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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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.

Just remember,

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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8 months 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.

Just remember,

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.

And with a 2025 population of 594 people (let’s assume it was similar 100+ years ago), the Roland name carries weight there –

Charles P. Roland, historian of the Civil War and the American South, was born in Maury City in 1918. His father, Clifford Paul Roland, was a schoolteacher in Maury City. Maury City is located at the intersection of State Route 88 and State Route 189, northwest of Jackson and southeast of Dyersburg. – the town’s official website

He died at the age of 104 on April 12, 2022. A long life.

There is a detailed dedication (“In Memoriam”) to Roland written on the AHA’s site that I will pull bits and pieces from –

• Undergrad completed at Vanderbilt University (a son of Tennessee through and through) in 1938.

• Combat officer in World War II (99^th Infantry Division); he received a Purple Heart and Bronze Star.

• Master’s completed in 1948 and PhD in 1951, both at Louisiana State University.

• Taught for 36 years: Tulane University (1952 – 70) and the University of Kentucky (1970 – 88).

• He’s received a ton of awards & distinctions for his professorship/research.

In closing –

Perhaps the most enduring quality of Roland’s impressive oeuvre is its breadth and depth. Few scholars have written as authoritatively about several American eras (two centuries in fact) and have offered as sweeping and incisive commentaries about past and contemporary history. Roland’s range as a scholar is remarkable; so too his graceful, powerful, and terse prose.

Roland will be remembered for his substantial corpus of scholarship on the Civil War and his native South. Years of study, reflection, and “real world” experience convinced him that history “is a vital sustaining force in society.” He found solace in the contradictions, paradoxes, and subtleties of the past. Roland believed, as he titled his final book in 2007, that History Teaches Us to Hope.

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Roland, thank you for the rum references.

Ironically, Roland’s work led me to Louisiana rum before anyone else’s. To be clear, I would not necessarily trust Roland’s depth of knowledge on Louisiana rum history; his references are apathetic at best and largely ring of stereotypes (e.g., the use of “crude” and “fiery” to describe rum is a historically easy place to go). All that aside, I appreciated the honest references to the liquid versus a complete overlook/sidestep, which is what I’ve found happens most in discussions of Louisiana cane spirit history. I am absolutely sure this was not Roland’s intent, but it served my purpose. Walk with me.

An example of economic alternatives plantation owners pursued once in the throes of the War –

Lacking a market for their sugar, planters racked their brains for ways to gain a profit on the blockaded produce. One Rapides Parish landowner had the ingenuity to dispose of his crop by converting it into rum. In March of 1863 he sold a large quantity of this homemade beverage for $17,000. Stored in Alexandria he had another 100 barrels of the fiery liquid, estimated to be worth $40,000.

Roland describing illicit production of rum –

Another sugar [producer] was disquieted upon finding that one of his Negroes was diverting sugar from what the planter felt was its true mission; the resourceful black had rigged a still on the plantation and was turning out rum.

Roland’s language aside, my brain immediately took me to two places: 1) Rigging together a still at that time, and for an enslaved person (in particular) would have been considered a highly technical/skilled trait; 2) Where are the ancestors of the “resourceful black,” I wonder if there’s ancestral knowledge of rum-making just sitting out there in Louisiana somewhere.

(and finally)

The author showcases an odd demonstration of what I’ll call “dancing amidst danger.” Despite the Civil War raging on, balls/dances between women and Confederate soldiers still carried on gaily –

The soldiers and ladies danced and romped in the parlor to the handle of an untuned piano. After hours of exaggerated hilarity they sat down to the resourceful hostess’ dinner of ham and roast turkey. Dessert consisted of cornmeal pound cake and eggnog, a beverage sharpened with a generous portion of “crude and fiery rum” made from plantation molasses. The girls did not appreciate this throat-burning delicacy, but the soldiers drank freely…According to one account, the plantation had never seen a merrier day. The party ended as abruptly as a bugle call, thrown into consternation by the appearance of an enemy gunboat on the river.

Though I will never agree with anyone who believes that a plantation society functioning on chattel slavery is a “graceful civilization,” I must acknowledge that it is Roland’s work that reassured me of Louisiana’s heritage with rum. I will continue to investigate further. Please send recommendations/people to speak to.

Allow me to return us to the book’s purpose: to understand how Louisiana’s plantation society fell apart. A glimpse –

War brought the Louisiana sugar industry to the brink of extinction. The closest estimates of the value of sugar property in 1861 ran to almost $200,000,000; four years later, with slaves freed, sugarhouses ruined or [severely] damaged, livestock confiscated, and land prices vastly depreciated, the industry was worth hardly more than one eighth of that figure.

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Setting the scene: Cane Country

A romantic view of Cane Country, Louisiana –

A favored and colorful part of the Old South was the Louisiana sugar country. This area was a labyrinthine river land of ample cane plantations interspersed with narrow sugar farms, of white-columned mansions contrasting with humble dwellings, of tall-chimneyed sugarhouses in juxtaposition with primitive mule-drawn cane mills, of Anglo-American planters among Creole proprietors, of Irish and “Cajun” laborers in the midst of a multitude of Negro slaves, and of affluent and graceful living in the presence of rural simplicity and back-breaking soil.

I have no idea why he put the folded bunny ears around “Cajun,” intriguing.

New Orleans was the main port for the sugar territories. Planters sold their wares at the market(s) there, and ocean vessels took on cargo for distribution to Atlantic coastal communities. NOLA had banks and merchants that provided money for the economy of the lower Mississippi Valley. Cane country planters flocked to the city to purchase Yankee-produced machinery and supplies and “to bid for Virginia and Carolina Negroes at the slave markets.”

South of Baton Rouge, the capital city, sugarcane was plentiful, despite a few cotton plantations along the riverbank. Roland notes that sugar was first granulated at a profitable scale in Louisiana in 1795; cane was introduced to Louisiana earlier in the century. Roland’s reference is to indicate when cane became of consequence to the state’s valuation. All to say, when Louisiana became a territory of the US in the early 19^th century, this sugarcane profile and production helped to satiate a growing (and large) domestic market for the produce.

Levees were erected to prevent the heavy flows of the Mississippi River from destroying cane country. A necessary engineering project for the inhabitants if they wanted to compete against West Indian sugar, which had been in the game long before Louisiana. The Creole and Anglo planters initially had a wedge, though I imagine the profit potentials of sugar forced their hands into mutualism.

