name-wise, both whiskey and whisky appear in the records (interchangeably used). The naming convention was due in part to the fact that colonial denizens did not place spelling things correctly at the top of the priority list. But also, some of the European Old World-ers who contributed to early whisk(e)y production were from parts of Europe where “whisky” was the common spelling (e.g., Scots).

Let me piss off the Kentuckians early on before we continue, though this is not my intention. It would not be geographically accurate to note Kentucky (or even Tennessee for that matter) as the original stomping ground(s) of American Whiskey. Nor would it be accurate to focus solely on corn when “Rye Meal” and “Malt” were highly sought-after for distilling –

…Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina. Here originated the interest in liquor, the equipment, and the techniques which later brought fame and prosperity to the Kentucky distillers.

Early days.

The author astutely notes that distilling know-how transferred from the Arab world (“Egypt and Moorish Spain”) to Europeans in the “twelfth century,” and “spread rapidly throughout the continent.” This know-how traveled with the British colonists “to the shores of America in 1607.” From there, the early colonists toyed with all sorts of agricultural raw materials to concoct spirituous liquids (e.g., fruit-oriented brandies were very popular, in part because fruit fermented more quickly than other raw materials). Other (crude brandies) whipped up used pears, apples, apricots, and figs. In many ways, I believe this is a nod to Portugal and Spain, since a) they were among the earliest colonizing nations (and their “stuff” was therefore held in high regard, hence the love affair with “Madera Wine”), and b) they established a commercial understanding in the transatlantic trading world that wine and brandy were viable as currency.

Most of these fermentable wine/brandy/beer experiments notably failed, given the colonists’ poor understanding of the new environment and its growing conditions. Also, they had a novice understanding of distilling apparatuses. For an early reference to corn spirit, which I’m reading as something closer to beer than distilled spirit, here is a preview –

By 1620, one of the colonists could write to a friend in England that they were making a drink from Indian corn which he preferred to English beer.

This is where I spoil the party before getting us back on (whiskey) course. In the earliest days of the English American Continental Colonies, rum became much more dependable than other beverages. Cane spirit was currency, dietary staple, and a product of value in the Atlantic community. New England/the eastern seaboard led the charge (circa 1600s through 1700s, emphasis mine) –

The seventeenth century marked the establishment of distilling in the other Atlantic colonies as well. Traditionally, New Englanders are considered to have specialized in rum manufacture…A legal transaction of 1654 in Boston establishes William Toy as being a distiller. The historian J. Leander Bishop reports that by 1661 a still and worm had been set up in New London “for distilling rum from the molasses procured there in exchange for the exports of the Colony.”

The inventory of a York County, Virginia, store (1667), following the death of the owner, showed that among the contents were “one hundred gallons of brandy, twenty gallons of wine, and ten gallons of aqua vitae.” An account of Governor Spotswood’s crossing of the Blue Ridge Mountains provides some indication of the selection that was available to the Virginians in 1716: “we had several sorts of liquors, viz., Virginia red wine and white wine, Irish usquebaugh, brandy, shrub, two sorts of rum, champagne, canary, cherry, punch, water, cider, &c.”

To be fair, “Irish usquebaugh” (usquebaugh, the Gaelic word for whiskey) is also a very good indication that those from the Old World sought satiation from their motherland, despite being in a New World. Unsurprisingly, many of those same people would go on to have a hand in what would later be known as true, American Whiskey. And they would use the grains they knew best (i.e., malted & unmalted barley).

Bringing us back to American Whiskey predecessors, below is evidence of its manufacture in New Amsterdam (Dutch), which later became New York (British) in 1664–5. Attention to grain mash bill would, again, not be of vital concern among groups of people operating under precarity and scarcity (emphasis mine, and I promise that this is how things were spelled back then) –

Edward Emerson places the operation on Staten Island and identifies the product as liquor and spirits from corn and rye. Bishop locates the distillery in the Wall Street area and states that it produced brandy. Both consider this as the first instance of its kind in North America and the date of its establishment as 1640.

The misuse of distilled products is apparent in the recommendation of a Delaware-area official, submitted to the New York governor in 1671: “That y’ distilling of Strong Liquors out of Corne, being y’ Cause of a great Consumption of that Graine, as also of y’ Debauchery & Idleness of y’ Inhabitants, from whence inevitably will follow their Poverty & Ruine, bee absolutely prohibited or restrayned.”

In the Carolina settlements (chartered in 1663), the early population was derived principally from Virginia and the settlers followed the patterns set by older colonies. In 1682, Thomas Ashe visited the Charles Town area of the Carolinas and reported on the use of Indian corn in producing alcoholic beverages: “At Carolina they have lately invented a way of making with it good sound Beer: but its strong and heady: By Maceration, when duly fermented, a strong Spirit like Brandy may be drawn off from it, by the help of an Alembick [still].”

All this debauchery was reportedly (and mainly) the modus operandi of men on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum. The wealthy colonialists often drank imported beverages (wines), whereas the common folks drank the things they could grow. Choice of drink was reflected in the prices of products, which the author does a fantastic job highlighting: whiskey was cheapest, and all the imported beverages (grape-spirit, cane-spirit, etc.) were higher priced and therefore reserved for the well-to-do.

Even so, those with the apparatus and means to distill whiskey had worthy assets in the context of what was of value in colonial settings. Some were more rudimentary than others, granted, but we shouldn’t simply write off the farmer-distiller as entirely parochial, since a meaningful amount of their wealth was rooted in assets/hardware –

In these colonial settings, the culture and economy were rural at best and often backwoods in character. Hence a still and its necessary appurtenances, representing a considerable monetary investment, might comprise the single most valuable asset in a person’s worldly estate. This is evident in the wording of another western North Carolina will of pre-Revolution days: “I leave the still for the benefit of the family whilst my wife keeps house with the children.”

The early colonists also used spirituous beverage as currency & weapon when engaging with Native Americans. The author notes that the “naive aborigines” / “gullible natives” were given spirit as “partial payment for labor performed,” among other exchanges. Eventually, the British crown sanctioned this practice –

A Virginia law of 1705 provided a ten shilling fine “for every quart of rum, or brandy sold to any Indian.”

To highlight the frequency of the practice, the British passed another law in 1757, attempting to curtail the engagements. Repetitive passings of ordinances were so common across every facet of the British-American colonial relationship (i.e., colonists ignored laws, so the British passed another one, hoping for compliance, usually to no avail).

Note: The author bounces around a bit from the 1600s through the 1700s, likely because the historical archives are disjointed. So, apologies for the non-linear telling.

A colonial tradition adopted from England was the practice of treating during voting season, whereby elected officials freely distributed spirits to voters for reasons that are probably obvious. Apparently, George Washington engaged happily in treating voters with “brandy, rum, Cyder Royal, strong beer, and wine.” Personally, the records indicate that GW was a big “peach brandy” distiller (for “home consumption by the family and slaves”). He later turned to whiskey for commercial purposes. All in the rum world knows that he imbibed the Barbados cane spirit enthusiastically.

Crowgey fairly notes that elected officials were almost guaranteed to lose an election if they did not provide booze. This tippling practice carried over into the American Revolutionary War in the form of treating soldiers (liquor rations). And in a time of war, the grain ordinarily used to make whiskey was seen as more necessary for feeding troops than making liquor. Other beverage production remained uninhibited. Let’s take a look at Prohibition and World War I predecessor practices of clamping down on whiskey manufacturing (emphasis mine) –

In 1777 General Washington wrote that “some of the Southern States have already passed Acts prohibiting the distilling of unreasonable Quantities of Wheat and other Grain into Whisky, and I hope Pennsylvania will do the same.”

Wartime limitations on raw materials for liquor applied only to grain; brandy distilling continued to flourish, as did rum. The manufacture of rum was carried on in several states (exclusive of New England) both before and during the Revolution. In Charles Town, Maryland, a versatile coppersmith operated a distillery where, in 1753, he made and sold “Rum as good as any on the continent.” In nearby Baltimore, fifteen years later, the Purviance distillery suffered a temporary breakdown which made them unable to supply “half the home demands for rum.” A Norfolk, Virginia, rum distillery was owned by eight partners…”

We know how this story goes. American colonists win the war, and the mass Westbound journey (of mostly men) to Kentucky and Tennessee continues, mainly through the Cumberland Gap.

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On to the Bluegrass State.

The largest crop of “settlers,” and most likely to have retained whiskey-distilling know-how, were Virginians, Pennsylvanians, and Marylanders (the Mid-Atlantic crew). It’s worth noting that many flocked to Kentucky before the American Revolution. And the author correctly notes – get ready, this is going to take some explaining – that the early travelers were afraid of the Native Americans they encountered along the way. To not mislead (i.e., suggest that the Natives were the aggressors), let me explain:

→ At this juncture, the Native Americans, across many territories, were used to encounters with the Europeans/later Americans.

→ Many of these prior encounters resulted in, as we know, massive amounts of pillaging, death, and stolen territory. In the context of colonial European jockeying, it also resulted in alliances (i.e., England-Natives vs. France-Natives, most often).

→ This new set of settlers making their way westward would have been in a very precarious (“frontier”) scenario, where open-season-style attacks on the band of travelers would have been commonplace.

→ The author refers to them as “merciless savages.” But I believe that a more non-partisan perspective is that the Native Americans were enmeshed in constant states of warfare/defense. Any new entrants to the picture would be viewed immediately as adversaries.

→ Often, troops were assembled for coordinated efforts against the Natives. But also, trading with the Natives, a sort of appeasement strategy, in whiskey (and other spirits) was prevalent.

Whiskey was as useful as money, for which it frequently served as substitute in frontier commerce.

Although the seal on westward travel was broken after the American Revolution, I believe it is worth honing in on the examples of those who went before 1776. Here is an example of a family successfully making the journey –

Among these settlers were distillers such as William Calk of Prince William County, Virginia, who went to Kentucky in 1775, finally settling in present-day Montgomery County. The Calk family holdings, at the time of his departure, included a grist mill and a distillery. On his way through the southwestern part of Virginia to the Wilderness Road he noted the following in his journal: “Wedn: 22d we Start early and git to foart Chissel [Fort Chiswell] whear we git Some good loaf Bread & good Whiskey.””

Another early figure (and pre-Revolution example), Colonel Evan Shelby, father of the first governor, moved his family from Maryland, operated a general store/tavern/inn (Shelby’s Station), and a distillery. Notably, Sr. Shelby sold that good old…rum (emphasis mine) –

Of particular interest is an entry [Shelby’s account book] for January 26, 1773, which records Boone as having purchased, on credit, “2 Quarts of Rume” at three shillings each. Some indication of frontier mercantile practice is provided by an additional entry which shows that Isaac Baker furnished 621/2 gallons of rum to Evan Shelby at ten shillings per gallon, which allowed the modest resale profit of two shillings on the gallon.”

To the modern Bourbon eye, it may feel incredibly strange ruminating – sorry, I could’ve used a different word – on sugarcane spirits having any early association with THE whiskey state. But so it was, my friend, so it was. However, whiskey maintained –

Cresswell noted his visit in June of 1775 to the camp of Captain Willis Lee (a surveyor) “who treated me very kindly with a dram of Whiskey.”

We can have both. Fair?

In Bourbon land, the lore usually goes that Evan Williams (1783) or Elijah Craig (1789) can be considered the “father of Bourbon.” My only question about those assertions is on what criteria is “father of Bourbon” being judged? If the criterion is who was distilling and barreling the whiskey in a way that is most similar to contemporary Bourbon, maybe there is an argument there. But it would be damn near impossible to convince a discerning reader that they were remotely the first to distill corn whiskey (as you’ve seen from the 1600s through the pre-American Revolution period). More importantly, we must always remember that these assertions are rooted in what was documented/recorded, and who had the capabilities & motivations to do so. In other words, there are likely many faceless farmer-distillers of the brown juice that are contenders in the “father of Bourbon” race. Crowgey on the matter –

A few writers and historians are even wider of the mark—one designates as the first distiller Elijah Craig, who didn’t arrive in the area until 1786; another maintains that “the first still in Kentucky had been set up in 1789.” This procedure, at best, relegates to limbo an eight-year period of time (1775–1783) during which the settlers had done absolutely everything necessary, with regard to both facilities and materials, to be actively engaged in the production of spirituous liquors.

In other words, liquor production was as mundane as soap making and crop growing. The settlers made use of their excess if they had the means and equipment to do so. Moreover, to plug the gaps in the timelines above, the author notes that “[a]t least two copper stills, with a capacity of forty gallons each, were brought to Kentucky on horseback prior to 1781.”

One of the more interesting analyses the author engages in is the examination of tavern rates as a means of understanding (a) the prevailing drinks of the time, and (b) how alcohol was priced. These prices were usually set by courts convened to establish the going rates for different spirits. A sort of predecessor to the three-tier system, establishing checks and balances. This practice was “prevalent in Virginia and other colonies,” so it was largely brought over and refitted to Kentucky. For example, in “Westmoreland County…southwestern Pennsylvania” (1773), there were listed prices for “whiskey, continental rum [homegrown], and West India rum, with the latter spirits priced some 50 percent higher than the others.”

This is where I interject with a healthy reminder that some items become symbols of national pride over time for no other reason than that they were an economic decision that bore fruit. In other words, if it were not cheaper to grow/consume grain whiskey (especially corn), it is not necessarily guaranteed that we would be where we are today. Said differently (emphasis mine) –

Several factors favored an emphasis on corn production and the use of any surplus in distilling. To begin with, corn was an indigenous grain; it provided an ideal, perhaps the best, initial crop for newly cleared land; it furnished food for both the settlers and their animals; it yielded considerably more per acre than did the smaller grains; and finally, with the possible exception of rye, corn mash offered an unmatched output of distilled spirits. For these reasons and regardless of vague product descriptions, corn was a significant factor in whiskey production from the onset of permanent settlement in Kentucky.

“Indian corn is here in general the basis of whiskey, and more often employed alone.” – A work published in Lexington, Kentucky

But remember, in those early days, the residents of Kentucky maintained a more open-minded palate disposition (emphasis mine) –

Listings in 1780 included West India rum, rye whiskey, peach or apple brandy, and continental rum; the prices similarly reflected transportation charges, and the varieties indicated local demand. Rye whiskey, being the cheaper, was undoubtedly made in the immediate area, with Colonel Evan Shelby perhaps supplying a significant amount.

The revised rates of 1779 reflected additional influences on sales of distilled spirits. Both an emphasis on quality and the wartime inflation of currency are evident in the following: “good rum at [£] 4. per gal…. good rye liquor full proof at [£] 2.s per gallon peach brandy at [£] 3.”

Availability of price, even for “indifferent or bad whiskey,” suggests that there was no shortage of distillers in Kentucky by that period (1781). Coming back to the ‘who started this thing’ conversation, the author offers a candidate –

Records of individual involvement in aspects of the liquor business, while not completely conclusive, are useful in identifying pioneers of the distilling industry. One man who has some claim (backed by recorded evidence) to being Kentucky’s first distiller is Marsham Brashears. It will be recalled that he was a signatory to the article constituting “burrough” government for Louisville; he was also one of the original trustees named at the incorporating of Louisville. On a deed, proved and recorded May 7, 1782, Brashears purchased 660 acres of land from Benjamin Pope and James Patten. The consideration was “165 gallons of good merchantable Whiskey, this day delivered by Marsham Brashears.” As locally produced spirits were a universal medium of exchange on the frontier, this transaction strongly suggests that Brashears himself had manufactured the whiskey.

“[B]acked by recorded evidence” are the operative words here. The point Crowgey is hammering home is that pre-1783 distilling was alive and well in Kentucky. By 1784, the population was hovering around 30,000 residents, all thirsty.

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Whiskey refinement.

Some people are of the mind that the further back you go, the better the whiskey. I think the conversation requires a many-fold approach, but here are some quick thoughts:

• Insofar as recognizing that spirits are fundamentally agricultural products, it is not unreasonable to suggest that cleaner inputs (e.g., no chemical use) likely produced cleaner, tastier outputs (spirit).

• Hardware and still technology is another argument on both sides (e.g., today’s equipment is more productive & technologically savvy, but stills from back then may have stripped out less flavor).

• Care and attention (back then) vs. purely profit-driven motivations (today) could have led distillers to produce better spirits. That feels a bit romantic, given we have prices for “indifferent or bad whiskey,” which is to suggest that cash was always top of mind.

And on that last point, whiskey as currency is something worth highlighting again –

A Fayette County landowner, Benjamin Carruthers, inserted a notice in 1790 which referred to his bond for 327 gallons of merchantable liquor, used as payment in a land purchase.

Whiskey quality would have been a key consideration because good-quality juice translated into more currency/higher-valued assets to barter with. Many of the Pennsylvania transplants were “Coppersmiths of the Quaker State,” and brought with them hardware and know-how to distill whiskey. This knowledge was passed along and became integral to the territory’s way of life. In short order, we see stills included in the lists of items for sale in packaged asset auctions (e.g., plantation, stills, whiskey stock), primarily listed in newspapers.

Kentucky became a state in 1792, let me throw that out there before I forget. Before this, it was part of Virginia, hence the deeper connection there. By the 1800s, the introduction of steam – similar to what happened with cane mills across Louisiana – played a vital role in improving distillation capabilities across whiskey producers. By 1815, using steam across distilleries was pretty firmly entrenched, give or take. Inevitably, production skyrocketed alongside mechanization/technology improvements –

Judging from the quantities that he listed in public notices, one of the largest operators of the day was General Green Clay of Madison County. On one occasion he featured 3,000 gallons of whiskey and four barrels of seven-year-old peach brandy. Some two years later the general’s advertisement included “ten thousand gallons of Whiskey, Brandy, Cider, and Cider-Royal.” Following Clay’s death in October 1826, a part of his estate was disposed of through a public sale; included in the inventory were “2 or 3000 gallons prime old whiskey, 1500 gallons old apple brandy, one steam and two copper distilleries.”

Most importantly, this signaled the death of the farmer who also distilled, something that is (still) incredibly prevalent across other spirit categories in many parts of the world. Today, farm-to-bottle Bourbon producers (i.e., distillers that are also corn/grain farmers) are a mighty minority. The business has gotten too big and industrialized. As the nineteenth century was off to the races, the artisan-distiller was left behind –

The passing of the small-farmer distiller was not immediately at hand, but his chapter in the making of Kentucky history was written and finished.

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Crank up production, there’s money to make.

With the ever-increasing value that brown liquor commanded, more and more was produced. Beyond serving as a firm medium of exchange, the use of spirituous beverages for medicinal purposes was a long-cherished colonial practice, which sustained in Kentucky. Only this time around, Americans began to get a bit more ‘we’re not drinking anything that reminds us of the enemy’ in their tone –

“… resolved to discard the unmanly fondness for the tinsel of European luxury and foppery … and after first day of February next, except in case of sickness, use any wine, rum, brandy, or other spiritous liquors which shall not be made within the District of Kentucky.” – Citizens of Danville [KY] drawing up resolutions

This disdain for the British is part of the reason that rum began to fall out of fashion in the (newly) American psyche. To reiterate, however, the primary reason that stands above all is that grain growing stretched (i.e., whiskey, food, etc.). So, the economic route would inevitably take precedence over all else. Case in point –

“Resolved, That the present circumstances of the District are also adapted to the brewing of malt liquors, and to the distilling of spirits from grain and other subjects in such quantities as with proper attention and encouragement would be sufficient for general consumption.” – Citizens of Danville [KY] drawing up resolutions

Further encouraging increased production was the “volume of whiskey traffic on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers” into the 19^th century. As “tobacco and whiskey” became the dominant “export crops from the interior of Kentucky,” a firm industry began to form around the ecosystem –

During a three and one-half month period at the beginning of 1801 almost 50,000 gallons of distilled spirits, with an aggregate value of almost $29,000, were entered for exportation at the Louisville Custom House. Somewhat over a decade later, a sizeable increase in this traffic had been noted. Zadok Cramer reported “receipts from the upper country” of 3,671 barrels of whiskey (considerably in excess of 110,000 gallons) at New Orleans for the first five months of 1812.”

Note: New Orleans is a fresh new American territory/state, so Kentucky had another thirsty market to send liquor on down to.

Contrary to what you may believe, the original whiskey territories were still producing more booze than Kentucky at the turn of the 19^th century –

Many states which produced significant quantities of distilled spirits in the period had adequate access to Mississippi River commerce. For example, in 1810, when Kentucky produced 2,220,773 gallons of distilled spirits, Pennsylvania produced 6,552,284 gallons; Virginia, 2,367,589 gallons…

Note: I’ve bypassed the history on excise taxes, Whiskey Rebellion (1794), etc. Crowgey provides solid detail on these items, but I recognize that these tales are told more often. If you’ve never heard of what I am referring to, here is a quick snippet:

• Post-American Revolution, Washington realizes that nation-building is hard work.

• He also realizes that he has massive war debts that need to be paid somehow.

• Of the many things he taxes to raise funds to pay down war debts, liquor is one of them.

• PA leads the charge on rebelling against the taxes; the death toll is very low.

• Government repeals the excise taxes (for now), and Kentuckians rejoice.

“The citizens of Kentucky felt indignation on the passage of the laws laying those duties—they experienced the baneful effects of their operation, (particularly the excise and stamp laws) and they rejoiced in their repeal.—In the evening the Lexington Light Infantry paraded and fired seventeen vollies of muquetry [sic]— the bell rang a joyful peal—the bonfires blazed—shouts rent the air &c. In due time the citizens retired to their respective homes in perfect harmony.” — Gazette, July 2, 1802

The distinction of being labeled “bourbon.”

As production increased in the 1800s, and the nation purchased more of the whiskey produced in Kentucky, people recognized the beverage’s commercial potential. And that is how the self-perpetuating cycle began. In other words, the notion of “a distinctive regional distillate-bourbon whiskey” was beginning to take hold, long before any formal naming assignment. Kentucky was increasingly singled out for the whiskey they were distilling. A product of regional specificity, if you will.

The days of expediency for “frontiersm[e]n and Indians” were vanishing, as different commercial incentives arose. Alcohol proof was an early qualifier, so that became more heavily scrutinized. Other rudimentary quality assessments (alongside proof) became a reality for producers. For instance –

In 1796 the Lexington Gazette published “infallible and simple” instructions for “all purchasers of distilled spirits, who do not know how to prove the strength of them”: “Take half a pint of spirits in a cup or tumbler, take a small quantity of clean cotton, lay it as light as possible on the surface of the liquor; if your spirits be good proof, the cotton will sink immediately to the bottom; add a little water to it and the cotton will rise.”

In my opinion, this culture of assessment is a predecessor to what (today) has become a discerning drinker’s social norm (i.e., scrutinizing quality based on a given set of metrics); people were given a vocabulary to judge spirits, then and now. There is a legacy of scrutiny that has become part of the modern-day lexicon for certain imbibers. Here is an example of where this fervor comes from (in the American Whiskey context at least) –

With the official adoption of federal guidelines for defining the alcoholic content of spirits, there “followed a definite increase in the use of “proof” as a commercial standard of quality in Kentucky whiskey. Advertisements of both whiskey and brandy, heretofore rarely distinguished by descriptive allusions to actual content, shortly began to include designations of quality such as “full proof,” “good proof,” and “well tested.” In order to more fully describe their products in 1825, the Union Mills of Lexington categorized their whiskey as “fifth proof and common proof.”

Another term that began to take fashion was “Old whiskey,” to distinguish from “common” whiskey. For example, “[i]n 1814 the Mauray firm of Louisville advised the public of both “old” and “common” in their description of rye whiskey.” The Lexington Gazette began carrying advertisements for whiskey that was age-stated (e.g., “John Stickney’s notice of seven-year-old whiskey for sale. In the following year (1819) Stickney modified his claim slightly by advertising “Whiskey at 9s per gal., said to be 7 years old.”).

What also naturally followed, since people were now firmly on the ‘distinguish my whiskey train,’ was an emphasis on the selection of raw materials, what proportions were being used, etc. A call for corn, among some, became a firm distilling decision. Which also highlights, again, that the distiller and farmer relationship was increasingly split into two worlds –

In 1833 the Lexington distillery of Daniel and Henry McCourt notified the public that they wanted “Corn, Rye and Barley, for which the highest market price will be given in cash—to be delivered at the Distillery formerly occupied by Mr. Benajah Bosworth, one mile from the city, convenient to the Railroad. N. B. Yellow Corn would be preferred.”

Remember, “corn whiskey” production goes back “as early as 1682,” maybe even earlier, and had kept pace “from that time until the distinctive name “bourbon” became an accepted type-description.” But understanding when and why it became known as “bourbon,” versus simply “whiskey from Kentucky,” is why we are here. And so, here you go –

The first known advertisement featuring the distinctive Kentucky product appeared, and fittingly so, in a Bourbon County newspaper for 1821. The Maysville firm of Stout and Adams used the Western Citizen to publicize “BOURBON WHISKEY” by the barrel or keg. The use of this nomenclature was to remain almost completely local for the next several years, but by 1840 the use of “bourbon” in identifying this delightful whiskey had become a statewide practice. In Lexington, Ben Crutchfield’s grocery store, located on Main Street, published the most comprehensive listing (to date) of wines and liquors available in the Bluegrass. Included in the latter group, and attesting to the status recently achieved by the Kentucky product, were Cognac Brandy, Jamaica Spirits, Holland Gin, Irish and Old Bourbon Whiskey.

Ben said, “I know we have our Bourbon and all, but that Jamaica Spirits [rum] is still good money over here!”

This use of the term “BOURBON WHISKEY” evolved from simply identifying “deserving distillers” to the formation of brands/recognizable names. Local merchants & companies, such as “Spear’s and William’s Old Whisky by the Barrel,” began to garner reputations for themselves as brands (in the more contemporary sense). Between the 1820s and 1830s, we see “auction house notices” indicating monikers of “Spear’s Prime Old Whiskey” and “Speaer’s Old Whiskey,” surely indications of perceived/actual quality. All in all, by mid-century, “Old Bourbon Whiskey” became a distinctive identifier (and price inflator) for what was considered higher quality juice. Another example praising one Solomon –

An announcement in 1850 provided the perfect example of merchandising a distiller’s reputation: “Old Bourbon Whisky at Auction. I will sell, on the public square, on the first Monday in December next, 15 barrels of Old Bourbon Whisky, made by Solomon Kellar, one of the best Whisky makers in the world, and this lot not to be surpassed by any.”

An important takeaway is that (initially) “Old Bourbon” was first and foremost to indicate that it came from “old Bourbon County,” not to signify anything else. Pre-Civil War, some would simply reduce the ‘this is where it’s from’ labels to “O B.” By the 1840s onward, though it was still widely used, we see a number of whiskey manufacturers begin to drop “Old” and just use “Bourbon.” It seems that, by mid-century, it was well established where the whiskey was coming from. No need to use the extra signifiers.

Thomas Eales of Paris [Kentucky] notified prospective customers in 1854 that “I have for sale 150 barrels of superior copper distilled Bourbon whisky, from one to six years old.” Four years later another company of Maysville, R. H. Newell, featured “1000 Barrels Bourbon Whiskey, 1 to 4 years old.” In this development, Kentuckians were fortunate in that a Kentucky place-name became synonymous with a widely respected product.

For the Bourbon enthusiast among us dying to know whether today's barrel specifications were used back then (i.e., charring of the oak), I got you covered. The simple answer is that it would have been a matter of personal preference versus adherence to any strict guidelines. Crowgey goes to great lengths to affirm that charring of barrels was by no means standard, and certainly not widely practiced. This is a really important point because a purist would have to ask themself the question, “Would the earliest whiskeymakers & coopers approve of how the product is produced today?” Has the core/DNA changed too much? Speaking-to-the-dead aside, this is not to suggest that there aren’t references to something in the wheelhouse of new, charred oak in the Antebellum period –

“seasoned heart of white oak barrels” – Lexington Gazette, 1820

“seasoned heart of white oak barrels full hooped” – Lexington Gazette, 1820

But to satisfy the purists, I will not withhold the closest we come to this reference –

“Be very careful to have them well burnt or shaved inside, so that not a blister remain, for if any of these blisters should remain on the inside of the cask, a portion of the contents will insinuate itself under the blister, become acid or putrid, and cause the succeeding mash to run rapidly into the acetous or putrefactive, instead of the vinous fermentation; the produce will consequently be decreased, the quality of the spirit vitiated, and the cause will be looked for in vain.” – Harrison Hall, 1818

Ultimately, what we see is a beverage that has gone through many iterations of defining itself (naturally). From farmer-distillers to distillers working closely with farmers, the soul of American Whiskey can’t be concretely pinned down. In effect, American Whiskey has moved in tandem with the nation on an ‘up and to the right’ trajectory. In its earliest days, American Whiskey would have been consumed most by the ‘common man,’ as the wealthier among them preferred their “St. Croix Rum, Holland Gin, Old Cognac Brandy, Old Peach Brandy, [and] ten-year old Irish Whiskey,” etc. Remember, “it would be impossible to designate unequivocally a “first distiller of Kentucky,” as I hope you will now easily agree. The author breaks our timeline and stops right before the Civil War. I will take you down one more not-often-discussed lane before we wrap.

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The not-so-pretty side of the glass.

There simply is no discussion of a pre-Civil War South without mentioning chattel slavery. It was the reality of every waking day, and the harsh truth is that Blacks were treated, valued, bartered, and dealt with as assets. I generally find whiskey historians to be either too imaginatively folklore-y, at which point they definitely aren’t giving you good history food to chew on, or they deem this aspect of the history unworthy of coverage. Whatever the decision, we must remember that spirits are fundamentally agricultural products. And if a society operates on slavery and hard labor, then an easy conclusion can be drawn regarding a) who did the labor, and b) what their contributions were (therefore) to the whiskey-making process. This is all notwithstanding those “frontier” families who did not have the means to purchase enslaved people, of which there were many; another very important point that often goes understated, since analyzing the poor in an honest way does not usually satiate those who want a good story told.

Crowgey talks around the topic, mostly to highlight stills, animals, and whiskey stock that were packaged in asset sales (transactions generally) and wills. As expected, enslaved people were included as line items in these documents. Exhibit A –

Benjamin Rust, of the adjacent Richmond County, either had no sons to carry on the distillery business or else desired to provide his daughter with an irresistible dowry. His will, executed in 1754, provided that she should receive 750 acres, a Negro woman, “all my home Stock of Cattle hoggs & sheep and all my horses my Still & worm, and all my household furniture.”

“An advertiser in 1788, for example, served notice that he had “a likely young Negroe man” for sale; his desired price (in that age of barter) included “two copper stills one of about eighty gallons the other about forty gallons.”

And for those who ran away from plantations, whiskey (i.e., currency) as reward was not off the table –

In the Lexington Gazette Robert Sanders, himself a distiller, offered a reward of twenty pounds or 100 gallons of whiskey for the return of a runaway Negro slave.

While it is beyond the scope of this piece, it is important to remember that, in the historical & global distilled spirits space, skilled enslaved people from other places (mainly the Caribbean) were highly sought after for their distilling know-how. To be crass, however, an enslaved person’s contribution would have been acknowledged very little (if at all), so that level of deep documentation and recordkeeping may be pithy unless you scratch the surface really hard. In other words, the ingenuity and outputs of the skilled enslaved spiritmaker would have been entirely vested in the slaveowner by law. Today, we call that assignment of rights in the world of intellectual property. This is my educated guess. I have not gone down the Kentucky rabbit hole on this. Just making an observation from what I generally know to be true.

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Let’s toast and start to get out of here.

I hope this piece provided a nice, big “Kentucky hug.” We should be proud of our corn liquor, and I hope this piece can make you toast to that long journey over the centuries. I also hope this piece helps reduce the amount of ‘what it was like back then’ stargazing because the earliest whiskey drinkers were undiscerning, practical, and even fans of adulteration –

“But, in the morning, having a bottle of native ‘Bourbon,’ filled with camomile-flowers, which, being bitter, were used very generally as a tonic before breakfast…The use of such an eye-opener seems to have been prevalent, not only in early Kentucky but in the South in general, where “a morning draught of either [peach or apple brandy] was considered as essential to good health as a breakfast.”

But more than anything else, I desire for our country to have a wider vocabulary, not because I have romantic associations with a wide variety of spirits – and if I did, so what – but because it is the historically apt thing to do. All this good juice running through our veins/soil that we completely ignore. What we know to be true today wasn’t always the case –

If any single domestically distilled product of the entire eighteenth century had been selected for its universality and premium qualities, it would have been a fruit distillate—probably peach brandy.

To judge from public records, Kentuckians were producing a surprising amount of peach brandy, along with their favored whiskey. From January to May of 1801, for example, the recorded export through the customs house for the Port of Louisville included 42,562 gallons of whiskey and 6,157 gallons of peach brandy.

The average Kentuckian would probably look at you like you’ve lost your mind if you tell them they got peach brandy in their blood. You know what would really send them over the ledge? If you tell them they also have gin – THE JUNIPER STUFF – in their heritage –

In 1816 the firm of T. Paxon and Company of Louisville notified distillers that 1,600 pounds of juniper berries were available for gin manufacture, enough for at least six thousand gallons of full proof gin. The choice of advertising terminology in a representative selection of newspapers—“prime country gin,” “domestic gin,” “American gin,” “common gin”—also testifies to the regional aspect of this significant business.

Alright, the gin was inconsequential. My point is that the evidence is too compelling around our earliest drinking days and how varied our palates were for me to blindly accept notions of a single heritage spirit. The ‘whiskey only’ argument doesn’t stand on any historically sturdy legs. I know I have beaten the drum on this hard enough by this point, but you just can’t escape our cane spirit heritage, not even when discussing early Kentucky history (emphasis mine) –

Captain Robert George, commanding officer at Fort Jefferson, wrote to Colonel George Slaughter, commandant at the Falls: “In the Month of January [1781] I have the pleasure to inform you we were able to drink brandy, Taffia & Wine—with your good assistance Whisky too; but it has not made us so saucy, but we can drink all the Whisky you can send us. … I have the Pleasure to drink your Health in a bumper of your good Whisky.”

Note: Taffia (correct spelling: tafia) is an early reference to r(h)um coming from francophone places (could have been Louisiana or somewhere in the French Caribbean). To be fair, given the widespread use of catch-all terms in those days, it could have been from New England, but made with French molasses. We don’t know. What we do know: rum.

Final beating of the rum & whiskey drum. Now this was by far the most interesting reference I found in Crowgey’s book around nomenclature and spirits in the late 18^th century. As you’ll recall, the men going westward to Kentucky interacted with Native Americans along the way, and trade was one means of making it to the other side of that journey. Given Native Americans’ long-standing experience with Europeans since the late 15^th / early 16^th centuries, the Natives had grown accustomed to certain spirits before others. I think you know where I’m going with this, but even what you are about to see will completely throw you for a loop (emphasis mine) –

“Some of your people mend our guns, and others tell us they can make rum of the corn.” – A Native chief, 1784, Filson’s council with Piankashaw Indians at Post St. Vincent

The phrase “rum of the corn” is extraordinary: it shows that rum was so universal a reference point that corn whiskey was described in relation to it, and not the other way around. From this point forward, I will be referring to my pours of bourbon as “rum of the corn.”

To redirect the (Kentucky) guns pointed at me right now, please remember, our dear corn whiskey is still named after the French –

By the time of the Civil War “bourbon” was well on its way to becoming a permanent part of the American language. The experiences of two French visitors to the United States serve to illustrate this point. In the first instance, during General LaFayette’s tour of the country (1824–1825), a part of his party’s itinerary included a visit to Kentucky and his namesake, Fayette County. Following the visit to “Ashland” a member of the party reported the hospitable offer, tendered by a Kentuckian, of a glass of “wiski” to the health of the guest of honor. Had the finest in Kentucky hospitality been known as bourbon whiskey at the time, it would certainly have been referred to as such. The second of the French visitors, somewhat over a quarter of a century later, was the Prince Napoleon inspecting the camps on Staten Island, in 1861. It was reported that “He tasted a bottle of liquor owned by one of the privates; in fact he not only tasted, but appeared to relish the draught. What is it?’ said he. ‘Old Bourbon Sir,’ replied the soldier. ‘Old Bourbon indeed,’ was the Prince’s remark. ‘I did not think I would like anything with that name so well.’