The planter’s home, romantically pictured by Roland –

In approaching by steamboat a typical sugar plantation, on first saw “the house,” the master’s dwelling. It was an institution of the Southern scene glorified in literature and lore, and even today venerated in its dilapidation. Set well back from the levee, with lines softened by a column façade, the white structure dominated its surroundings and lent and impressive elegance to the countryside…it was and yet remains the highest symbol of the grandeur of the ante-bellum sugar civilization.

Behind the owner’s home was typically the “slave quarters.” The sugar house/mill (i.e., where the technically-inclined produced the white stuff) was usually constructed at a convenient point between where the cane was transported from the fields and where the hogsheads of product were brought to the pier to sail downriver. All of this was positioned in a way that aligns with the author’s assertion that the planter was the ‘Monarch of all he surveyed,’ a “seventeenth-century lord in his great hall.” What Follett would have dubbed the “fantasy” of “patriarchal sway.”

The planter’s wife had duties stereotypically associated with the Antebellum era: mother, hostess, and tutor to the household’s enslaved people. The hostess would have helped the planters throw sugarhouse parties/balls, the pinnacle of social life in the bayou. However, then as now, “New Orleans was the entertainment Mecca of lower Louisiana, and many sugar planters kept town houses in the city for the season of opera and balls.” Incredibly, Roland hints that (initially) the planters were unlikely to embrace religion and Christian values in that magnanimous way that is often historically portrayed. The sense of being Kings of their circumstance was potent –

In the lives of many cane proprietors [religion] was not a compelling force, for perhaps they were more nearly able to achieve a “heaven on earth” than was the general run of mankind.

Another ‘look at it from this perspective’ point that Roland makes that I found to be honest, for lack of a better word, is the assertion that most people played along with chattel slavery because they were of their time and not necessarily intelligent enough to think about an alternative. It’s probably the one theme that is true for the majority of humans at any given point in time. Alas, Roland notes that most enslavers also likely condemned the peculiar institution, “but felt that they were not responsible for it, could do nothing about it, and must make the best of it.” A stark contrast to historians who claim that many considered the institution to be good for all. My read is that both mindsets were pervasive at the time and probably fed each other. All told, chattel slavery was the fundamental fuel keeping the Old South’s engine going, that much we know.

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Plantation life and those who bore the brunt of it.

The conditions of life for those who endured on Louisiana plantations were so harsh that the state became an epithet for a doomed existence. So much so that those enslaved in the upper southern regions of the country were threatened with being sent to cane country. Ironically enough, those enslaved in Louisiana were threatened with being sent to Cuba. An ecosystem and industry, both economic and psychological.

To massage the larger-than-life image the planters had of themselves, they became the judge and executioner for all things in existence on the plantations. Everything from settling disputes among the enslaved to approving marriages and finalizing punishments. On beatings, it was not uncommon for a plantation owner to require his presence before an overseer used the whip. To be clear, wanton brutality was routine. However, Roland asserts that there was a supposed “gentlemanly manner” that punishments were to be meted out by.

All in all, regimentation was the utmost priority –

Slave organization has been compared with that of an army. The master was the commander, and the overseer his lieutenant. From the overseer the chain of command ran through first and second drivers, who performed the functions of sergeants, to the command hands—the private soldiers of the slave company. The plantation bell was to the Negroes what the bugle is to the troops. It was rung in the morning by the first driver as the quarter’s reveille; meals were announced by its rolling; and at night it sounded taps to send the laborers to their cabins.

Drivers were typically enslaved Black people who exercised (were given) disciplinary powers over others, which served to maintain a calculated amount of disarray. Enough to sometimes turn the attention away from the plantation owner. The overseer surveillance was so pervasive that they completed bed checks daily/nightly, and administered/approved passes for leaving and coming onto the plantation (applied to both “resident” and “nonresident Negroes”). Skilled laborers – Black and White – were also present on plantations (i.e., carpenters, masons, engineers, mechanics, etc.). I wonder if the “resourceful black” who began churning out rum was someone close to the hardware, so it was easy for them to distill the juice. As you can imagine, I won’t let this thought go.

Roland’s colorful language regarding the enslaved and their state on the plantation was crudely honest in asserting that, no matter the façade of pleasures they eked out, they were still in the lowest rung of the social ladder. His language would understandably be considered patronizing & dehumanizing –

Slaves enjoyed amusements consistent with their low place in the social scale. Sundays were usually days of rest, except in the grinding season, while on plantations where religion was encouraged, worship services offered an avenue and social expression…The year’s social high light for the slaves was a rousing sugar-house dinner and ball at the end of the grinding period. These diversions, scattered at intervals among periods of grueling toil, were water in the desert to the fun-loving Negroes and did much to buoy up their spirits.

To leave or to stay?

January 23, 1861 – the Louisiana legislature’s scheduled meeting date of the state convention to decide if they will secede and join the other pro-slavery states. You must all know how this story goes. If not, then here are some quotes –

“Well done Mobilians … well done Louisiana …” – A. Franklin Pugh, Louisiana planter

“All honor to the men, who had the courage to this first step, to prosperity which will be as permanent as earthly things may be.” – Pugh

Roland on Louisiana’s decision to secede –

Louisiana sugar cultivators led the movement that carried the state into secession. Thirteen of the twenty-three parishes of the cane land were represented in the secession convention in January by immediate secessionist delegates. Among this number were the great sugar parishes of Iberville, St. Mary, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Martin, and St. Charles.

Not all were so sure. You had “[c]ooperative secessionists” who sought a middle ground, likely out of fear of the unknown. Ultimately, however, those middle-grounders believed that the slaveholding states should withdraw together and form a Southern Union.

The one thing that all secessionists seemed to agree upon was that Lincoln’s ascension represented the elevation of a “Black Republican,” which, to me, feels like semi-coded language for what those in favor of plantation societies feared most: the manifestation of Haiti’s (Black Republic) outcome on their shores. More directly, however, the terminology in the southern psychology represented the Republican Party’s support for a pro-Black cause (note: Democrats and the secessionist South go hand-in-hand at this time). Put differently, progress forBlack people was considered detrimental for the South.

From the horse’s mouth, a Southern prayer –

“This Day is set a part by presedent Jefferson Davis for fasting and praying owing to the Deplorable condition ower Southern country is In My prayer Sincerely to God is that Every Black Republican in the Hole combined whorl Either man women o chile that is opposed to negro slavery as it existed in the Southern confederacy shall be trubled with pestilences & calamitys of all kinds & drag out the Balance of there existence in misry & degradation with Scarsely food & rayment enughf to keep sole & body to geather and O God I pray the to Direct a bullet or a bayonet to pirce the hart of every northern Soldier that invades southern Soil…My honest convicksion is that Every man women & chile that has gave aid to the abolishionist are fit subjects for Hell…Amen…” – [An] Overseer on Magnolia Plantation

The conviction of a people lay in one direction only: gather arms and fight to protect the peculiar institution. Substantial sums of money were raised for militias and cavalry units across various parishes (e.g., the Bayou Goula Guards). In the closing months of 1861 & early 1862, a decent number of sugar growers and their sons joined the Confederate army. Many of them presumably saw little action, as Louisiana was far from the main battle zones in Virginia and Kentucky.

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But what’s going on back on the plantations?

→ 1860: anxiety among the planters skyrocketed as “political excitement heightened”; there was a steep drop in land values.

The sugarcane industry operated on borrowed funds, which largely came from the capital markets – bankers, merchants, and financiers – of New Orleans.

→ 1861: talks of secession and war did not affect the 1861 acreage/production, as we know this was a banner year for Louisiana cane, mainly because the cane was in the ground before the fighting began. In total, 459,410 hogsheads of sugar were produced, marking the highest output up to that point; the greatest in the history of the industry up to that point.

Notably, many plantation owners behaved as usual because they fundamentally believed in the South’s ability to win the War. Slowly but surely, the pendulum swung in the other direction once the Union blockade was in place. Shipments from the sugar parishes to the North ground to a halt. The Federal Navy soon took control of the Gulf of Mexico, tightening any movement and trade potential around the Mississippi River. Visuals for it to make a bit more sense –

Rail could have served as an alternative, but the Confederate rail system was at capacity (troops and supplies were the priority). As the plantation owners became more fearful of the inevitable, cane operations took a further hit as many overseers were sent off to war (shortage of enforcers). A necessary evil in the planters’ eyes, I suppose.

Contributions to the war effort, in some capacity, seemed inevitable. Planters probably began to believe that the war’s consequences would fall on their doorsteps. You would assume that the War was their sole focus. In fact, it was not: they were desperately holding on to their way of life, too. In other words, they remained committed to enforcing control & surveillance over the enslaved during the conflict. I suppose that fighting the war and maintaining the status quo were part of the same goal they set out to defend. The paranoia was so palpable that the Louisiana soldiers implemented internal punishments for anyone who did not enforce their purported racial dominance. For instance, “in 1862 [, they] passed an act subjecting to a fine of ten dollars or twenty-four hours’ imprisonment any eligible citizen who failed to take his assigned place on patrol.” But, as Roland notes, the anxiety plantation owners felt may have been unfounded (at least initially), since the Union war effort primarily targeted New Orleans, the state’s economic engine. In 1861 to early 1862 –

Distant war changed but did not crush the rich social life of the bayou land.

Geographically speaking –

Louisiana felt secure from invasion of land, for she was located behind a tier of states that spread from Virginia to Arkansas…These border states absorbed the thrusts of the Union army for many months, sheltering the lower South from assault.

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Violent disruption of the status quo.

“As there is great scarcity of meat in the country, every planter I believe is trying to get a good supply of molasses.” – Letter from a Bayou Lafourche plantation owner to another plantation owner, October 1861

…in desperation they turned to molasses as a substitute…consumption of this by-product vastly increased throughout the South during 1862.

In April 1862, New Orleans fell, doing away with the notion that the war would be short and in the South’s favor. Sugar planters made last-ditch (covert) efforts to move and sell their goods. Some fled with the people they considered their property. Texas became a popular destination for those escaping their sugar plantations. Those fleeing appear to be a minority since the Union army cut off major transportation arteries. As you can imagine, especially for those who remained, the invasion by the Yankees was not well received.

“We are no welcome tourists, at least not to the white inhabitants…But to the negroes we evidently appear as friends and redeemers.” – A Union soldier

Again, Roland makes clear that he believes what was taking place was “the destruction of a graceful civilization.” He offers conciliation by reminding us that Confederate soldiers also erred and took advantage when the opportunity presented itself. However, I would assume that Roland believed these were minor misdeeds relative to what the “Negroes” and Yankees did.

Union pillaging –

Federal troops stripped Louisiana plantations of an untold amount of property by foraging and looting.

Plantation furniture and fixtures were handsome booty to Northern men and officers alike. In September of 1862 all of the silver was stolen from Bradish Johnson’s plantation on the Mississippi below New Orleans.

Both –

…elegant mansions abandoned by owners and pillaged by Negroes and men of both armies.

Confederate pillaging (friendly fire, if you will) –

“The brigade of Genl. Alfred (Mouton) is still encamped on my plantation, devastating my property; robbing & plundering me & my negro cabins…” – William T. Palfrey

“Our troops have stripped me, by robbery, of nearly every resource for living from day to day, & what is in reserve for me from the common enemy, is yet to be ascertained. [From] a condition of ease comfort and abundance, I am suddenly reduced to one of hardship, want & privation.” – Palfrey

The author reports that “poor whites” flooded plantations, taking what they never had access to. In the Spring of 1863, a Bayou Teche planter found that his house “had been broken up & robed by the…rogues who [had] long infested this neighborhood—and everything taken off…which could be moved.”

The Union soldiers carried on with their supposed “noble crusade to stamp out human bondage.” Acts of Congress – August 3, 1861, and July 12, 1862 – supported the soldiers’ efforts by legalizing “confiscation of property employed in aid of the rebellion.” Union General (Butler) manned the vehicle behind these Acts. Everything was taken: mules, racehorses, guns, food, you name it. Losses in equipment, as calculated by an “eminent contemporary student of the sugar industry,” were estimated at $70 million.

War left the cane country stricken, for the “winds of destruction” had blown from friend and foe alike.

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Union control and the fallout of the plantation’s belly.

General Butler’s sequestration order of November 9, 1962, permitted landowners who were peaceful and who took the oath of allegiance to the United States, to remain and work their plantations.

Undoubtedly, some planters were genuine Unionists, while others wore the mask to protect their assets. The catch-22 to the sequestration order was that it effectively allowed sugarcane plantation slavery to continue as-is. Or as Roland puts it, oath-taking ended up being an “invaluable service in keeping the Negroes reasonably well in line on the plantations.”

It seems that most planters were too incensed to recognize this paradigm, as the presence of the Federals was already too much to bear. It disrupted their lifestyle and the world they believed would endure in perpetuity, notwithstanding their general allegiance to state and region. Practically, all things – disputes, arrangements, etc. – were now to be approved by Union provost Marshals, which only further aggravated a group who were previously at the top of the socio-economic chain.