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The author.

Henry Gundry Crowgey (RIP) was born in Emory, VA, in 1916. He died in 2012. Long life. See what happens when you drink alcohol? He was not just a writer of the Southern cloth, he was from it through and through –

• Received his undergrad from Emory & Henry College (Emory, VA).

• Obtained his master’s from Appalachian State Teachers College (Boone, NC).

• And received a Ph.D. in history from the University of Kentucky (Lexington, KY)

Kentucky Bourbon: The Early Years Of Whiskeymaking was his dissertation, which is crazy because this is an incredibly well-done piece of ‘first work.’ We never truly get someone’s all from their academic ‘knight me’ material, at least not usually. Even crazier, it is his only book.

Now, with all that said, I also generally find that old school historians have a penchant for detail, research, and fact-finding that is so insanely admirable. They leave it all on the pages!

Crowgey was also a military veteran. For more details on his background, I found two good resources:

→ His funeral service.

→ Spirits & Distilling (written by Lew Bryson, a great whisk(e)y author).

How you feeling? Thirsty, I hope. Go have a pour of some corn whiskey. It’ll taste even better now that you know what you know.

Just remember,

in all that you do, please, don’t ever stop reading.

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Sipping tips: When you pick these up, I implore you to chew your food before swallowing. Most spirits taste harsh if you down them immediately (shots): you’re blasting your taste buds with high-proof alcohol. Take a small swig, let the liquid sit in your mouth, and hug every crevice for 4-5 seconds (open the taste buds). Down it. You’ll pick up all the flavors and truly know what the beverage tastes like. Once you do that 1-2 times, your palate is ready. Drink away. And to my NY’ers, I am sorry for all that wild language.

The last rotation was April 2026: William Hinton’s 3 year, Down Island Spirit’s Ghana (2020, ~4 year), and Worthy Park’s 12 year. It is *checks watch* 12:37pm on May 23rd, 2026. Which means I’m doing this in real time. Rum in the afternoon is never a bad thing. Alright, here we go!

Today, we’re all in on Doctor Thomas Soltau’s Sugarfield Spirits, based in Gonzales, Louisiana:

Sugarfield produces a range of spirits and liquers — vodka, corn whiskey, peach liquer, etc. — but I will, to absolutely no one’s surprise, focus on Sugarfield’s rum portfolio.

My philosophy on tasting rums remains the same: start with unaged products to understand what you’re tasting, then branch out to aged expressions; that linear journey lets you see what cask-aging does to the raw rum.

Some Louisiana melodies can’t hurt before we dive in, right?

Unaged x White Rum

There is an odd balance of sugar sweetness and astringency on the aroma that makes me feel like green apple, if it were sour, would smell like this on the inside. In trying to place this unaged rum, I think the average drinker would classify this expression’s aroma as being in the vodka wheelhouse, but not quite killing your nose in that rubbing alcohol sense that most vodkas emit. I like it: can see someone who’s into baking using this as a core ingredient akin to Jamaican rum cake makers soaking the goods in Wray & Nephew.

Sweet and sour lemon candy in taste. I can see this rum being a workhorse in cocktails. At 80 proof (40% ABV), the taste will come through, rest for a second, and then go away. But there’s a slight zing in flavor — back to that sweet/sour lemon candy thing — that sits with you for a second.

I do think the average drinker who needs to place it will still feel like it’s in a bucket that tastes closer to vodka if they’re not familiar with rum. For my cane spirits folks, this will feel light and vaguely familiar, but likely preferable in a cocktail vs. neat. My guess: that is the Doctor’s intent.

A mini technical sheet for the keen eyes among us:

• Source material: molasses and raw cane sugar (note: I assume that the addition of raw cane sugar helps achieve the sugar-to-water ratio needed to enable fermentation; educated guess)

• ABV: 40%

• Makeup: Solera-inspired method whereby distillate is drawn from the stainless steel tank (i.e., different batches). Those different distillates are topped off with new make distillate.

• Unaged

• Method and still: Batch distilled on a column

• Yeast and fermentation: Lallemand SR, 5 — 6 day fermentation

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Unaged x Cane Juice White Rum

This right here is a reminder of how expressive the sugarcane plant truly is. I cannot stop smelling this rum because of how beautiful the aroma is: grassy galore. Cane juice, man, the smell never disappoints. I think that batch process hones the aroma more aggressively. Or at least that’s how my non-technical brain makes sense of the roar. Just gorgeous on the nostrils. It’s like a lemon candy got splashed by a vanilla wave.

Holds up right through to the taste. Still balanced at 92 proof, but a burst of flavor comes at you. Bright. Maintains that lemon-y, vanilla hug. Ton of grassy and earthy tones. Yea, this one is a winner for sure!

A mini technical sheet for the keen eyes among us:

• Source material: 100% raw cane juice. The first press was done at Lula Sugar in Belle Rose, LA. Varietal is the hybrid sugarcane LSU 0299.

• ABV: 46%

• Makeup: A blend of unaged rums from the same year (2023)

• Unaged

• Method and still: Batch, hybrid still; pot on the stripping run, 4 tray column on the finishing run

• Yeast and fermentation: Lallemand RM yeast, much faster (~60 hours). Ferment to dry over that time from a starting gravity of about 1.060

• Other: Experimental Series Batch #008. Cane from the 2023 season, though the finishing runs were done in early 2024. Won gold at the 2025 Tales of the Cocktail. Third in the rum category overall.

Well done, Doctor, well done. Holding onto this one for dear life since it’s Experimental/small batch (i.e., when it’s gone, it’s gone).

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Aged x 98.8 Proof

On the aroma, there’s a lot of those anticipated American cask notes — caramel and vanilla. However, it’s balanced by a bright, flowery tinge. The more I smell the liquid, the more I get a cherry-red note at the end, which will make sense once you see the technicals. But also, it’s a beverage that is a fan favorite in my household. So far, I can say that a unique characteristic of doc’s rums is that a lot is going on, yet it still feels like just enough. That is the best language I have to explain what I’m trying to convey.

Sharp and acidic on the taste, but mellow on the finish. Won’t kill you. That’s actually a really nice thing for people not incredibly well-versed in rum. Something to bite on entry, with a calm hug to the chest as it goes down. As opposed to the opposite: roar & more roar. I feel like this would really stand up in just about the only cocktail I allow myself to be familiar with, an old-fashioned.

One more nose and taste: there’s a peppery spice kick at the end I’m a fan of. Overall, well done.

A mini technical sheet for the keen eyes among us:

• Source material: molasses

• Makeup: Blend of 9 different barrels (8 ex-bourbon, 1 red port)

• Aged: 30 — 33 months

• Method and still: Batch, hybrid still; pot on the stripping run, 4 tray column on the finishing run

• Yeast and fermentation: Lallemand RM yeast, longer fermentation (2 weeks).

• Other: Proof around 120 (60% ABV) at the start of the blend, and eventually proofed down to 98.8 (49.4% ABV).

That 2-week fermentation makes a lot of sense now!

Aged x 111.2 Proof

But this is why higher proof should not force thoughts of more (using that term loosely). Because the aroma is much softer on this one, for reasons that will — again — make sense once you see the technicals. Matter fact, I won’t bury the lead: aged in red port cask. On average, this mellows out the distillate (not in a bad way). There’s a balance of soft astringency with those same cherry-red notes that provides a pleasant smell. What may appear as thin is more appropriately characterized as romantic & inviting. I suppose some would see the cask (and country) in that manner, depending on your worldview.

Bites on the palate, expected at 55.6% ABV. A ton more fruit-forwardness in this rum. I don’t know if my brain is playing tricks on me, but it has both the red-fruit notes (raspberry, dark cherries) and a slight hint of that heavy Jamaican fruit-forwardness. The combination of casks on this expression I respect. Rum makers trying things to see what works — we must patronize ($$$) those efforts so that they can continue to experiment, improve, and provide us with the best.

A mini technical sheet for the keen eyes among us:

• Source material: molasses

• Makeup: Single barrel (red port)

• Aged: 3 years

• Method and still: Batch; pot on the stripping run, column on the finishing run

• Yeast and fermentation: Lallemand SR yeast, longer fermentation (2 weeks).

• Other: Series #13

Spiced Rum x 80 proof

Out of my wheelhouse in terms of the type of rum I usually drink. Bear with me.

Alright.

Whoa!

A lot of baking spices. A LOT. The Spiced Rum smells like something a Caribbean person would use to season rice with. Cardamom and nutmeg are the stars in the aroma department, while the black pepper rounds things out.

Pimento Seed on the taste. Undoubtedly. This is why my brain went to rice & peas, because pimento seeds feature prominently in any rice & peas dish. And when you accidentally bite into one, it’s a taste you will never forget or mistake.

The Spiced Rum isn’t that aggressive (i.e., that pimento seed shock to the palate), but it is unmistakably that in taste. Hats off to the Doctor for this expression: gave us something unique and far-reaching in the most natural of ways.

My cocktail people, grab this immediately and go crazy!

A mini technical sheet for the keen eyes among us:

• Source material: molasses and raw cane sugar

• Method and still: Batch distilled on a column

• Other: No extracts used, only whole spice co-macerated in the rum. The blend consists of cardamom, cloves, nutmeg, Mexican all-spice, black peppercorns, and vanilla. Macerated for several months in rum in a stainless steel tank. Racked off the spices and lightly sweetened with cane sugar

As you can imagine, this is how I feel right now (writing this in real time):

It is now *checks watch* 3:32pm. I’ll get this out in the next 10 mins or so.

Cheers and #rumresponsibly

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P.S., for my people who really need a crash course on what rum is, please check out the latest video I uploaded on YouTube. You will have all the info you need after watching it.

Building the Devil’s Empire – strong title – is easily one of the best books I have read on colonial Louisiana (and New Orleans specifically, since the author’s core focus is the Big Easy). Shannon Lee Dawdy does a world-class job augmenting popular perspectives on New Orleans while simultaneously redirecting you to places of fulsome critical analysis; you walk away from this book with a deep sense of gratitude for the knowledge imparted.

The author tackles colonialism’s history & tentacles via the (highly specific) New Orleans experience, which I believe helps us better grasp colonialism’s adaptations. From the pen-woman herself –

New Orleans contributes to our understanding of colonialism in a particularly historical way, and in a more global way. The town was launched at a critical juncture in the early eighteenth century when ministers were taking a new, scholarly approach to refine strategies of rule and expand the power of the state. New Orleans was in many ways an Enlightenment experiment in which recognized tools of modern colonialism (urban planning, census-taking, natural histories, ethnographies, mapping, new criminalities, and the control of subordinates through sentiment) were under development. Such experiments in social engineering and Enlightened absolutism often failed, but the lessons derived from the famous failure of New Orleans [and] the Mississippi Bubble informed later colonial efforts in the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries.

The Mississippi Bubble? That’s our boy John Law! We’ll come back to that in a bit. I must warn that Dawdy’s book, for the non-habitual history readers among us, will feel very dense in the way that many history books do. However, Building the Devil’s Empire will not read as ‘dry’ because the author’s perspectives are so damn refreshing. It will take some time to get from cover to cover. But I wouldn’t write about the book if I did not believe it to be worth the time. All this talk of Dawdy – fire last name (Jamaican side of my brain speaking) – so let’s give the author the floor before we jump in.

“Ah weh yu get da new Clarks deh Dawdy?” Why did my brain go there? I do not know. It won’t turn off, so be it.

Dr. Shannon Lee ’the Clarks’ Dawdy ()

Alright, I’ll stop. First things first, the author’s accolades:

• Anthropologist

• Archaeologist

Those two things = you’re in for a treat when they share perspectives on history!

• MacArthur Fellow

• Professor Emerita at the University of Chicago

• Independent writer, researcher, and director of the Future Café Network

Topics of her writing include death, disaster, food, colonialism and the history of capitalism.

The highly condensed CV aside, what most struck me about the author’s background was how Hurricane Katrina reoriented her life and perspective, as disasters tend to do. Flirtations with mortality are, to put it lightly, life-changing in the best and worst of ways. Optimistically, it urges one to see, live, and embrace chances more ruthlessly. Those who no longer have the opportunity would probably have urged you to do the same on their behalf. For Dawdy –

My strong emotional reaction to the disaster made me realize how attached I had become to New Orleans, not simply because I have been an on-again, off-again resident for thirteen years, but because I identified with the city. In my imagination, it had a personality I had come to know, love, even emulate. This is a risky admission for a researcher to make. I think Katrina has emboldened me to take more risks.

Dawdy first moved to New Orleans in 1994. She’s remained struck by how decidedly French much of the city has remained, despite this aspect of its history being least preserved, and, at this juncture, the shortest stint in its New World tale. But a base that hasn’t been ruthlessly targeted for extermination (often) serves as an unshakeable foundation, so it’s a little less surprising to me. In the same way that New Orleans has retained its specific strains of African compared to other towns.

The primary sources Dawdy used for this work are:

→ Louisiana Superior Council Records

→ Louisiana administrative correspondences of the French National Archives Colonial Section (C13 series, in particular)

→ Other letters/correspondence between Louisiana and France

→ Various historical mémories (this is French for memoirs, not memories) and maps

A major thank-you to the author for layering in French throughout the book and translating where necessary. For a summary of the author’s perspective –

…I am most interested in how New Orleans informs us more generally about the nature of colonialism—how colonies are established, how they are ruled, how they produce new societies, and how these societies are organized.

In other words, Dawdy’s focus is not a “linear, event-centered history.” She is more concerned with daily lives and understanding colonialism in full.

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Paving the New Orleans road (pre-drive).

Before we discuss what this book entails and the approach the author took, I want to ground you in Louisiana’s & New Orleans’ gradual shift from an Old World (Native) territory to a New World (French) colony, with more emphasis on the latter given the context of the book. From 1682 to 1718 –

The French explorer Robert Cavalier de La Salle and his party passed through the site [that] would become New Orleans in 1682, in France’s first bid to claim the lower Mississippi Valley. Other explorers and coureurs de bois likely visited the site between that time and Iberville’s visit in 1699. In that year the real colonization of Louisiana began. Within a few years, a handful of Canadian and French settlers established themselves at an Indian village along Bayou St. Jean (present-day St. John) a mile or two inland from the future colonial town. The holdings were confirmed by concessions in 1708. By 1715 French administrators recognized that a post located near the Indian portage would be a valuable asset. In 1717 the Company ordered that not only a post, but a “principal town” should be built on the site recommended by Bienville…Toward the end of March 1718, Governor Bienville ceremonially cut the first cane at the chosen site for New Orleans. The city was christened with convict labor…thirty out of forty men sent to clear the dense canebrake were French convicts. Within a year, a handful of buildings had been erected.

And thus began the journey of what French nun/missionary, Marie Hachard, dubbed “[t]he devil here possesses a large empire.” Dawdy’s frameworks for unpacking French-founded New Orleans (1718 – 1768) are:

1. Ethnography &

2. Nature of colonialism (“…certain undercurrents of colonialism became mainstream in New Orleans, and thus remain more visible for study.”)

On #2, she pays keen attention to unpacking rogue colonialism, where the inhabitants manage the frontier conditions “in their own self-interest.” Ultimately, this style led to colonialism’s downfall because it “create[ed] conditions that foster not only cultures of resistance, but also circuits of seditious power and contraband flow.” In short, when Europeans-turned-Creole got a bite of the economic/political independence apple, they wanted the full fruit. We see this time and time again. Can’t put the lid back on the proverbial candy jar once the kid gets a taste. But New Orleans is unique in many ways when stacked against other colonies that had a consistent influx of people, be they enslaved, indentured, wealthy, etc. In other words, when you do not have that consistent stream, your “native born” seemingly take on a much different stride to defining themselves and how they view the territory they are in. More importantly, it allows us to see the transitions from one generation to the next much clearer since the denizens and their offspring vary little from one handover to the next –

The utilization of creole as the dominant designation for native New Orleanians dates at least to the 1740s. Virtually abandoned by France in 1731, Louisiana saw no significant new immigration from Europe or Africa until the beginning of Spanish rule thirty-five years later. As a result, the city presents an unusually clear picture of the generational transition from colonial to creole society.

For clarity:

→ The “founder generation” is considered the folks in New Orleans/Louisiana from 1699–1736

→ In the “abandonment era,” 1730s – 1760s, we have the firmly “creole generation,” before Louis XV secretly handed off Louisiana to his cousin, King Carlos III of Spain, post-Seven Years’ War loss.

Some very seismic cultural & socio-political waves governed these decades listed above:

• The French colonized New Orleans during the height of their “Enlightenment absolutism,” which served as a guidepost on “social control,” colonial experimentation, and what was deemed a successful campaign vs. not (i.e., “metropolitan neglect” stems from the French crown viewing this colonial experiment as a failure).

• The French three-tier system & prevailing social construct were firmly in play: clergy (#1), nobility (#2), everyone else (#3). All three are expected to have full and absolute deference to the king (absolutism).

Where are we? A New World French colony emerges in 1699, in which Pierre LeMoyne d’Iberville, who brought with him “French soldiers, Caribbean buccaneers, and Canadian coureurs de bois,” settles in. Over the next ~15 years, the colony became a small outpost led by Iberville’s little brother, Jean-Baptiste LeMoyne de Bienville (“father of Louisiana”). Remember the Scottish flag and John Law? Well, Law had the influence and status to convince the French Crown to let him experiment with “centralizing and tying together national banking operations, the royal treasury, and the colonial companies” for the new territory. Long story short, this led to the “Mississippi Bubble” in 1720, and eleven years later, the colony returned to the crown’s administrative control (i.e., after the Company of the Indies took over in the interim). Some of this was referenced in my Studies on Black Colonial Louisiana piece.

Yet, despite all of this, “New Orleans [was viewed] as the center of the colony’s social, economic, and intellectual life,” hence its christening as the capital in 1722. There was also a geo-economic practicality behind this capital status, given that New Orleans was the primary port/commercial locus. This central-locus benefit typically induces citizens to believe that they’re culturally superior, on account of figuratively (and literally) speaking more languages given their interactions with the Atlantic community.

To put a nice (long) bow on the form and consequence that New Orleans’ colonialism took, the author encourages us to decenter the metropole –

Colonialism was as much a creation of rogues and independent agents as it was the project of imperial states. It was actually rare for those at the center of state power (such as a monarch and his close advisers, high-level ministers, or powerful legislators) to take initiative in launching colonial projects, and even rarer for them to pay close attention to how the projects were managed. “Colonial power” has become too abstracted and too overstated, in my view. Although colonialism, particularly in the Americas, is characterized by unfathomable depths of genocide and dehumanizing slavery, this brutality has too often been attributed to a nearly faceless state power located in Europe. In fact, these acts were perpetrated on the ground by local militias, slaveowners, and colonial administrators often acting on their own initiative and in pursuit of their own interests—in short, by private citizens and rogue politicians.

If you don’t know what comes next, prepare for a sharp turn off the Louisiana road, and into the cane fields (sort of).

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Rum.

Just when I thought Hall’s work, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, was my earliest peek into rum imbibing in 18^th-century Louisiana, here comes Dawdy with the gems! And the story goes (circa 1720s Louisiana, emphasis mine in the quote):

→ There is a historian & writer, Dumont, who was “well educated and politically well connected, but of uncertain nobility and little wealth.” These distinctions, given the three tiers, are of high social importance.

→ The author discusses his manuscripts, life, and how he eventually engaged with the revered home beverage (“Bordeaux wine”), while also engaging in the New World liquids (rum).

…He eats a good meal of salad and curdled milk, then drinks “at least” two bottles of Bordeaux wine and smokes three or four pipes of tobacco while taking large gulps of the local crude rum called eau de vie. After vomiting violently for two days, he finds his body [purged] of its illness…

eau de vie, to the modern-day eyes, reads as unaged fruit brandy. But we must remember that certain terms served as catch-all categorizations rather than the clear/clean distinctions we use today. So, eau de vie = unaged (“local crude”) rum is not out of left field (historically speaking). Point here is: the man drank excessively, in part because alcohol as remedy for illness was still popular in those days. And he surely did not discriminate between the low-proof (wine) and high-proof (rum) goods.

Next, we’ll get a glimpse of an early catalog of goods desired by the Louisiana colonists. The original sources of these items ranged from the French Caribbean colonies, Europe, and trade with Indigenous peoples. The below quote is from “the Company period,” so this must mean all references are pre-1731, when the colony was returned to the French king (emphasis mine) –

Louisiana consumers desired the sugar, coffee, flour, cloth, tools, liquor, Indian trade items, and household sundries available in island markets. Some of these items were local products, such as sugar, coffee, and rum, while others were European imports.

Smuggling, pirate & privateer activity was par for the course in those days, though one of the three activities gets far more attention – in a Hollywood sort of manner – than the others. Nonetheless, we see how this illegal/illicit activity encouraged the flow of alcohol to Louisianans in the early 1700s (emphasis mine)

A pirate and smuggler named Béranger described how he helped settlers survive by running a corsair between Martinique and the Gulf coast in the early years, preying upon New England ships when not docked at Tortuga, the legendary port of the Caribbean underworld. He provided Louisianans with wine, eau de vie (brandy or crude rum), flour, and dry goods plundered from New England ships in exchange for Native American slaves and lumber.

Note: see, eau de vie could be either brandy or rum. But since the “Caribbean underworld” and “New England” were involved, there is a high likelihood rum was in the mix.

For a firm example of rum in Louisiana via import from Martinique (circa 1740s), Dawdy cites one Jacques de Meyère. Meyère, a shipowner & smuggler based in Martinique, who also had a second home in New Orleans, gets caught up in a legal tussle with other smugglers surrounding prices paid for goods and other disagreements (emphasis mine) –

De Meyère had also allegedly attempted to cover his debts by “overcharging” local smugglers Michel F. Gerald (alias Fitzgerald) and Jacques Lorrain dit Tarascon. They had purchased beer, rum, cloth, syrup, and soap they intended to sell at the Pensacola post in Spanish Florida. Governor Bienville supported Gerald in his suit against de Meyère. De Meyère countered that Gerald had tried to “extort” a price break by causing unnecessary delays while piloting Le Chevallière to port.

When I stumbled upon the above, it Dawdy dawned on me that, in my quest to unearth all that is Louisiana & Rum, much will be left unfound because “wine, liquors, and cloth” were some of the most highly sought commodities on the smuggling/black market. And the smuggling/black market is where recordkeeping went to die, lest those items were confiscated and thereafter reported to authorities. But the author masterfully allows our imagination to put those pieces of the puzzle together –

Runaways, in particular, found peddling smuggled goods a viable employment. By supplying their contacts with clothing items, liquor, and small luxuries difficult to get in rural areas, runaways played a key role in the distribution system to plantations that tied the internal economy of slaves to international smuggling rings.

To substantiate Dawdy’s quote, I’ll recall a ‘for instance’ from Africans in Colonial Louisiana (circa 1779 or 1794, emphasis mine) –

There were distinctive patterns of crime at the post. Crimes committed by slaves usually involved theft of food and clothing. Free black women were sometimes accused of being involved in provoking thefts and receiving stolen goods. Nanette, a free négresse living at the house of the English commissioner Boukguard, was accused of stealing cloth from him and selling it to two male slaves in exchange for eight bottles of tafia and four barrels of corn.

My final-ish example, before I make a very strong conclusion, is from court proceedings that took place between the 20^th of February and the 21^st of March 1744. An enslaved person admits to drinking cane spirit in a tavern, which stoked the fears surrounding “negro” drinking and how that would result in an enslaved person losing “his senses.” In other words, it was believed that enslaved persons were no longer prone to “the necessity of submission” while intoxicated (sentiments of “Attorney General Lafrénière” in 1763). Back to the court proceedings/charges (drinking & stealing) –

…criminal trials…Alexandre, a thirty-four-year-old Senegalese slave, admitted to drinking rum at Dusigne’s tavern with his friend Jupiter, but not to passing off stolen merchandise.

These sentiments were layered into the fabric of social control and stereotypes foisted upon certain groups (emphasis mine) –

…Governor d’Abbadie wrote a letter to France saying, “Immoderate consumption of tafia [crude rum] has turned all the people into brutes.”

And this is when I had a…

In almost every single case where I come across the word “tafia,” it is usually followed up with some descriptor to emphasize its (1) lack of exportability (undesirable for trade in the (Trans)Atlantic market), (2) crude nature, and (3) proximity to those of the lower classes. All to say, rum (or rhum en français) is rarely described in those same manners (at least not in the same frequency). The plain and unfortunate truth is that a good’s perceived value is often divorced from its actual, artisanal production quality (inputs and outputs), and judged more by the people who embrace and/or can afford it. In-group / out-group behavior.

The ‘what is luxury vs. mass’ goal post shifts over time. Case in point: what we think of as rum punch today was once considered a luxury in the 18^th century, because only a select few could afford the ingredients to blend rum with fruits and spices. Today: the commoner’s cocktail.

So, my conclusion is as follows: in many instances, “tafia,” “Guildive,” and any other form of “crude [colonial] rum” were spoken of in pejorative ways because they posed a threat to the social order. In the French New Orleans scenario, there was no chance that those at the top, increasingly the creole generation, wanted any symbiosis between the following groups:

• French prisoners & soldiers

• Native Americans (free/enslaved)

• Blacks (free/enslaved)

• Poor Frenchmen and women

• “Forçat” (forced exile or convict labor)

• “Engage” (indentured servants)

• Literally anyone in that #3 category

Collectively, “les petits,” or the “little people.” Gatherings of les petits across taverns where rum was widely available had a specific ‘what could come of this’ ghost lurking in the background for those at the top. Hence, we see “tafia” (and related terms) often discussed negatively. It’s more symbolic than anything to do with the beverage’s actual quality. I’ll need to continue picking up the breadcrumbs on this, but it holds water –

Social and economic exchanges in the cabarets and taverns of New Orleans continued to blur intended divisions of class and color…policies appear to have had negligible effects. The Superior Council issued redundant ordinances in 1725, 1746, 1751, and 1763 attempting to control the number of taverns and discourage the mixing of slaves, soldiers, and free people in these establishments…Some establishments were owned by free people of color, who offered a place for slaves to meet in the city.

Maybe future clampdowns on tafia/rum consumption & production were because they served as the fuel lubricating the social car of the petit gens. Another way to sow disintegration among the classes. To be determined. What does not need any further determining, as far as I’m concerned, is that rum was part and parcel of the colonial drinking environment of 1700s Louisiana. And I am here to never let you forget that, cheers.

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Back on Dawdy’s New Orleans road. First stop: European expectations, Louisiana realities.

“Les petits” are led by the example of “les grands” and “les grands” have no power to repress the unruliness of “les petits” since they take part in the same disorders. This entire colony is a veritable Babylon.” – Father Le Marie on Louisiana, 1717

As you can see, the French missionaries rarely had pleasant things to say about New Orleans. It is through Le Marie’s lens that Dawdy takes us on the journey of those early days surrounding people, culture, expectations, behaviors, and all the other qualities that go under the ethnography bucket. But remember, humans are storytelling, fallible machines, so we must – as Dawdy does – take good care to peek between the gaps to reveal as full a story as possible. Which is to say: “disorder” was viewed in a very particular way by the standard of (1) “eighteenth-century modes of thought” and (2) the “Enlightenment absolutism” of the “ancien régime” (French crown and its adherents). It is largely through the “les grands” echo chamber that we get perspectives on the “order/disorder thread” Dawdy discusses. Or, as Marie Louise Pratt described the echo chamber: communicators wrote with “imperial eyes.” We must consider this when drawing conclusions –

…disconnect between metropolitan expectations and local developments in French Louisiana, or to a particularly inept effort to install colonial power.

It is probably impossible to establish any agreement on criteria for measuring “orderliness.”

A favorable (for the colonists) local development that deviated from the crown’s “blueprint” was “the famous LeMoyne brothers (Sieur d’Iberville and Bienville)” becoming “quite successful” in short order of setting up shop in the territory. All in all, what would have looked chaotic to some was probably viewed as favorable by others. It’s just that the chaos was overly emphasized, like a baby crying when it doesn’t get its way (bad example, but I’m not changing it!).

Separately, proof that New Orleans was not entirely void of intellectualism, which is a popular trope –

The size and content of private colonial libraries proves that spending thirty years in a remote outpost did not prevent colonials from continuing their education, nor imbibing the most current thinking in the metropole. Estate inventories of major Louisiana concessions taken between 1729 and 1769 list collections of books and pamphlets numbering from 36 to 300.

In 1713 alone, over 700 official letters passed between France and its American colonies, while the parallel British correspondence averaged just 52 per year.

You don’t usually think uncontrollable territory and rich “epistolary” exchange; it’s also important to add that letter-writing was the primary means of communication for every facet of life: business exchanges, favor requests, updates (administrative tool), and, most importantly, proving to your fellow humans that you were participating in the higher intellectual cultural practices of the time. Practically speaking, (1) many were homesick and wrote back to their Old World (Europe), and (2) the constant war between colonial powers, which caused “variation in ship arrivals,” urged many to communicate as often as they could.

Ultimately, the French did not heed the lesson that every action has an equal or greater reaction, which is reflected in the letters of the day. Dawdy analyzing a colonist’s exchange showcases this epistolary cause-and-effect (i.e., natural environment → lowest on the three-tier shipped to the territory) –

Vallette shows us that already in 1720 two theories were forming to explain Louisiana’s failure. The first held that it could be blamed on a particularly inhospitable province of Nature where flooding, disease, and heat sabotaged efforts to build a respectable community. The second claimed that the colony represented a moral failure in the part of the French themselves—the blame falling not only on loose women in Louisiana, but also on the men who sent them there. How could France expect an orderly colony when it was peopled with criminal rejects from the home country? Vallette was not the last to express concern about the moral quality of Louisiana’s immigrants, and its women in particular.

Yet still, Dawdy provides us with further fuel to combat the long-standing myth about the supposed “anti-intellectualism of colonial New Orleans.” She notes that Louisiana’s literacy rate was comparable to that of France and other Catholic communities. And when you dig into the data further, some unanticipated truths reveal themselves –

Thomas Ingersoll found in a sample of slave baptism records from the 1730s that 84.4 percent of male and 57.8 percent of female sponsors (godparents) could sign their names. In another sample, it was found that 42 percent of the colony’s soldiers between 1727 and 1730 could sign their name and 7 percent had received some sort of higher education. About the same percentage (40 percent) could sign their names to the oaths of allegiance required by the new Spanish king in 1769.

We’re jumping ahead a bit (timeline-wise), but it’s all relevant –

On average, creole New Orleanians [“generation of 1760–62”] were twice as literate as their parents or grandparents and much more likely to sign their names than contemporary in France.

And for women, in particular, this was even more the case –

Emily Clark credits the Ursulines for the unusually high literacy rate of New Orleans creole women by the 1760s.

Ultimately, the author wants us to recognize that the poor self-image projected onto New Orleans is in part due to the metropolitan failure to realize its “blueprint,” as opposed to something inherently wrong with the colony itself. Dawdy encourages us “to free our understanding of New Orleans from this flat duality so that we can better see ethnographic complexities on the ground.” More honestly, the circumstances in early colonial Louisiana are split down the middle, a sort of metaphor for most things –

It was simultaneously ordered and disorderly.

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Second stop: figuring out where everything goes.

Bienville and Company of the Indies had the “proprietary charter for the development of the colony.” In 1721, French military engineer, Adrien de Pauger, was charged with designing/overseeing execution of the city. Rules of the (three-tier) road said that those of higher stripes received the best assets –

Concessionaires, company officials, and military officers received the best and the largest lots, situated on the high ground next to the river. This was not a free-for-all land grab of a frontier town.

Homes that conflicted with the plan (i.e., built before execution) were often torn down, much to the frustration of the existing colonists. We get a clear sense of where this New Orleans backwater reputation comes from: the French had a way they desired for things to look and feel, all else was criticized, especially if it involved petits gens –

“The inhabitants, sailors, Indians, and slave run around freely, inside as well as beyond the town. They meet in a multitude of negro cabarets frequented by slaves who have fled their plantations either due to laziness or want, and who survive by trading stolen goods. They meet in the thick and intruding woods that border the town almost all around. The woods trap humidity and provide a good cover for smuggling.” — French visitor’s remarks on New Orleans, circa 1750s

For the French, control of the space/territory meant control of people, politics, and economics. Which is a difficult thing to do in a heterogeneous society where people from various walks of life have their own concepts of space & existing –

…African societies had been building large towns in the interior of the continent for over 3,000 years. The late [pre]colonial period seems to have been a time of urban growth, particularly in the kingdoms of Mali, Niger, and Benin.

Be that as it may, the French went ahead with the intentions –

With its Place d’Armes overlooked by St. Louis Church, its rigid symmetry, and its segregated spaces, the original plan for New Orleans actually resembles Spanish colonial cities much more than it does old French towns of the eighteenth century.

The colonists (most likely those directly from France, not the ones who came over from Canada) did their darndest to recreate Paris in New Orleans, “la cité idéale.” Some of these desired city attributes were: well-lit, properly surveilled, no abandoned buildings, encourage freshwater circulation, among other things.

One of those “other things” was enforcing continuity between its port cities (Le Havre, Brest, Lorient, and New Orleans/La Balize), mainly to maintain an efficient flow of goods and capital. But New Orleans is unlike France (to say the least). The French did not encounter fresh terrain when colonizing Louisiana. Also, the Spanish had been there 150 years prior, so there was some exchange between the native population and the Spanish. Even so, the Native Americans had altered the terrain to suit their needs (e.g., using clamshells to build mounds that protected against flooding, improved drainage, and soil enrichment). These areas already settled by the Natives became more attractive to the French because the land was better and easier to inhabit. As mentioned in Africans in Colonial Louisiana, the assistance of the Indigenous is an all too important part of the French colonization formula that must not go underreported –

Although engineers drawing up plans in France may have reduced Native Americans to features of the natural landscape, the Canadians who first explored Louisiana did not depict the country as uninhabited, wild land. The foundation story of New Orleans credits Iberville’s Native American guide as playing a key role during an exploratory trip in 1699.

The French underestimated what fortifying a city at “the edge of a swamp” would entail. The “hurricane on 11 September 1722” surely put the pep in their step. Ironically, this became an opportunity for the French engineers charged with building the city. To the engineers, the hurricane was seen as fortuitous (i.e., an excuse to knock down buildings erected outside of/before the implementation of their plans). Their cause was only further encouraged by diseases such as “cholera, dysentery, malaria, and yellow fever” that ravaged the colonists throughout the 1700s.

By 1722, Bienville enforced the engineering of levees to protect against future disasters –

By the middle of the French period, the city was walled in from the river and the streets were scored with an intricate grid of ditches and canals crossed by little footbridges at intersections.

Although a large influx of slaves entered the colony between 1719 and 1731, for the first several years those in the New Orleans area were put to work building levees, herding cattle, hunting, and tending gardens. Their labor tasks differed little from those of the idle soldiers in the city or the majority of free colonists who were forced to experiment with agricultural diversity to ensure their own survival.

It seems that most goods were imported as the town fortified itself/French colonists learned the lay of the land. Subsistence farming (e.g., “livestock and food crops”) did sustain, while in tandem attempts to cultivate “tobacco and sugar” largely failed (latter more so than the former). The imbalances kept the colonists in a hand-to-mouth state since procuring “provisions from Europe” (i.e., trading goods) was not a guarantee when the French Caribbean islands were more mature.

As the city approached a decade of organic development outside the military engineers’ control (mid-1730s), the representatives of the crown must have realized that they had not accounted for the large enslaved population that eventually inhabited the city. They did not design with this development in mind. The emerging creole population (French European descent) began doing away with self-sufficiency plots in place of slave quarters –

A new, local model of urbanity arose that mimicked the plantation landscape…the parallels to Mauritius…are stunning.

In short, the creole generation began to embrace New Orleans for their own concept of survival and living (irrespective of the “ancien régime”) —

Rather than being a European metropolis of aristocratic gardens, New Orleans became a more African place, its gardens given over to slave quarters. Rather than serving as a major port for transatlantic trade, it became a hub for an intercolonial black market that defied mercantilist controls.

And that “BACKWATER ENTREPÔT” is what we will discuss next.

Third stop: get out the car and hit the waters.

Given French abandonment of their perceived failed colony, along with other survival/frontier constraints, many in New Orleans turned away from the typical Atlantic (Caribbean-Europe) trading schema and looked inward for alternate routes. This included trading with Native Americans, as well as going up & down the Mississippi River, and around the greater Caribbean. Where there are constraints, people find a way –

The circuit linked tiny New Orleans to the major ports of Veracruz, Havana, and Cap François, as well as to sister cities such as St. Pierre, Martinique, and smuggling coasts such as Cartagena.

Smuggling was a rampant (though common) reality of the “Mississippi-Caribbean World.” A new style of mercantilism. Gone were the days (1712 – 1731) of being forced to patronize the Company of the Indies’s stores, where goods were sold at “preset prices.” The Company’s “exclusive control over all imports and exports” unintentionally engineered a society where people learned to create economies – smuggling, secondary exchanges – beyond the monopoly. This sustained even when the Company flipped control back to the French crown, despite the strict licensing requirements imposed. The bucked system I am referring to –

All native exports, from tobacco and indigo to deerskins, had to be sold, commissioned, and/or shipped via the Company. After the crown took the colony back from the Company in 1731, independent French merchants gained the right to trade in Louisiana, but only if they operated out of a French port authorized for that destination, and only if they obtained a proper license.

We are talking about the commercial hub of the territory, which does not account for the economies and market practices developed throughout the entire state. Many came from other parts to peddle goods/extra provisions from plantations, which created another (organic) market mechanism out of the crown’s control –

In 1739, a free woman of color named Isabelle came to town to buy fifteen herd of cattle for her ranch and tar factory on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

The very important secondary market, many thousands of miles across “Illinois farm country” and the rest of North America, allowed the colonists to trade in “pelts and deerskins…arms, metal tools, beads, vermilion (valued as body paints), cloth, and liquor that had value in Native American markets.” Everything was on the table: wine, sugar, flour, hams, and bison tongues. Dawdy reminds us that this was not necessarily illicit activity; these commercial exchanges just existed outside the established political/colonial preset boundaries. Women and people of color played a significant role in this part of the economy, from “inn” & “storehouse” operators to boat managers along this stretch of trading terrain.

The third tier of trade was inter-colonial commerce: the greater Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. This third tier often took the form of sanctioned (contraband) activity among arch-enemies: French <> Spanish <> British. However, the illegal “stuff” was helped along by many payoffs and turning of the blind eye –

“The proximity of Louisiana to the Spanish Indies assures us of good trade.” – Pirate Jean Béranger (1720s)

…St. Pierre in Martinique and Portobello on the Panamanian isthmus…two of the most active smuggling entrepôts in the world.

Over half of the recorded voyages (51 percent) involve foreign (and usually banned) Spanish, British, or Dutch colonial ports. Most shipping connections of New Orleans in the greater Caribbean were with other secondary ports and small coastal transfer points. Many of these, such as Cartagena, Portobello, and Jamaica, were notorious smuggling harbors. – From the Superior Council Records regarding “secondary ports” and New Orleans trade (1735 – 1763)

The heads of Louisiana, Bienville and Iberville, had a sharp reputation for smuggling/profiteering on the crown’s dime. But much of this history, for obvious reasons, went undocumented, and is therefore “understated in the historical literature.” The complicity of higher officials follows along similar lines, so “regulatory record[s]” are also sparse. However, in the “[n]otarial documents,” people often had goods they weren’t supposed to, which is evidence in and of itself that smuggling was rampant. In other words, how is it possible that someone was able to secure Jamaican rum in Louisiana when French colonies were forbidden from trading with the lads? Most investigations by the Superior Council “led them to the top of the colonial power structure,” meaning the investigation was dead on arrival. The creole generation was firming up their own impenetrable hierarchy –

Criminals or not, international traders and merchant-planters became the most powerful group in New Orleans from the 1730s to the 1760s through their influence over the Superior Council and their political alignment with Louisiana’s pragmatic governors.

We gotta give it up to Dawdy for using civil cases, depositions, and other records to triangulate the extent of smuggling in New Orleans.

These structures only operated because of coordination and complicity. New Orleans is not the only ‘bad child’ in the underground economy of the time. State-sponsored smuggling was par for the course across Louisiana’s “sister cities” –

The governor of Martinique wrote to Louisiana Governor Kerlérec in 1759 that cartel ships “are today our only means of subsistence…[it is] important that we encourage them.”

Healthy reminder that, regardless of what the law says, people will typically do what is “socially acceptable and pragmatically necessary.” And in the case of ‘get it how you live,’ market participants responded accordingly. What’s beautiful about this slice of New Orleans history is that, depending on whose side of the story you listen to, you’ll end up drawing different conclusions. Naturally, therefore, you should grease every spoke on the wheel. As told by the French, New Orleans was an “economic backwater [that] failed to return any significant profits to the metropole.” As told by the boots on Louisiana soil, however, success was manufactured where there was no clear path – along the Mississippi, across the broader Caribbean, and throughout the rest of the Americas (especially Mexico). The success yielded from ignoring the Mother Country’s constraints must have emboldened the colonists –

In French Louisiana one can easily imagine that in addition to its survival value, smuggling represented ideological resistance to the imperial impositions of mercantilism and chattel slavery. This romantic version of the story idealizes free trade and informal economics as revolution from below.

Jumping forward – to Spanish-controlled Louisiana – we can see why a tightening of the ‘how things operate around here’ belt (i.e., imposition of structure & formalities to secure complicity) would have been anathema to those who built the proverbial glove to fit their hand. It’s worth taking a closer look at those characters who were of this mindset –

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Fourth stop: back on the road that the creole paved.

Dawdy emphasizes the “social organization” that took hold among the people now considered the early “creole elite.” This hierarchy was “foreign to metropolitan design” when compared to the rigidness of European feudalism, where birth & status dictated your lineage’s social standing. What took hold in New Orleans by the 1730s or so was a “new type of social order.” I would say that it mirrored European feudalism in rhythm, but, like everything else in the territory, was refitted to make sense for the citizens and environment.

By the second creole generation, one could characterize New Orleans as a society with four basic social strata: large slaveholders and merchants, small slaveholders, non-slaveholders, and slaves. Mobility into the top tier had become circumscribed by marriage and inheritance, but considerable fluidity remained among the other social classes. Individuals could transform themselves from slaves to small slaveholders and, under legal duress, back again.

This social operation, a far cry from the caste system under the English/American colonies, aligns with Gwendolyn Midlo Hall’s notion that race and judgment, while likely practical approximations at the time, were not hard-and-fast rules about how things operated. All, of course, within reason since we’re talking about societies that mainly depended on Africans for slave labor. Dawdy affirms: social demarcations between citizens of the 1750s were largely rooted in “slavery and trading wealth.”

Part of the issue in New Orleans was that there were too many classifications for those at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid. Legal statuses ranged from “free French subject, freeborn person of color, affranchit (freedman), engagé (indentured servant), soldier, forçat (forced exile or convict labor), and slave.” Add gender into the mix, and you’re in over your head trying to count the sub-classifications. So, when the colonial orders could not fully segregate people, as seen in the many drinking establishments of New Orleans, “the elite began to segregate themselves.”

…the rise of the creole oligarchy in New Orleans was accompanied by blancification (or whitening) through endogamy and marriage alliances with the few new French officers who arrived in the colony after the 1730s. The work of defining who was a grand eventually evolved into defining who was “white.” In other words, the elite racialized themselves. Racialization reflected the development of elite endogamy and oligarchy at least as much as it reflected the development of color-coded slavery.

And though they siphoned off into their own social universe, the source of the group’s wealth was largely sustained by the form & shape that slavery took on in and around the city –

Planners had not anticipated the rapid growth of urban slavery, nor the unregulated movement of free people of color, runaways, and hired slaves into town. After the 1730s, as Louisiana’s creole population came of age, New Orleans became a multicolored place, both in neighborhoods and within individual households. The census of 1763 shows the evolution of a creole society in the second and third generations and its own categories of classification…this time the ranks of the free were also finely divided.

That fine division referenced, Affranchit (“the freed”), was further broken down into négres, négresses, négrillons, and négrittes. Free or not, skilled Black labor became critical to the city's growth. Artisans were probably most sought-after, followed by a legion of craftsmen. And then there were edge cases –

In the 1720s Raphael Bernard, who called himself a “negre libre,” sued several Euro-Louisianans to collect on debts they owed him.

Note: Dawdy does a rigorous job detailing census, which categories of free persons of color were emphasized vs. not, among a host of other analyses that I am going to bypass. I recommend tearing into those details when you pick up this book.

The takeaway: New Orleans had tended toward a posture of “insubordination” against the metropole in forming their own understandings of social structure, though I believe these structures had a base in feudalism (ultimately). Wealthy planters/merchants enjoyed the developing “creole system, which tied status to slaveholding and commercial wealth rather than to claims of nobility that few could plausibly defend.” Poor Whites and enslaved people enjoyed “greater mobility” than they otherwise would (had they been elsewhere).

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Fifth stop: the hand of the law stopped the vehicle.

Law as written is rarely an adequate instrument of power, and the ambitions of individual agents are frequently at odds with their own class interests.

Which is to say: the creole elite went off script. In the earliest periods, the focus was controlling “the colony’s unruly petit gens in the interests of the king.” In the first creole generation (1730s on), those in control went above the king’s head and started calling the shots; the Superior Council became far more concerned with controlling the enslaved via enforcement of the Code Noir. For background on the Superior Council –

From 1699 to 1712 Louisiana was ruled singlehandedly by a military governor. With the takeover of Crozat’s company in 1712, the king issued letters patent establishing a Superior Council with responsibility for the colony’s civil affairs of finance, administration, and justice. After 1722 New Orleans became the seat of the Superior Council.

Dawdy shows how “law, discipline, and political power” had a specific set of colors in the New Orleans territory. In many respects, NOLA became the chaos (“theater of violence”) and “judicial center,” since crimes committed far away in Louisiana’s “backcountry” would also be settled in the city. I will throw you for a quick loop, but one that showcases Louisiana falling dead last in the French’s list of preferred territories –

Technically, Louisiana’s government operated under Québec, but in reality, very little correspondence occurred between the two governments.

Given the creole elite’s tightening grip on how the society functioned, it is worth zooming in on specific actions they took to secure control. Much of this was done via modifications to the Code Noir. First things first, no lawyers –

The second intentional modification made by metropolitan planners was to legislate lawyers out of the colony. In doing so, they hoped to curtail civil suits and challenges to political authority.

Second things second, some key tenets they modified out – based on what was in the Saint Domingue Code Noir (late 1600s) – were: a) Black & White marriage (concubinage illegal even if both parties baptized), b) manumission needed a reason with full backing of the Superior Council, and c) free people aiding maroons could “be remitted to slavery.” I suppose the one positive in a sea of negatives was the following –

Masters were prohibited from directly administering any of the more severe corporal punishments.

This was also under the jurisdiction of the Superior Council. But given those stipulations, you see many enslaved people in Louisiana, probably more so than other slave territories, sue & win for compensation or freedom under claims of extreme punishment. All of this was a far cry from where things began in the precarious colony –

In the charter generation, the black-on-white penal strategy [e.g., Louis Congo] served to level the colony’s petits gens at the same time that it attempted to cut a divide between two of the most dangerous elements of the lower orders—enslaved Africans and Frenchmen serving in the colony under their own degrees of servitude (forçat, engagé, soldier)…French forçats arrived with a legal status similar to that of black and Indian slaves, and were themselves known by the same term, esclave. Many had originally been exiled to the colony as a cheap alternative to Africans.

After 1737, there don’t seem to be any further signs of a “Negro executioner,” which means that the creole generation’s articulation and exacting of race/white superiority was firming itself up. And when you make & enforce the rules, there are predictable outcomes, regardless of what the letter of the law says –

Instead of the state intervening in the relationship between slave and master, as intended in many parts of the Code Noir, in the creole generation local government handed over the means of force to slaveowners as a private matter. Of course, the government officials responsible for this move were themselves major slaveowners.

It should come as no surprise that the Code Noir’s clauses were selectively applied. Generally speaking, it is difficult to locate a society where equal distribution of justice under law is a reality; the further back we go, the more true this tends to be. Importantly, however, we must account for the fact that Louisiana’s environment made requests of the people in ways different from those in other places. Example (also addressed in Africans in Colonial Louisiana) –

Louisianans declined to enforce many of the code’s articles, such as the ban on slaves carrying guns or weapons, or the ban on concubinage.

Primal behavior.

While Dawdy provides some solid understandings around the crimes of the day (e.g., “verbal violence”), who committed what crimes, and the psychosis a society must be under to treat enslaved drinking & marronage as a higher crime than actual violence, I think it is fairly predictable to conclude how crime, justice, and punishment were dictated in this era. Moreover, one can only wonder what the Superior Council deemed unworthy of reporting (e.g., “conflict between lower class French men and enslaved women”), which only results in a reader having to treat this topic as a rabbit hole to explore if they see fit. Nonetheless, the author sharing as much detail as possible helps remind us that what’s said & unsaid need to be weighed just as equally.

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Sixth stop: who the hell let the Spanish in the car?

To go from French rule (hands off) to “Spanish Catholic imperialism,” as you can imagine, was too heavy a transition for the second creole generation. But given the outcome of the Seven Years’ War (France lost) & Treaty of Paris (1763), this transfer of colony from Louisiana to Spain was beyond their control.

The colonists did their best to put up strong resistance (initially): issued manifestos decrying Spanish rule → revolted → sent the first governor on his way –

…both les petits and les grands revolted and forced the “tyrannous” Ulloa back onto his ship, bound for Havana.

The Revolt of 1768 was made up of “three different sociopolitical interest groups” (~1,000 strong):

1. Elite merchant-planters (Superior Council);

2. Yeoman farmers (mainly German-speaking & crypto-Protestant upriver from New Orleans); and

3. petit gens (artisans, soldiers, laborers, and small-business owners)

The Spanish, determined to get things under control, sent in “bloody O’Reilly,” who forcefully put down the tumult (and yes, Alejandro O’Reilly was an Irish-born, Spanish officer) –

Louisiana’s days of rogue colonialism ended when the heirs of its “founding father,” the aging Bienville, faced the firing squad. Among those known in popular memory as the “martyrs of 1769” were his second cousin Lafrénière and grand-nephew Jean Baptiste de Nolan dit Bienville (nicknamed after his famous uncle).

Fair to say that 1769 marks the official transfer of control to the Spanish. Dawdy, talented as all hell in the ‘astute analysis game,’ unpacks why O’Reilly ultimately targeted the top of the socio-economic pyramid for executions, and why the petit gens would “simply move on” if they did not approve of Spanish imposition –

This is one of the major paradoxes we must add to our understanding of “the many-headed hydra,” as Linebaugh and Rediker term the maritime working class. The same mobility that made nationalist loyalty weak among sailors, traders, and tavern-goers (and thus made them prone to revolt) meant that they were rarely invested enough in any particular place to carry through with full-scale revolution. Revolution requires the collaboration of a group rooted to the land—be they large property owners or enslaved peasants working provision plots.

We will not go any further down this road, because the Spanish are now the owners of the car. What made me go with car-themed sections? Completely random choice that I decided to stick with. And since you made it this far, thank you for coming along for the drive. Let’s park.

Engine off, where are we?

Colonialism dependent on chattel slavery is bound to produce a disjointed picture, and anyone who claims to tell it in a coherent way is selling you garbage juice. The French tried to create “[a] peaceful, orderly slave society,” whatever that means, and failed; plainly, the premise was ill-suited. But, as we saw, New Orleans was wrapped up in the French Enlightenment’s objectives and ideals. All of the above urges us to take a step back when analyzing the history. In other words –

Désorde was a pervasive preoccupation of Enlightenment France, a term applied to so many aspects of daily life and public culture that it becomes difficult to have faith in its specificity.

“[D]isorder” could have been anything. A reflection of the tension between “colonizer and colonized,” or “colony and metropole,” or “creole and newcomer.” Disorder was also me figuring out how to distill this fantastically dense book down from the lovingly provided 300+ pages. I’ll leave you with a sentiment from the author that I found apt (to say the least) –

It is time to do away with the heroes-and-villains model of historical explanation and social analysis. It distorts our understanding of the working and reworking of power, disabling us with naïveté and making it even more difficult to control our political fates. For one thing, the colonial situation strips down the pretensions of legality and legitimacy to show how fragile and murky these categories are. What was technically criminal according to metropolitan law was socially acceptable according to local custom.

Bon voyage! I just like saying that, has nothing to do with the car theme.

Just remember,

in all that you do, please, don’t ever stop reading.

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Answering the question upfront to ground us in the same language.

By definition, a full life encompasses more than a good life; one who has lived more fully can categorically say that they have seen & felt more, irrespective of what those things may be. An easy example is speaking multiple languages. That breadth allows your experiences to exist on a fuller continuum. If I can only laugh at jokes told in English, for instance, I will hypothetically laugh less than a person who can understand jokes in two or more languages (all things being equal). I’d opt for a life of more laughter. Feels like a universal aspiration.

A good life may feel subjectively better than a full life, but it can’t (again, by definition) be more complete than a full life. And elders on their last leg seem to always remind us that, when your time comes, fullness is what you’ll be thankful you experienced.

But we’ve always been an ears-half-open sort of species. Hard of hearing, as Jamaicans would say. For whatever reason, we need to see it for ourselves to believe it.

True?

Further grounding.

We are all traceable consequences of what came before us. Some call it history (read: I call it that). Others vary their talk track to prevent dissonance. Not mad at you for your choices.

We are also the cumulative of our experiences. The grand sum of the only guidepost that matters: exposure. Or, as Brené Brown highlighted in Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience –

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein

Because how can you know if you don’t know? How can you enjoy or seek out that which you can’t even see? Rude answer is – you can’t.

Bob Marley, ever one to be introspective in his days, evoked and verbalized this timeless notion best: “Who Feels It (Knows It).”

So I ask – are you after a good life or a full life?

Range.

“We were poor, but we had love. And the fun we had was real fun, because it was all built on love.” – Dapper Dan, Made in Harlem: A Memoir

Anyone who grew up without, anyone who has borne the heavy brunt of economic volatility, even if their innocent child brain could not decipher that cloud, knows that the presence (or absence) of love made a huge difference. I do not mean poor in the completely inescapable sense, since poor-poor is whale weight heavy and chronic. That bind doesn’t allow for fun when everyone is hanging on by a thread. This is not what I mean.

The ‘getting by, but we’ll be alright’ described by Dapper Dan – what I’m referring to – is far from a contradiction. Dapper Dan’s portrayal is a fiercely aggressive (I prefer the word “honest”) world to live in, yes. One that strips people down to their naked selves and forces you to be who you are, truly. But also, since economic preconditions aren’t social acceptance prerequisites in that world, the love that is passed around tends to be more honest. Everything, for that matter, tends to be (or at least feel) more real.

“Living simply makes loving simple.” – bell hooks, all about love: new visions

For perspective on the other side of that coin:

“Indeed, the rich and the rest have very differently constructed social networks: rich networks are broad (national and even international) but shallow and cater to “a mobile, even migratory” or “cosmopolitan” self, while working- and middle-class networks are narrow but deep and cater to a “rooted self.” Even activities as basic as cooking and conversation now divide the rich and the rest. Elites cook novel foods to impress people whom they would like “to know better,” often for purposes of professional networking; the middle class, by contrast, cooks familiar food to share with family and long-standing friends. And the rich tend toward formal and polite conversational habits, while the rest are proudly straightforward and direct.” – Daniel Markovits, The Meritocracy Trap: How America’s Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite

Wouldn’t we all be happier if everything were “proudly straightforward and direct,” or is that a pipe dream?

As I’ve coursed through a few universes and seen how different tribes live (note: this is how I prefer to describe humans across countries & socio-economic classes), I’ve grown increasingly thankful for the personal range – exposure & experiences – I’ve developed. And I don’t mean experienced the way a 3-day vacation leaves an intentional person wanting. I mean experienced in a ‘I was in it-in it’ sort of way.

And across every single tribe, there are more constants & similarities than differences. A primary sticking point is that we are full of shit, which I mean in the most loving way possible. We’ve inherited worlds that we do our darndest to make sense of, often with a finite toolkit. For many of us, a limited range will only allow us to deal with what we can perceive/see, which can drive a person crazy when they know that something is more detailed than they have language to describe.

Those with the most range interrogate their inheritance fiercely (read: are open-minded), which is a fancy way of saying they care more about knowing than defaulting. We’d do really well as a human species to practice the mantra of ‘I see you in me’ as opposed to allowing our intersubjective realities (things that exist only because we talk about them) to siphon us off into specific tribes.

A little personal range brain dump to keep things exciting:

• Of the Bronx, not enough to just say I was born there. I was an outside child (shout out to my Uptown massive).

• Another shout out to my Albanians and Kosovars (who I used to kick ball with) for teaching me how to play poker and chess. Forgive me, I’ve forgotten how to do both.

• There is no greater teacher than the soil and the mountains. They don’t confuse you about what’s what. Big up the best-balanced youth a child could ask for, given my time spent in St. Elizabeth, Jamaica.

• I believe investment banking & private equity are the best introductory roles a person can start in; I can also admit that I don’t have the introductory experience across other industries to opine in those directions. But see, I am in the rum space now = ), which will come as a surprise to absolutely no one.

• Texas, I miss you from time to time.

• Kingston (Jamaica), I miss you more.

• Wadi Shab in Oman is still one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen; I’m sure some of those sites in Madeira could’ve topped it. I didn’t get around to scaling the island in the limited time there.

• To the French man in Nice who translated my request for a pour of neat rum to ‘pure,’ I won’t ever forget that…or you and your wife’s Brazilian food, my goodness.

• I’d put Grenada up against a lot of countries in terms of beauty (and hilliness).

My core point is that range is a blessing. It is the only thing that carries you from point A to Z. Range is your way of sense-making. The idea that ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’ is particularly true for those with less experience & exposure. Range anchors where and how you can exist. Some friends can slum it. Other friends need a 5-star hotel. Some friends can be thrown in any room. Other friends can only exist in certain rooms. Some friends are antisocial. And I don’t hang with those friends. I’m kidding.

For someone who has climbed to the top (whatever that may mean to you) from the bottom, the idea of starting over from zero is far less scary because that person has the range to understand that everything will be just fine; it may not be ideal, but there are worse things in the world. This sentiment most often comes from people who have walked that walk:

“I make sure I always prepare for the reality that I might have to start all over.” – Dapper Dan, Made in Harlem: A Memoir

Vary your palate, good and bad, even if it feels contradictory/that you’re inviting pain and friction into your life. Because when it’s time to face yourself, the only person you won’t ever outrun, that range will be your compass. For me, variation is a healthy reminder that things will literally be okay, EVERY SINGLE TIME.

I’d go so far as to argue that your range dictates the type of life you’ve lived to date, though it says nothing of what is to come. Humans are malleable like that.

Ignoring the extremes for a second, the narrower your bounded range (by design or decisions), the more you’ve lived a good life and not a full one. And the older I get, the more I begin to believe that a full life is best, even if it doesn’t have the bells and whistles of the perceived good life. Didn’t I say that all the old folks on their way out usually tell us this?

So I ask again – are you after a good life or a full life?

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The forest.

“Most people today rarely step outside their comfort zones. We are living progressively sheltered, sterile, temperature-controlled, overfed, underchallenged, safety-netted lives. And it’s limiting the degree to which we experience our “one wild and precious life,” as poet Mary Oliver put it.” – Michael Easter, The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self

“…as we experience fewer problems, we don’t become more satisfied. We just lower our threshold for what we consider a problem. We end up with the same number of troubles. Except our new problems are progressively more hollow…no matter how good we can have it relative to the grand sweep of humanity. We are always moving the goalpost. There is, quite literally, a scientific basis for first-world problems.” – Michael Easter, The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self

Life. You only get one chance to go through the forest. And in this proverbial forest, freedom of movement is guaranteed. Let’s assume no jaguars or other animals to remind us that we are, strength-wise, a supremely inferior species. Laughably so.

Some will carve out a portion of the forest, let’s call it “Z-land,” the homogenous section. The good life is a reality in Z-land – let’s accept that. Someone from another part of the forest may be dissatisfied with their section and pursue residence in Z-land. Once they arrive, they’ll feel temporarily fulfilled that they finally made it. That latter person has gone from A to Z. And now, assuming full acceptance in Z-land, A-lander is firmly rooted in a bounded life, typically an unsavory meal for someone who has experienced and knows that the joy is in the journey. Those born in and only know Z-land may inquire about what things are like back in the A to Y sections of the forest. Z-lander doesn’t know what they don’t know because the good life has kept them bound in the sparkly, uneventful side of the forest. But hey, life is good - right?

“Upward-oriented people, in contrast, moved in more homogenous social and family circles, had experienced less class mobility, and espoused more conservative politics (relatively speaking).” – Rachel Sherman, Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence

Outside of that clear priming with the quote, I’ll be presumptuous and surmise that your brain largely defaulted to a rags-to-riches story in the context of the forest; arguably, the most apt think-track for our purposes. But I’d say it applies to everything. Reading only one kind of book vs. all kinds (I’m a bit guilty in that regard). Listening to one type of music and never feeling the jolt of good feeling that comes from all kinds of music. Have you ever listened to a great South African soulful house track? To that end, I want to give another big shout out to my Albanians for introducing me to this song at a young age, when I was strictly in Hip Hop & Dancehall mode (for the most part) –

Note: some of the best artists we have are dear fans of music you wouldn’t immediately associate them with. Case in point, Method Man:

Scale as much of the forest as you reasonably can. There are all sorts of phrases and adages about ‘greener grass’ and ‘watering where you are.’ I only advise you to pursue range without anchoring yourself in hopes and dreams of what you expect something to be like. Your chances of ending up disappointed decrease dramatically. It must be incredibly defeating to, as many do, chase something your entire life only to find out that it’s not a ‘bed of roses.’

Or, as many people who go from rags to riches feel about the riches side of things, it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be from an interpersonal standpoint. Which I can understand, given that there is the very real cloud hovering above: there would be no relationship if there were no economic and social status anchoring the contact. In that way, it’s a thin connection. Or it can be. There is no judgment in that statement. Tribes operate differently, and if you want to be a part of that tribe, people tend to play by those rules. That’s just the way it is, I suppose.

There’s a heady middle-ground that can feel complicated for the range-r (I just made that up, but I like it):

“My people be projects or jail, never Harvard or Yale.” – Nas, Book of Rhymes

Philosophically speaking, I don’t think any of the above has to be that way, so long as you’re grounded in who you are. Being grounded is one of the fastest tracks to accepting people from all walks of life. I thank NYC and Jamaica for making me completely full of myself (in my youth), which then served as the tool(s) I rely on to knock down invisible wall(s) between I and another person. All within reason, of course. Let’s not get carried away.

All to say, journey through the forest and back. You’ll be thankful for the variety along the way. Hell, you’ll have more to speak about. Those typically are the most interesting people. You can’t invent, engineer, or shortcut the knowledge that accumulates from seeing, feeling, and knowing as much as possible. Go and see what…I don’t know…R-land looks like in that proverbial A to Z forest.

For those who are more ‘how can I apply this’ inclined, here are some analogous ways to think about the information –

“…breadth of training predicts breadth of transfer. That is, the more contexts in which something is learned, the more the learner creates abstract models, and the less they rely on any particular example. Learners become better at applying their knowledge to a situation they’ve never seen before, which is the essence of creativity.” – David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph In A Specialized World

“Learning deeply means learning slowly.” – David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph In A Specialized World

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Go for it.

“The true measure of your potential is not the height of the peak you’ve reached, but how far you’ve climbed to get there.” – Adam Grant’s Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Becoming a creature of discomfort can unlock hidden potential in many different types of learning. Summoning the nerve to face discomfort is a character skill—an especially important form of determination. It takes three kinds of courage: to abandon your tried-and-true methods, to put yourself in the ring before you feel ready, and to make more mistakes than others make attempts. The best way to accelerate growth is to embrace, seek, and amplify discomfort.” – Adam Grant’s Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

Go, but look back if you need to. Whenever I chat with friends about decisions, I make sure to remind myself that we will largely conclude if a decision was good or bad in hindsight. Maybe even on our deathbeds, if we’re lucky. In that respect, life proves that the here and now, the experience received along the way, is where you’ll locate the maximum amount of memories and knowledge.

“There’s only an eternal present, and you can only experience the now.” – Fumio Sasaki, Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism

“There’s really no tomorrow, and no next week to look forward to. Once tomorrow comes, it’s going to be today.” – Fumio Sasaki, Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism

In a world that increasingly advocates for flat (similar) experiences, stepping off the line and showcasing a bit of variation can feel like you’re not playing nice with the times. I want to be clear: I do not believe this in the least. If there’s one thing my NYC upbringing taught me, and something that I will continue to practice until I turn skeleton, is that when you are on a train, and you don’t know what direction it’s going in, you get the hell off that train. Simple!

Anyone who knows the precarity of riding the train into unknown territory will understand this intuitively. Get your bearings; you may even get back on the same train and find that nothing changed. But at least that decision was yours.

“…my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else’s. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain’t that something? A secondhand lonely.” – Toni Morrison, Sula

That thing called retrospect. I believe it must be engaged often and with intention, so as not to lose sight of what is tangibly meaningful; life will pull you in all directions. Retrospect can be the proverbial CITGO sign at Boston University: a landmark that will always be your guidepost to get you home. As you can tell, this city kid has a thing about home base, guideposts, and taking heed of the signage. Shout out to my fellow BU terriers. I understand that the CITGO reference is hyper-specific.

Range fills out the compass by giving you the tools to assess. It allows you to determine if you’ve seen, felt, heard, or can distinguish whatever is going on in the present. Now I’ll close with a hard truth that serves as a seemingly immutable defense to everything I’ve discussed: that’s not how things work across most tribes. There’s a deep psychosis that comes with confined living. Economic and social reinforcements rationalize homogeneity. A self-reinforcing feedback loop denoting ‘this is the pinnacle.’ In the same wheelhouse, you have confined living driven mainly by anxieties toward outsiders, whoever they may be. People inherit fears about invisible ghosts. But can you imagine being fearful of someone you would probably enjoy being around if you just had a conversation with them? Whoa, I’m grateful to not be in that scenario, fighting with my mind, while my mind has Lennox Lewis gloves on.

No judgment on my end, someone else’s battle to fight. I’ll close with this: seek out novelty, change, and anything that will nurture your range. If that isn’t motivating enough, think back to when you were a little kid. Remember how slow time moved? How everything felt new, and many moments felt indescribably precious? There’s scientific reason for that:

“Psychologist William James…1890 work, The Principles of Psychology: “The same space of time seems shorter as we grow older…In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day. Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollections of that time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are of something intricate, multitudinous, and long-drawn-out. But as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine that we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse.” – Michael Easter, The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self

Trade in all that comfort and extend your life – psychologically – vs. living out the good life, dying a “hollow and collaps[ing]” death. I’ve heard it has implications for aging and dementia/Alzheimer’s; a naturally deteriorating brain combats this freefall with cognitively new challenge & activity, rather than living in complacency & mastery. Put simply – range extension:

“The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.” – Marcel Proust

My thoughts on this are evolving and loose. However, I hope you received something concrete in the jumble.

The question remains – a good life or a full life?

Your brain may be screaming, “BOTH!”

Cheers to that.

Just remember,

in all that you do, please, don’t ever stop reading.

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P.S. – don’t do anything extreme, all within reason, please.

If I wrote about every book I read, I’d be writing just as much as I’m reading. Can’t have that! But it’s negligent to withhold info on books that some may want to explore. Here’s a peek into the archives.

Note: If I circle back with a long write-up on any of the books covered below…

Appleton Estate Jamaica Rum: A History

From my understanding, you can only secure this (history/marketing) book from the Appleton distillery in Jamaica. Which I highly recommend you visit if you have the means and capacity, not least because I am biased to the rum brand’s location: both mother and father hail from different sides of St. Elizabeth parish, and I think quite highly of Jamaica’s breadbasket.

If you’re interested in getting a historical peek (soft landing) into the history of the most popular rum brand in Jamaica, this book provides a great start. Here’s a preview –

…the Appleton sugar plantation was not created until 1749 when the third generation of Dickinsons — Caleb and Ezekiel of Bristol (sons of Caleb of Monks) — combined five parcels of land in the Nassau Valley…What became known as Appleton Estate was finally established in 1774 and remained in the hands of the Dickinson family for another one hundred years! For all one hundred years, they were absentee owners, leaving the Estate to be managed by attorneys, a common practice among sugar estate proprietors in the eighteenth century. Jonathan migrated to Philadelphia in the U.S. and all members of his succeeding generation of absentee owners settled in Bristol, then a leading sugar port in the UK.

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Statement Of The Sugar Crop Made In Louisiana

To provide you with some connective tissue between old and new (emphasis mine, one of the author’s names) –

When a combination of floods, drought, frosts, and a wider financial panic wiped away the hopes of many Louisiana sugar planters in 1873, Louis Bouchereau unequivocally advised planters to adopt the “share system,” which entailed “comparatively small” losses in poor season. He claimed that “White tenants” were the most productive…Bouchereau’s call for a rapid transition to white tenants failed to materialize, but his message resonated in Louisiana. — John C. Rodrigue, Reconstruction in the Cane Fields: From Slavery to Free Labor in Louisiana’s Sugar Parishes 1862—1880

The copy I have is not an original. Instead, the book is an amalgamation of the authors’ work while they were alive (i.e., I believe they died around the mid-to-late 1800s). Regardless, flipping the pages takes you on a detailed journey through the imagery of the sugar industry players (and related companies) in and around southern Louisiana (late 1800s through the early 1900s). Credit for pulling this together goes to Legare Street Press & Creative Media Partners. Here’s a taste of what I’m referring to →

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Raising Sugar Cane: Out of the Sugar Cane Fields of South Louisiana (a memoir)

This book is about the life of a little boy born during WW II raised on a sugarcane plantation in Southern Louisiana. These were hard times for poor folks who had to work very hard to earn meager living wages to support their families. Although money was scarce, living and working on the land allowed you to grow and raise much of the food that the city people could not do.

Times were hard and folks were poor but most of us did not know we were poor because all of our friends and neighbors had the same things we had – nothing. You made the most with what you did have. It was a simple time when you could grow you own food and make your own toys to entertain yourself and friends. As a youngster, I had plenty fun times growing up on the plantation. This book is about some of those times as best as I can recall them.

This book was a valuable mistake: I allowed “Sugar Cane” in the title to draw me in. Truthfully, I would’ve enjoyed reading something else. But I don’t stop once I start, and I’m glad I didn’t. Grammar errors aside, the memoir was a good way to break up my very dense reading with something plain & ordinary. I did enjoy the bits on planting and harvesting cane, among other random ventures.

The author’s background is a mashup of colonial Louisiana: his mother’s side hails from Spain, and she grew up speaking Spanish, while his father’s side is Cajun. The culture with the most potency wins here, as the author identifies as Cajun. Raffray also confirmed for me what Brasseaux posited regarding race relations (Cajuns x Blacks) in the mid-1900s: “That blacks were inferior was universally accepted…”

Raffray on his inherited discrimination –

I (we) made sling shots too. Although I did not know them as sling shots at the time I made them. I was about seventeen years old before I knew the nigger shooters were actually sling shots. The derogatory name was all we knew to call them because we just did not know any better. It was a normal thing for us to refer to them as nigger shooters because this is the only way that this item was referred to. I actually do not know what the black folks on the plantation called them. Honky shooter sound like it could be a good name for them to refer to this item as.

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in all that you do, please, don’t ever stop reading.