Even though some plantations remained in operation, many were abandoned. Contrary to popular belief, many of the enslaved, knowing no other life for centuries, willingly remained loyal to their plantation owners. Let’s deal, however, with the masses that fled –

During the summer of 1862 the Negroes of parishes below New Orleans grew increasingly restive. Owners were unable to maintain discipline among workers because of the nearness of protecting Federal troops—an advantage not lost on the blacks. Large gangs of plantation Negroes wandered almost at will into New Orleans and the Union army camps, seeking freedom, excitement, and escape from toil.

Roland labeled this mass exodus a “dark tidal wave” sweeping over New Orleans. Those who deserted the farms often set up camps (“shanty villages”) in and around Union army posts. It wasn’t all pretty once the enslaved were across Union lines. Many White Northerners held deep-seated beliefs that, irrespective of the War, Black people were still at the bottom of the social caste. As such, they interacted with them in this way –

…penniless wanderers depended upon Federal soldiers for food. Invading troops often looked to the fugitives for entertainment, and the result was a debauch of the blacks. The availability and complaisance of slave women to Northern soldiers brought on a frolic of miscegenation.

The notion that the “[p]lanters” were “disgust[ed] at the behavior of invading stalwarts with their laborers” is a bit one-sided and narrowly conveyed, given that droit de seigneu was fundamentally part and parcel of Louisiana plantation society. As noted in the Follet piece –

“The young masters were criminally intimate with the negro girls; it was their custom…practice of copulation was so frequent…” — J.B. (Jean Baptiste) Roudanez

Nonetheless, without hands to work the plantations, cane farms inevitably fell apart. In addition to seed cane shortages, climate catastrophes, of which Louisiana was no stranger to (then and now), and disease ran amok. Levees burst open (lacking the forced and free labor to fortify them as was done in the past), whooping cough, malaria, & typhoid fever decimated certain areas. Some threw an economic hail mary by trying their hand at cotton cultivation. This turn in economic hand did not bear fruit, as the climate of lower Louisiana was not conducive to cotton growth (hence the historical focus on sugar). But desperate times, right?

This dance ended when desperation led those with cold economic minds to turn to available funds, irrespective of their source. With New Orleans’ capital on hold, Louisiana plantation looked to Northerners who were hoping to “find quick fortune in the cane fields.” Which seemed much more viable with land/asset prices at rock bottom levels.

Leading plantations and forming partnerships, frequently with Northerners, lightened the onerous burdens of wartime planting.

In fact, many Louisiana fortunes were amassed by Northern companies and transplants after the Civil War. And since we’re on the topic, let’s understand what a post-slave Louisiana society looked like. Wage laborers, or what Roland called “Indolent Negroes,” were the new reality in a society and culture entirely unfamiliar with that structure.

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Freedom?

The supreme social and economic result of war in the cane country was the freeing of the area’s 139,000 Negro slaves, an action that transformed a great mass of black humanity from chattels into citizens.

“Freeing” should be interpreted loosely. General Butler, now responsible for thousands of enslaved people fleeing across his lines, had to figure out what to do with them. Butler did not advise “declar[ing] the blacks free,” though he could not “re-enslave them.” Instead, he concocted a plan “to hire as many as possible to planters who remained on their estates.” One. He also employed many of the enslaved as “government agents and lessees who operated abandoned plantations,” among other roles. Two. Wage levels were established for workers who worked 10 hours per day for 26 days per month. Hardly imaginable by today’s standards. A look at what was to be provided by those now employing wage laborers –

The new wage scale provided that mechanics, sugar makers, and drivers receive three dollars a month, male field hands two dollars, and female field hands, house servants, and nurses one dollar. In addition to these wages, sugar producers were to furnish food, lodging, and medical care for the workers, and support for the dependents. If the cane growers and laborers agreed, one twentieth of the profit from the year’s crop could be paid to the hands in lieu of monthly wages. Two great differences between this system and slavery were that the Negroes could now contract to work for planters of their choice, and discipline was administered by Federal provost marshals rather than by owners.

The new wage workers held a bargaining chip previously unthinkable: they could choose who to work for. As a result, planters cautioned overseers against violent discipline (and harsh language) out of fear that the new profile workers would desert immediately.

Needless to say, hysteria among plantation owners remained high because they could not maintain strict cooperation and discipline in this new environment. Sugar production continued to fall, even with the latest wage dynamic, which only further infuriated them. Southerners pleading to federal authorities to force Blacks to work became a common occurrence.

“The wish of the negro is now the white man’s law.” A man had as well be in [purgatory] as attempt to work a sugar plantation, under existing circumstances.” – William J. Minor, plantation owner

Formalized freedom was on the horizon, which would only further put a rift in whatever new plans the plantation owners were formulating. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued “his” Emancipation Proclamation, setting free the enslaved in rebellious states. Notably, Lincoln “exempted from this action various parts of the South already under Federal control, including thirteen of the lower sugar parishes.” What does this mean?

The Proclamation freed zero people in “loyal Louisiana—that is, occupied Louisiana—and Lincoln had no power actually to set free anyone in Confederate Louisiana.” Roland had very specific feelings about the circumstance, labeling those who wanted to remain enslaved “intelligent” and possessing “insight to remain docile.” In his words –

When asked why they did not take this opportunity to go free, an intelligent slave replied: “I see no use of us going and getting ourselves into trouble. It so be it we are to get free, we get it anyhow…. we think it betterer to stay home on the plantation, and get our food and our clothes…But, if we run away, and go to New Orleans, like dem crazy niggers, where is we?” This Negro possessed the insight to remain docile and continue being provided with the necessities of life while the whites decimated themselves in a contest to decide his future.

The confusion about ‘free or not’ ended when Louisiana’s Constitutional Convention declared all to be free in the state later that year (September 1863). Sugar production would take considerable time to recover as the state adjusted to its new normal. The 1864—1865 crop yielded a paltry 10,000 hogsheads of sugar (reminder that 1861 yielded 459,410), which Roland squarely blames on “the inefficiencies of free Negro labor in its trial stage.” Or, more crassly –

For a people fresh out of bondage to spend a season in the wilderness of irresponsibility and unrest was not without precedent, even in the Old Testament. Nor could the unschooled and inexperienced blacks know that freedom meant freedom to work, not freedom from work.

Louisiana plantation owners were “[b]red in this conviction” that slave labor was the only way to obtain maximum value from their farms. The potential in the “new order” would take some time to sink in. But sink in, it eventually did.

As Roland aptly notes, there was still a fixed caste system in place that both Northerners and Southerners could agree on, even if the schema appeared modified from place to place –

Bitterness over defeat and military occupation robbed cultivators of the insight to perceive that Union officials in large measure shared their own views and role of the Negro, which were that at least for the present he should remain a laborer and not become a landowner.