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In Donna McGee Onebane’s The House That Sugarcane Built: The Louisiana Burguières, the author draws this conclusion about people & colonial Louisiana/New Orleans –

Despite the diverse population, the French nationals left the most enduring mark on the culture.

While this statement may understandably invite disagreements from some, I think it is fair to frame the sentiment in a ‘that was inevitable’ framework. Which is to say: if the French colonized Louisiana, one would expect that social foundation to be demonstrably francophone. An indisputable floor (not meant negatively), with healthy debate left open on the “most enduring” characterization.

Personally, I get wary of absolute statements about historical developments, especially those regarding culture. Culture shapeshifts over long periods of time, vacuuming inputs to create contemporary profiles that inevitably vary for the denizens of the period(s) in question. One could say that culture is a sort of never-ending creolization process.

To borrow language from the first author on the lineup, culture is dynamic, socially acquired knowledge, constantly on the developmental train. In a second, I’ll share historical context to what those familiar with Louisiana (today) may consider a ‘water is wet’ sentiment. Namely, that African culture is deeply woven into the fabric of the state, especially so of its loudest-microphone city, New Orleans. An example centering language and food, two of the many pillars undergirding culture, is gombo, a shortened/creolized word for okra (in a few African languages). Gombo (today, Gumbo) is known as a staple Louisiana dish with a medley of African & European (French/Spanish) influences.

Language, to bring it all home –

“Bouki fait gombo, lapin mangé li.” — “Hyena makes the gombo; rabbit eats it.” Louisiana Creole proverb from Lafcadio Hearn, Gombo Zhèbes: A Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs

Here’s a little primer, courtesy of the author, on Louisiana Creole’s development, and the players involved –

The cultural impact of the Africans brought to Louisiana during the French slave trade is engraved upon the very structure of language as well as in the history of its use. The Louisiana creole language was created by the African slaves brought to Louisiana and by their creole children. It belongs to a special language group, the Atlantic Creoles, which are languages created by African slaves brought to the Americas. These languages are markedly similar in grammatical structure, in pronunciation, and in literal translations of African idioms, though the vocabulary is largely that of the language of the respective European colonizers…The vocabulary of Louisiana Creole is overwhelmingly French in origin, but its grammatical structure is largely African.

Okay, on to what you came here for, the books (and rum, I hope)!

Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century

It is fair to say that Hall’s book, published in 1992, is an uncontested staple for subsequent authors who sought deeply researched understandings of how African profiles evolved from Louisiana’s earliest days. In other readings, I noticed countless references to Africans in Colonial Louisiana. I suppose I walked the path that many of those scholars journeyed (as a non-academic). Selfishly, Africans in Colonial Louisiana also got me to some of the earliest references to my chief concern: rum. And that is where we’ll start.

High praise for the best bev en l’universe.

We are in the year 1752. There is a drunk French soldier/colonist, Pochinet, harassing and chasing enslaved people. That soldier was ultimately sentenced and tried. Because if there is one thing that the French colonial administrations did not tolerate (if you didn’t rank high enough), it was interference with growing their precarious colony, of which enslaved people were a vital input. Contrary to popular tellings –

When soldiers and other poor whites attacked and injured slaves, they were prosecuted as criminals.

Add drunkenness to the mix, a trait deemed immoral within the context of a religious-morals-are-supreme Catholic society, and you have a situation where the soldier was doomed. What does this have to do with rum? Well, that is what he was drinking (emphasis mine) –

The colonial officials were less charitable and sentenced Pochinet to forced labor on the galleys, commenting upon “the excesses with which Guildive is distributed at the taverns here: a drink which ruins the soldier entirely and throws him into a rage.” — Source: Michel to the Ministry of the Colonies, September 20, 1752

Reminder: Guildive is the French(iphied) version of the Bajan term “kill-devil,” which was an early moniker for rum. Today, Haitian Clairin producers still use the term Guildive.

Given the above timeline (i.e., circa sugarcane’s introduction to Louisiana), I would guess that the colonists imported the spirit from the French-controlled Caribbean, likely Martinique and/or Saint Domingue. That’s example one.

Example deux is one of the more intriguing because it outlines pivotal figures responsible for the commercialization of cane in Louisiana (i.e., developing a technique to combat the shorter growing season). But also, a keyword that usually goes un-discussed jumped off the page (emphasis mine) –

[Joseph] Dubreuil [de Villars] played a major role in the early sugar industry. In this case, there is documentation of the introduction of the crop from the French West Indies. The Jesuits introduced sugarcane from St. Domingue in 1751 when a troop ship stopped off there on its way to Louisiana. They shipped to their brethren in Louisiana a quantity of cane and a number of blacks acquainted with the culture and manufacture of sugar. The first sugarcane was planted on the Jesuit estate north of New Orleans, but it was Dubreuil who experimented with the adaption of sugarcane to Louisiana. He developed the technique of covering the cane so that it would not freeze over the winter, and he established the first sugar mill. Although Etienne de Boré has been credited with commercializing sugar production in Louisiana in 1795, as early as 1763 Boré contracted with one Baudon to remain on his estate for three years to operate his sugar mill and distillery and to teach two of Boré’s slaves how to do so.

de Bore is an oft-quoted figure in Louisiana’s cane history, understandably. But this was my first time encountering his “distillery” being discussed. An educated guess would be that he was distilling what he was already growing. So, beyond being “credited with commercializing sugar production,” I would loosely conclude that he may also have added to the guildive/r(h)um being produced at the time, even if nominally.

Example trois. A free Black woman, which was not uncommon in the way that it would have been in colonial English/American territories, engaging in a typical, even if illicit, commerce practice of the time: stealing goods for resale or trade in the frontier economy. Five-finger wholesaling. Here is Hall’s account of an event that took place in either 1779 or 1794 (emphasis mine) –

There were distinctive patterns of crime at the post. Crimes committed by slaves usually involved theft of food and clothing. Free black women were sometimes accused of being involved in provoking thefts and receiving stolen goods. Nanette, a free négresse living at the house of the English commissioner Boukguard, was accused of stealing cloth from him and selling it to two male slaves in exchange for eight bottles of tafia and four barrels of corn.

Reminder: Tafia was an early term to describe distilled cane spirit. There is contemporary debate regarding whether this would have been closer to today’s molasses-based rums or cane juice-based rums, with most arguments favoring the latter. I believe it has more to do with qualifying the exportability (i.e., indication of perceived quality) vs. the source material. In other words, I’m sure it could have been either molasses, cane juice, or a blend. For the sake of acknowledging that people regularly used catch-all terms in colonial speech, let’s conclude that this was rum as far as we’re concerned; it was valuable enough to be traded for clothing, a prized commodity among the enslaved.

I’M NOT DONE. Example numero four. This one is a little shaky. Keep in mind the “catch-all” nature of things I just referenced. I’ll get right to it this time, circa 1792–3 (emphasis mine) –

And when asked about the Mina ball, Pedro had replied: “There was a ball that lasted about 24 hours, in which a lot of liquor [aguardiente] was drunk. Several of them decided to steal from their masters and go off to become maroons to free themselves from mistreatment by their masters.”

A lot going on in that quote. Let’s focus on “aguardiente,” a word historically used by the Spanish (and Portuguese, slightly different spelling) to denote an unaged spirit. In other words, “burning” or “fire” water. The Spanish controlled Louisiana post-1763, so the use of that term is unsurprising. The only issue is that “aguardiente” could be anything (e.g., high-proof, distilled grape alcohol). However, I assume that the “liquor” in question is unaged distilled sugarcane spirit. Note: the Spanish outlawed production of cane spirits in their Caribbean colonies for most of the 1700s to prevent competition with their European spirits/wine. Attempts at tight restrictions on things in Louisiana didn’t go over as easily for the newcomers among the mainly francophone population. But also, just because it was illegal does not mean it did not happen!

You know, finding these Louisiana cane spirit references is usually a ‘needle in a haystack,’ head-first kind of dive. And it took me thousands of pages (pre-Hall’s book) to realize something that understandably evokes a “duh, Javaun!” response. I can’t find what I’m looking for because the records of Louisiana’s earliest days are mostly…wait for it…IN FRENCH AND SPANISH.

All to say, valuable primary resources  –  letters, colonial correspondence between colony and crown, etc.  – are living in the archives of France and Spain, and I need parts. S’il vous plaît, y gracias!

Will I have to learn French and Spanish to get to the heart and soul of Louisiana’s earliest threads with cane and rum? Maybe. As Hall stated, the history of colonial Louisiana has largely been neglected because of “the Anglophone orientation of American historians.” To engage, one would have to peruse the “manuscripts [that] are scattered about in France [and] Spain.” Honestly, the search and journey are the exciting parts. There is beauty in knowing that a specific slice of history can’t be contained, rigidly outlined, or boringly bifurcated.

As you can probably tell, from the quotes I’ve already shared, Hall goes deep into this history. If I walked through it bit by bit, we’d be here for a long time. So, I’ll condense.

French and Canadian before African.

Naturally, my first question, given the title of the book, was: when were the first Africans brought to Louisiana? Quick answer –

The first two slave ships from Africa…arrived in 1719…

Before we go further, I’ll answer the historically apt ‘elephant in the room’ that precedes the African arrival –

France explored down the Mississippi River from her Canadian settlement and staked her claim, establishing a beachhead at Biloxi, in 1699, on what is now the Mississippi coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

The earliest French attempts actually took place in the early 1680s. 1699 is when they actualized. Given the race to conquer the Americas at that time, this French land claim was of vital military/empire concerns vs. purely economic (i.e., “prevent England from gaining control of the mouth of the Mississippi River”). Green to this territory, but with some experience in frontier conditions (Canada), the French/Canadians were largely unprepared for pre-conquered Louisiana terrain and all its bayous, difficult-to-navigate terrains, etc. So, as they initially did in Canada, the French relied on Native support & guidance to settle in (hunt, house, cook, etc.). There was one particular group of French Canadians adept at this settling in: “Canadian courreurs du bois, fur traders who lived in Indian villages and often took Indian women for wives.” What’s important to note is that an openness to others became an (initial) default practice of the French, purely for safety and posterity. More crudely, they did not want to die –

White settlers, traders, soldiers, and missionaries were killed by Indians, sometimes after slow torture. When they were not mercifully tomahawked and scalped at once, they were sometimes tied to wooden frames and slowly burned to death.

A particularly helpful takeaway and juxtaposition is understanding how the French viewed their crown jewel colonies, the Caribbean (#1) & Canada (#2), versus how they viewed Louisiana. The latter had a striking similarity with how the British colonized Australia – bet you didn’t see that coming – in the late 1700s, largely because of the characters involved. Outside of the ranked military folks who mostly came over from Canada, the French flooded the new colony with those considered “defiant,” not “useful,” and every similar label under the hot Louisiana sun. This included “beggars and vagabonds from Paris,” prostitutes & convicts (like Australia), and you even had cases of people asking the “special police force” to kidnap and deport their family members. Louisiana became a de facto penal colony where 3-year sentences were handed out to the most troubled of French society.

By 1708, Louisiana had “278 persons in French settlements, including 80 Indian slaves of both sexes, 14 major officers, 76 soldiers, including 4 army officers, 13 sailors, including 4 marine officers, 3 Canadians, one of whom served as interpreter for the Chickasaw language, 1 valet, 3 priests, 6 workers, and 6 cabin boys (mousses) who had been brought in to learn Indian languages, as well as to serve on sea and land. The garrison totaled 120 men.”

Now, there is a lot more we can cover on the specifics of things like

(a) how the colony functioned,

(b) how and why Paris deprioritized this holding (saw it as a failure), and

(c) how Louisiana’s specific frontier conditions shaped the French/Canadians to operate differently from those in other French colonies.

Case in point: almost nothing was exported from the colony in its early days because the goods in question were either needed in the colony or considered to be of inferior quality relative to what was coming out of the Caribbean and Canada. Not all were at a loss. Some were doing quite all right; leaders spearheading the operation, if you will –

The ruling elite of French Louisiana was a military-bureaucratic clique whose wealth derived mainly from commerce, often smuggling, and sometimes piracy.

Bienville was accused of employing His Majesty’s crews and boats to transport his own goods and those of his clique to Veracruz and to France and of treating the King’s merchandise in the warehouse as his own, appropriating whatever he pleased, and then selling it at an exorbitant price to the desperate settlers, making an enormous profit. When he did not appropriate the king’s goods outright, Bienville bought them at a markup of 25 percent and resold them at a profit of 400 percent.

Note: Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d’Iberville, and Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, were French-Canadian brothers and considered the founders of Louisiana and New Orleans, respectively.

I’ll get us back to the Africans in Colonial Louisiana focus shortly. But it would be irresponsible of me not to remind that one of the best ways to understand European colonialism is through the framework of power/control and economics. There is a sum-of-the-parts that we must account for before talking about Africans & Louisiana. Namely, the Company of the Indies (Compagnie des Indes), a conglomerate that the French King awarded monopolistic reign over all responsibilities for the territory, and, therefore, was responsible for overseeing the slave trade:

1. John Law’s Company of the West (1717) was first “granted a monopoly of Louisiana’s trade for twenty-five years and of the Canadian beaver trade in perpetuity, and it was given ownership of lands and mines as well as the right to build fortifications and to nominate the company directors and colonial officials.”

2. Company of Senegal (December 1718), Company of China and the East Indian Company (1719), and Company of St. Domingue and the Company of Guinea (September 1720) were all formed.

3. The above were private enterprises that issued & sold shares.

Financial fallout in the 1720s led to a collapse and consolidation of the above into the Company of the Indies. Side bar – there is a French independent rum bottler named “Compagnie Des Indes.” I wonder if they are familiar with this history, given that they now own a name tied to deep colonial history. All in all, the Company of the Indies opened the way for “true colonization of Louisiana.” Let’s get back to center.

African Louisiana.

Remember when I said the first Africans arrived on ships from Africa in 1719? Well, that may not be the full story. Hall notes that while no Blacks were listed in the 1708 census, Bienville likely procured human cargo for himself in 1709, with Saint Domingue/Haiti & Havana being the most viable candidates. All done, of course, under the pretense of securing other goods (e.g., powder) on behalf (and at the expense) of the King/colony. We know this to be accurate because “the first document evidence of” enslaved persons in the territory showcases 12 Africans in 1712. For official purposes, however, 1719 is the recognized year of mass African arrival in Louisiana. Where did most of these Africans hail from? Senegambia (#1), Bight of Benin (#2), and Congo/Angola (#3). Records –

Hall does a great job of showcasing which trading posts (e.g., Bissau in Upper Guinea) the French were guaranteed, and how the “administrative relationship between Senegal and Louisiana” developed over centuries into one of supposed exclusivity. Interestingly, and to highlight the constant state of warfare across both Europe and Africa, the French labeled their human cargo assets as captifs (“probably a legalistic fiction justifying their enslavement as captives of war”). It was not until the humans were sold in the Americas that the French considered them “slaves.” All in all, the human/cultural foundation of what became African Louisiana (“Afro-Creole culture”) was fundamentally Senegambian & Beninese in nature.

Down to the food. Much of Louisiana’s early staples were intimately familiar to those of the Senegal Valley region: rice, corn (though “boiled Indian corn” was already a Native American staple), tobacco, indigo, peas, salt, etc. It therefore becomes easier to understand why, for instance, tobacco and indigo plantations were some of the first profit engines the colonists explored. Less of a hill to climb when your human labor already intuitively understands the crop.

Indigo grew wild along the rivers of Senegambia, where it was processed into a vivid, blue dye with which cotton cloth was colored.

One of the skills regularly listed on slave inventories was that of indigo maker (indigotier).

In that region of Africa, French traders/plantation owners, such as Père Jean Baptiste Labat, documented what they observed on the ground, especially that of skilled labor. Smiths of all kinds (silver, copper, black, gold), all lumped under the title of “metalworkers.” Interestingly, Labat was stunned at the Africans’ calm and communal approach to working, describing it as “informal manner,” done in “a social and ceremonial occasion.” Lots of talking/smoking because their labor objectives were likely more subsistence-oriented, whereas Labat considered this lazy since they did not overproduce “more cloth than they could consume.” In truth, it ran counter to the “European drive to maximize production and conquer nature.” Other interesting facets of the society he reported on included:

• Largely Muslim

• Female circumcision was regularly practiced

• Literacy was high

• People were incredibly polite/friendly

• Women were particularly hardworking

• French men found the women very attractive

The attraction of French men to the Wolof, partially because of what they considered to be “their pure blood” and their “beautiful, black, lustrous skin [beau noir lustré] calls into question theories positing a revulsion among peoples who least resemble each other in color and appearance in early contact situations.

And this mentality made its way over to Louisiana in a sort of twisted manner because many slaveowners preferred Wolof (pure blood) labor. More crassly, they felt “lighter-skinned slaves smelled bad.”

Quick reminder: if we are to analyze this era accurately, we can’t solely identify Africans by contemporary country naming conventions (Gambian, for instance). The frame of reference used back then was tribes/nation-states, much the same way the French identified with their nation rather than being European. “Wolof,” “Bambara,” “Mande,” and other tribal identifications are more accurate. And if you’re curious why Wolof looks awfully close to Jollof, it is because the Wolof/Jolof empire (circa 1300s) is from the Senegambian region. Slip in, “but Senegal makes it the best,” when your Nigerian and Ghanaian friends are arguing about rice. Alright, back to it.

Hall gives much-deserved attention to the Natchez Rebellion of 1729, and the contributions of enslaved Africans who fought on both sides, French & Native. The frequency of uprisings in colonial Louisiana was surely underplayed/underdocumented. Why? Because an image of ‘we got this under control’ needed to be maintained, for both attracting more colonists and appeasing the crown –

The governor and the ordonnateur [Salmon] would be motivated to deny slave conspiracies, since the existence of such plots would imply negligence and their own inability to control the situation. Even more important, these official[s] tried hard not to alarm the settlers, who were already leaving the colony in large numbers. Officials were often quite cold-blooded, denying dangers in order to avoid panic among the colonists, while the fears of the colonists were often quite realistic.

Despite this, the shared identity of being subjugated by the French resulted in alliances between the Natives and Africans, the latter of which often ran away to live among the Natives. This historical connection is resurrected during Mardi Gras, when those of African descent don Native/tribal garb –

Indian slavery continued in Louisiana, though on a small scale. Matings between Africans and Indians took place both on and off the estates throughout the eighteenth century. Africans and Indians continued to run away together. Documents surviving from the 1730s and 1740s record the departure of Indian and African slaves, who often left together to seek refuge among Indian tribes.

Black-Indian mixtures, designated grif in Louisiana, emerged as a distinctive, self-conscious group among slaves.

Many of these alliances fell through as we approach the mid-18th century. The French militantly and violently fortified the colony to make their best attempt at preventing future dislocation (post-Natchez Rebellion). These events followed the same timeline as when the Company of the Indies returned control of the colony to the King of France (1731). The French subsequently turned up the dial on labor activities: levee construction, tree cutting, drainage, land clearing, building construction, etc.

Despite this, marronage was common given the ease of subsistence (“fish, shellfish, and game”) in and around “the tidal wetlands near the Gulf of Mexico.” The maroons secured cash by cutting cypress and selling craft products, NOLA being a common destination for those who escaped the plantations. We really get a glimpse at how economic constraints, coupled with the ramifications of Le Code Noir, prevented (what is commonly perceived as) a system of perpetual and unrestrained brutality. Slavemasters were often reluctant to dish out harsh punishment on runaways, the defiant, etc., because of the costs: incarcerated labor meant lost money/work, and replacing (renting) labor was not cheap. Moreover, slavemasters were required to front the costs of having persons released from jail, so they were inclined to advocate for fair treatment & second chances.

This mélange of characters across Louisiana created a creolized society that was unique in its step. The very specific conditions of Louisiana warranted a different modus operandi. For instance, in certain parts of Louisiana, freedom of movement and even meaningful socializing were not uncommon. 100% chaos was not as routine in certain circumstances –

While it has become a truism that masters separated slaves who were from the same African nations, in Pointe Coupee, slaves from the same nations and/or who spoke mutually intelligible languages were often clustered on the same estates. Furthermore, as we see from the testimony in the slave conspiracy trials and other documents, the master’s right to stop his slaves from leaving his property was highly theoretical. Slaves of the same nation belonging to various masters met and socialized on a regular basis. They met in the ciprière, and parties held in the slave quarters were attended by slaves from various estates and by free people.

Another example is that enslaved people in the most frontier of conditions were given guns to hunt for food because there were no viable alternatives for securing food –

By 1776, there was a new comandante at the post. He found that all the nègres of the coast were armed and that some estates had fifty slaves with firearms, most of the guns given to them by their masters. He made a rule prohibiting masters from giving guns to their slaves, except for hunters using them with a permit that had to be returned at the end of each day.

Survival was the name of the game, and that mission was pursued by Black and White alike, and by any means necessary. Remember when Labat said that French men found the Wolof women attractive? Well, that did not slow down; the ramifications extended to the highly intimate areas of life, and women of African descent took full advantage of the French-Creole licentiousness.

The Afro-Creole women of Pointe Coupee exploited the white men’s taste for dark women in order to obtain freedom for themselves and for their kin. It was a strategy that often worked.

And if freedom was on the table, many of African descent jumped at the opportunity. One example is Louis Congo, previously owned by the Company of the Indies, but later freed (hired) when he agreed to conduct executions that no one else wanted to do. His claim for justifying his freedom request was that Natives/Blacks attacked him often, which leads one to question, “Why?” Nonetheless, his wish was granted, and he executed both Blacks and Whites. Here was his payroll for the various execution styles –

There is much that I left unsaid. After all, the book is 400+ pages long. I highly encourage you to read this gold mine of a text. A true gem of Louisiana history, focused on the African influence specifically, but also the state’s history at large. Again, it is no surprise that Hall’s work is referenced often by other writers. With that, a quick bit on the author herself.

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall (RIP).

When this writer was growing up in New Orleans during the 1930s and 1940s…

She didn’t just speak about the place. She lived it and could therefore tell these stories with personal and historical context. I encourage you to take a look at the AHA’s write-up on her life. Quickly –

The AHA honored Hall with a posthumous Award for Scholarly Distinction in 2023.

Deserved.

Congo Square: African Roots In New Orleans

Going to lead us into this book with words from Hall (worth threading the needle) –

It is likely that the Congo (Bantu) impact upon Louisiana folklore has been exaggerated to the neglect of the Senegambian, and particularly the Mande, influence upon folktales and proverbs, though Congo names for folk dances were common. – Hall

Congo influence is, however, discernible in the bamboula, a folk dance, and in the use of the term wanga (ouanga) for a magical charm. – Hall

I know it is in the name, but I’ll reiterate anyway: we are talking about Congo Square. The name of the Square has changed many times over, largely on account of who was in power at the time, and what they felt was best use of the area(s) –

Place Publique, Places des Nègres, Place du Cirque, Circus Place, Circus Square, Congo Park, Places Congo, Congo Plains, Place d’Armes, and Beauregard Square were among the official as well as unofficial names of this location.

Before we dive in, you know what comes first.

Rum/R(h)um/Ron (English/French/Spanish).

Selling wares/goods in markets was a commonplace occurrence, particularly on Sundays, for the enslaved, especially so in New Orleans. And they often maintained practices from their Old World (i.e., women leading the “economic exchange” that took place in buying centers). Apparently, one of the items sold was good old tafia, which you also now know what that means –

The market women also sold lemonade, a Louisiana rum called tafia, and pure streaming coffee… – New Orleans Times, sourced from 1874

And then there is a reference by a Nina Monroe from 1921 regarding dances in Congo Square, where tafia shows up again –

I have [heard] from the lips of an [elderly man of African descent] once an expert at the Calinda, that there was much sport in it at the stage of dancing with water-filled bottles, and that the last remaining dancer well deserved to have the water in his bottle replaced by good “tafia” (whiskey) celebrate his victory.

The war-like version [of] the Calinda resembled a war dance called the Cadja, which a New Orleanian described in the late 1930s during an interview with the Federal Wrtiers’ Project staff. The dance reportedly came from Africa, was popular during slavery, and continued many years after…The dancer who won by lasting the longest received a bottle of tafia.

Like me, you probably saw the word “whiskey” in parentheses and had this reaction –

I’m fairly confident I know what’s going on here:

• “Tafia” became a catch-all term for whiskey/spirits rather than a specific reference to rum, as Louisiana became more Americanized/Anglo. That, or the true definition was simply lost in translation over time.

• These things were commonplace. Let’s take the words “Ethiopia” and “Congo” as examples. They were often broadly used to describe people of African descent engaging in specific behaviors or activities, irrespective of their true origin.

• I can confidently say that tafia is not whiskey, historically speaking.

Takeaway: Louisiana’s cane spirit heritage continued into the 19^th century, but we can conclude that its potency began to dim slowly; people of African descent seemed to maintain its upkeep in some form, though I’d argue other beverages, such as “Creole beer (pine apple cider),” and maybe even whiskey, were more widely consumed. Let’s get back to the heart of the book.

Congo Square.

Code Noir (1724) established Sundays as no-work days for the enslaved, which allowed them to gather within certain limitations. In New Orleans (1817), “a city ordinance [eventually] confined them to one gathering place.” Congo Square. This ordinance was also, in part, a reaction to the 1811 slave revolt. Limit movement, increase surveillance.

1786 is the earliest reference to the Square, “Place Congo,” where the “Yolofs, Foulahs, Bambarras, Mandingoes, and other races” gathered to “dance the bamboula.” Jumping forward a bit, it becomes evident that the Congo Square gatherings were part of a larger extension of socializing – as we saw from Hall’s references – that took place among the enslaved.

In the early 1840s, newspaper articles indicated that private and “unlawful” balls for the enslaved took place in homes and backyards. An 1841 Picayune article reported that an unlawful “Negro ball,” at “half past two o’clock on Sunday morning … was in full tide of successful operation.” Authorities arrested thirty-four enslaved people, and their owners had to pay the prescribed fines.

The economic status of many of the enslaved explained why, despite laws prohibiting them from visiting taverns, cabarets, balls, etc., newspaper articles and eyewitnesses reported that they continued to do so. Taverns that welcomed the money of the enslaved thrived and multiplied, and free people of color owned many of them. The prevalence and regularity of enslaved people at taverns was so great during the 1830s that an article published in The Bee in 1837 called for the city to regulate the large number of cabarets where “mobs and caucuses” of the enslaved assembled at night.

To be clear, many of those enslaved did need firm permission, in the form of the below passes (example), to congregate. However, we can reason out, logically, that enforcement could have been an ‘every now and again’ sort of thing –

The author provides really rich details around:

• Instruments utilized/manufactured (e.g., the quill)

• Dances conducted (and what resulted in subsequent generations)

• Same with music (i.e., Jazz, Zydeco, etc.)

• Chants and spiritual aspects of the gathering

And on that last point, Evans makes an apt distinction between the Congo dance(s) and Voodoo, which would have been obfuscated by the many non-African descent viewers of the time –

One must not confuse the Congo dance with that of the voodoo. The Congo was danced by colored people in general. Dances were given on Sundays in the hall on Claiborne between Esplanade and Bayou Road (river side of the street).

We’ll come back to this in the last book.

I’ll leave you with a few popular songs and chants reportedly sung by the enslaved in the Square. First, what was chanted at 9pm when cannon fire in New Orleans signaled an end to the celebrations, the ‘return to the plantation’ warning shot –

Bon soir dansé. [Soleil] couché.

“Good night dance. The sun has set.”

Note: slight chance of misspelling in the quote above.

And finally –

Drums, along with other instruments, and a Calinda dance accompanied another popular song in Congo Square on Sunday afternoons, “Quand mo te jeune (Bal fini),” translated “When I was Young (The End of the Ball).” Reportedly, gatherers frequently sang this farewell song and performed the corresponding dance at sunset when police dispersed the crowd signaling the end of the Sunday celebrations. The lyrics summarize the sentiment of those who danced there. Life, pleasure, and good times pass away quickly, so enjoy them when you can…

Freddi Williams Evans.

Just now realizing that the author has a rich (academic) music background across both undergraduate and graduate studies. Being from Mississippi and writing about Louisiana, with those academic/home stripes in mind, feels like a sonic satisfaction of massive proportions. For an even deeper dive into Evans’s background, please see her site (and support her work).

Okay, last but not least.

Share Books, Rum, And Then Some

Voodoo Dreams: A Novel of Marie Laveau

Continuing to thread the needle, this time with Evans speaking to Rhodes (emphasis mine) –

Congo Square resumed its prominence as a gathering place for African descendants after emancipation. Eyewitnesses who spoke with Federal Writers’ Project researchers in 1940 reported that followers of Voudou danced at night, weekdays and Sundays, and their accounts refer to the legend of Marie Laveau. – Evans

“Most of the time old Da-pa Laba would dance (He was a healer, too, who worked with Marie Laveau)…Then there was a big hollow tree in the square where everybody that believed in Marie Laveau would come and put money—fifteen cents, and liquor and cow peas—jambalaya…I did go to her house on St. Ann Street. It was a double house with three brick steps and was one story.” — Joseph Morris, 1940 interview with the Federal Writers’ Project [Evans]

First things first: the beverage.

I am spoiled with this author’s – I’ll call it – homage to the beverage because Rhodes really picks apart and showcases how relevant rum/cane spirits were to the people, time, place, things, and practices of New Orleans and greater Louisiana. I only have one complaint (and I am about to sound like a brat): there is an overuse of the beverage in contexts that lean abusive/desperate/pain numbing/etc. This is, however, nicely juxtaposed against rum being used as a core part of Voodoo practices, so there’s a balance. To clarify, I’m usually wary of leaning too hard into the “demon rum” (not the author’s words) narrative. There would be too many quotes to pull referencing rum, so I’ll give you a few. Author, thank you for this – I’m grateful.

Voodoo ceremony in the square –

Followers moaned while John passed tafia, barrels of molasses and rum.

Paying respect to the history of women dominating the market square, while men dominated the shipping/port activities. Yet still, rum was central to the economic motions of New Orleans –

Women dominated the square. Men dominated the wharf, scurrying barefoot on decks, unloading bales of puffed cotton, rum, and squealing piglets.

Marie Laveau’s elevation-to-Voodoo-Queen ceremony and probate –

Nattie passed tankards of rum. She pressed a rim to Marie’s mouth, forcing her to sip.

And finally –

…Marie used rum to suppress her worries.

“Who is this Marie Laveau?” Let’s take a very necessary first step before I answer that.

Rough primer on the spiritual practice(s) and people of Louisiana.

While I am not 100% sure, the records, popular opinion, and all trails lead us to confirm that Louisiana (broadly) and New Orleans (specifically) are the richest home bases for Voodoo religious and spiritual practices in the Southern U.S., going back a few centuries. While this was further enhanced by those brought to Louisiana after the Haitian Revolution (i.e., flood of slaveowners fled and took Haitians with them), I think it pays to remind ourselves that the original base of these practices came directly from the many African tribes who were originally brought to Louisiana in the 18^th century. As a reminder (giving you a two-for-one here):

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall’s research shows the geographical as well as ethnic origins of these Africans. Under French rule, traders brought Bambara, Mandinga, Wolof, Fulbe, Nard, Mina, Fon, Yoruba (Nago), Chamba, Adó, and Kongo-Angola people to Louisiana. These ethnic groups landed directly from Africa within the twelve-year span between 1719 and 1731. Two-thirds of them originated from the Senegambia region from a limited number of nations with relatively homogenous cultural practices; and others originated from the Bight of Benin and the Kongo-Angola region. As the founding contingent in the colony, these Africans adapted and blended languages, food ways, and cultural materials and practices to develop the Creole slave culture and language to which those who arrived later had to largely adjust. – Evans

During the Spanish period, the Africans who traders brought to the colony originated in four main areas of the continent including the three locations involved under French rule along with the Bight of Biafra. These additional nations included the Caraba, Ibo, and Momo people. Among them were also Africans from Sierra Leone (the Kissy), the Wind[w]ard Coast (the Canga), the Gold Coast, and Mozambique. – Evans

The point here is that many Africans practiced a blend of Catholicism and their Old World spiritual practices; many practiced the former out loud and the latter in private –

What developed in general…was a New World religion that blended Catholicism with beliefs and practices from several African nations. In Louisiana, the name of the New World religion was Vodou, which derived from the Fon word “Vodun” meaning “spirit” or “Gods.” In Haiti…Vodou…Ethnic groups credited with the initial “emergence and resilience” of Voudou in Louisiana are the Yoruba and Fon, and the Kongo. – Evans

This, as you may now agree, is a form of religious/spiritual creolization. And we will start with a figure that embodied this creolization and remains a figure of historic proportion in the state: Marie Laveau.

This novel is a fictionalized account of the life and times of Marie Laveau, a nineteenth-century Voodoo Queen. Many New Orleans residents claim that Marie Laveau, the “Widow Paris,” lies in a tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, where to this day the faithful bring offerings and prayers. In St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 there is a crypt covered with crosses scratched in red brick by followers who believe Marie rests there. Others claim that Marie Laveau never did die.

The book.

The novel starts a little sluggish, but I advise you to keep going. The buildup is a nice one once you get past the feelings of ‘I have no idea what’s going on here.’ Case in point –

Her daughter might still survive. Marie chewed at the corners of her mouth. She was so far from Teché and childhood wonders. She’d been happy in Teché until she turned ten.

When a book opens up with these sentences, and imagery of snakes and feverishness, the reader naturally goes –

Like many great stories, however, Voodoo Dreams opens with a middle-to-end-of-the-story scene, and then tells you to hold your horses and jump back to the beginning. A literary flashback. That end-beginning scene is the aforementioned ‘John passing tafia around while in Congo Square’ quote. We’ll get back to his character in a bit. The real beginning contains the following characters:

→ A young Marie at ten years old.

→ Her grandmother (“Grandmère”).

→ The maternal elephant in the room, Marie’s dead mother, or “Maman.”

→ An understanding that this family is Creole, defined as French & Mulatto (Euro and African).

→ The rural, quiet, and serene setting of Teché, which I assume refers to somewhere along Bayou Teche (in Louisiana).

Something strange happens to Marie as she grows into her teenage years, where she feels as if spirits are speaking to her. Visions of inexplicable things where a man, her Maman, and grandmother feature prominently –

Maman, the man, and her visions were a circle and Grandmère lived in the heart of it, while she was on the outside, disconnected, looking in.

At some point, Marie’s pushing to know more about her Maman, as well as the potency of the “visions” she’s having, becomes too much for Grandmère to bear. So, Grandmère takes the family to New Orleans under the guise of finding Marie a husband.

On arrival, around 1819, the author pays good respect to the history of how the francophone population viewed their newfound countrymates. But also, the reality of New Orleans as a historical military garrison for the colonial power in control at the time. Reminder that Louisiana became a territory of America in 1803 (statehood, 1812). Grandmother on the Americans –

“Soldiers, New Orleans has always needed soldiers to govern her. If they were Spaniards, they’d be more brown, less tall. If they were Frenchmen, they’d be lean and handsome. These must be Americans. They look like mules. Barbarians.”

We are soon after introduced to the Aristocratic and quite chaotic DeLavier family: Antoine & Brigette (twins), and Louis (Protestant cousin from New England).

In the same setting, the author introduces the reader to Jacques, a shipman whom Marie later marries. Long story short: Jacques and Antoine get into a tussle → Black man is not allowed to strike a white man, so Jacques is beaten up → The entire time, Louis cannot take his eyes off of Marie, and is soon to lose contact with her for many decades (though he never stops thinking about her) → Louis is in Louisiana to marry…wait for it…Brigette (his cousin). CHAOS!

As Marie is navigating New Orleans, she recognizes a strange, almost homegrown familiarity with the place, its denizens, and her grandmother –

Marie recalled how strange it was that, in New Orleans, Grandmère had known precisely where to go. Strange, almost magical, how a crowd had greeted them at the Haben’s Haven cottage. People had bowed, given gifts, and, as Grandmère accepted them, each had responded as joyfully as though they’d been blessed.