Freedom in name only, not in practice.

Where do we go from here?

By 1865, there were less than 200 sugar plantations (out of 1,291) still in operation. Those who remained likely fell in the “nominal Unionists” or “pseudo-Unionists” buckets. In other words, dedication to their economic “self-interest” & “[s]elf-preservation” was the utmost priority. It didn’t matter that William J. Minor’s sons were in the Confederate Army. He “reverted to Unionism” once he saw the Yankee tidal wave coming his way.

“I foresaw (or thought I did) the terrible woes that would result from. it & opposed it most strenuously.” – William J. Minor

Of those 200 remaining, many probably did whatever they absolutely could to satisfy the Union side. To make clear that they were oath-takers –

Plantations belonging to Unionists frequently were the setting for dances and parties attended by Federal officers.

Unsurprisingly, the author is steadfast in his belief that “Old Abe” [Lincoln] robbed White Louisianians of their respectable/admirable way of life –

War blighted the colorful social life of many families in the sugar land. Plantation daughters were lonely after planters’ sons marched away to the armies, while wartime shortages greatly reduced the sumptuousness of balls and dinners. Casualty lists from the fighting front shattered many homes and brushed away all thoughts of gaiety.

But Roland also concluded that all was not lost. Gradually, life reverted to a pseudo-pre-Antebellum scenario in which the majority of laborers in the cane fields were Black. The incorporation of wage labor probably satisfied the North’s desire for optics more than substance. Or, as Charles Nordhoff (Northerner who traveled to the South) put it in 1875 –

“Here was a clear indication of a meeting of Southern and Northern minds as to the role of the Negro in the New South.”

Most labor was now contracted monthly, and many laborers continued to live in the planters’ cabins, which were effectively postwar slave quarters. Sharecropping did not become as popular in Louisiana as it was in the cotton South because sugar production (machinery in particular) was much more expensive, leaving less economic room for negotiation beyond the new reality.

Foreclosures of sugarcane lands were rampant, so many old faces of the Parishes went out of business. These failures are what invited many of the merchants, bankers, and speculators from the North. But as we saw with Leon Godchaux, some in the South were also able to take advantage of low asset & land prices. In short, the speculators won in the long run –

One student of the post-war Louisiana agricultural pattern estimates that after 1870 at least half of the planters were either of Northern birth or were backed by Northern money.

Being a son of the South, I can’t imagine that Roland was pleased with another Northern “invasion,” this time in the form of speculative/aggressive capital. What we know for sure is that the old way of life was legally no more. What was to come? Let Roland tell it –

Ultimately the cane industry regained its economic strength, but the soul was gone from the old sugar civilization. Great numbers of plantations after the war belonged to Northern entrepreneurs and to banks and corporations…while emancipation of the slaves reduced the sugar growers’ old sense of patriarchal omnipotence.

Today three landmarks of the ante-bellum sugar plantations remain: the broad, canal-gridded cane fields; occasional sugarhouses, infinitely more elaborate than of old; and the great, proud mansions—ghosts along the waters.

I finished reading this book on June 20, 2025. Approximately one month earlier, the Nottoway Plantation, “billed as the largest antebellum home still standing in the American South,” burned to the ground (source). The “proud mansion” was no more. I will leave you with that information for you to do your own musing, which I hope is a robust exercise now that you have deep historical context.

I am very happy that I read this book. Beyond all the learnings I outlined – you know where I’m going – the one specific to my core interest (unbeknownst to Roland, I’m sure) was that rum and Louisiana share a deep heritage. I knew this deep in my soul (based on common sense and historical dots connecting)! Even if mentioned in offhand ways, the aha moment far surpassed anything else. I hope you walk away from this piece a bit more informed.

Happy (almost) New Year’s. Have a fantastic 2026.

Just remember,

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

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.

First of many rum rotations. Why not, right?

Ten to One x Oloroso Sherry Cask Select

I’ve highlighted the company in a previous post (in decent length). As a result, I won’t go into much beyond the liquid this go round.

So, TTO has a Dark Rum, which is a blend of —

• 8-year-old Bajan (column still)

• Dominican (column still)

• Trinidadian (column still)

• and Jamaican (pot still)

Never had the Dark Rum, only the Five Origin Select (the fifth island in the blend is Guyana). They’ve taken the Dark and finished it in Oloroso Sherry (Spanish fortified wine) casks for 8 months. The Oloroso Sherry Cask Select was previously a Costco-only allocated rum, but it now has wider distribution. Funny enough, the day I cracked this bottle open was the same day I tried a small swig of Sherry for the first time. I highly recommend tasting the base liquid—Sherry, in this case—to fully appreciate the marriage that occurs when rums are finished in other spirit/wine casks. Sherry is good. Port is still winning for me in the fortified wine category, though. What I can say is: I understand why people, across spirit categories, are fans of Sherry finished (or matured) juice.

There’s a richness to this Ten to One product from smell to taste. Even at 43% ABV, it packs depth: there’s a dark richness to the liquid all around. Baking spices and cinnamon balance the fortified wine finish. It gives me the feeling of oil on water; all the flavors float, and never really sink.

It’s incredibly structured. Doesn’t leave you wanting at any point in the drinking experience. Dark chocolate and some bitter cherries would pair incredibly well with this rum. It’s manageable given the ABV, though it will provide a fair surprise and challenge to the palate. Certainly so for the uninitiated.

This rum feels like taking molasses, drizzling some Sherry on it, and then enjoying the brown gooey stuff. Big rum hug to the chest, but it won’t kill you. All around, great job with this expression, Ten to One. I am still enjoying it.

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Alambique Serrano x Cañada.

Aguardiente de Oaxaca. A traditional style of spirit production (sugarcane, in this case) that is unique to this part of Mexico, though you will find Aguardiente (in Portugal, aguardente) histories/beverages across Spanish-speaking countries. Before we jump into the liquid, what I absolutely love about this rum, the one thing that I usually place above others in judging the character of a spirit is: sense of place.

…far off the grid in the town of Santa Maria Tlalixtac, Oaxaca. There they plant, harvest, and distill 100% organic java sugarcane from altitudes as high as 4,000 feet above sea level.

The makers of Cañada practice traditionally organic agriculture, leading to healthy and robust cane plants while preserving the integrity of their farmland.

Far from typical, the Krassel family have engineered a variety of techniques and tools to make Cañada on the steep hillsides of Santa Maria Tlalixtac.

Highly recommend checking out the company’s website for a deep dive into their history, production methods, agriculture, and general ethos.