Through sheer teenage nosiness, Marie eventually realizes that there is significantly more to this story, and that her grandmother is hiding the truth about their family –

“You can’t prevent Marie from knowing. Three generations of women. Three generations of Voodooiennes, all named Marie.” – Nattie speaking to Grandmère

Eventually, “the man” from the visions appears in the flesh: John. He convinces Marie that she will be just like her Maman, the “Queen of the Voudons,” if she follows his lead. And it is at this point that the story goes off on a wild set of twists and turns that I will bullet-point out for you, in as dramatic a fashion as possible, to provide you a preview without ruining the entire story:

• John and Marie’s Maman was romantically engaged.

• Brigette and Antoine are also romantically engaged (very often, I might add).

• John is Brigette’s “voodoo doctor,” whom she consults with to get feedback on how to get rid of the baby that is…wait for it…her twin brother’s.

• Brigette unknowingly consults with Marie (the Voodoo Queen who can make things happen); Louis spots/talks to Marie in this chance encounter after many failed attempts at locating her over the years.

• Marie gets pregnant (John’s).

• Marie kills Antoine.

Half the population of New Orleans claimed to have seen Marie Laveau the morning after she killed Antoine DeLavier.

• Marie eventually has Nattie killed (John does it), and Marie kills John.

“John told me to. He ordered the death of Grandmère long ago…Wait and see if the baby survives. If it does, kill Grandmère.” – Nattie

John was smiling. Murder simplified his life. Nattie and Grandmère were two less women to worry about.

Inevitably, and eventually, Marie herself dies.

“NEW ORLEANS, June 17, 1881—Marie Laveau, who preferred to be called the Widow Paris, died last night of natural causes. She was one of the most colorful personages of New Orleans. Reports about her age [vary]: 70 to 103. The attendant doctor, M. Reims, estimates she was in her late 70s.” – Louis DeLavier, Special to the Daily Picayune

Let’s meet the author who penned all of this beautiful chaos.

Jewell Parker Rhodes.

Pittsburgh native, and true embracer of all things homegrown (went to Carnegie Mellon). Contrary to popular belief, they don’t only produce engineers. They pump out great novelists as well. I’ll probably pick up the continuation of the Laveau story, Hurricane (produced ~20 years later), at some point.

Rhodes’s journey to Marie Laveau, and her sentiments more broadly on the history and folklore surrounding the Voodoo Queen –

I first came across a reference to Marie Laveau many years ago in a Time-Life book on Creole and Acadian cooking.

Little is known about Marie Laveau or her introduction to Voodoo. Folklorists seem to agree on certain facts: she was once a hairdresser and a Roman Catholic; she married a man named Jacques Paris (who later disappeared); and as the “Widow Paris,” Laveau transformed herself into a flamboyant and powerful Voodooienne.

Laveau had a daughter (named Marie, of course), who also practiced Voodoo, and this apparently confused people because her daughter claimed to be the original Marie Laveau.

Beyond this, the history of Marie Laveau is obscured by time, legend, and conflicting opinions.

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Hope your noggin is knocking from all this information, in the best way possible.

Just remember,

in all that you do, please, don’t ever stop reading.

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In this life, you must be willing to trade in all “progress” if pivoting is worth it. When you have conviction about a path forward, and your “passion is greater than the sum of [your] fear of failure plus the alternative cost,” you must take that leap. Go back to catapult forward.

That path forward for me is Louisiana Cane Spirits. For the last ~2 years, I have painstakingly read, researched, and written about the economic, political & social history of rum/sugarcane broadly, and its impact in Louisiana specifically. No shortcuts; many early mornings and late nights combing through thousands of pages.

The question I sought to answer: is it possible that a place that has crushed sugarcane for so long (1700s) would not also have a rich cane spirits (rum) history? Is it possible that the state with the largest sugarcane acreage (400,000+ football fields worth) completely ignored rum making? My Caribbean sensibilities led me to conclude that there is no chance a cane spirit heritage hasn’t coursed through the state in some consequential proportion.

Thankfully, I have evidence to prove that rum importing, distilling, and consumption occurred in Louisiana (heavily) throughout the 18th century. Given this, rum is the state’s native spirit that has fallen under the radar. As a country, we should be thankful to have the example of what a heritage spirit can do for a state: ~$11B Bourbon impact on the state of Kentucky (alone). For context, ~$11B is reportedly more than 50% of the value of the GLOBAL rum market.

So I ask: is it not possible for Louisiana’s native spirit to stand out in the same way? How many jobs will be created, when thousands are being lost daily, if the place blessed with the source material can also convert the plant into a cane-to-glass product for state, country, and world to consume? How many Louisiana rum-making families can we create? How much pride and dignity would that enable for generations to come? A Louisiana cane spirits (rum) trail is not far out of sight when you begin putting the puzzle pieces together.

I am not naive. There are regulatory and commercial realities governing how all of this works. Furthermore, I understand that people’s lives aren’t academic subjects. Human beings do what is socially acceptable and economically practical. And people can’t make sense of that which they’ve not been given the language and context to understand. But I feel passionately that we cannot let this go, even if it takes a lifetime to achieve.

This is what Louisiana Cane Spirits will work toward. Thank you to the handful of rum producers in the Pelican State who have kept this history alive through producing amazing liquid. I look forward to working alongside each of you, as well as all constituents across the state, to reclaim what will be transformational for the lives of every Louisianan. I accept that there is simple but hard work to accomplish, like building the nation’s rum vocabulary to understand the basics: rum comes from sugarcane, the purest of cane spirit is unadulterated, etc. Today, cane spirit has to be understood before it can be appreciated.

Louisiana can lift the entire American rum boat. I acknowledge and tip my hat to the many producers - Georgia, Colorado, New England (the 13 Continental Colonies’ rum stomping ground pre-Independence), and others - who continue to raise the rum flag high. Ultimately, a nation with a rich alcohol vocabulary and appreciation is a net opportunity generator at home and globally. And we’re fortunate to be agriculturally resource-rich and of scale. The future is bright. However, those in the industry know all too well that time is of the essence.

Cheers and #rumresponsibly

www.lacanespirits.com

(IG) @louisianacanespirits

(Personal IG) @rumandprose

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Sipping tips: When you pick these up, I implore you to chew your food before swallowing. Most spirits taste harsh if you down them immediately (shots): you’re blasting your taste buds with high-proof alcohol. Take a small swig, let the liquid sit in your mouth, and hug every crevice for 4-5 seconds (open the taste buds). Down it. You’ll pick up all the flavors and truly know what the beverage tastes like. Once you do that 1-2 times, your palate is ready. Drink away. And to my NY’ers, I am sorry for all that wild language.

The last rotation was March 2026: Hampden’s Maverick, Papalin’s Réunion (10 year), Transcontinental Rum Line’s Jamaica WP 2012 (5 year), and Clairin (Kléren) Sajous (35 months). April’s will be slightly different, as I’ll be weaving in more personal touches with respect to the countries covered. It’s vital to remember that drinks start from someone’s soil — sometimes in a far-off place — before it gets to your glass. That should never be taken for granted.

Friendly reminder: Interlude #6 is done! New post goes live on May 1st. We get back on the Louisiana train. To be clear, Rotations will live on, so you’ll get another one of these in May.

What’s in the glass this month? Here is my excuse to kick us off with music in the form of symbolism.

William Hinton x 3 Year.

For the folks wondering where Madeira Island is located:

I went. It’s beautiful. And all “the blue stuff” are my personal location pins for places either visited or on the list for next time I’m there. Easily one of the more breathtaking countries I’ve been to, so I highly recommend taking a trip. You’re more familiar with this place than you think: it’s where Cristiano Ronaldo hails from. They’ve even named the airport after him. And if that reference didn’t help…then just take in the beauty:

While I am very tempted to talk history, I’ll restrain myself. The Portuguese discovered Madeira in the early 1400s, and sugarcane was introduced to the island before they went on to colonize (and introduce sugarcane) to São Tomé and Príncipe + Cabo (Cape) Verde. So, before sugarcane ever touched Brazil, and then later the Caribbean, Madeira, São Tomé, and Cabo Verde had sugarcane. If you’re wondering why this Madeiran rum carries an English name, then you will enjoy the rabbit hole that is English-Portuguese history (e.g., Taylor Port is another example of this legacy).

Alright, the liquid.

From the aroma, I am pleasantly reminded that I don’t know anything about anything. Because I was 100% sure that this rum was aged in ex-Madeira wine casks for 3 years. Although I indulged a good share of Madeira wines while on the island, I must admit: I still think Port is the holy grail fortified wine. Back to the point. The William Hinton 3 year has a tire shop, gasoline-like aroma (not in a bad way) that is very reminiscent of notes I got in Madeira wines. The rum smells of that damp/wet fortified wine kick. But I’ve come to learn that the 3 year was aged in ex-French oak casks.

The 3 year is a bit alluring: when you smell it from afar, you get one read (gasoline, tire shop). But when you place your nose closer to the glass, I suppose the layers open up, and you get a more caramel aroma. There are chemistry/biology terms to describe what I just said, so please up my vocabulary if your lightbulb just went off.

As for the main event — taste — it’s easy at 40% ABV. I’m reminded how shareable this is (for the uninitiated) because my good friend’s fiancée enjoyed the 3 year most of the 7 or so expressions we tried. Everything from the nose comes through in the taste, but it rounds out with a nutty, dry character that complements. While mellow, I’d say this William Hinton drinks more flavorfully than a good chunk of 40% ABV rums.

The 3 year is an easy one to share and sip. I recommend. Because of distance and distribution, you won’t ordinarily find Madeiran rums floating about. So if you see it in the wild, grab it!

Where to next?

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Down Island Spirits × Ghana 2020 (4 Year).

Note: Down Island Spirits is an Independent Bottler (IB). IBs purchase rum, most often from bulk rum suppliers and/or rum brokers, and then bottle the liquid under their personal brand & label. Most often, IBs tend to be very picky-choosy, with the goal of — in this case — spreading the rum gospel via the unique or unexpected. A rum from Ghana hits the nail on the head.

Long before I ever set foot in Ghana for the first time, I’d been intimately familiar with the people and their culture via my Yankee Stadium and Tracey Towers massive (Bronx, NY). If we’re being historical — which I know I promised to relax a bit with this piece — the familiarity has always felt tangible, given the Akan/Coromantee heritage underpinning many Jamaicans.

I am notoriously bad at taking pictures. When in the moment, especially if I am enjoying myself, my brain rarely goes ‘capture this!’ I’ve had to start setting phone reminders to take flics. So, both times I went to Ghana (2017 and 2021), I walked away with skimpy photo albums, but a treasure chest of memories to mentally recall from time to time. To not leave you wanting, I’ll provide you with a little something:

Alright, the liquid.

Remember that golden profile I mentioned in the March 2026 Rum Rotation? This GH distillate sings of that characteristic. There’s a singularity about this rum’s aroma, which I find to be really attractive. What I mean is that Ghana 2020 does not take you to a proverbial four-way intersection and force you to guess what’s going on. Everything is upfront and in your face.

With that — and this is all good, just to reinforce — it smells as if a grape was dipped in vinegar. More prominently, there’s a lemon-lime / lemon head candy note that shines. The 62% ABV feels like it focuses the drink’s qualities; again, right in the center, no confusion.

On first taste, I appreciate that the beverage reminds me that, unless you work directly with sugarcane and/or distillation equipment, you will never fully understand how the combination of inputs produces certain outputs. In other words, I was not expecting this batch-distilled cane juice rum to taste the way it does. There’s no grassy-ness roaring at you. Almost feels closer to a Jamaican rum’s cousin in taste, strength, and depth/body.

That lemon-lime/lemon head candy + vinegar comes through on subsequent sips. There’s a soapy aftertaste that lingers (not in a bad way) that reminds you that a small pour of this goes a very long way. All in all, fantastic rum. But it will shock a beginner’s palate (so be careful). Said differently, do not laugh when drinking this, or you’ll be coughing because the liquid is doing a springboard dive down the wrong pipe.

When most people think of Ghana, I assume that Accra and Kumasi come to mind. However, the Ghana 2020 liquid was distilled & produced in the Ahafo Region of Western Ghana by Mim Cashew & Agricultural Products Ltd.

The provenance takes a slight hit because it was sent to the Netherlands to age in ex-Bourbon barrels for 3+ years (note: I rounded this to 4).

Where do we end? Only place to end:

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Worthy Park × 12 Year.

Remember last month when I said that WP does not produce bad rum? Still true. The 12 year holds symbolic value for me because 1) I retrieved it directly from the distillery, and 2) it is among a handful of rums I brought back after leaving Jamaica last year (note: was living on the island from October 2023 — July 2025). Extra special when I share pours of this with my people!

Here are two photos from my time over in St. Catherine:

Alright, the liquid.

That dusty molasses aroma I love, wrapped up in a fruit-forwardness so characteristic of heavy Jamaican rum profiles. The fruit in question is overripe banana. All remains consistent as the notes flow through to the taste buds, though it is rounded out/edged up with the ex-Bourbon barrel’s 12-year impact (i.e., notes of vanilla on the top).

No long talking, just a beautiful rum. For my new-to-this folks, it will feel weighty and bold, off-putting if you’re not used to Jamaican rums; it almost tastes like a pen dipped in ink (keep rolling, that was a weird example). Look, I like to think Jamaican rums are representative of the culture: a beauty wrapped up in some heavy realities. But once you get used to things, you realize why JA is a shining star. Also, if I may, Jamaican rum does not try to trick you into believing that you are drinking something other than bold rum. Your rum should not taste like juice. It’s alcohol!

But I’m biased in a heavy-handed way. No if, ands, or buts about it.

Point is: WP 12 year is a winner.

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You may hear a true rum evangelist say that rum is the most multifarious spirit in the world. There are two ways to interpret this:

1. (most common) A rum produced in one country will rarely ever taste like a rum produced in another country, and rums are produced in so many more countries when compared to other spirits!

2. Another way to look at this is from ground zero: more places in the world have a history with sugarcane cultivation, and therefore have a deep history of sugarcane spirits (rum) production.

Tomato-tomahto?

In any case, I hope #1 and #2 feel even more true after our journey through Madeira → Ghana → Jamaica.

Cheers and #rumresponsibly

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Sipping tips: When you pick these up, I implore you to chew your food before swallowing. Most spirits taste harsh if you down them immediately (shots): you’re blasting your taste buds with high-proof alcohol. Take a small swig, let the liquid sit in your mouth, and hug every crevice for 4-5 seconds (open the taste buds). Down it. You’ll pick up all the flavors and truly know what the beverage tastes like. Once you do that 1-2 times, your palate is ready. Drink away. And to my NY’ers, I am sorry for all that wild language.

The last rotation was February 2026: Rhum Bielle’s Blanc, Worthy Park’s 9th Floor Cane Juice WPE, Rhum Clément’s Blanc Agricole, and Clairin (Kléren) Le Rocher.

Many thanks to the incredibly passionate and generous rum enthusiast community for sharing these expressions with me. I will do my part in paying it forward at the many gatherings to come. Cheers.

On to the sample party. Rodney Price, take it away.

Hampden x Maverick.

Back in early 2025 or so, I saw this expression in Kingston before the producer released it commercially to the world. At the price point (~$200 or JMD 30,000+), I chose to pass until I tried the liquid. Your decision to purchase it at that price is a personal one. However, I can comfortably say that you will not be disappointed in the experience if you appreciate heavier, bolder, unique(r) BIG MAN Jamaican rums. Why?

Well, there aren’t many rums that will leave as lovely a lingering aroma in your space as Hampden does. When I took the cap off the glass, I smelled the liquid the same way you do a candle in a store. I mean, it just doesn’t get much better than this on the nose. The signatures shine through: pineapple, green apple, and nail polish (in a good way, that always needs a disclaimer).

That 59% ABV lifts the taste right to every corner of your mouth. The bananza of overripe fruit and very dry, overly ripe coconut satiates immediately. The peppery heat tickles the tongue in a ‘relax yourself’ sort of way. Almost as if to remind you that too many tastings will promptly sit you down.

Like most Hampdens, for those uninitiated, there will be a shocking challenge to the palate. Get past that (see Sipping tips). For the initiated, if, like me, you haven’t had a Hampden drink in a while, the Maverick will feel like a nice welcome home. Akin to landing at your three-lettered domestic airport, or crossing over a bridge that signals you’re back in comfortable territory.

All around, Maverick is a hefty rum, but a fantastic sipper. Would I grab this? I’d have to say yes. With it being a limited release, it would behoove you to speed up your run to the store; once these are gone, much like their New Beginnings release, they’re finito.

A little bit on the technicals/background of this expression (full sheet here):

→ It is very common in Jamaican rum culture for different producers to distill a range of rum marques, or desired flavor profiles. In my opinion, the production of multiple flavor profiles on the island is one of many reasons you can find yourself in the Jamaican rum hole, and never leave; You will run a lifetime race trying to taste every marque, blend of marques, aged marques, blend of aged marques, etc.

→ Hampden’s Maverick is the eponymous name for Christelle Harris’s and Matthew Hann’s son. Harris is a leader of the business and member of the Hussey family, Hampden’s owners. From what I recall, Harris and Hann also picked the name/marques for New Beginnings to signify their marriage. This is their thing!

→ The marques/vintages used are “50% HGML 2018, 40% LFCH 2020, and 10% C<>H 2021. HGML is one of the distillery’s most intense marks, LFCH represents Hampden’s second lightest formula, while C<>H is also among the distillery’s most iconic marks.”

→ Batch-distilled, molasses and dunder…what is there not to love?

Note: Some prior pieces on Hampden expressions →

• Rum Fire

• 8 Year

• Great House 2023

What’s next?

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Papalin x Réunion (10 year).

First things first, Paplin is one of many rum projects/sub-brands of the Italian bottler/importer & distributor, Velier. A romantic undertaking that strokes the head of purists (emphasis mine):

Papalin is a project dedicated to blends conceived by Luca Gargano. The idea stems from a desire to return to the history of rum in the late 1800s, when Jamaican traders began to make blends, without indicating which distilleries they came from. Tropical blends have gradually disappeared since the 1970s, when the distilleries began selling their products. Papalin therefore intends to return to the oldest tradition. The aim is to unite rums from a single island that have been totally produed and aged at distilleries. — Velier Explorer

Notably, Réunion Island is not in the “Caribbean.” It is actually so damn far from home base that it would be irresponsible of me not to show the leap between here and there -

Bye bye Caribbean Sea/North Atlantic Ocean. Hello Indian Ocean. Would I make the journey for Réunion r(h)ums? Yes. This Papalin specifically? Not necessarily. Before we talk about the liquid, quick overview of the non-Caribbean island.

→ Like its Caribbean counterparts, Guadeloupe and Martinique, Réunion is an overseas department of France.

→ Something Réunion does share with its fellow overseas departments is being on land with a volcano. In fact, “[i]t is home to one of the world’s most active volcanoes, the Piton de la Fournaise, which is also a World Heritage site.” (source: BBC)

→ Like other francophone places, they speak both French and their own Creole.

→ Unlike many other francophone places, their population (the original use of the word Creole) is a mixture of European, Asian, African, Malagasy, etc.

→ Note: click the BBC link for a deeper dive on the island. If you’re in NY (Brooklyn), check out Maloya. Great Réunion Island restaurant, plenty of their homeland r(h)ums.

Ok, back to the Papalin Réunion (10 year).

The aroma stands out immediately. Like a baby cousin of Hampden, which I don’t mean in a pejorative way. Before looking up details of the expression, I guessed that some of this blend had to include Grand Arôme (larger/higher aroma) style juice, similar to TCRL’s Guadeloupe (2013). In layman’s terms: the fermentation process resulted in a bit more going on in the nostril and tongue départements.

The big difference between this and the Hampden, though, is that the Papalin has more of a cherry cola (or maybe even grape soda) type of smell that sits on top of the green apple. Like having a green apple while drinking soda. Balance. In a very contradictory way, the taste both fades quickly, while also having enough character to make you go -

With that in mind, I think this is a great r(h)um for the uninitiated who would like to explore something far outside of countries they typically drink from. What you’ll get most is a sort of sweet/sour pomegranate taste. It’s a very mellow r(h)um at 50% ABV, which I think is largely because of the French oak aging—that has to be some of what’s going on—as opposed to resting in ex-Bourbon barrels. This one is okay for me; the Haiti and Jamaica Papalins are lingering on my mind.

Some details on the Réunion (10 year), courtesy of The Auditor:

This molasses based rum is a blend of 3 traditional rums, a 10, 12, and 15 year rum. The other component is a 10 year old aged Grand Arome rum. These were all aged in ex-French oak on the island of Savanna before being blended together and bottled at 50%.

If you want a full overview of the island, its r(h)um characteristics, the players involved, etc., check out ’s article, Réunion Rendezvous. Per Pietrek -

True confession time: having dug into Réunion’s rum making, the island now tops my list of “must-visit rum destinations.”

All in all, for me personally, this one is okay. Time and place. Let’s go back to Jamaica, where the answer will usually be, “YES!”

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Transcontinental Rum Line x Jamaica WP 2012 (5 year).

Note: WP = Worthy Park, the Jamaican rum company that manufactured the juice.

Quick overview on Transcontinental Rum Line (TCRL)—another La Maison & Velier brand/project—pulled from my other piece covering TCRL’s Guadeloupe 2013 -

The Transcontinental Rum Line reflects the great diversity that can be found around the world of rum production. Inspired by the voyage of rum between the country of distillation and its ageing conditions, the founding principle of the range is transparency. No sugar or colouring is added and ageing conditions are clearly stated on every bottle.

Velier said, “Leave it to us, we are going to cover every gamut of this rum blending/aging thing, from pure tropics to tropics-continental.”

Layman’s terms: some of the juice is aged in the tropics, some of it is aged continentally (Europe). The history behind this is sometimes romanticized for commercial & marketing purposes. In other words, former colonial holdings of European nations had very little political/economic alternative but to ship their rum to their former/existing “Mother” metropolis. Alright, on to the liquid.

Aroma is fully back in bold Jamaica land! Roars at you in the best way possible, which I think is further enhanced by how young the aged distillate is. There are some rums that have a golden personality, which is not to imply anything about “gold” labeling in the product description. This golden “thing” isn’t necessarily positive or negative. It just is. Smell-wise, this Jamaica WP 2012 (5 year) fits that golden bill.

For specificity: this smells like when you’re a kid and someone kicks up dust/dirt. Only this time, someone infused that dirt with banana perfume. I promise this is supposed to evoke good imagery. Almost has a citrus/tamarind infusion that cuts through the nose hairs. Love it.

Unsurprisingly, given this is a Worthy Park distillate, that banana fruit-forwardness shines in a very beat-your-chest-as-a-proud-Jamaican manner. That golden taste is there, but with a richness (i.e., not thin). This is a heavy one for non-rum drinkers, unless you regularly indulge high ABV spirits of other varieties. Speaking of, the 57.18% ABV carries the flavors right through to the chest. It stays with you. When you try this one, I advise you to put the glass down after the first couple of sips, rub your tongue around your gums and mouth. Enjoy the linger.

All in all, Worthy Park has yet to make something I don’t like. The continental aging, “1.5 year[s] in the mild European climate,” is pretty negligible for me, insofar as my non-chemistry/distilling brain can reasonably tease out. The “4 years on the island” stands out drastically.

Of the four reviewed here, this is my favorite. See, sometimes the younger spirit is better for certain palates. Disclaimer: Taste is subjective, this is me-specific. I’d probably recommend something else for a non-discerning drinker who wants to explore. However, it is not just I who feels this way about the liquid.

If it were the only liquor I had, I could drink this all day any day. — Reddit user

Last but not least, Haitian juice touched by Trinidad.

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Clairin (Kléren) x Sajous (35 months), ex-Rum/Caroni

Believe it or not, Velier is all over this one as well. From ’s Modern Caribbean Rum: A Contemporary Reference to the Region’s Essential Spirit -

In 2013, Velier, La Maison du Whisky, and Berling jointly created a company called the Spirit of Haiti to bottle and distribute Haitian cane spirits in international markets. The partnership assists small, artisinal clairin producers by bottling and exporting their products globally.

The hand-crafted, artisanal nature of clairin production, under the organization’s “key requirements,” makes other spirit producers look like industrial vagabonds -

• Sugarcane varietals indigenous to Haiti. No hybrids and no use of chemicals.

• Hand harvesting.

• Transportation of cut cane to the distillery by animals, e.g., oxcarts.

• If cane juice is the source material, it cannot be treated in any way, e.g., dilution or acidification. Similar restrictions apply for cane syrup-based production.

• Only natural yeasts and a minimum of fermentation duration of 120 hours.

• Distillation must be a batch process, with limits on rectifying plates if used.

• Must be bottled at Haiti at distillation strength.

Notably, however, Pietrek correctly points out that the specifications above “have no legal standing” (i.e., HaïRum is the official certification mark/wording for Haitian rums). Also, he notes that the requirements have attracted criticism from some who believe that “it glorifies antiquated production methods and discourages producers from modernizing their production.” Strong arguments can be made on either side of the coin. I’ll get on with the main focus of this piece.

The liquid.

This is my first go at an aged clairin. I love (LOVE!) the unaged, indigenous craftsmanship that comes right off the still, so I’ll admit that I had some skepticism about this aged product. Now, after drinking A LOT of the Rumcast’s Guyana VSG pick, which was aged in a heavy char ex-rum cask, I got a bit more excited about the Sajous (35 months) since it was reportedly aged in an ex-Caroni cask. For rum people, Trinidad’s Caroni needs no explanation. For the uninitiated, here you go -

In today’s rum world, few names cause as much excitement among collectors as Caroni. Although not a drop of rum has emerged from the shuttered distillery in two decades, the substantial stocks of rum left behind have slowly dribbed out to consumers via independent bottlers and command ever-growing premium price. — , Modern Caribbean Rum: A Contemporary Reference to the Region’s Essential Spirit

In the end, Caroni’s stock was sold off piecemeal. Angostura got an early look at the casks and acquired some; other purchasers included the Main Rum Company and Italy’s Velier…The value of Caroni’s stock remains a highly contentious issue in Trinidad today. — , Modern Caribbean Rum: A Contemporary Reference to the Region’s Essential Spirit

You should be thinking, “Velier again?!” Yes. It would be fair to argue, given Velier’s influence in getting Hampden going-going, that their prints are on every single rum covered in this piece. Off-track, back to the juice.

The aroma is such a pleasant deviation from all of the other liquids covered. It’s an odd balance of freshness, which I assume is coming from the cane juice material, balanced with a grape or pear-like astringency. The ex-Caroni cask is playing a heavy role here because I don’t remember the unaged Sajous (WHICH IS LOVELY) smelling anything like this.

Good burn on the taste. Lingers heavily. I haven’t quite tasted anything like this, so it is hard for me to place it. There’s a nutty-cherry character to it that I really enjoy. I’d say this is a close runner-up to the Jamaica WP 2012 (5 year). I’m fairly convinced I still prefer the unaged Clairins. With that said, I’d buy this in a heartbeat because it’s still damn good juice.

Like the Le Rocher coverage, I’ll drop the video highlighting the distillery where the Sajous distillate was produced. The rum tastes better when you see the heart and soul that went into creating it -

Note: Mr. Sajous tells you exactly how it’s made, so I’ll spare you the quick technicals. On another note, wow, Haiti is beautiful. I cannot wait to go.

Again, handcrafted.

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What you think you know about rum is play-play. Indulge in the vast history of the beverage in a meaningful way. Your palate will thank you for the pleasure.

Cheers and #rumresponsibly

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Sipping tips: When you pick these up, I implore you to chew your food before swallowing. Most spirits taste harsh if you down them immediately (shots): you’re blasting your palette and taste buds with high-proof alcohol. Take a small swig, let the liquid sit in your mouth, and hug every crevice for 4-5 seconds (open the taste buds). Down it. You’ll pick up all the flavors and truly know what the beverage tastes like. Once you do that 1-2 times, your palette is ready. Drink away. And to my NY’ers, I am sorry for all that wild language.

The last rotation was December 2025: Ten to One’s Oloroso Sherry Cask Select, Alambique Serrano’s Cañada, and Rumcast’s Guyana VSG & Mauritius MLM0.

As you read through, bear this in mind –

Freshly distilled spirits should dazzle the tongue and clearly reveal their source material. For connoisseurs, a well-made spirit should not require aging to be enjoyable. – , Modern Caribbean Rum: A Contemporary Guide to the Region’s Essential Spirit

Note: I’m on page 200 something of the 800+. It is well worth the time spent. I encourage everyone to grab a copy of Rum Wonk’s (text)book.

Rhum Bielle x Blanc.

Rhum Bielle hails from Marie-Galante. Where is Marie-Galante, you ask? It is an island off the coast of its mother island, Guadeloupe. An island’s island, if you will -

Guadeloupe is an overseas department of France with a population of nearly 375,000. Marie-Galante is much smaller and makes up about 10,000 — 11,000 of that 375K figure. And one thing that every rum purist knows is that M-G can make some rum, boy!

Take the unaged Blanc pictured above. Unlike most places that start their baseline products at 40% ABV, Bielle makes clear that on the island, “white rum is consumed at 59% ABV.” I LIKE THAT! 118 proof seems to be a tradition that other producers follow as well. Not in the historical mood this go round (I’m human, cut me some slack), so I’ll leap right to the distillate.

If grass had a creamy aroma, it would be called Bielle. Wet leaf smell leaves you with a (good) stink of nature’s sweet scents. I probably sat and smelled the liquid in the glass longer than I have most rums. Oh, my bad - r(h)ums. Smells like it could be a note in a lemon drop candy.

First touch is peppery and dry, with a lingering kick from the ABV. Per usual, given my Jamaican-skewed palate, the cane juice tempers the roar of the liquid. Without sounding offensive to my still and cask-strength fist pumpers, it becomes easy to drink (for me personally). There’s a marshmellow-y vanilla note that comes through on subsequent sips. Akin to a minty smoke.

All in all, this is just damn good. Point-blanc!

Easy one to add to the list if you can find it. As someone who has tasted a decent chunk of cane juice r(h)ums but still considers themself a learner-in-progress, Bielle Blanc is an easy, easy one to recommend. I wonder what their VSOP-equivalent tastes like. In due time.

Company: Rhum Bielle

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Worthy Park x 9th Floor Cane Juice WPE.

I will leave my personal ‘what are Jamaicans doing cane juice rums for’ to the side, notwithstanding Worthy Park’s existing use of cane juice in its overproof product. More fairly, I’ll tip my hat to Worthy Park giving the people (i.e., rum nerd community) what they want. I can respect that. However, if the average Jamaican tasted this, they would be confused, to put it mildly. Alright, moving on.

The aroma is ripe as if something is rotting in grass (don’t mean this in a bad way); if you chew up cane, leave it in vinegar, and put a rag in the stew - I’m not making this any better - and wring it out, this is what you get on the nose. Alright, let me go all the way with it: almost has a ram goat (renk) stench. And if you don’t know what that smells like, it’s probably for the best. Big up the family in St. Bess.

The taste is surprisingly pleasant. A little more heat than the Bielle, but nothing remotely close to the 63% ABV unaged (molasses) juice that floats all over the island. Has an olive and banana combination to it, which is usually tough for me: I try to give olives a chance - every color, every size - and it always makes me go, “NOPE.” That’s where I landed on the taste after many small sips.

To borrow the words of Ian Burrell, this could be a session rum, though I am sure we would exchange lots of patois-laden banter about this expression. The community loves it, job accomplished.

Company: Worthy Park

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Rhum Clément x Blanc Agricole

Let’s hop back over to another French overseas department, Martinique. The 80-proof Rhum Clément Blanc adheres to the strict criteria of the island’s Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC), and you get that immediately when you smell the liquid. The grassy/vegetal requirement pulls on your nose hairs immediately, even at the much lower proof than their Guadeloupean cousins.

Funny enough - and since I always make things about Jamaica anyway - this has a green, JA plum smell. This lovely fruit right here (the unripe one, not the red) -

Going back to the quote at the beginning, the source material - cane juice - shines in this expression. Truly, how do chemists/distillers work with these products when you can literally sit down and smell this thing all day long?

On the palate, the taste fades quickly. And this is to be expected, since the company recommends using it in cocktails. You’ll get the typical tastes of grassy, citrus-y rhum. Semi-briny notes will linger on the tongue for a bit. I’d be interested to see how much more expressive this is at 50% and 55% ABV, which they also make. All in all, a good introduction to Martinique Agricoles. If you’ve never had one, your taste buds will be shocked in the best way possible. To this day, I am still getting used to these expressions.

Not a colorful sipping experience by any means. But that’s not what this is for. I just grabbed another one for a friend’s game night gathering later tonight. If you want to surprise a room of self-proclaimed drinkers with some liquid good-ness that won’t completely offend, this is a good one. Be prepared to explain yourself, that’s all.

Company: Rhum Clément

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Clairin (Kléren) x Le Rocher

I mean, come on! This stuff makes me do this EVERY SINGLE TIME -

Every rum I covered before this was made with cane juice. Le Rocher was produced with cane syrup. What takes this up a notch further is that dunder (vinasse en français or vindage per the proprieter), the previous nutrient-dense residue left in the hardware from the last batch that cooked, is added to the cane syrup during fermentation. Without going into further detail, the takeaway is that this process imparts much more flavor to the rum wash before the low-ABV juice is put into the still and cranked up to 49.5% ABV on the bottle. All in all, you can taste and smell the beauty of this product.

Smoky on the nose, immediately! It’s as if smoked meat were stuffed with raisins, which Haitians wouldn’t do because they can actually cook up a storm. I put up Jamaicans, Haitians, and Trinidadians against any other 3 across the world. You get more and more on subsequent nosings: sour oranges, vinegar, and green apples, all held together by a gluey paste. If honey were smoked, it would be called Le Rocher.

There is an elegance to this heady rum that keeps you perked up because of the smoky character. People often use the terminology “rustic” to describe Clairins, and I think that comes through with this expression. I have a bias for fermentation-forward rums (i.e., a maniacal focus on yeast’s impact, length of fermentation, what’s added to that initial process to impart unique flavors, EVERYTHING JAMAICA STANDS FOR, etc.). And because of that, Le Rocher sits well with me. To all my Zoes, what a beautiful heritage product you have.

Company (highlighting a few notable producers whose products are available globally): The Spirit of Haiti

Le Rocher, specifically -

Handcrafted.

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Let me know your thoughts if you get around to any of these rums.

Cheers and #rumresponsibly

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Sipping tips: When you pick these up, I implore you to chew your food before swallowing. Most spirits taste harsh if you down them immediately (shots): you’re blasting your palette and taste buds with high-proof alcohol. Take a small swig, let the liquid sit in your mouth, and hug every crevice for 4-5 seconds (open the taste buds). Down it. You’ll pick up all the flavors and truly know what the beverage tastes like. Once you do that 1-2 times, your palette is ready. Drink away. And to my NY’ers, I am sorry for all that wild language.

As briefly noted in my last piece, r(h)um, tafia, and other cane spirits have a longstanding (even if not widely discussed) imprint in the Pelican State. If New Orleans operated anything like their Caribbean counterparts, which is rhetorical in many respects, then there were probably colonial merchant bottlers who got their juice from southern (cane country) Louisianans producing spirits. And did what city folks operating in one of the major port cities (of the world) would do: drink or sell the stuff.

History aside for a second, which you may (fairly) think I’m incapable of putting down, what we have above is Cheramie Rum out of New Orleans, led by Jason Zeno. Note: The French term “cher ami” translates to “dear friend.” As far as I can tell, the dear-frienders are the only ones in Louisiana distilling their full expression line-up with cane juice as the source material.

When I began typing up this piece, I intended to talk about a few of their expressions, like I did with Rhum Depaz, how good they are, etc. However, I’ll take a more direct, less academic approach this go round. Cheramie knows what they’re doing, and I would encourage anyone to blind buy their juice. Don’t even second-guess it, purchase. Zeno is a damn good distiller as far as my non-technical brain and taste buds can tell. That much revealed itself in every glass, of which there were plenty.