→ 100% sugarcane juice

→ 53.8% ABV

Like most cane juice rums, this rum has a beautiful, grassy aroma. And the taste is incredibly balanced. It’s excellent. A lot of Mexican rums come roaring at you (in the flavor department), which is a great thing, to be clear. Cañada, even at 53.8%, has a dual delicateness and robustness. Pounds of flavor that still pack complexity. This Krassel family expression is incredibly intentional. They have other juice, like the Cartier 30, which comes in at a whopping 70.3% ABV (monster punch), and is absolutely a joy. Every sip I’ve had of the Cañada, I think the same thing — “Oh, this is great.”

Unripe apple tastes linger on the tongue, with that core grassiness that comes from cane juice rums. But more than anything else, back to the sense of place, there’s a distinct smokiness that squares this as a Mexican beverage. I wonder if the Krassel family’s rum-making traditions are similar to those of Mexico’s Mezcaleros (Mezcal producers). The aroma and the taste have that distinctive agave-juice smoke (to me).

The back of the bottle is precisely for “rum nerds.”

• Type of cane: 100% Java

• Elevation (how high up the sugarcane is cultivated): 760m — 1180m

• Processing method: crushed mechanically on site (i.e., farm-to-table, or cane-to-glass)

• Fermentation & yeast: 7-10 days (lengthy, let it cook) & wild yeast, native to the environment

• Distillation equipment: the Krassel still, built by the head honcho patriarch way back when

• Distillers: Axel & William Krassel

• Batch: CB11-22

I know that when people think Mexico, they don’t often think rum. Understandable. But there’s a serious legacy of cane spirit production in the country. Note: most of the Americas were introduced to cane first by the Portuguese and Spanish. If a country was a former colony of either, you can make a good guess that the place has a sugarcane spirit history (to some extent).

I recently purchased this book and am excited to explore the “Bittersweet History” of Mexico and rum —

Well done, Krassel clan. This rum from up in the clouds is a beauty.

Rumcast x Journey #1(s).

Speaking of “rum nerds,” there is a podcast collective called “The Rumcast.” And they have (what I imagine is) the most popular podcast/community on the beverage. John and Will love rum so much that they would not settle for just “talking to the people who shape it.” They also desired to have expressions that represented their years of drinking, loving, and creating a community for other rum lovers —

On January 27, 2025, we tasted our way through the warehouse at the legendary Main Rum Company with one goal: select a single cask that’s not only evocative of the rum’s origin, but also of Main Rum’s unique aging environment and cask management skills. Instead of one cask, we walked away with two. When you taste them, we don’t think you’ll hold it against us. — Rumcast Website

I am glad that they walked away with two. Let’s discuss them. Note: On the site, they do as true “rum nerds” would: tell you EVERYTHING about the beverage’s composition/journey/production/etc. Instead of regurgitating, I’ll copy and paste the details so that we can focus squarely on taste. They also walk you through the entire “Journey” via a couple of episodes. Jump in!

Cask #1: Guyana VSG

First off, them boys have been around the (rum) block, so I trusted that they would pick some good juice. Though the tropical-continental dynamic of the rum muddies the sense of place for me a bit, one quality that keeps it a bit sticky is the use of the “Versailles single wooden pot still.” Note: All Guyana rum comes from these folks. Those wooden pot-still Demeraras have a unique, almost molasses-infused, earthy taste. The heavy char ex-rum cask is new for me, but I love the marriage. LAY ON THE RUM THICK!

The aroma continues with a heavy smell of molasses, which I assume is helped along by the ex-rum cask (probably had molasses juice in it). Has a buttery popcorn and caramel note. The taste is cherry-vanilla reminiscent, and the finish is somewhat lengthy. The taste remains on the tongue long after you swallow the liquid. Good job with this pick, gents.

Cask #2: Mauritius MLM0

First off, Mauritius —

An Indian Ocean island off the southeastern coast of the African continent. The distillery that produced the liquid is Distillerie De Labourdonnais (can’t get their site to work, so I don’t want to link to a faulty URL). Been around since the late 18th century, though their rum production began in earnest in the early 2000s.

Now, I wanted to like Guyana more. I wanted to maintain my Caribbean solidarity. But this liquid is marvelous. Young cane juice, just slightly below what VSOPs are typically aged at (I’ll round up and give them the 6 years). For me, this taste is just incredibly new, which is why I think I’m drawn to it. Rum in “Ex-English malt whisky cask…that previously had red wine” is a medley of flavors that sing when they marry.

The aroma is light, delicate, and bright, what you would expect if a cane juice touches a malt whisky. The rum almost has a slight wine aroma, reminiscent of a Moscatel. It’s flowery. Just pleasant.

The flavors dance on the palate. Spicy. Peppery. Flowery. Nice mix of pepper and brightness. I need another bottle. Great job, even if the purist in me is saying screaming “BUT WHAT IS THE DISTILLATE SAYING, SCREW THE CASK!”

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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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I will start by placing the bad news upfront (note: bad, only to me). There is no mention of rum in this book. However, I’ve chosen to take the purist approach. Which is to say that if we want to get to the beverage, we must go on the agricultural rite of passage: explore the hell out of the raw material (sugarcane) that produces rum. I remain unconvinced that any land where cane was crushed in significant proportion does not also have a consequential cane spirit/rum history; We’ll have to continue digging, that’s all.

With The Sugar Masters, we’ll be going on a 40-year journey (1820 – 1860, more or less), covering a very specific paradigm – the master-enslaved relationship in Antebellum cane country, Louisiana. That European, feudalistic know-how that took on its own horns when it developed on New World soil, though one can argue that the European flair was stickier in Louisiana, given the French influence (reminder: Louisiana Purchase was in 1803). Follet dubbed the slavemaster’s modus operandi as being laced with “[p]atriarchal sway.” Tie that in with ruthless capitalistic ambitions, and you had a plantation system that was “manipulative” and “wholly oppressive.” All under the “semicapitalist” paternalism (i.e., hybrid culture) of the “Old South.”

In most economic histories of the agricultural variety, we see that being king of the dollar bill, and what comes with it — status, power, more dollars — usually supercedes moral, ethical, and humanitarian considerations. Follet points out that the dollar chasers were in a deep psychosis that manifested in their unrelenting actualization of the reality they desired.

In the author’s words –

This study examines the planters’ “turn of mind” in Louisiana’s antebellum sugar country. Shrewdly capitalist in their business affairs, the sugar masters defended slavery as an organic institution, and idealized hierarchy in which the slaveholders stood at the apex of society. The fantasy, however, did not preclude them from viewing their slaves as proficient in capable sugar workers who could be readily exploited. As aggressive promoters of the most industrialized sector of southern agriculture, the sugar [m]asters found a few discrepancies between the personae as slaveholders and as thoroughly modern businessman who transformed the swampy landscape of the lower Mississippi Valley into a rich and productive plantation belt.