Besides that, and this is what’s most important, there aren’t enough aroma, taste, and finish notes to highlight what mattered most while sitting down with the Cheramie folks. Which is, that good old Louisiana hospitality rained in like a summer thunderstorm, tearing down on the Big Easy. The dear-frienders truly made me feel at home. The hospitality was, as most things are in Louisiana, in a category “unto itself.”

And that really is the takeaway. Because rum tastes good when it tastes good, yes. That is not a moot point, by the way! But rum tastes even better when you’re surrounded by good people, with good hearts, who talk plainly. Or simply just having a good time.

While I’ll always be in liquid solidarity with the rum family of all ages, stripes, and walks of life, the sorts of people who sit with their rum and a notepad, or those who really tear into the technical specificities of the rum, trust me when I say that the rum won’t ever taste as good as when you’re sloshing it around with others. When you allow the rum to serve its social purpose of lubricating the good times.

When I brought a bottle of the unaged (Blanc) back to the East Coast…

…I fulfilled that purpose of only sharing/drinking it with friends in a very social manner. I even gave my barber some right before my haircut, which is only a risky move if your barber has shaky hands. All in all, you can imagine the responses I received when people tasted (yet again) another thing out of Louisiana’s food/beverage landscape that sings on the taste buds. The rum went a little further because, well, unfortunately, it’s not as well-known as it should be. Must’ve felt like having something that others aren’t privy to – a familiar rum feeling.

Dear friends, until next time.

Cheers and #rumresponsibly

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In addition to distilling the authors’ incredible books, this piece will also be an exercise in juxtaposition. You will see how varied the French experience – arrival (to) and life – in Louisiana was. The first work centers a specific family. The second centers a group of people.

Note before we explore “The House That Sugarcane Built”: I’ve concluded that the closer we get to the American Revolution, and certainly anytime post-Louisiana Purchase, the further we stray from Louisiana’s heritage with rum (and cane spirits). I can also recognize that I’m human and may not be looking in all the right places. Still, we will dial back the clock in this piece, especially so with the second book, rather than pick up from the latter half of the 19^th century. If you’re interested in understanding Louisiana (1) pre-Civil War, (2) during the Civil War, (3) during Reconstruction, and (4) at the end of Reconstruction, check out the following pieces:

• The Sugar Masters

• Louisiana Sugar Plantations During the Civil War

• Reconstruction in the Cane Fields

• Coolies and Cane (+) The Thibodaux Massacre

The House That Sugarcane Built: The Louisiana Burguières

This book is a monument that says, “We Were Here, 1650–2013.” Memories reside in dusty scrapbooks, in stories handed down from generation to generation, in values, in traditions, and in heirlooms. In the end, memory is stronger than death.

…270 years of French family history.

Before walking us through the family’s start in the 1800s, the author sets the scene in early 2000s New Orleans. Ravaged by Hurricane Katrina (August 2005), and much the same for “Southwest Louisiana” one month later (Hurricane Rita, category 5), there were not many choosing to descend on “the City of the Dead.” However, on February 18, 2006, the Burguières and their extended families flocked to the city for business as usual –

…nearly one hundred Burguières family members gathered in the French Quarter at the Monteleone Hotel for the annual meeting of the J.M. Burguières Company. No matter the conditions, the meeting goes on, as it has for decades…The year has been difficult, but the clan and the company have prevailed.”

The company remains today – JMB Companies, Inc. – and is one of the oldest family-owned/operated enterprises in the state.

To understand the importance of the company meeting in the early 2000s, let’s rewind to the 1800s, and climb the tree from which six generations (plus) blossomed. You’ll get a glimpse of “the experiences of French nationals (“Foreign French”) in Louisiana in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”

Then to now.

On April 29, 1831, Eugène D. Burguières (1804–76), a merchant, and his cousin, E. Denis Lalande (ca. 1808–44), a jeweler, docked in New Orleans port after boarding the ship, La Glaneuse, at La Havre on November 7, 1830. La Havre immediately stood out to me because the “busy seaway” from there to the Big Easy was referenced in The Sugar King, Leon Godchaux: A New Orleans Legend, His Creole Slave, and His Jewish Roots. The cousins’ ship was originally destined for Veracruz, Mexico (city of Coatzacoalcos), which the French colonized and granted land to French citizens who settled/built the territory. I am willing to bet that sugarcane grew plentifully in Veracruz. But the cousins saw death on the horizon, given that yellow fever and starvation plagued the territory, so they got on board the “Schooner Jane” in April 1831 and headed for New Orleans. With longstanding French control & influence in Louisiana a palpable reality, the cousins entered not-so-foreign territory. It is worth noting that Louisiana’s becoming a U.S. territory did, however, result in a flood of “Américains” into the state. The Anglo-Americans raced full speed ahead in wealth-building and commercial activities.

Historical reminders:

→ French controlled Louisiana since 1682

→ Ceded the territory to the Spanish in 1762 (“Spanish Interregnum between 1763 and 1800”), and they controlled it until 1803

→ 1803, Louisiana Purchase shifted control of the territory to the U.S.

While Eugène had “Old World Aristocracy” ambitions that he aimed to establish in this “Little Paris of America,” New Orleans was too precarious for his liking. Having seen how yellow fever ravaged the colonists in Mexico, he would not take his chances in the Big Easy. Between 1817 and 1905, yellow fever claimed the lives of 41,000 people in New Orleans. Eugène instead moved to Terrebonne Parish. If your memory sensors are activated, then you are not crazy; I referenced the parish in a prior piece (“The Terrebonne Strike”). For additional background, Thibodaux is currently located within Lafourche Parish but is also part of the larger regional area known as the Houma-Thibodaux area. Houma is the largest city in Terrebonne Parish. In the past, Terrebonne Parish and Lafourche Parish were combined into a single parish. However –

In 1822, the western part of Lafourche Interior Parish became Terrebonne Parish. The dividing line between the two parishes was east of the current boundary dividing the parishes. In the year 1853, Lafourche Interior Parish became Lafourche Parish as it is known today. The parish seat of Lafourche is the city of Thibodaux. – Thibodaux Chamber of Commerce

What’s the point? Point is: Eugène had land on his mind from the moment he left France, and so setting up in New Orleans was off the table. City life was not his destiny, landholding was in his blood –

Eugène’s grandfather…Joseph Antoine Burguières (1716–83), was a merchant and land-owner. They, like their descendants in America, were well-heeled and well educated.

This is not an unimportant point. He was cut from a cloth that valued a) landowning, b) education, and c) government work. Eugène sought to replicate that a + b + c in Southern Louisiana. He and his family were ruthlessly strategic in getting those components to work for the bloodline. Hence, his settling in Terrebonne in 1832. Note: Terrebonne is French for “good earth.”

Eugène dove right in and “began working for the local government as a recorder and notary public,” eventually becoming fluent in English. His goal was to rub shoulders with the most “influential people in the parish,” especially those of the insular French community who maintained their “fiefdoms” via inter-marrying, or “un bon mariage”. This advantageous marrying became a commonplace objective/practice among the Burguières bloodline in Louisiana.

The Burguières extended family serves as a paradigm of Louisiana French marriage traditions—marrying within the French culture, keeping the French blood pure, preserving French culture and values, and maintaining or improving socioeconomic status.

Eugène fulfilled his ‘keep it pure and ascend’ mission on July 25, 1837, when he married Marie Marianne Verret Delaporte (1812–83). The Verrets were part of the “pioneering first families” of Louisiana’s first 100 years. The other advantage he established for himself, through his work in government, was continuous land acquisition along Bayou Terrebonne (i.e., a first-mover advantage since he was on the inside). He and Marie went on to have nine children, notwithstanding the two children Marie had from her prior marriage (i.e., previous husband died). Their children would go on to also have very large, targeted families (i.e., marrying French gentry, political leaders, military veterans, people of the arts, etc.). Some of the surnames that the Burguières began marrying into were: Bonvillain, Viguerie, Dupont, and Patout.

My goal with what I outlined above is to give you the firm origin story of the Burguières family. The rest of the book follows many twists and turns as each generation carries its elders’ baton(s). Amassing bricks on top of the foundation that Eugène started. Plantations and land were purchased, and the family followed suit, becoming slaveowners and overseers on various plantations (theirs and others). All in an effort to solidify their family’s future.

And then there’s Jules Martial Burguières Sr. Note: I’m racing through the lineage/timeline, these folks had lots of children, who all contributed to the family’s march forward. He helped the family business expand into Iberia Parish, partnering with Alphonse Bonvillain to purchase the 1,413-acre Cherry Grove Plantation. He was also responsible for creating a new entity, the one that is around today, J.M. Burguières Company. Jules Sr. purchased Cypremort Plantation, “the estate that eventually became synonymous with the name Burguières and where billions of pounds of sugar were subsequently manufactured.”

One of the most intriguing aspects of the family’s history is their geographical (and influence) shift to the state’s business and cultural hub, New Orleans. A sort of historical nod to the original patriarch: it’s safe to go there now. An alluring prospect for people who wanted to be firmly rooted in the lifestyle of the wealthy/elite of that time (i.e., exclusive clubs, operas, etc.). Even more interesting is the division and demarcations of the “Anglos” (e.g., Garden District) and the French in the city, and how this transformed over time. For instance, Ernest A. Burguières married Isabella Moore, blurring the lines between influential French families and influential Anglo-American families.

We even get to the Florida Everglades and Cuba when Jules Jr. (keeping up?) went to work for the Cuban-American Sugar Company; The family had a vested interest in building roots and influence in these areas, through speculation and getting in where the model was already proven, respectively. With this much at play, and a family tree with many, many branches, the inevitable occurred: legacy disagreements, company ownership dislocation, distribution & decision-making disagreements, and full-blown family feuds that would plague the various branches. Certain lineages would “lose their seats,” but the 5^th generation did their best to maintain the peace via establishing a Family Council to better manage familial affairs.

Since 2009, Leila Bristol has been among the leaders of the Family Council. Bristow is the keeper of tradition, the storyteller, the family historian, and her untiring efforts to reclaim the family’s past and shared roots have resulted in a more cohesive clan that now includes every family line. The Council has also embraced the responsibility of preserving that information for generations to come.

Before we transition to the next book, I must admit…

…my chief concern was also addressed: r(h)um.

The Jules Rhum Project –

The family has also begun producing a private-label rum named Jules as a tangible expression of the Burguières identity.

This took me by surprise. A family rooted in French traditions, I was expecting would maintain their allegiance to wines and brandies wholeheartedly. The beverages of the Mother Country. Was this a way to differentiate themselves from their whiskey-drinking, Anglo counterparts, given that the French still had Caribbean colonies producing r(h)um? That feels a bit simple, but could be one of many nuggets. I’ll certainly be digging into this a bit more to answer the question ‘why r(h)um?’

Donna McGee Onebane.

Onebane published this work over a decade ago (2014). It seems she had the full weight and cooperation of the family in compiling the history, going all the way back to 17th-century France. Case(s) in point –

Dr. Thomas and Janice Burguières and their five daughters (Alexandra, Elizabeth, Genevieve, Juliette, and Victoria) who served dinner on their ancestors’ china, demonstrating their strong connection to family, past and present.

I appreciate Sam Burguières Sr. And Nettie Burguières for making it possible for me to interview Sam’s mother, Gertrude Reynaud Burguières, not once but twice. Gertrude was the keeper of history and tradition, and she wanted to ensure that generations to come would know about the struggles their family and company endured to safeguard their legacy.

She even met a man named Leroy Yeggins, a 94-year-old laborer who worked his entire life for the Burguières. Needless to say, Onebane pulled together an amazing piece of archival history, keeping alive the memory, or at least one example, of French Louisiana’s heritage in the Pelican State.

I’ll close out this half with her words and sentiments on the book, which also provides a neat summary of the text –

In 1851, twenty years after arriving in Louisiana, Eugène D. Burguières, French merchant and progenitor of the Louisiana House of Burguières, planted the first Burguières sugarcane crop on leased land in the hinterland of Chacahoula, Terrebonne Parish. Although floodwaters destroyed his entire crop, he persevered. In 1877, his son, Jules, purchased Cypremort Plantation. By the time of his death twenty-two years later, Jules was a millionaire, living among other sugar and cotton barons in the Garden District of New Orleans. Though he had great success and his vision was far-reaching, he could not have imagined the personal and business empire that would result a century later. He could not have foreseen that in 2010, his great-great-great-granddaughter, Susanne Cambre Dwyer, would become the first woman to stand at the helm of the family company and that his family would remain united through bonds of blood and business.

The Founding of New Acadia: The Beginnings of Acadian Life in Louisiana, 1765 — 1803

The author of this book may describe the highfalutin practices of the Creole (Louisianians of French descent, in this context) / Burguières – French wine, art collecting, and La veillée – as nothing more than tendencies of “self-styled aristocrats.” Not so much today. Well, I can’t make that call. But certainly so in 18^th-century colonial Louisiana.

You see, the journey of the Acadians, or what many refer to today as Cajuns, was categorically opposite that of their fellow French speakers. We’ll soon see why and how that all came to be in their (now firm) home base of Acadiana, a mashup of the words Acadians and Louisiana.

The learnings in this book were so vivid. Truly. Felt like I explored the origin story of a group’s psyche & way of operating. Also got to rum/tafia in this text. More on that later.

“You can tell a Cajun a mile off, but you can’t tell him a damned thing up close.” – Antoine Bourque

The Acadians.

“[The Acadians live] in a manner from hand to mouth, and provided they have a good field of Cabbages and bread enough for their families with what fodder is sufficient for their Cattle they seldome look for much further improvement.” — Lieutenant Governor Paul Mascarene, 1720

A firm quote that Brasseaux opens with as a lead into the story surrounding those “Children of the Frontier.”

Helpful historical context before we jump in:

→ Acadia was established in the early 17^th century by the French, before losing and regaining the territory over the decades.

→ 1632: over 300 settlers arrived to expand the fur trade and further fortify the colony.

→ Interwar among different French factions caused dislocation that the British capitalized on, seizing Acadia in 1654 (controlled the colony for 16 years).

→ 1655 — 1755 was the century before “the Grand Dérangement (as the Acadian dispersal is popularly known).”

The specific “frontier nation” these Acadians were part of since 1632 was the vast wilderness of Canada.

But the Acadians’ original stomping ground was the Centre-Ouest region of France (55% of “first families” hailed from there). In Europe, the group was relegated to the peasant class, working under noble landlords. In Canada, the group was transferred over to France’s provincial administration to help build out and fortify their New World colonial holdings. Their social status, while less controlled per se, was that of “engages” (indentured servants).

Subject to the omnipresent threats of political, economic, & militaristic instability (i.e., British always on the prowl), disease, and the vagaries of a new environment, the Acadians developed what Brasseaux labels a “frontier mentality.” In other words, the Acadians social status as peasants, coupled with the “colony’s geographic isolation,” resulted in a “chronic neglect by the mother country,” causing the Acadians to develop a psyche of self-sufficiency and insularity. Other traits that the author highlights as of vital importance were “individualism, adaptability, pragmatism, industriousness, equalitarian principles, and the ability to close ranks in the face of a general threat.” Closing ranks was enabled by their extensive kinship system (aunts, uncles, and cousins everywhere).

The one caveat to this is their seeming amicability with the “Micmac Indians.” Acadians, especially in their early Canadian days, were dependent on the natives for understanding trading, fur trapping, hunting, braving the cold of Canadian wilderness/winters, gathering fish in the warmer months, and many other survival necessities. The Acadians may have engaged the natives in this way purely out of practicality: the peasants grew up under agrarianism, not in environments where they had to fend for themselves in the blistering snow.

But what truly defined the prospects of the Acadians, unfortunately, was the military effectiveness of their neglectful “mother country” in its offensive and defensive jockeying against London. The War of Spanish Succession saw Port Royal (Canada) fall to the British in 1710; The Acadians engaged the British in guerrilla warfare for 2+ years until the French ceded Acadia to Britain in 1713 under the Treaty of Utrecht. It is these sorts of historical mishaps that I find incredibly intriguing. Because, after the events above, it must have been burnt into the Acadian psyche that, sense of pride/nationalism for your country, French solidarity and brotherhood, was 100% null and void under these conditions. In short, all of those ideals fall apart when your side is not the victor. What’s worse is that your so-called countrymates, who saw you as beneath them anyway, would leave you to fend for yourself, even if it was under the thumb of a sworn enemy. In short: every man for themselves.

The British promised freedom of religion (i.e., Acadians could practice Catholicism openly) to those who chose to remain in the colony. Understandably, the Acadians were deeply skeptical of that proposition since the British track record revealed that their crown required 100% cooperation and assimilation. The Acadians sought to protect their “unique blend of French and Indian folkways forged on the seventeenth-century Acadian frontier.” In the decades that followed, the British took swift action to remove the “subversives.”

• November 1754: Major Lawrence & Governor William Shirley conspired to “remove all Acadians from the Bay of Fundy coast.”

• June 1755: Nova Scotian governor ordered an assault on Fort Beauséjour (French fortress), which fell and sealed the Acadians’ fate since they were now “completely at the mercy of the colonial government.”

• Lawrence threatened the “French Neutrals” to take a 100% oath to the crown or suffer “under the pain of deportation.”

• August 9, 1755: “Colonel Robert Monckton captured between 250 and 400 local Acadians,” and began the process of forced deportation.

• September 5, 1755: The Grand Pré settlers were the first to go.

• Mid-October 1755: The majority of Acadians were “deported from the Minas Basin area.”

Not all were captured and removed. Some were put to work once Acadian lands were “forfeited.” The victors commissioned the helpless Acadians to build dike systems to protect properties against “the Bay of Fundy’s mighty tidal surges.” The Acadians would carry this skill set into Louisiana to fortify the land against the mighty Mississippi.

Many fled into the woods and fought to the end.

The Acadian resistance movement was centered in present-day New Brunswick, where at least 3,500 residents in the areas of Beaubassin and Cobequid sought refuge…

However, starvation soon plagued and decimated many of the resistors. Ultimately, over 5,400 people were deported to other British seaboard colonies (American Continental Colonies). Quebec’s falling to the British in 1759 signaled a de facto (permanent) demoralization among any Acadians who desired to continue the fight.

The deportations continued into the early 1760s. Boston/Massachusetts refused 1,700 Acadian prisoners that the British planned to send there in 1762, so that crop of Acadians remained in the colony until further notice. Well, that further notice came one year later –

The issue of massive deportation thus lingered until the Treaty of Paris (1763) established the framework for final resolution of the Acadian problem. Through Article IV of the treaty, the Acadians were granted a period of eighteen months to abandon England’s North American colonies for any French possession…many French Neutrals developed great interest in going to the French West Indies…No French assistance was [coming]…because the French crown had assured the British government that it would interfere in Nova Scotia’s internal affairs.

The Acadians, from my reading, were used as muscle when needed but ultimately served as strategic negotiation pawns that the French crown could deploy in times of turmoil and war. What Brasseaux makes clear is that the Acadians were steadfast in their refusal to assimilate; they’d rather rebuild in a foreign land, preferably with “their large extended families in a stable, francophone environment.” That environment, as we well know, becomes Louisiana. For some, immediately (1764 – 1765). For others, it would be a disastrously windy road, and a destitute number of decades post-Grand Dérangement before they would arrive and rekindle with their “confreres.”

Many Acadians were exiled in Maryland and Pennsylvania (British territories), which were hostile to the newcomers. The “papists” faced every accusation in the book. One allegation was that they “incit[ed] the colonial slave population to insurrection.” Here is a snippet of the English colonists’ sentiments –

“We are now upon the great and noble Scheme of sending the Neutral French out of this Province [Nova Scotia], who have always been Secret Enemies…If we effect their Expulsion, it will be one of the greatest Things that ever the English did in America; for by all the Accounts, that Part of the Country they possess, is as good Land as any in the World…” — Maryland Gazette, September 11, 1755

Some Acadians were exiled to Britain and France. Based on historical French views/treatment of the Acadians, you can guess how the newly returning peasants fared back in Europe. To be fair, there were many (surface-level but) noble attempts to resettle the Acadians. As expected, the Acadians faced the same prospects everywhere: poor crop prospects (if given land), malnutrition, begging, disease, cramped quarters, etc.

By “mid-May and mid-October, 1785, a total of 1,596 Acadians turned their backs on France, joined the seven transatlantic “expeditions,” and faced the challenge of creating a new life in Louisiana.” Or, as Brasseaux titles chapter 5, “Allons à la Louisiane (Let’s go to Louisiana).”

Like Onebane’s book, I will (kind of) stop my heavy detail overload here, and enthusiastically encourage you to pick up Brasseaux’s work so that you can understand the “cultural transplantation” of the Acadians making Louisiana home. The juxtaposition I spoke of at the beginning of the piece really comes to life when the author highlights some of the reasons the French Creoles of Louisiana and the Acadians did not operate or see each other as “confreres.” Exhibit steal your woman A, the Bertonville Incident –

The intensity of the Acadian-Creole feud can be partially attributed to amorous affairs between Acadian men and Creole women. The interest of Creole men in slave women is indicated by the emergence of a significant mulatto population along the Mississippi River during the Spanish period (1769 — 1803). Neglected by their husbands, some Creole women formed liaisons with young Acadian bachelors; such illicit unions, however, were usually detected by the cuckold husbands, frequently with violent results. One such incident involved Sieur Bertonville, a French-born surgeon, who returned home in July, 1773, to find his wife and young Jean-Baptiste Braud in bed.

Where the Acadians settled, or, rather, were initially granted land/cattle/survival supplies by the Spanish, is also of vital importance to understanding the group (then and now). For a people who cherish connection to home and permanency, for reasons that should be immediately clear, where they ended up (or desired to end up) in the Pelican State is telling. Many of those areas, it seems, are still heavily Cajun territory.

Brasseaux gets incredibly granular throughout the latter half of the book. You’ll get a taste of –

1. Not only where Acadians settled, but also the outfitting of their homes (e.g., what materials they were made from).

2. How the Cajun diet & repertoire adapted in their new land, inevitably incorporating their neighbors’ cooking practices (e.g., the use of African cooking staples like okra).

3. The evolving nature (and maintenance of old-school) attire across Acadian families.

4. Anticlericalism (i.e., deep skepticism) and a sharp eye for what they deemed the “imposition of European morality.”

5. How Acadians were strategically used (by the Creole/Spanish) as the muscle via “enthusiastically serv[ing] in the local slave patrols.” Over time, the Acadians adopted the culture, practices, and ways of those Creole elite planters.

Sexual exploitation of Acadian-owned slave women became increasingly frequent in the late eighteenth century, and by the antebellum period, mulatto children of Acadian parentage had become commonplace in the river parishes.

Can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Ultimately, Brasseaux confirms that they adopted the default mentality of their Creole and Anglo counterparts regarding Black people: they were at the bottom. Many well-off (“genteel”) Acadians, he expands, completely shunned their heritage until it became fashionable to proclaim the Cajun flag. Brasseaux would venture to say that those claiming home-team need a bit more scrutiny (i.e., they may be perpetrating, and not truly of the original stock).

All in all, Acadian culture adopted a mentality that other Whites were to be avoided or trusted with some high degree of reservation. Home team was the most trustworthy, no matter what. Native Americans may be okay, a carryover mentality from Canada, but those ideals were largely strained and tested in Louisiana (e.g., Houma Native Americans reportedly stole their food and killed Cajun hogs). Blacks can be okay, but they are at the bottom of the social chain. Note: inherited mentalities vs. universal truths, I hope that’s obvious. At a later date, I’ll talk about the memoir of a Cajun person who affirms many of these inherited mentalities. When describing 1950s St. Landry Parish (“insular world”) –

That blacks were inferior was universally accepted, despite generally amicable personal relationships between the races, and segregation was deemed the foundation of an ideal society.

I’ll close this part with a landmark case the author opens the book with, James Roach v. Dresser Industries (July 1980):

• A judge ruled that Louisiana’s approximately 500,000 Acadians “are of foreign descent” and entitled to protection under the Equal Employment Opportunity Act that prevents discrimination

• The Plaintiff, Calvin J. Roach (Acadian), sued his Texan supervisor for “repeated use of the pejorative term “coonass” in referring to Louisiana Cajuns.”

Judge Hunter’s decision was merely the federal government’s belated recognition of the persistence of a francophone culture forged in the North American wilderness in the seventeenth century and tempered by foreign domination, dispersal, and subjugation, and, finally, by adaptation to life in an alien land.

If I am interpreting Brasseaux’s coverage correctly, this means that, even today, Acadians are considered a national (minority) ethnic group afforded protection under anti-discrimination laws. In other words, protective status, whether acknowledged or not, is granted under legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In that, the judge’s ruling was a hindsight acknowledgement that Acadians were never adopted as “White” (Anglo/Creole/true Europeans). Practically speaking, those lines are blurry for reasons aforementioned. Before we go, we must address the most important beverage there is.

Tafia/Rum.

French Caribbean sugar planters also profited from rum, more commonly known as tafia and guildive. – Frederick H. Smith, Caribbean Rum: A Social and Economic History

French Canadians had lumber, fish, tar, and provisions that were much needed on Caribbean sugar plantations. In order to stimulate trade and facilitate a self-contained empire, Colbert’s policies reduced import duties on rum entering French Canadian port[s]. As early as 1685, French Caribbean rum made its way to the northern French colonies. – Frederick H. Smith, Caribbean Rum: A Social and Economic History

Outside of the well-documented connections/statistics showing colonial French Caribbean rum exports to other French territories, as well as shipments to the Mother Country, I suspect that French Acadia has some shared rum history with New England. Given that New England was the preeminent molasses importer/rum producer in colonial America, this makes geographical sense somehow. Sure, it was illegal for New England to import from non-British territories. But as we saw in John J. McCusker’s Rum and the American Revolution: The Rum Trade and the Balance of Payments of the Thirteen Continental Colonies (Volume 1), the New Englanders smuggled molasses and rum into America out of necessity.

Look at the distance. I am not convinced that Acadians and New Englanders did not share goods/knowledge rooted in rum/tafia/cane spirit production in some capacity.

For half a century prior to the Grand Dérangement, Grand Pré farmers had bartered wheat and barley for manufactured goods and specie with Boston smugglers at Baie Verte.

Whether it was the Acadians who spent a bit of time in St. Domingue before they made their way to Louisiana, or those I suspect who had a history of drinking cane spirit back in Canada, Brasseaux affirms that early rum drinking was part of the Acadian experience (emphasis mine) –

As French traveler C.C. Robin noted in 1804, Acadian Coast residents “give balls … and will go ten to fifteen leagues to attend one. Everyone dances, even Grandmère and Grandpère, no matter what the difficulties they must bear. There may be only a couple of fiddles to play for the crowd, there may be only four candles for light … wooden benches to sit on, and only exceptionally a few bottles of tafia diluted with water for refreshment. No matter, everyone dances.” But always everyone has a helping of gumbo, the Creole dish par excellence: then ‘Good night,’ … ‘See you next week.’”

Another rum reference in Brasseaux’s book –

Their [Houmas] insolence was reinforced by rum readily available from Jean-Baptiste Chauvin, a local merchant who concealed his cache of liquor in the woods behind the Assumption Parish church. By the 1780s, tribal elders complained the warriors were squandering all of their belongings, bartering them for liquor from white renegade rum runners.

I encourage you to check out Jean Baptiste Spirits, a modern-day Cajun rum producer who pays homage to the rum & tafia heritage of Acadians.

The Acadians brought cane spirit back to the “banks of the Mississippi,” I’m convinced. The issue, at least for me, is that this knowledge might be tucked away in some national archives deep in France or Spain somewhere. I’ll live with the breadcrumbs for now.

Let’s wrap with the penman.

Carl A. Brasseaux.

I am a Cajun, a direct descendant of an Acadian exiled from Grand Pré to Maryland in 1755.

Brasseaux desired to reconcile his “personal observation” of Acadian life with what was popularly portrayed and told. To unearth, critique, and explore the varying contradictions. An exercise in taking control of the narrative from a place of love for his people. During his master’s thesis process, he came across rich “material regarding the first Acadian influx to Louisiana.” This first-person information was deeply valuable to him. Those details provided the insight needed to construct a proper narrative about the Acadian migration, no more “speculation and myth.”

You wrote a damn good book, Brasseaux.

Cheers, with a glass of tafia/rum.

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Louisiana, you’re something else. Good food, literally and metaphorically.

Just remember,

in all that you do, please, don’t ever stop reading.

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Sipping tips: When you pick these up, I implore you to chew your food before swallowing. Most spirits taste harsh if you down them immediately (shots): you’re blasting your palette and taste buds with high-proof alcohol. Take a small swig, let the liquid sit in your mouth, and hug every crevice for 4-5 seconds (open the taste buds). Down it. You’ll pick up all the flavors and truly know what the beverage tastes like. Once you do that 1-2 times, your palette is ready. Drink away. And to my NY’ers, I am sorry for all that wild language.

In my last article, I covered a piece of history connecting colonial Louisiana rum drinkers to Martinique. The former was the importer, the latter was the producer & exporter. I feel compelled to share more details on rum & Martinique. The island has a storied history with the beverage, given colonial France’s impetus to squash liquor production in its colonies to prevent any direct competition with French wine and brandy. That is, of course, until Mother Nature forced the French hand to turn elsewhere when wine production was no longer viable, notwithstanding the pre-existing gains from rum production/molasses exports realized in its holdings. Enough of that. A quick historical peek into Martinique & rum (and sugar, of course) –

On Martinique six [sugar] refineries were at work in 1688…

The remaining molasses, 839,000 gallons, the islanders converted into rum at the standard French West Indian rate of 103 gallons of molasses per 100 gallons of rum. Martinique distilled 914,000 gallons of rum in 1770.

French North America before the war [American Revolution] had been a major importer of Martinique’s rum.

All of the above are from John J. McCusker’s Rum and the American Revolution: The Rum Trade and the Balance of Payments of the Thirteen Continental Colonies (Volume 1).

Before I continue down the history & context lane(s), let’s talk about the Depaz liquids pictured in the cover image.

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4-way Martinican street.

I secured the sample pack in Paris, France, which is where the eponymous rum brand’s founder, Victor Depaz, passed away in 1960. More on the senior Depaz later. Below is coverage of each expression in age order vs. taste preference.

Unaged Rhum Blanc Agricole: Cuvée de la Montagne.

Having visited Grasse, France, before securing the rums put me in a perfume-oriented mindset. I do not doubt that this influenced my initial thoughts surrounding the standard grassy aroma characteristic of cane juice r(h)ums from Martinique. The nose is elegant with just enough grass not to throw you in the deep end. I wonder what a perfumer would think about its addition to an aromatic composition. Overall, the Cuvée de la Montagne has a beautiful nose. I’d hand this rum to someone who needs a softer (but still very tasty) intro to Martinique liquids. Fruity and floral-y, but temperate on the palate. Would be akin to trying a Le Rocher first before Vaval or Sajous (Clairins). The slight spiciness on the finish is preceded by a floral flush—balance. While I don’t pick this up (on the pre-distillation side of things), the producer notes a fermentation and “slow reduction in fractions” period lasting up to 60 days. My non-technical brain interprets that the 60 days comprises more of the latter than the former, since Depaz typically engages short fermentation (48 hours or so). But I am not 100% sure. At 45% ABV, and something many would consider a candidate firstly for a Ti’ Punch cocktail, I would recommend giving it a try (pure). It’s a very pleasant, albeit vegetal, sipping experience. Par for the Martinican course.

Lightly Aged Rhum Agricole: (Plantation) Vieux.

Still on a scent high: the Vieux placed me squarely in candle land. Kick all those garbage pumpkin and gingerbread candles out of here and put the Vieux aroma in their place. The nose has a soft chocolate and caramel scent. But be careful: what you smell is not what you will taste. Of all the rums I’ve had thus far, this one is high on the bait and switch. Not necessarily a bad thing. Only that it distorts the primal instinct of a human’s survival tick: what we smell is what we expect to taste, lest it be some sort of poison trick. The chocolate and butter-y caramel nose vanishes, and the cane juice comes roaring back. What the brain concludes between smell and taste is: good bitter. The green apple on the palate comes through a ton. This expression is okay. I would reach for the unaged over the Vieux.

Medium Aged Rhum Agricole: Réserve Spéciale VSOP.

This is it for me. VSOP cane juice liquids are my sweet spot. The character rains through the entire journey. The oak doesn’t take over too much. There’s a spicy finish to let you know that the distillate and oak are playing well together. I was so in tune with the rum that I forgot to take a single note. I just remember an orange peel aroma, which brings me back to Appleton 8, and a finish reminiscent of Rhum Bologne’s VSOP. This is all from memory, so take it with a grain of sugar. Here’s what the producer says –

Aroma

• Chocolate, toasted dried fruits, tobacco, and licorice (initially)

• Follows up with hints of prune, vanilla, and soft aok

Palate

• Rounded, prune notes, and soft oak

• Long, slightly spicy finish

And finally…

Slightly Longer Aged Rhum Agricole: Grande Réserve XO.

A lot more wood influences the aroma. If you are into spirits that extract a majority of their composition from oak, then this will sit well with you. For me, and I think this is a fairly common theme among rum-people, that much oak influence can take the joy out of experiencing the bright, vegetal characteristics of cane juice r(h)ums. It’s not entirely far off from the VSOP in flavor, but the VSOP sings on the tastebuds a bit more vibrantly than the XO. I’d recommend this for sipping sessions with friends who enjoy decently aged liquids outside the rum category and would like to introduce them to something that balances vibrancy with oak. Those notes of vanilla rain through in the XO.

Overall, the unaged and VSOP are the ones I’d reach for first. The commonality flowing through all four expressions, aside from the 45% ABV, is that the source material (cane & juice) comes from the “foot of Mount Pelée” (volcanic soil). In an age of mass substitutes, these terroir distinctions, what I lovingly refer to as “sense of place,” are important, insofar as the characteristic(s) truly distinguish the r(h)um(s), and do not serve as mere marketing tactic. Before we sign off, let’s dial the clock back a bit to discuss some of the brand’s history, as well as social dynamics in Martinique.

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The patriarch and family behind the brand.

The birthplace of the Depaz brand, the La Montagne homestead, was originally a farm founded in 1651 by Jacques Duparquet, the first governor of the island. Clinging to the majestic flanks of the Mount Pelée in the north of the island, these fertile but dangerous soils tell the amazing story of one man, Victor Depaz, and his extraordinary destiny. – Depaz

May 8^th, 1902 – the volcano erupted, wiping out the town. Depaz was in Bordeaux, France, studying during the event. And as the story is told, he felt compelled to return to his birthplace in 1917 to start a new distillery.

In 1922, Depaz rums won their first medal in Marseille…During the 1950s, Victor Depaz’s sons took over from their father. André and Raoul Depaz modernized the sugar cane production and improved the distillery that became known as the Depaz distillery. Still today, the sun-soaked sugar canes, the volcanic soils and the purest of waters contribute to the exceptional taste of Depaz rums, certified AOC Rum of Martinique. – Depaz

Other sites note Victor Depaz, the Industrialist, as being a Béké. Békés, or what some would simply call Creoles, are White Martinicans (or Martiniquais) who are the direct descendants of colonists – former slaveowners/plantation owners. These Creoles operate at the top of the socio-economic ladder and are seemingly an insular bunch. Modern-day example –

In Cap-Est, the location of residence favored by the Creole whites of Martinique, beautiful villas overlook the turquoise water, their high walls protecting their owners from the curious and jealous. From the cul-de-sacs traveled by no one, except those who have business being there, all the way up to this spur, the area is called “Békéland” by the islanders. Here, during the general strike, they hid themselves, even more than usually. Police patrols have been reinforced. – Béatrice Gurrey, Békés: A Matter of Inheritance

“The béké boy who ‘messed around’ with a black woman was ostracized by others,” recalls Roger de Jaham. That’s a rule that still persists among some families. Family trees have endlessly intersected since the beginning of the colonization. – Béatrice Gurrey, Békés: A Matter of Inheritance

A little context to further heighten the palate. It’s good to have a somewhat full understanding of a thing’s origin and inheritance.

Till next time.

Only right that I talk about Louisiana juice next time around, right? Done.

Cheers and #rumresponsibly

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Heavy academic stuff here, promise it’s interesting.

Retrieving this book, albeit in digital form, was probably one of my nerdiest endeavors, of which I don’t think I’m at liberty to discuss. If anyone knows where I can find a physical copy, please let me know. This piece will gently pull us out of Louisiana – detour, we’ll be back – so that we can zoom out and understand the consequence of “The Rum Trade” in the former English Seaboard Colonies, the Caribbean, and everywhere else in that geographical formula where sugar and rum touched. Now, as I stare at all 61 pages of my notes, I’ve concluded that disseminating them would simply be too much.

For those with academic or other interests in tearing into this incredible volume of research, take the leap. You will not be disappointed. For those on the other side who allow me to entertain them with incredibly specific details about incredibly specific topics, I’ll pick things apart and give you just enough.

For the ‘I care about this stuff’ crowd –

Tested in this work will be the thesis that the export of rum contributed significantly toward righting the balance of payments of the Continental Colonies.

…my goal: an exposition of the production, trade, processing, and consumption of sugar and its by-products -- molasses and rum -- in the Atlantic world of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.

• The author explores imports (debits) and exports (credits), who and where produced/imported rum, “coarse brown muscovado” vs. semi-refined or clayed sugar production, sugar refinery operations (Continental Europe vs. their colonies), and all related factors surrounding sugar and its outputs (e.g., shipping, insurance, etc.).

• A lot of historical background on sugar before exploring the later ramifications on the original Thirteen Colonies.

This Balance of Payments (BOP) definition will be useful as you read: BOP measures all economic flows in and out of a country over a specified period (year, quarter, etc.). For more on the topic, see Investopedia.

For my ‘what does any of that mean’ crowd –

• Export of sugar and rum is a credit (like money entering your account).

• Import, the opposite (we are all painfully aware of what it’s like for money to exit the account).

• McCusker argues that the threat of “English commercial legislation” was squarely dependent on the “economic importance of what it threatened.” Which is to say, sugar and rum were fundamental products that kept the English Crown wealthy pre-American Revolution, so they focused intently on monitoring, taxing, and controlling their movement.

The author urges us to understand the relevance of the above and what it meant for the original Thirteen Colonies (emphasis mine) –

Conventional wisdom about the importance of the colonial export trade in molasses and rum suggests it to have played a decisive part in helping the colonists pay for their purchases from Great Britain. Any attack upon such an important trade would seem to have been an obvious reason for revolt. No one has ever performed such an analysis, however; no one has ever studied the relevance of rum to the colonial balance of trade…

In other words, the South already had a base from which it could produce stuff, sell that stuff, and generate the income necessary to pay taxes to the Mother Country (Britain). They could plant, exist, and subsist off their “tobacco, rice, indigo,” and other foodstuffs. Hence, and this is my argument, there is a higher propensity for amnesia about the role of rum and America in the southern psyche, given an absence of consequential dependency on sugar and rum. Kick the can up to the “northern colonies,” which did not have those luxuries, and we see that trade was the name of their game. The West Indies became vitally important to those colonies (as a trading partner); the northerners sent them “provisions, lumber, horses, and the like,” while the Caribbean colonies sent over, among other things, sugar, molasses, and rum.

Rum, especially for the northern colonists, became “an important item of export” because it allowed them to generate the money “to offset their unfavorable balance of trade with England.” In fact, rum was “the most popular export of New England.” Customers included many, but much of the liquid “went mostly to Africa” to be used as a trade bartering tool for the “purchase of Negroes.” See my piece on “Rum, Slaves and Molasses: The Story Of New England’s Triangular Trade” if you read that and were surprised in any way.

The numbers support this –

Before we dive in, a very important callout around the author’s chief analysis year of 1770 –

For the rum trade it will appear that 1770 was atypical only in that it was the best five-year period for the export of rum.

Let’s dive in.

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But first, Louisiana = )

In 1770, the Pelican State would have been part of “Spanish America,” at least formally; reliance on the French for colonial administrative assistance, given the territory’s largely French-speaking populace, was very much a reality. Nonetheless, we have information on Louisiana and rum that I would not dare skip over –

Even though the manufacture of crystallized sugar was short-lived in Louisiana, the planters turned the raw cane juice and the molasses to a profit. They sold some as a cheap sweetener in lieu of sugar but they also distilled some into rum. Limited quantities of rum were manufactured in Louisiana before the American Revolution, but how much is anyone’s guess.

I am used to the scant references to rum and Louisiana at this point, even if I remain unconvinced that a place that crushed cane in such consequential proportion does not also have a vibrant cane spirit/rum history. What became increasingly clear to me while reading the author’s work, however, is that the juiciest details surrounding rum imbibing among Louisianians may be found the further back we go. But even then, the liquid’s proliferation was inevitably tempered by the French’s/Spanish’s urge to squash meaningful competition to their wines/brandies.

Before 1763 Martinique had exported rum to Louisiana and after that date the Cubans found an export market at New Orleans for their own rum, so the local production could not have been too large. Certainly in 1770 Louisiana exported no molasses or rum to the English Continental Colonies.

But I wonder how much the New Englanders historically smuggled from the neighbors up top (Canada). It had to be of some consequence, since New England was a prime market for French goods, mostly illicit, it seems (i.e., exports or re-exports from French colonies). The North is too close for that not to be the case. Here’s the history I’m mulling over –

French North America before the war [American Revolution] had been a major importer of Martinique’s rum. In the ten years 1743 through, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Louisiana accounted for an annual average of roughly 350,000 gallons…

The author suggests that much of the rum referenced went onward to Boston, NY, and other colonial ports. That is where we will end the Louisiana and rum coverage. Before we dive any deeper, let’s talk about the author.

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John J. McCusker

Now this is an author & historian who is completely off the digital grid. Cut from that old school cloth. Therefore, I will have to rely primarily on Wikipedia for his download –

• He’s from upstate NY and attended the University of Rochester (graduate degree). That’s very upstate of McCusker. While there, he studied under a Nobel Laureate economic historian, Robert William Fogel.

• Looks like he also did some work (maybe studied, too) at the University College of London.

• But he definitely completed his doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh. A full education.

• Taught at the University of Maryland for 24 years.

• Moved over to Trinity University – Ewing Halsell Distinguished Professor of American History and Professor of Economics – where he retired in 2015.

Seems that he’s still with us and is 86 years old. Combining history and economics/financial matters is sometimes a more straightforward way to understand human development, and certainly societal development (loosely speaking). When you follow the funds or simply understand what groups of people depend on for their livelihood, it allows you to have a more grounded understanding of the who, what, where, when, and why(s). This McCusker explores robustly.

While digital archives of his work are available, finding a physical copy is HARD. Special shoutout to the folks who digitized McCusker’s book in 2023, the Internet Archive, and those who funded the endeavor, the Kahle/Austin Foundation.

Rum and the American Revolution was originally published in 1989. From the words of the academic himself, here is what he set out to establish –

…the objective of the dissertation must be to establish the value of exported rum as a credit item in the colonial balance of payments. The background and point of reference against which this will be compared is the annual colonial debit for goods and services imported from England and Scotland. These were not, of course, the sole colonial debits because Great Britain was not the only area supplying goods and services to the Continental Colonies.

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Price and trade of sugar + rum on the colonial scene.

McCusker sets the scene in a riveting way –

Since the colonies and the colonists were constantly faced with the problem of paying for their imports from England, and since they often phrased their discussions of a particular trade in terms of its usefulness in surmounting this obstacle, an analysis of the contribution of each colonial trade toward meeting their English debts becomes a particularly meaningful enterprise.

But, to balance the beam, he also outlines the qualitative and quantitative exports of England and Scotland into the Continental Colonies. All rum exported (from the Continental Colonies) was originally an import (debit) of finished rum or molasses that were used to manufacture rum. The export value of the rum (FOB) is compared to the import cost of the raw materials used (CIF).

The CIF value of molasses or rum equaled the original cost (C) of the commodity at the point of exportation (including any export duties), the cost of marine insurance (I) for the voyage northward, and the cost of freight (F) between the origin and destination. Each of these three elements must be established in turn for both commodities from every exporting colony. Clarity is served by dealing first with molasses, next with rum, and then with the conclusions which arise from the calculation of the net debit.

A completely separate accounting of shipping services must be included, along with other “invisibles,” in the balance of payments of the Continental Colonies.

Ultimately, he wanted us to understand the true net export value (net FOB), a formula the British worked hard to have squared in their favor.

Before the above analysis, however, McCusker takes us on the historical walk (“primeval migrations”) of sugarcane from Melanesia → Southeast Asia → India (reached India “many centuries before the first historical reference to it in the fourth century B.C.”) → China → (much later) the West. He even notes that “followers of Mohammed” planted it around the Mediterranean; the Crusades brought sugarcane to Europe, where I believe Italy’s sugarcane culture began to take root. In the 15th century, the Portuguese and Spaniards brought cane to the Atlantic Islands (which I assume he’s referencing places like São Tomé and Príncipe), West Africa, and then the New World. The expansion of sugarcane exploded after the 1500s.

The European quickening of the pace after 1450 grew out of the burgeoning demand for sugar in the late Middle Ages and early modern period. Greeks and Romans had known sugar only as an article of foreign import and Westerners in general were little acquainted with it until the eleventh century. Initially they were supplied from the Moslem lands along the Mediterranean littoral. With the conquest of Sicily by the Normans in the 1190’s and the settlement of Cyprus by the retreating Palestinian Franks, Europe put its hand for the first time to cultivating its own supply of sugar. In their century of emulation the Atlantic powers sought their own source and they soon introduced the cane from Crete to the islands of Madeira and the Canaries. The tilling of new fields was well timed for the Turkish conquest of Moslem Syria and Egypt in 1516 and 1517 and Christian Cyprus in 1521 ended large-scale production there.

After the history walk, the author takes us through the technical aspects of converting the plant into a semi-finished and/or finished product (i.e., how we get from sugarcane to coarse and raw sugar). Understanding the sugarmaking process is a helpful bridge to understanding the emergence of the sugar-refining industry and where that industry fits in the chain of command between the colonies and their colonizers.

A report of 1770 speaks of 110 Amsterdam refineries…

On Martinique six refineries were at work in 1688 and 18 ten years later; Guadeloupe had one by 1699; the turn of the century found them all shut down. French planters turned to white clayed sugars as [their] processed export.

…in the eighteenth century, the English colonists were the sugar refiners of the Western Hemisphere. The English refining industry had a long and important history but, in a country so apparently dominated by mercantilism, the refiners of England were unable to rid themselves of colonial competition. British North America and the British West Indies both refined increasing quantities of sugar as the era of the Old Empire drew to an end.

Unlike their Caribbean counterparts, maybe due to size, scale, and industrial potential, the Continental Colonies were allowed sugar refinery operations of some consequential scale –

On the eve of the American Revolution, therefore, sugar refining ranked as a considerable industry in the Continental Colonies. If we assess Massachusetts with four refineries, Rhode Island with three, New York with four, Pennsylvania with five and South Carolina with two, a total of 18 were in operation in North America in 1770. Assuming neither a net gain nor a net loss in the number of refineries in the [British] West indies between 1753 and 1770, then 15 more were in production there. In spite of the strictures of mercantilism, the English colonists worked over 30 sugar refineries just prior to the War for Independence.

While you can’t talk about rum without talking about sugar… I’m going to have to talk about rum without talking much more about sugar. Why? Because, with a fine-toothed academic comb, McCusker goes through the debit (expense) column of the American colonies to showcase where they got sugar/rum from (empire colonial holding by empire colonial holding). What I’m saying is, this would become an incredibly lengthy article if I were to rehash that level of granularity. So that you do not feel entirely left out, below is my very rough table of contents of McCusker’s content:

• Rum and sugar costs for the Continental Colonies (i.e., what they received from the Dutch, Germans, French, Danes, Spanish, and the West Indies/British).

• Sugar and rum production/export profiles of the above colonies, broken down by each of their holdings (New Spain, Peru, Brazil, Nevis, Montserrat, Barbados, you get the drift…every single territory!).

• Accounting treatment of the importation of rum and sugar into the Continental Colonies.

• Credit (revenue) to the Continental Colonies: distillation, consumption, internal trade, re-export, and general export.

• Accounting treatment of the bullet right before this one

• And a whole lot more…

The above comprises about 1,200+ pages, and this is only volume 1. You know what that means? I need volume 2 = ).

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Quick analysis of the chief concern: rum

Here is early evidence of rum production in the late 17th-century American colonies –

The Continentals began to distil their own rum from molasses by the 1660’s and the industry became important after the beginning of Queen Anne’s War in 1702. Yankee merchants disposed of locally distilled and imported rum to whomever would buy. The sale of rum both at home and abroad constituted what every schoolboy knows as the rum trade.

Here are the net credit values associated with the importation of West Indian rum in 1770 –

According to the Customs Ledgers the Continental Colonies imported an average of 2,730,000 gallons of rum in 1770 from the British West Indies. Recall that it was forbidden to import any rum from the other sugar colonies. In actual fact…the North Americans imported 3,709,000 gallons of rum, 14% of it from French, Dutch and Danish sources. The illegally imported rum would have paid no imperial duty but its value as a debit amounted to more than £80,000, not far short of the amount attributable to the significantly greater quantity of smuggled molasses about which everyone made much more noise.

We see a similar trend for the amount of “NORTH AMERICAN RUM” exported and re-exported from the colonies in 1770 –

I know you’re not wondering, but I’ll tell you anyway: the trends remained similar for molasses as well –

New England colonies were the molasses traders of the Continental Colonies. Although they imported only 54.7% of the quantity received from the West Indies in 1770, they re-exported 87.2% of the molasses sent coastwise, and 99.6% of the molasses exported overseas. The New Englander’s role as purveyor of molasses to the other Continental Colonies involved them intimately with the economic life of their neighbors to the south while the earnings from the sale of molasses abroad proved a steady, if very modest source of credits in their balance of payments. From all indications these earnings reached a high point in 1770. So also had the quantities imported.

And finally, where did much of this rum leave the Continental Colonies and go?

In 1770, 29 ships cleared the ports of the Continental Colonies for the coast or Africa, each carrying roughly 11,000 gallons of rum. The total, 316,000, fell short of the estimated average during the Seven Years’ War by hardly more than 10,000 gallons. In 1770 the total exported to Africa equaled 29.6% of all rum exported from the Continental Colonies, but only 3.7% of the amount available there. The ships involved, when compared with all ships which cleared from colonial ports in 1770, represented less than 1% of the total either by number or by tonnage.

Significant, but not really, I suppose, is McCusker’s conclusion.

The real, ultimate, and final conclusion(s) that we should draw, on this year that America celebrates its 250th birthday are –

In summary we can only total the net credit value of the export of molasses and rum from the Continental Colonies to £201,300, note that this was the equivalent of 0.5% of the debit owed to Great Britain in 1770, and concludes that the rum trade came nowhere near balancing the colonists’ debits with the Mother Country.

(and)

Rum’s real importance was not as an export at all. In 1770 the inhabitants of the Continental Colonies drank more than 87% of the available run at a rate of over four gallons per white man, woman and child. All of this rum had to be imported, either as rum itself or as molasses from which the colonists distilled more rum. Rum and molasses occupied a strategic position in the vital trade of the Continental Colonies with the West Indies, being readily available and readily acceptable returns for colonial goods shipped there. The distilling of rum in the Continental Colonies created a manufacturing industry second only to the shipping complex as an employer of local capital, managerial talent, and labor. Steadily in demand, rum and molasses served the colonial economy almost as a currency.

(and, last one – I promise)

If these protests and petitions added fuel to a simmering fire of colonial discontent which later blazed into open rebellion, maybe we then can talk about rum and the American Revolution.

You cannot talk about an American desire for independence without discussing sugar and rum. It’s in the economic paper trail. Any argument against is an emotional one, as far as history is concerned.

What an incredible piece of research/book.

Feel smarter? I hope so. I did my best, with the constraints of life staring down at me, to distill McCusker’s work as much as possible. For the curious, there is a gargantuan amount of info you can parse through, from all sorts of angles, so I encourage you to pick up his dissertation.

That’s all for now. We’ll circle back to Louisiana in the next piece.

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in all that you do, please, don’t ever stop reading.

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This, like a prior rum article, is a two-for-one and will be more condensed compared to previous releases. I know, I know – you really enjoy reading those 20 – 30-minute pieces, right?

We will stick to the timeline by picking up from Reconstruction in the Cane Fields. Still Louisiana, but this time, and I’m not much of a betting man, I’m willing to wager that we are venturing into new historical territories for most. At least it was to me. If you are from Louisiana, then you may already be familiar with what I will cover. On to diving deeper into a region of the country, and world for that matter, that truly is “a place unto itself.”

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Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation.

In my last piece, I touched on the importation of Chinese labor following Emancipation ever so slightly. And while that is a natural place to pick up from, I’m urged, for personal reasons, to start with the etymology of the word “coolie[s].”

Cultural detour (still relevant).

Everyone in the Caribbean (English-speaking in particular) knows the word “coolie.” My side – Jamaicans – volley the word around in everyday speech quite loosely and amicably. From describing (i) an actual person of East Indian heritage, (ii) the texture of someone’s hair, or even (iii) a riddim, Jamaicans generally view the word in a harmless, playful, descriptive manner, or some combination of the above. Note: this is an overgeneralization + you will die on a tall hill trying to get Jamaicans to use “appropriate” terms to describe people, places, and things. On (iii), I wasn’t joking. One of the hardest riddims to come out of Jamaica is literally called “Coolie Dance Riddim” –

Etymologically, however, the word has a much more layered history (emphasis mine) –

“As they prepared the rigging, I heard the ship’s men call us “coolies” from the Tamil word kuli – the payments made to the poorest of us for manual work in India.” – Shanti (a main character in Joanne Joseph’s Children of Sugarcane)

Amazing (historical) novel that I read at the end of 2025, covering Indian indentured labor on plantations in British-controlled Port Natal/Durban, South Africa, in the 19^th century. Quick clarification: “kuli” refers to the payments, not the laborer themselves (i.e., it would be akin to referring to a group of people as “minimum wage”).

And with that, let’s hop over to our friends in the Lesser Antilles and broader CARICOM region. I know that if I am around friends who are of Guyanese or Trinidadian heritage, islands with significantly higher Indo-Caribbean populations (e.g., Guyana’s Indo-heritage is nearly half the population, and probably more if we include mixed-heritage Guyanese), the word “coolie” does not go over well. In short, it’s a very charged slur, which we can understand why, given the history underpinning the word’s usage.

But also, what actually took place. Memories of groups such as the “Gladstone coolies,” Indians who faced the worst of conditions in modern-day Guyana, many of whom died or elected to return to India, linger in the soil and memory of the people. The word weighs significantly on the psyche of a people when this is the history to contend with. Note: “Gladstone” is the last name of the British plantation owner who brought the Indians to British-controlled “Guiana.”

With that personal story, mini history lesson, and socio-cultural context in mind, let’s end the detour here.

Back to Coolies and Cane.

The “coolies” that Moon-Ho Jung is concerned with are Chinese laborers who were “imported” to southern Louisiana following Emancipation – the plantation owners’ attempt to solve what they deemed was a labor problem. Sinners make a bit more sense now? Showcasing Chinese people with thick southern/Louisiana accents is historically accurate, if you were curious.

This importation of labor was, yet again, another page taken right out of the Caribbean (i.e., fellow sugarcane countries’) playbook. However, Louisianians did not have to look to Trinidad or Guyana. Cuba was notorious for their Chinese labor importation: 1847 – 1874, almost 125,000 Chinese people landed in Cuba for work, showcasing slavery and indentured labor working side by side on the island. In many cases, Chinese labor would leave Cuba after a stretch of work for higher wage prospects in the Pelican State. In truth, this was a strategically competitive move on the part of Louisiana planters, who pursued every outlet to reduce Cuba’s importance on the world’s sugar stage. Louisiana planters offered $15 to $18 per month compared to 4 pesos per month offered by the Cubans. As you can imagine, many Chinese jumped at the opportunity –

A New Orleans newspaper soon announced that “a dozen fullblooded Coolies” had arrived from Cuba, under contract to work in Louisiana.

“There seems to be a rage at this time for speculating in Chinese…the trade, which gives enormous profits, is engaging the attention of the first commercial houses and largest capitalists of this city…Chinese are coming in fast; and…these laborers are, on some plantations, treated no better and even worse than negro slaves…For my part, I assure you that I regret very much to see vessels under our flag engaged in such a traffic.” — U.S. consul in Havana, 1855

In Louisiana, the “Chinese cooly contract system” was viewed crudely and directly as a business, despite the human costs, not much different than the previous trade in people of African descent –

…the remaining 150 or so slaves left the plantation…Within eight years, Boston investors would purchase [Laurent Millaudon’s] estate for merely $175,000 and recruit more than 140 Chinese migrant laborers.

John S. Thrasher, a resident of Cuba and Louisiana and a leading filibuster before the war, argued in the summer of 1865 that the “advantages of Coolie contract labor” had “been abundantly demonstrated in Cuba” and ought to initiate “a combined effort” by “our responsible planters” to invest in a similar project.

There were labor recruiting firms, such as the “Arkansas River Valley Immigration Company,” and shipping entities like the “Oriental Steamship Company,” who did the legwork of finding/importing laborers on behalf of the plantation owners. There were also major meetings & conferences geared toward the Chinese labor question, such as the June 30, 1869, meeting of the “Memphis Chamber of Commerce.” Despite the significant costs and subsequent failures associated with experimenting in the Chinese labor trade, the planters pressed on. They were determined to prove to the formerly enslaved that they could be replaced, and that their newfound political empowerment would fall apart without consistent income –

“Some happy medium may be struck, and the only medium between forced and voluntary labor, is that offered by the introduction of Orientals.” – New York Times (19^th Century)

“…the Coolie competition will bring the niggers to their senses.” – John Burnside to Edward J. Gay

Unsurprisingly, primarily the elite planters (e.g., Edward J. Gay) could afford to absorb the losses associated with hiring the “runners” sourcing the Chinese labor. In the long run, the Chinese would follow the same patterns as previous laborers of all stripes: overworked, mistreated, and discontented, they would initiate strikes or take more extreme measures, such as deserting plantations entirely. The plantation owners desired as close a return to chattel slavery as possible by using this new immigrant element, which they believed would challenge the Black population’s place in society. The planter’s aspirations did not bear fruit –

The bitter interracial rivalry imagined by coolie promoters never took root in Louisiana.

We can add this labor-substitution scheme to the tall pile of failures during the Reconstruction Era. The last thing to note is that many rallied against the importation of Chinese labor and, really, against anything they felt was pro-planter policy, given the tension between North and South following the war. Ultimately, anti-Chinese labor advocates indicated that it was an affront to America to behave like the West Indians to resolve labor issues. This was not the industrial, free-market representation of American business that the anti-Chinese labor side believed in.

So, ultimately, who were America’s “coolies” and what did they mean for the nation?

They [coolies] remained an enigma, a cultural figure identified with the past (slavery) and increasingly with the future (industrial capitalism and free trade). Were they slaves or immigrants, black or white, an asset or a deficit to America’s progress? In an industrializing and expanding nation trying to recover from a devastating war, they were all those things and much more.

Culturally and socially, the term “coolie”, not being remotely relevant to the modern-day American reality, speech, and psyche, is telling. Before we flip the page to another book & chapter, the author, Moon-Ho Jung –

“I learned to think critically and engage politically—this is, I woke up and grew up—at Cornell University.

P.S. – Below is an interesting article highlighting the development of the Japanese population in Brazil. Today, the largest diaspora of Japanese is in the South American nation. Although the author does not point directly to “cooliesm” as an industry and prevailing outlet, it does not require too much brainpower to realize that the Brazilians’ reach for Asia’s sons (primarily) was of the same flavor as the Louisianians –

Strolling Down Curiosity Lane

Why Brazil Has Millions of Japanese

It’s hard to imagine two societies more different than Japan and Brazil. Safe and dangerous, quiet and loud, emotionally repressed and hyper-extroverted, clean and dirty, disciplined and chaotic … almost every comparison is a study in extremes…

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a year ago · 4 likes · 1 comment · Cailian Savage

Author:

…in 1888, Brazil became the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery. Good news for humanity, very bad news for the coffee and sugar barons, who suddenly had to start paying their workers.

Simply moving on from these industries, especially coffee, was not feasible: Brazil produced ~75% of the world’s coffee, and coffee made up half of Brazil’s exports. But few of the former slaves had any desire to stay on the plantations, so where would you find the workers?

Like many countries in the Americas, Brazilian elites responded to the end of slavery by pursuing a goal of “racial whitening”, i.e importing large numbers of Europeans to “dilute” the black population.

Struggling to recruit Europeans in the desired numbers, Brazilian elites turned instead to Japan.

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The Thibodaux Massacre: Racial Violence and the 1887 Sugar Cane Labor Strike.

Almost every book on Louisiana I’ve come across that explores cane country in the 19^th century makes a cursory mention of the Thibodaux Massacre. Some do indeed call it a massacre. Some call it a war. Others call it an uprising. Each label nudges me squarely into an author’s mindset. What feels somewhat clear to me regarding the historical tragedy is that, for locals, the events of 1887 may be something that people are hush-hush about.

The terror instilled from the time of the strike, as well as the decades and centuries before, is still evidenced through the loud sound of silence.

I don’t have personal, confirmatory evidence of this; just my suspicion given the gravity of the event. Most would say that this slice of history is very specific. You would be well within your rights to ask me how I even landed here. Well, here’s how.

Queen Sugar.

A main character of the show, Nova Bordelon, after discovering bones on the family land, emotionally recalls and verbalizes that the discovery is linked to the Thibodaux Massacre. I watched this in 2024 (maybe early 2025 at the latest), so I cannot recall the season/episode or much of the details beyond what I outlined. There are a lot of seasons & episodes, each worth watching (to be clear).

As someone interested in history, and increasingly Louisiana’s, Nova’s new-to-me highlight stuck. Voilà, a book was thereafter procured because I had to make sense of what was clearly a deeply painful connection of dots for the fictitious Bordelon family.

Back to The Thibodaux Massacre.

Interestingly, the “incident” was never investigated. It was an “ancillary inquiry” by Jack Conrad, a formerly enslaved person and veteran of the U.S. Colored Troops (Civil War), that opened the floodgates to detailed accounts of what happened in 1887. Before we leap ahead, let’s rewind the clock to the year 1887 –

Bleeding from his chest and right arm, Jack Conrad squeezed himself under the simple wood-frame house on St. Michael Street as members of the mob, maybe fifty strong, kept on firing, clouding the air with acrid smoke. “I am innocent!” the fifty-three-year-old veteran called out, protesting that he had nothing to do with the strike of sugar laborers, nominally the cause of the violence. He pressed his chest against the cold ground and felt hot blood pooling beneath him. Another ball ripped through Conrad’s flesh, and he pushed his face against the earth and weeds. – November 23, 1887, 7:00am

Conrad ended up playing dead. Jack’s wounds became the aforementioned “ancillary inquiry,” leading us to what happened that day in 1887.

In 1890, Congress passed a law that allowed Civil War veterans to file for pensions if they could not work, even if their injuries were not related to the war so long as they came about through no fault of the veteran…The Conrad files confirmed the killing and wounding of innocent people on the basis of race in an atmosphere poisoned by concepts of white superiority and panic fed by rumors, as well as a resulting breakdown of law and humanity.

Let’s explore what led to the events described above.

The author does a good job of providing historical context/grounding – the expansiveness of the cane country, the original inhabitants of the state, conflict in early Louisiana societies, the Civil War, Reconstruction, etc. – in the decades preceding 1887. Grounding the reader in this context is helpful for sensemaking of the events leading up to the month-long strike of Black sugarcane workers (pre-massacre).

Any Union intervention in the South was, understandably, met with animosity by the White population, notwithstanding the very overt military occupation during Reconstruction, which ended about 1877 (i.e., withdrawal of federal troops after the Compromise). So, when Northern labor unions grew influential among southern Louisiana’s labor force, you can imagine how it was received by those who identified with the “cult of the lost cause.” A particularly popular labor union in the late 1870s was the Knights of Labor (KOL), whose membership swelled to over 80,000 by 1884. In cane country, one of the KOL’s primary initiatives was advocating for wage increases ($0.65/day to $1.25/day for day workers off plantation grounds, or $1.00/day for those living on the plantation grounds).

It is worth noting here that Conrad did not support the KOL because he was an engineer, did not toil in the fields, and therefore earned higher wages. Additionally, as a family man, he seemed much more risk-averse than the many single men who made up the union’s ranks.

I did not go on the strike. None of the mechanics went on the strike. – Conrad

But it was believed that his youngest son, Grant, was a field hand and member of the KOL. This likely came back to haunt the entire family.

“…these negroes felt unusually important because of their organization called the Knights of Labor, of which they were members.” – Daily Picayune, “The Knights and the Laborers” (October 29, 1887)

Once negotiations over wages revealed that neither side would walk away satisfied, the “Terrebonne Strike” ensued. Many Black workers simply refused to work, leaving plantations stranded. As this timeframe is the height of grinding season, a critical juncture for the cane-to-mill process, state authorities, planters, and their allies saw this Strike as particularly dangerous to a state whose sugarcane production had not rebounded to pre-Civil War levels. Planters felt that their plantations were “in the hands of a mob of strikers,” and that circumstances had become increasingly violent.

Sugar planters refused to increase wages as a means of calming down the strike(s), given the depressed conditions of the cane industry at large. Instead, they would act “by force” to maintain (what they would have considered) decent and law-abiding conditions. They called on all citizens, “regardless of race or color,” to help in “carrying out the plain behests of the written law of the land.”

And, by order of the state’s Executive Department, they were supported –

“The Terrebonne Strike has unnecessarily assumed a shape that is considered dangerous to life and property, and in order to support the civil authorities in their efforts to preserve peace, the Governor has upon an urgent requested, ordered that a detachment of troops be sent to the parish…deemed necessary to prevent serious troubles.”

Many Confederate Civil War veterans, and those sympathetic or directly a part of The Knights of the White Camellia, were sent by railcar to Thibodaux to quell the strikes.

In another instance of tearing a page out of the Caribbean playbook –

…Planter’s Association would provide food, as well as quarters, for the troops.

Note: it was common for West Indian plantation owners to provide rum, food, and other resources to the soldiers and navies of the “Mother Country” when they arrived to squash slave wars/rebellions, or maintain whatever standard of order they sought to preserve.

Things continued to remain tense –

“Serious trouble is then expected all over the country as the negroes generally are stubborn and disposed to stand their ground.” – Picayune, November 2, 1887

On that same November day in 1887 –

Hundreds of men and no fewer than a half dozen artillery pieces were stationed at a variety of points in Terrebonne and Lafourche.

Lots of arrests and beatings followed. Rangers reportedly fired “between thirty to one hundred shots.” St. Mary Parish planter and politician, Don Caffery, was at the shooting site and said that he “saw no negroes fire.” However, this seemed to eventually shift –

The overseer at Rienzi Plantation had been shot in the face, though not severely injured. Four white workers on the Ridgefield Plantation were shot at, though not hit. In the actual homes of Thibodaux’s sugar elite, domestic workers—primarily women—muttered threats, causing fear among the wives of planters and politicians. There were rumors of murders that never occurred.

What happened at Rienzi, coupled with what seemed like unsubstantiated hysteria by the publications of the time, was enough to make White citizens feel that a Black uprising was imminent, that “assassins” were on the loose. There was a general sense among the White population that it was time to prepare for another war. An example of this was them shutting off entry/exit for Black citizens of Thibodaux. The author notes that no historical records substantiate Black citizens feeling the same way, though publications portrayed them as feeling that way.

On November 23, 1887, a group of watchmen (White) was having a discussion when a shot rang out, and one of them was hit. Word made its way around town, and we can predict what happened from there –

“And this opened the Ball.” – Mary Pugh

It was commonly reported that only 8 people were killed. The author estimates that the more accurate range is between 30 and 60. Many of those who escaped fled into the woods, an act not unfamiliar to the formerly enslaved, who did the same during the Civil War.

Let’s close by revisiting the statements of the Conrad family, filed from Jack's veteran’s pension application in 1893, as well as those on the other side of the narrative –

(Conrads)

“I think there were about 50 or 60 men in the crowd, which was comprised entirely of white citizens who lived in and around Thibodaux. Jack, his son Grant and his brother-in-law Marcelin were told to line up, and they began to run.” – Clarisse Conrad (Jack’s daughter)

“I heard my uncle [Marcelin] tell them he wasn’t in it.” – Clarisse Conrad

“And they said “get back you son-of-a-bitch” and shot him down and killed him. My brother was back of the house and got behind a barrel and the white men got behind the house and shot him dead. My father crawled under the house and they shot him under the house. He fell on his face when they shot him. After he fell on his face I heard them say “he is dead now” and “let us go”…I know that my father was unarmed when the white men came and called him out.” – Clarisse Conrad

(The other side)

“…he had exhausted every means within reason to bring the negro to a sense of his real condition; that he had advised him time and again to be aware of and avoid those who would plunge him into difficulties with which he was wholly unable to cope; that he would afford him the largest protection with respect both to life and property; but that when the shot…was fired there was nothing further left for him to do so save that of assisting the good citizens in the preservation of law and order.” – Judge Beattie’s sentiments recorded in the Times Democrat

This very tucked-away piece of history was covered by John DeSantis –

Thanks for continuing to walk down the Louisiana lane with me. Still, no rum. I’ll live.

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in all that you do, please, don’t ever stop reading.

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We pick up where we left off. The last Louisiana piece covered Charles P. Roland’s Louisiana Plantations During the Civil War. I will again dabble in the War’s timeline (pre- and during), given John C. Rodrigue’s concern (1862—1880). However, the primary focus here is the period following the conflict, popularly known as the Reconstruction. More specifically, the details surrounding Louisiana’s sugarcane plantations transitioning from “masters and slaves” to “employers and employees.” What did this new wage dynamic, and its varying flavors of negotiating power across payers/earners, mean for a recovering southern state, once known as a beacon of co-opted feudalism? A quick piece of insight from the author would be that sugar production’s firm demands gave Freedmen “considerable leverage” in the “new labor system.” However, this bargaining chip did not make them dictator of terms. Notably, the author warns that he provides more attention than usual to the “planters’ perspective” in this study. We’ll flesh this all out shortly.

But first, I must get my chief concern out of the way: no mention of rum in Rodrigue’s book. Roland addressed that for me. But the dig continues. Let’s continue the historical walk through Louisiana’s sugarcane country. But first, the author. A person whose last name my brain kept trying to add a “z” to the end of. No, just Rodrigue.

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John C. Rodrigue.

A “Lawrence and Theresa Salameno Professor of History at Stonehill College.” For the Massachusetts crew, yes – Stonehill out in Easton, MA. His undergraduate and master’s degrees were completed at Rutgers and Columbia University, respectively. Afterwards, he took his talents to the South and wrapped up his (formal) education at Emory, where he received his PhD. As for his teaching –

He previously taught at Louisiana State University, and he was an editor on the Freedmen and Southern Society Project at the University of Maryland.

His teaching and research focus on nineteenth-century United States history and Southern history, in particular the Civil War and Reconstruction era, and slavery and emancipation.

Rodrigue served as president of the Louisiana Historical Association from 2016 to 2017, and he was elected to the association’s Company of Fellows in 2019.

Not much on Rodrigue’s personal life, which I’ll assume he’d prefer to keep that way. He dedicated the book to one of his parents and provided a beautiful reflection on his time at LSU –

I count my blessings for having been given the opportunity to become a member of LSU’s history department, where a reasonable teaching load (in these days of “accountability”), a collegial environment, and colleagues who are serious about their work—but not about themselves—afford a situation conducive to the life or the mind and help me remember why I wanted to become a historian in the first place.

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A historical walk to understand Louisiana and sugarcane.

→ Early 1750s: sugarcane was introduced to Louisiana (source: LSU Ag Center/College of Agriculture).