The transformation Follett describes is labor-management practices that mirror contemporary business operations. In cane country, you had factory-like plantations with labor bifurcated by skill set. If you’ve read any of my pieces on sugarcane plantations in the Caribbean, then it will come as no surprise that the labor organization and profile of the operations were similar (e.g., gangs) in Louisiana as they were in the West Indies. These things are best understood as global industries vs. regional phenomena. In other words, Louisiana plantation owners would have looked to people and places that had already gotten the slave-cane model right and then molded it to fit Louisiana. Understanding what happened in Jamaica, Barbados, Cuba, Haiti, Martinique, etc., would have been par for the course for the plantocracy –

…Louisiana’s sugar country evolved as a hybrid region that combined aspects of Caribbean and American slavery. The plantation elite drew upon the slaveholding culture of the American South and northern business practices, and it matched the cold-blooded exploitation of the West Indian sugar lords.

Before we dive into the heavy details, it’s worth opening your visual imagination with a (qualitative) painting of the work performed by the enslaved.’s needs–

In the spring and early summer, slaves hoed and chopped away the weeds that grew among the sprouting canes. By mid-June or early July, the cane shoots were robust enough to survive without constant attention. During this lay-by, when canes required no cultivation, slaves turned to a myriad of maintenance tasks—the cultivation of corn, the collection of wood, and the ever-constant maintenance of the levees—which kept the destructive power of the Mississippi and its tributaries in check.

→ Early autumn, harvest preparations are completed before the grinding season

→ [THE MOST IMPORTANT PERIOD] Grinding season, mid-to-late October through January. This season is when the cane is cut, the juice is extracted, and the factory process at the mill converts the juice into sugar.

The seasonal nature of sugar production imposed a forbidding regime on the slaves. It impelled speed through the entire production process and placed a premium on discipline, organization, and labor stability during the grinding season. The exigencies of cane farming obliged planters to mechanize…

Sugarcane and Mother Nature, the latter of which is incredibly relevant for Louisiana’s cane survival prospects, continue to prove that the crop is the dictator of all things. If you search for details on what the grinding season looks like today, it will essentially be the same (timeframe, methods, etc.), save for the more technologically advanced methods of reaching the sugar finish line.

Let us begin with one of the New World’s last (if not the last) sugarcane colonies, by way of the relationship between the enslaved and the enslaver. But before we do so, the author.

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Richard Follett.

First and foremost, Follett is a damn good researcher. That, or he’s incredibly adept at finding great researchers to assist him. Maybe all the above. Regardless, The Sugar Masters is a testament to what outstanding research can achieve.

What immediately stands out with Richy F is that he’s not American. Slow down, give big Rich a chance. He is a UK-er through and through, brought up primarily in Bangor, Wales, and Bristol, England. His bio on the University of Exeter website notes that he had “spells in the United States,” which I then had to figure out just exactly what that meant.

To LinkedIn we go:

• He started his formal academic journey at Swansea University (Wales), where he focused on History and American Studies.

• In the middle of that, he went to the University of Indiana (Urbana-Champaign). My guess is this was a study abroad where he got the field work in (gotta see the place you’re studying after all).

• University of London for a master’s degree (American History).

• Fulbright Scholar/PhD completed at Louisiana State University (American History) in 1997. BINGO!

An overview of all things post-PhD –

From 1997-1999, Follett was on the faculty at the National University of Ireland, Galway before joining the University of Sussex where he taught between 1999 and 2022. Richard was appointed to a Professorial Chair in 2011. – U of Exeter

Richard Follett is Vice President and Deputy Vice Chancellor (Global) at the University of Exeter. He is Professor of American History and a specialist on the history of slavery and emancipation in the United States. Richard enjoys a strong international reputation for his scholarship and public engagement work. He is a multi-award winning scholar and an elected fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistSoc). – U of Exeter

Alright, let’s get into Follett’s work.

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Who in the world are (were) sugar masters?

In 1860, the productive thrust of the Louisiana sugar industry lay in the hands of William Weeks, John Hampden Randolph, and approximately five hundred elite sugar masters who controlled over two-thirds of the slaves and available acreage in Louisiana’s cane world. Although these planters represented less than 13 percent of the slaveholders in the sugar parishes, they produced three-quarters of the region’s cane yield.

In the history of all that is capitalism, it seems generally true that a small portion tends to control the lion’s share. Let’s focus on one of the names above: Weeks. David Weeks acquired Grand Côte Plantation in 1814. By 1850, David was a sugar magnate, and his son, William F. Weeks, was right by his side. That year, their plantation yielded almost 400 hogsheads of sugar, produced by 200 enslaved people across 2,000 acres of land. Their operation was known to have a “superior” sugar mill. By 1858, the Weeks’ operation yielded 711 hogsheads.

What spurred this near-80% growth, in part, was the scale of “industrial transformation that the planters orchestrated throughout south Louisiana.” Everything from the implementation of new technology, such as Norbert Rillieux’s multiple-effect vacuum pan to better heat/create higher grades of sugar, and the implementation of steam power in mills, to rigid attention to plantation management and organization of labor. To keep us honest, these rapid transformations were the practice of the economically well-off. Less affluent planters made do with lower-scale/rudimentary technology, if not outright dependence on manual labor. Understandably, there was an unwillingness to gamble based on tomorrow’s technology –

…almost 90 percent of planters continued to produce sugar in open kettles.

The plantocracy received much praise, noting that, despite climatic limitations on cultivation in south Louisiana, the latest technology was procured, and the newest science was practiced. In short, they were forward-thinking when many remained complacent. In truth, wealth afforded them the room to look ahead.

Publications such as the Louisiana Gazette published rosy economic portrayals of the profit potential associated with sugar operations to attract more planter aspirants to the region. To me, this was ripping a page out of the British playbook: early colonial publications/advertisements circulated to encourage aspirants to flock to the New World colonies, set up sugar plantation operations, and be part of that era’s gold (sugar) rush. All to say, the advertising worked –

…Anglo-Americans flocked to the sugar belt to cash in on Louisiana’s apparent riches and for the chance to double or triple their fortunes in the process

Practically speaking, local and global capital markets also supported the sugar industry. In 1840, “Louisiana ranked third in banking capital (after New York and Massachusetts),” with New Orleans serving as the hub. The volume of bank loans in New Orleans went from $18.6 million in 1850 to $31 million in 1856. Across the pond, British lenders extended their credit lines to get in on this southwestern expansion of the US’s tentacles. In effect, much like the early investment/rush to the Caribbean’s sugar aisle, Louisiana became part of a transatlantic operation, fueled by the capital and capitalism of dollars coming from near and far –

By the eve of the Civil War…Louisiana’s sugar industry was the most heavily capitalized and investment-rich agricultural region in the country.