These early cultivators (and those they enslaved) could not get the sugarcane juice to granulate, and therefore used the cane for its molasses (i.e., no real sugar was produced).

→ 1795: the “Savoir of Louisiana,” Jean Etienne de Boré, “using techniques imported by slave and free-black refugees from Haiti, produced Louisiana’s first commercial crop of granulated sugar.”

Boré’s demonstration that sugar could now be produced profitably led the march for southern Louisiana to become a plantation slave society (of economic consequence). However, because of Louisiana’s climate, the cane still wasn’t doing so well.

→ 1817: ribbon cane, which matured rapidly and was more resistant to frost, was introduced.

Ribbon cane gives us insight into why sugarcane in Louisiana is considered a “forced crop.” Sugarcane typically grows best in mild and predictable tropical climates (hence why the Caribbean and sugarcane usually agree with each other). Even more, cane requires –

…moderate and well-distributed rainfall, and a growing season of about eighteen months. In Louisiana, rain is plentiful but seldom evenly distributed. Because south Louisiana lies in the subtropics, frost becomes a possibility by late fall. Louisiana planters, compelled to harvest the cane before winter, faced a growing season of only ten months.

→ 1820s: steam mills appeared in Louisiana, which helped sugar production, though it was likely the wealthier planters who were able to first adopt the new technology.

→ 1830s: a free Black Creole, Norbert Rillieux, invents the multiple-effect evaporator process, which used steam/heat to convert sugarcane juice into sugar more efficiently, and at lower temperatures (i.e., better grade product, less work); the technology was expensive, so it took a while for mass-adoption to spread across Louisiana. Nonetheless –

…prove[d] to be the most important technological advance in the history of sugar making.

→ 1840s: steam mills outnumbered animal-powered mills.

Unfortunately (poetic), a historian noted that Louisianians would never be able to solve the dilemma of “complete harmony between land and product.” (Sitterson x Sugar Country). Environmental and other threats, including frost, floods, thunderstorms, hurricanes, parasites, insects, rats, and the might of the Mississippi River, routinely affected plantation operations. Nonetheless, Louisianians would continue to cultivate sugar as there was no slowing the train down once it reached full speed.

→ 1849: there are 1,536 farms and plantations producing almost 250,000 hogsheads of sugar

→ 1860: sugarcane cultivation’s demands (lots of acreage), cane country’s constant flirtation with mother nature (lots of disasters), and the nature of capitalism (lots of money needed to satisfy the first two) converged over a century to favor the elite – 525 wealthy plantation owners, or those who owned 50 or more people, had an average of 110 slaves, 730 acres of land, and $14,500 of farm equipment (reminder that we are talking about the 19^th century, so that $14.5K is a lot of money inflation-adjusted to 2026). Rodrigue provides great data to showcase what’s outlined above –

Summary: 12.5% of the region’s slaveowners owned nearly 70% of the sugar parishes’ enslaved people, as well as nearly 70% of the region’s improved acreage. They produced 77.2% of the region’s 1859 crop and 60.2% of all sugar in the U.S. that year. On the eve of the Civil War, that same group produced 75% of sugar in the respective parishes. In short –

…the large landholders were quite a small elite, representing only 2.7% of all adult white males.

(back to the timeline)

→ 1861: the banner year for sugar production, or the last crop season “before the federal invasion of southern Louisiana…last one made exclusively with slave labor.” Almost 460,000 hogsheads of sugar, the spoils going primarily to the elite planters. But who are these planters we speak of?

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The Big Whigs of Big Sugar.

John Burnside

• 940 slaves

• $2.6 million in real and personal property (1860), certifying him as the richest man in Louisiana at that time

Duncan F. Kenner

• 473 slaves

William J. Minor

• 584 slaves

The Pugh(s), the Gay(s), the Weekes(s), the Palfrey(s), the Patout(s) of the Bayou Teche, and many more. Here are images of prominent members of the Gay and Pugh families, respectively –

Big Sugar did as Big Sugar had done everywhere there was a Big Sugar – become an aristocracy, often dubbed plantocracy. Big Sugar families engaged in everything from endogamy → specific schooling (North, Europe, etc.) → ostentatious mansions → specific balls/dances/social events → collecting European treasures → horse racing → etc.

The social line was played very delicately, however, because Big Sugar needed small sugar and poor Whites on their side –

At the same time, planters belonged to a democratic polity that celebrated the equality of all white men before the law. They could not afford to let their elitism slip into haughtiness lest it provoke their neighbors’ resentment. Planters cultivated toward white people of lesser station a patriarchal attitude that fostered, ever so subtly, deference and respect for their authority.

One can imagine the misgivings Big Sugar had when, on January 26, 1861, Louisiana ratified an ordinance of secession (the 6th state to do so). After all, a large portion of their sugar-consuming customer base was in territories they were breaking away from, which was surely Big Sugar’s primary concern. We’ve seen that many in the plantocracy straddled the allegiance line (Confederate vs. Union) more strategically than from a place of pure nationalism. In short, pocket protection. Although Big Sugar’s operations continued as normal for months following secession, the consequences of war arrived at their doorstep in due course –

The war made itself felt, however, in financial affairs. The federal naval blockade of southern ports in spring 1861 crippled commerce in New Orleans and prevented marketing of a bumper sugar crop.

“[O]ur white sugars…cannot now be sold.” – Planter

By spring 1862, Big Sugar fell on hard economic times, and invasion became imminent. Patriotism for the Confederate cause, for some, also sank to an all-time low (i.e., not favorable to pocket protection). The planters’ way of life was beginning to unravel before them. The ghost of potential emancipation lurked in the background.

The sugar planters’ social position was inconceivable without slaves, whose labor generated the slaveholders’ wealth and bestowed upon them their place in southern society…But slavery cannot be thought of in terms of what it did to slaveholders without considering what it did to slaves. Slavery denied slaves control over their own persons, and it enabled one group of people to live upon the fruits of another’s labor…Slavery was a system of racial oppression, but it was also a means of exploiting labor…While only black people in the South were slaves, they were enslaved for their labor as well as the color of their skin.

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Yankees disrupt cane country’s modus operandi.

April 1862 through the summer: The “loss of mastery” had begun to take hold as many of the enslaved escaped across Union lines. Northern forces, led by General Benjamin F. Butler, were there to protect the Union, not to free the enslaved, but the repercussions of the enslaved becoming assets in the dismantling of the South’s fabric must have played well with the Union’s military aims.

July 1862: Congress passed the second Confiscation Act and the Militia Act, which freed the slaves of disloyal slaveholders (i.e., those who abandoned their plantations to serve the Confederacy or had run away with their slaves). The Acts also authorized the enslaved to help “suppress the rebellion.” See, strategic.

The catch-22, however, is that General Butler was also obligated to protect the property (i.e., enslaved) of loyal planters, those of Big Sugar who took a loyalty oath to the Union. Still, as a representative of Northern ways of life, he instituted preliminary, quasi-free labor initiatives that resulted in wages, hourly requirements, and days worked per month statutes that were to be abided by (by) the loyal planters. One failsafe measure was a guarantee of manumission to “any slave” who was physically abused by “his or her owner.” It seems that some planters acquiesced to the discipline requirements. Having to pay those they enslaved was something that their psyche could not tolerate.

For instance, at Magnolia Plantation in Plaquemines Parish, Effingham Lawrence, after issuing $2,500 compensation to workers, insisted it was not compensation but a present. He asserted that those who were paid, no matter what, “were not free but my slaves and property.” Note: I believe that Butler’s compensation program was initially limited to Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes.

By November, the Union forces took Lafourche Parish. 9^th of the month, Butler issued Order 91, which implemented his labor agreement in the Parish, and also allowed his troops to take the estates of the disloyal. The Sequestration Commission, which I’m sure you understand what they’re responsibilities entailed (given the name), leased out the abandoned/confiscated plantations, often to Northerners in search of buy-low opportunities.

By the end of 1862, 87,000 hogsheads of sugar were produced, a mighty drop from the banner year 365 days prior. To add fuel to the political fire, on January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, which reinforced that the enslaved in rebellious parts of the South were free (i.e., excluded many parts of cane country).

If the loyal planters thought they were in the clear, a regime change would test that comfort. Out goes General Butler, in comes Nathaniel P Banks, who dismissed Big Sugar as “full of theories, prejudices, opinion based on the old system.” Banks felt that the planters needed to “look to the new state of things, to the future & not to the past.” Practically speaking, Banks eventually realized that he needed the planters’ cooperation, so he adjusted the wage system to be a bit more agreeable (Order 12) –

• $2 for men

• $1 for women

• At year-end, the enslaved would receive 1/20 of the proceeds of the crop to divvy amongst themselves

The French language publication, L’Union, and its successor, the bilingual New Orleans Tribune, along with Radical Republicans and Abolitionists, went full on attack, accusing Banks of coddling the planters. As you can imagine, the 1863 crop season was also abysmal. Still, Banks carried on what he believed was best –

• January 1864: Banks suspended all slavery provisions of Louisiana’s antebellum constitution and laws

• February 1864: Order 23 implemented an apprenticeship system, ripping a page right out of the Caribbean playbook (see A Jamaican Plantation or Caribbean Rum posts for more background), which endorsed easing the transition from slavery to freedom. The Order no longer referred to people as slaves, monthly wages went up from $2 to $8 for males, 1/14 of crop proceeds were to be distributed vs 1/20, families were allotted garden plots of up to one acre for independent production, and laborers could now, for the first time, choose their employers

• The concession to planters was strict enforcement of labor contracts. For instance, idleness was considered a crime, and abandoning plantations without reason was a violation of contract. The worst part of this enforcement, from the workers’ perspective, was the withholding of 50% of wages that were to be returned to them at year's end. You can imagine how this played out, especially among planters who could not believe they had to pay those they owned in the first place.

Everyone affected by the Order’s consequences devised plans to derail the other side’s machinations. The workers knew that cane planting in Louisiana was a race against time & Mother Nature (i.e., frost season), so they could easily disrupt crop season by causing an “oops” scenario around that critical timeframe. The planters colluded to “impede [the] development of a labor market” by agreeing not to hire another planter’s workers, as well as fixing the pay levels across Parishes. To be clear, all of this collusion was illegal under the Union’s policies, but the Louisianians were busy infighting using the tools they were most accustomed to. The Yankee policies were more a an obligatory nuisance than anything else.

One planter, who likely represented the thinking of many at the time, believed that if they didn’t “stand by each other,” then the formerly enslaved “will become more and more exacting every year until in a short time we will be the slaves and they the masters.” Heavy dose of paranoia.

Big Sugar – economics-first – mindsets highlighted that profitability and survival of cane depended on slave labor. It was what they knew, and they were uncertain how to produce at scale without it –

“The saving of the growing crop is entirely dependent on the exercise of authority over the blacks, otherwise a large portion of the cane will be left to perish in the field.” – W.W. Pugh

By September 1864, Louisiana Unionists approved the state constitution, formally abolishing slavery. It’s worth noting that this approval was done by a few thousand loyalists in New Orleans “and its environs” (i.e., those who participated in the “constitution plebiscite”). In other words, the decision was by no means a consensus opinion (unsurprisingly). All of the above translated to the impact you would expect for the 1864 crop season: 10,387 hogsheads of sugar. Scant.

By November 1865, Lincoln won reelection, and General Ulysses S. Grant beat out the Army of Northern Virginia to cement the demise of the Confederacy. Another regime shift occurred in 1865: out went Banks, in came General Stephen A. Hurlbut. Hurlbut (what a name) implemented his own changes to the labor policy, demonstrating that this desire for a free-market society was a moving target. What increasingly became the reality of the wage-labor dynamic was that planters began to yield more and more to workers’ demands.

“I have agreed with the negroes today to pay them monthly wages. It was very distasteful to me, but I could do no better. Every body else in the neighborhood has agreed to pay the same and mine would listen to nothing else.” – A.F. Pugh

…by spring 1865, a pattern surfaced in negotiations between planters and freedmen that would become as familiar as the Bayou Teche two-step. Just as crop seasons overlapped, so did settling accounts for one year and contracting for the next. Aware of the effort, the rolling season demanded, freedmen could express their dissatisfaction with a planter’s offer for the new year by working slow slowly or not at all. Likewise, if displeased with the settlement after completing the crop, they might seek employment elsewhere as planting was to begin. The perils of sugar production had caused planters enough anxiety before emancipation; now they had to bargain with laborers who were free to leave. Despite the restrictions of army policy, freedmen were learning how to take advantage of the sugar region’s emerging labor market.

In creating a new labor system, planters and freedmen were shackled together, incapable of acting independently from one another. Distasteful as it was, they moved in tandem, grudgingly and reluctantly, but inexorably forward.

The desire for land and autonomy rose among the new workers. One example of acting on this desire occurred in Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes, where residents organized into “labor companies” to till abandoned estates. This, too, worked in the Union’s favor, as the Sequestration folks probably had a difficult time keeping up with all the properties newly under their jurisdiction. The labor companies' efforts were short-lived, as many of these abandoned plantations were returned to their former owners (i.e., non-loyalists) after the Civil War. Either that, or it went to Northern businesspeople coughing up investment cash. Those (planters) who remained in the South continued to bang on the federal government’s door, pleading for a reduction in plantation life interventions.

Many in the South viewed the confiscation of property as robbery. Misdeeds that would be met with violence, eventually. These feelings were exacerbated by the March 1865 establishment of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. This entity is more popularly known as the Freedman’s Bureau. The Bureau had many responsibilities, but chief among them were overseeing the transition from slavery to freedom and dividing up abandoned/confiscated plantations into 40-acre plots for distribution among the formerly enslaved. By the spring of 1865, the government had almost 100,000 acres of land under its jurisdiction, most of it located in the sugar region.

All told, the consequences of the war were of seismic proportions for cane country and those who were at the top of its socio-economic pyramid –

Losses in slaves, animals, machinery, tools, farm implements, and buildings for the industry as a whole approached $190 million out of an estimated antebellum value of $200 million.

The Civil War ended in 1865. But conflict (in Louisiana) would sustain for many, many decades to come.

Out goes slavery, in comes Reconstruction…for now.

The political and social rejiggering of the South – “emergence of black politics during Reconstruction” and the “new [wage] labor system” – uprooted the life that the former slaveowners were accustomed to. And they could no longer, legally, resort to old customs that would squeeze complicity out of the Freedmen (and Freedwomen).

For instance –

…as long as Reconstruction lasted in Louisiana, planters could not call upon the state militia to impose control over labor.

Navigating the economic conditions seemed impossible. Post-Civil War, credit dried up, production levels sank, and the physical destruction from the war took its toll. However, U.S. consumers’ demand for sugar continued to increase unabated, as did demand in the rest of the world. Unfortunately, Louisiana lost control of the domestic market (firmly) once European Beet sugar stepped onto the scene; the ever-present (competitive) thorn in Louisiana’s backyard, Cuba, maintained its contribution to Louisiana’s flailingly market share losses as well. As noted in The Sugar Masters, Cuba benefited from their continued slave labor production 21 years post-American Civil War.

Unable to compete at the global level, and with the consequences of war worsening an already precarious situation, the story of sugar and Louisiana became a narrative that would forever include the federal government’s assistance –

Even as planters faced the challenge of making sugar with free workers, they confronted other changes that profoundly affected their fortunes. Since Louisiana’s subtropical environment produced inferior grades of sugar, which required further processing in refineries, planters could not compete, even under ideal circumstances, against foreign sugars without a protective tariff.

The only other piece I would add to Rodrigue’s assessment of “inferior grades of sugar” is that soil depletion may be a factor as well, given that the planters had, for a century plus, forced the enslaved to toil the land relentlessly to grow sugarcane.

Speaking of the government, Andrew Johnson’s becoming President led to a swift about-face in Reconstruction policies: despite the launch of the Freedmen’s Bureau in March 1865, Johnson issued an amnesty proclamation two months later, pardoning those who fought against the Union and restoring their property. The hundreds of applications (for claiming abandoned property) that were submitted by the formerly enslaved would largely go into the trash pile. In short, “Johnson did not intend to bring social revolution to the South.”

The nail in the coffin for the Freedmen –

In September 1865, Johnson ordered bureau-controlled property returned to its former owners once they had received presidential pardons, which by this time he was dispensing quite freely.

A few months prior (Summer 1865), the state militia was reactivated. The old (slave) patrol system tactics were reinstated (e.g., Freedmen moving about without their employer’s permission were arrested). Many of the patrollers wore “their Confederate uniforms” to add insult to injury. Federal authorities often petitioned for assistance to curb these overreaches, but the planters (and their associates) held firm. Those who supported the Confederate cause did everything to “preserve what they could of the old order while adjusting to the new.”

The apotheosis of the old order’s attempt at dialing back the clock was the enactment of the Black Codes (late 1865/early 1866). These Codes were designed to coerce/keep Freedmen working on plantations, while giving plantation owners full authority to control everything from their movement, political participation, and even their right to marry. The Black Codes were short-lived but foreshadowed what would later become Jim Crow laws. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 negated the enforcement of Black Codes.

The free labor system in the cane country married the ideals of free-labor ideology with plantation-based realities. The formerly enslaved responded to all of this by using their newfound leverage (i.e., choice) to “master the labor market.” Attempts to keep Freedmen working on their “home plantations” were among the more vicious efforts to curtail this leverage. As a result, some left for other opportunities (e.g., “wood trade”), especially if the wages were better.

1866 marked the first year that contract negotiations, previously adjudicated by the federal government, took place directly between the Freedmen and planters. An attempt to allow the “free labor market” to run its course organically. The Freedmen were not on board, as they detested the idea of full commitment to plantation owners they knew would shortchange them. One can say they’d had enough evidence to draw that conclusion pretty cleanly –

Freedmen’s unwillingness to contract in early 1866 also stemmed from their aversion to arrangements that they found would bind them to particular plantations for the year…hesitated to sign annual contracts, preferring to work on a monthly or weekly basis.

Unsurprisingly, the planters held the opposing view and strongly favored withholding 50% of wages until year-end. They felt it was the only way to “compel workers to fulfill their contracts.” To make matters worse, nature took this game by the horns to show man that they can be preoccupied with whatever they want; they are never in control. In 1866 and 1867, there were crop failures.

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Radical Reconstruction.

By early 1867, the new order’s course was about to take another unexpected turn. The break between Johnson and Congress over Reconstruction precipices passage of the Reconstruction Acts. By imposing military rule upon the former Confederate states and making black suffrage a requirement for their readmission to the Union, Radical Reconstruction irrevocably changed the dynamics of the postwar social order…further shifting the balance of power on plantations.

Just when you thought the stage was set, The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 entered the picture. The new laws outlined the process by which former Confederate states were readmitted to the Union. Military rule was imposed on the South, dividing it into 5 districts (Louisiana and Texas were part of the Fifth Military District). Black suffrage was now a reality for the South to contend with, and the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution granted citizenship to those who were formerly enslaved.

Freedmen made immediate leaps into grassroots political organizing over labor rights and anything else that was of concern. The centralized nature of sugar plantation work facilitated the early/quick mobilization of the politically oriented Freedmen. During the Summer to Fall of 1868, violence abounded as the planters sought to curtail this political engagement. The Freedmen’s desire for fair/equal treatment seemed preposterous to the Southerners.

“I look upon this flood of water as nothing compared to the political flood of fanaticism & anarchy, now sweeping over & desolating the land.” – William T. Palfrey

This “flood” represented a duality: a psychological (power-loss) burden and a hard reality pill, given that much of the cane country Parishes had Black majority populations. But this population imbalance was engineered by the planters. When they needed slave labor, they brought in as many bodies as possible. Those same bodies (and their offspring) now had political power. In other words –

Black majorities in several sugar parishes became powerful voting blocs, which translated into potential black dominance of both state and parish offices…By creating a black majority in the sugar region before the Civil War, planters had inadvertently laid the foundations for black political power after it.

These Black majorities formed Union Leagues and other political clubs that coalesced around a “collective conscience.” Plainly, however, the planters viewed this “recent elevation” as incredibly disruptive to controlling labor. The “ringleaders” of these Black political efforts were often excluded from employment (or worse). As you can imagine, Bureau agents adjudicated many of these conflicts, much to the chagrin of the Southerners. An example of the consequences that these Black majorities had on the 1868 State Constitution vote –

This began to unravel the ‘we need to stick together, so don’t hire another planter’s workers’ plan –

…an Iberville planter complained…of Bayou Teche planters trying to woo his workers while a neighbor headed for the Lafourche to hire labor.

This scheme was doomed to fail from the beginning. For people who previously toiled without pay, the concept of losing pay (by walking off the job) was a paltry threat.

Much to planters’ consternation, freedmen were beginning to master the principles of the labor market.

The planters and their allies would have to devise new methods. Or, more bleakly, remix the old way for their new environment.

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Intimidation & violence.

The planters were steadfast in their support of bulldozing, the “crusade of intimidation and violence” to prevent newly freed persons from exercising political power. With the November 1868 election on the horizon, planters and their allies reverted to old school methods. They made no efforts to hide their political motivations/intent to get 100% cooperation from labor –

A freedman in Terrebonne Parish complained that his overseer had ordered away all those who did not pledge to vote Democratic.

As you can imagine, some Freedmen voted Democrat out of fear and/or a desire for security. This was particularly true of men with families (i.e., security was the priority).

Planters and managers recognized that the best way to secure reliable workers was to hire men with families.

“…good reliable married men for laborers to locate here, who will stay here for years.” – Manager on David Week’s plantation x June 1877

Voting Democrat also afforded Freedmen, on some plantations, protection passes which enabled them to be rehired for the next crop season. When these low-scale intimidation tactics did not yield the desired results, the heat was turned up to its most violent proportions –

When intimidation failed, as it often did, planters and other white Louisianians resorted to stronger methods. It would be difficult to exaggerate the violence that wracked Louisiana during the fall presidential campaign. Such organized gangs as the Knights of the White Camellia—Louisiana’s version of the Ku Klux Klan—terrorized freedmen and white Republicans.

Leading up to the election, some sixty or so Freedmen were slain in the countryside surrounding New Orleans. This slaughter demonstrated that, without federal protection, the long-term viability of Freedmen’s attempts to protect their rights would be useless. Nonetheless, election day favored the Republican candidate and Civil War hero, Ulysses S. Grant, who won the presidency without Louisiana’s electoral votes.

But the hardly credible tally of 33,263 votes for Grant against 80,325 for Democrat Horatio Seymour, in a state with a black majority, confirmed bulldozing’s effectiveness…Republicans captured the presidency in 1868, but white terror carried the day in Louisiana.

All of these details are important. However, we must return to the source of this entire situation.

Doing bad.

It is not until 1894, 30-plus years after the start of the Civil War, that cane country returns to a similar level of breakout sugar production. Here are stats covering the decades prior to the 1890s, to give you a grasp of how steep the drop in economic productivity was –

As we can see, the rebound in production did not assuage the plantation owners because “any solace planters derived from improved production was partially nullified by a dramatic drop in sugar’s price. From its height of eighteen cents per pound in 1864, Louisiana sugar plummeted to about six cents by 1880.” More work, lower prices. Much of this was driven by sugar’s shift from being a “luxury item to dietary staple.”

• Louisiana's share of the domestic market in 1860: 27%

• By 1875: 8%

• Summary: By the mid-1870s, 90% of American sugar consumption was from imports.

• Louisiana’s share of the world market, given European beet sugar and Cuban competition, decreased to 2.9% by the 1880s.

• Silver lining: The federal government’s tariffs stepped in to prevent the Louisiana cane industry from falling apart.

Few planters…made money. Even the relatively successful John Burnside reported losses of more than $130,000 in 1869 alone. Burnside possessed resources to absorb this loss, but others were not so lucky. A visitor to St. Mary Parish the same year estimated that fewer than one in seizing antebellum estates had been in operation since the war. Plantations could be purchased cheaply…so long as a prospective buyer was willing to invest at least $100,000 before realizing a profit. Investment capital as a rare commodity in the postwar South…planters depended upon short-term loans—at interest rates of as much as 25 percent…

As a result, the makeup of Big Sugar (families) in cane country began to change, though some of the larger sugar families remained. If your memory serves you well, this is where we would insert Leon Godchaux into the picture –

…by 1874 Pugh was among the minority of antebellum elite planters still in business…Though no longer slaveholders, planters who persisted still dominated land-holding.

The new elite, moreover, derived from diverse origins: it included antebellum planters and their families who survived, native southerners who had not been planters before the war, and a small but conspicuous group of northerners who came south during and after the war.

Rodrigue points out the “new elite” helped to modernize the industry, in part because “they were not saddled with slavery’s cultural and ideological baggage.” They could operate within the new (to Southerners) paradigm without feeling interfered with. In other words –

“The new system required “proper direction, proper management, proper treatment, which many of the pro slavery idea planters do not understand how to apply.” – Samuel Cranwill x 1873

Determined not to be left behind, (old) Big Sugar got behind the technological change and inventions that helped to modernize the sugar mill’s function. In truth, they probably viewed these improvements as the best alternative to “bypass the apparently insolvable labor problem.”

1877: The Louisiana Sugar Planters Association (LSPA) was formed.

• Initially focused on lobbying to maintain tariffs against imported sugar (and to maintain federal subsidies for Louisiana’s product).

• Shifted to scientific research in partnership with the USDA, Tulane, LSU, Audubon Park Sugar School, etc.

At the same time, and there’s no doubt that one thing influenced the other, the adoption of central mills (with larger capacity for cane processing) emerged. From the 1870s onward, you see an uptick in White sugarcane families laboring in the fields to help fill out these large mills’ excess capacity. By the eve of the twentieth century, it was reasonable to conclude that productivity in the space was attributable mainly to technology and centralization, rather than to a greater emphasis on labor-intensive field operations (i.e., control of Black labor).

Even with that, output per worker also improved because of improvements at the mills –

The other improvement in technology – this is a callback – that was adopted at a wider scale was Norbert Rillieux’s methods via vacuum pan usage. The invention & techniques were available pre-war, but the urgency to adopt them was not, in part because the methods/hardware were too expensive.

“By the turn of the century, the sugar industry had undergone a revolutionary transformation. Not only had planters discarded centuries-old technology, but Big Sugar had been born.”

I’d say Big(ger) Sugar had been born, though I get that the central mill model produced consolidation at scale, so more of the spoils went to fewer planters.

Big(ger) Sugar –

If you thought that those of the old stripes were simply satisfied with the improving future prospects for sugar, given the advances outlined above, then you are in for a rude awakening. Black involvement in politics via Radical Reconstruction still perturbed “Louisiana’s white community.” During the 1870s, violence against “the Reconstruction state itself” would reach new heights. And that wouldn’t slow down for some time.

Note: there are a lot more details surrounding the “insolvable labor problem” that Rodrigue covers, namely, “jobbing,” what Freedmen did with their wages, “floating hands,” a burgeoning property-owning class of formerly enslaved people (albeit in “marginal areas,” on the “periphery), development of disunity and betrayal among the planters across Parishes regarding the wage system, bringing in outside labor (Dutch, Germans, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, etc.) via The Louisiana Immigration Company, and much more. Each of these requires an article in and of itself. And if I write it, it won’t be short. I will spare you this one time. But I must highlight two important callouts (quotes). The first callout will be revisited in another piece. The second is a testament to what we anticipate will happen when planters, grounded in hard economic ways of operating, had to choose between race and their wallets.

Attempts to use Chinese labor as a replacement for the freedmen (failed) –

Equally futile was an effort to replace freedmen with Chinese immigrants. During the early 1870s, John Burnside, Edward J. Gay, and others imported several hundred Chinese workers, either through independent labor recruiters or by sending their own agents to California and even to China. Believing that Chinese workers immigrants would be more controllable than freedmen, planters at first roundly praised them. Competition for their services intensified, however, until most planters became convinced that securing Chinese immigrants was more trouble than it was worth. Nor were the Chinese more amenable to working in a slavelike manner than had been freedmen, and they resisted planters’ efforts to lower wages and impose discipline. The eventually left the plantations for New Orleans or southern Louisiana towns. By 1873, planters’ dreams of replacing freedmen with Chinese workers also lay in shambles.”

Planters choosing rugged individualism and economic ascension over race solidarity –

A number of St. Mary planters met in October 1877 to establish wage rates for the following year and to end full payment. “It was unanimously resolved,” noted the reporter in attendance, “that the next year none should pay full wages monthly, but that one third should be reserved until the end of the year to make planters secure.” Yet this attempt at concerted action ended as futilely as had previous ones. By early 1878 some planters were reneging on their pledges. An editorial entitled “Honor Among Planters” bemoaned the fact that, despite planters’ promises not to pay full wages, “already we hear a repetition of the old story—violation of these pledges by avaricious and unscrupulous planters.” One planter’s unscrupulousness was another’s sound business practice.

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Violence & politics in the 1870s onward.

The White League was responsible for the Coushatta massacre in August [1874], in which five white Republicans were slain, and in the Battle of Liberty Place in September, it defeated Metropolitan police and state militia in a conflict at the foot of Canal Street in New Orleans, leaving thirty-two dead and forcing Kellogg to seek protection under the U.S. flag. Federal troops restored Kellogg to power, but clearly Republicans could not govern even New Orleans, their home base, without federal support. These incidents, however harrowing, merely punctuated an electoral season that was exceptionally violent by Louisiana standards.

However, “sugar parishes remained a Republican enclave until the Bourbon elite suppressed black political rights in the 1890s.”

Detour: fellow Kentucky whiskey lovers, “Bourbon” is a French word that ties back to the former ruling Kings of France (16th to 19th century). Those rulers were notorious for having “revived old laws intended to reassert royal authority and elite privilege at the expense of democratic principle.” The term was adopted in Louisiana to represent the most reactionary faction of the Democratic Party, though Bourbons were initially seen as anyone opposed to Reconstruction. If you were wondering why there are so many French words all over American things (e.g., Paris, Kentucky), it’s (in part) because they aided in America’s defeat of the British during the American Revolution.

Source for the above (dive deeper if interested): 64 Parishes

These Bourbons would go on an even more repressive crusade dubbed the “Redemption.” What were they bemoaning? An example: In 1872, the state legislator, sheriff, coroner, and full police jury of Ascension Parish were all Black. If we extrapolate majority-dynamic across the sugar regions, we can conclude that planters had no practical/legal means of “restricting the labor market and reestablishing control over their workers.”

But again, planters who were of the ‘wallet first’ variety tepidly supported the White League/Bourbons/radical factions because they understood all of the above was going to be disruptive to crop seasons.

“White Leagues are arousing an alarm for the general war of the races, which will cause the loss of the crops.” – A.F. Pugh

The 1876 presidential election, which Rutherford B Hayes (Republican) won, would signal the beginning of the end of Reconstruction –

Thus, Hayes assumed the presidency, the few hundred federal troops stationed in the South were ordered back to their barracks, and in Louisiana—whose gubernatorial contest was yet again disputed—Democrat Francis T. Nicholls was inaugurated, while Republican candidate Stephen B. Packard and his supporters were sacrificed on the national party’s altar of power.

The terror ensued. An unequivocal “use of force” rained down on Freedmen and anyone who remotely appeared to be in their allyship. Any form of resistance, protest, or demonstration of leverage was put down with violence. The author, in his Epilogue, touches on the “THE SUGAR WAR OF 1887,” otherwise known as the Thibodaux Massacre. This is another event that we will return to in another piece. But here’s some unfortunate foreshadowing that will give you a sense of how the rest of the decades in the 19^th century played out –

“[W]e have had a horrible three days….I am sick with the horror of it—but I know it had to be….I think this will settle the question of who is to rule the nigger or the White man? for the next 50 years. [B]ut it has been well done & I hope all trouble is ended. The negroes are as humble as pie today, very different from last week.” — Mary Pugh to Edward F. Pugh, November 25, 1887

…planters now enjoyed a decided advantage. This eventuality…became so with the tragic events of 1887.

Safe to say, Redemption completely did away with Black political leverage, and (re)legalized segregation/disenfranchisement –

The Thibodaux Massacre was thus an epilogue to the story of emancipation and a prologue to the saga of Jim Crow and the white lynch mob.

Advantage – planters.

Heady.

Just remember, “planters” is a hilariously ironic designation for people who did not do the planting

in all that you do, please, don’t ever stop reading.

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A post-script for the nerdier amongst us. If you’re curious about the historical processing of sugarcane into sugar –

1. At the sugar mill, sugarcane was placed on a conveyor belt that transported it to the mill, where it was fed into a set of rollers that crushed the cane and extracted the juice.

2. The juice was purified by boiling it in a series of kettles (three to five).

3. The impurities floated to the top and were taken off; the author notes that the sugar maker, usually a White man, but sometimes a free man of color, had to be really sharp in assessing when to pass the juice to the next kettle and not keep the kettles on for too long, implying that this person was overseeing the bulk of the process.

4. When it was determined that the impurities had been removed, granulation, or the “strike,” took place, a critical step in determining when the syrup had reached a sufficient consistency.

5. The sugar was poured into large shallow vats and stirred.

6. Crystals would eventually appear, and then more layers of syrup were poured onto the first.

7. When granulation was completed, the enslaved transferred the raw sugar into hogsheads, “from which molasses, a by-product drained.”

8. This was brown sugar, not white sugar, which the planters usually shipped to refiners in New Orleans, St. Louis, or northern cities for further processing.

A visual timeline of the step-by-step process –

The humans who labored pre- and post-slavery –

All of the above was for my own knowledge, but thank you (as always) for reading.

Happy 2026. Last night, I fell asleep on the couch while watching Eddie Murphy’s 1987 stand-up special, Raw. Shame on me because I think Netflix made 12/31/2025 the last time you can view it on the platform. That’s alright, I’ll get around to it at some point. All to say, no more falling asleep on the couch in 2026.

My second rendition of the Collecting series. This one will be much shorter, since the first piece dissected the reasons that we’re here for collecting, the decision on what to collect, and what I ultimately hope will manifest with the liquids I’m amassing. If you haven’t had a chance to read it —

Then, as now, I’m dedicating this one to the #paid gang.

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My last piece covered Richard Follett’s The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana’s Cane World, 1820–1860. His work analyzed Louisiana’s cane world & plantations right before the Civil War. It is only appropriate that we thread the historical needle by picking up where Follett left off.

Poetically, Charles P. Roland, the author of Louisiana Sugar Plantations During the Civil War, and Follett use the same map to showcase the major cane regions of the state –

However, a sharp eye notices that the authors edited the map’s date range to align with their respective scopes (i.e., 1820 – 1860 for Follett and 1861 – 1865 for Roland). In short, same map, different years. I wonder if Follett came across Roland’s work at all. He must have –

• Louisiana Sugar Plantations During the Civil War (1957)

• Follett’s work (2005).

A significant departure from Follett is Roland’s more affectionate tone toward the foregone Louisiana plantation society. As a product of his generation and era, he uses language that reflects this affection without requiring further interpretation. Personally, this is one of my favorite aspects of history: you gain a better understanding of time, place, and people from the verbiage. Alright, I’ll get on with it. Roland’s sentiments –

Cane planters lived full lives. They strove with a measure of success to build a graceful society on a foundation of sugar cane and Negro slavery…They were men of sound wit who tempered their lives with vigorous play, set the pace for the area in which they lived, and made the plantation ideal supreme.

A peek into Roland’s mind upfront, as it will be necessary for sensemaking.

John David Smith, a Professor of American History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, nudges us to contextualize the history (and author) in the time Roland wrote the book, which people generally find difficult to do because of the understandable shock value of people and circumstances pre-dating them by a material number of decades/centuries. From the foreword –

In contrast to Roland’s approach in the 1950s, scholars now take much greater heed of the perspective of those enslaved, view emancipation as “progress,” and write of the good that came from slavery’s demise. – Smith

Frankly, Roland was of a time when he probably would have responded to Smith with, “Nope, said what I said.”

Who knows. What I do know is that we need to talk a bit about the author.

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Charles Pierce Roland.

A son of the South: Roland was born on April 8, 1918, in Maury City, Tennessee.