By 1844, Louisiana’s cane industry was valued at $60 million. The elite planters gradually squeezed out the majority, given the increasing and prohibitive entry costs characteristic of the sugar business. Those who remained often went to “New Orleans, [b]anks or…fused their assets through capital-accumulating partnerships.” In the 1840s, Cooperative estates were formed, mainly through mergers, which spread the risk of enterprise across many planters. The insurance model.

One commonality shared among the planter class, irrespective of wealth, was a firm belief in the caste system that sustained life in cane country. White identities in these areas were “anchored firmly in slaveholding.” Another explanation Louisiana planters used to defend the peculiar institution was to say that slavery was “a strategic necessity that saved the consumer thousands of dollars.” In other words, lower labor costs meant that plantation owners did not have to raise prices to account for paying workers.

The planter elite locked themselves into a psychological and real cycle of self-aggrandizement. They lacked the resolve/foresight to get out of their own way when circumstances required them to shift. Instead, the wealthy planters allocated funds primarily to self-expansion and protection (e.g., investment in the local militia to protect their assets). On the latter, the wealthy planters fortified the social hierarchy by bringing less well-off (and poor) Whites into the machine. Feudalism’s adaptation to Louisiana was in full force –

…their identity as slaveholders ultimately defined progress in the sugar world…slaveholders remained wedded to individualistic notions of progress…Capital expenditure on a plantation mansion, more slaves, or the latest machinery heightened the planters’ sense of mastery over land, labor, and sugar; public investment, on the other hand, did little to exalt their power.

But crop does not bend to man, no matter how much you try to control it or the forces around the plant. Couple this reality with a demanding world that requires more of your output; the planters were guaranteed steep hurdles. In other words, the global predilection for sweetened foods and drinks eventually overwhelmed the capacity of sugar producers in Louisiana. Unfortunately, that significant domestic demand became a mixed signal: planters led to believe that all they needed to do was work harder. A vicious feedback loop.

But here are examples of what will take place when things go wrong, as they eventually will –

When the crops failed in 1855 and 1856, merchants simply filled the void with Caribbean sugar.

By the eve of succession, Cuban and Puerto Rican imports surpassed the entirety of Louisiana’s increasingly marginal crop.

The high degree of substitution made it apparent that Louisiana had a weak position in the domestic market and relative insignificance on a global scale.

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The people on the other side of the paradigm.

“I come up in hard times—slavery times. Everybody worked, young, an ole’, if yo’ could carry two or three sugar cane yo’ worked. Sunday, Monday, it all de same…it like a heathen part o’ de country.” – Interview with Cecil George, a former slave, in 1940 (LSU archives)

In the cane world, exploitation for profit was the norm. Youth and male were prioritized, as evidenced by the fact that “males constituted 70 percent of all slaves imported to New Orleans.” Most of the young boys (and girls) selected for bondage were in what would have been considered prime age ranges of 17—24 and 13—20, respectively; younger for the girls because they could be forced to have babies (i.e., future labor for the plantation).

Bondswomen worked in the fields and mill house as well, but for the sugar masters, they were seen mainly through the prism of reproductive capabilities (“breeding wenches”). For other women, serving as a source of pleasure was their fate: some planters patronized “fancy-girl markets,” where they “paid up to $5,000 to satiate their desires for young concubines who would enhance their sense of power and prestige.”

“The young masters were criminally intimate with the negro girls; it was their custom…practice of copulation was so frequent…” — J.B. (Jean Baptiste) Roudanez

Many young, enslaved women delivered their first infants at around 16 1/2 years old. Most women delivered a child every 24 months, with the average woman carrying seven babies to term during a “reproductive career” (yikes) that began in their mid-teens and came to a close by 35 or so. Planters methodically engineered this “career” to suit their needs. One example: no suckling, newborns sent off to wet nurses immediately following birth so that the mother would easily impregnate again.

J.B. Roudanez also reported that women worked right up to the point of delivery and immediately after. Commercial concerns took precedence over health, as would be expected for a group classified as property. For instance, during whippings (punishments), a woman’s belly was protected (i.e., she lay face down in a carved out patch where the stomach had a specific coverage area) “‘cause the children were worth money.’” There is substantial historical evidence supporting this practice, from the Caribbean to the USA.

As you can imagine, the women were not always cooperative. Rebellion, often covert, was common –

…black women…wove contraception through the dark fabric of slave oppositional culture. Whether swallowing abortifacients such as calomel and turpentine or chewing on natural contraceptives like cotton roots, slaves ingested homemade remedies that provoked a miscarriage.

Check out Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” for a glimpse into a great piece of work that highlights what’s discussed in the previous quote. Note: I talk more about women’s experiences compared to men’s because enslaved men’s stories are readily documented. If you’re interested in diving deeper into the topic, check out my piece on Rose Hall Plantation, Jamaica.

As the Civil War neared, and global competition increased, the cost of “field hand[s]” went from $700 (1850) to $1,000 (1856). By the eve of the War, the price jumped to $400. Some tried to make their way around this by calling for the revival of the Atlantic trade, and, in some cases, engaging in contraband trading from Africa via Cuba. Note: Cuba was one of the last countries to abolish slavery (1886) in the Americas.

When that pipeline did not satiate their needs, the plantation owners relinquished their gender biases and began “investing” in women and slightly older slaves, a practice they would have denounced entirely before reality forced their hands.

The only group that faced similarly bleak prospects in south Louisiana was the Irish –

Only the Irish sank as low on the sliding scale of Anglo-American condescension. Savagely exploited by English landlords and the British state in their homeland, Irish immigrants faced treacherous employment as ditchers and delvers for Louisiana’s sugar lords.

“It was much cheaper to have Irish to do it, who cost nothing to the planter…” — John Burnside’s overseer

All sorts of schemes were cooked up to alleviate the labor shortages that plantation owners faced. There were “active slave rental market[s]” for those who may not have had the means to purchase expensive labor. Post-Civil War, Italian and Chinese labor were imported as substitutes for Black labor. That did not work out in the long run. We’ll talk more about Chinese labor when I cover this book –

The limits of the human body (i.e., the depletion of substitute labor), the seasonal nature of cane cultivation, and the illegality of sourcing labor from the African continent forced plantation owners to zero in on making their operations more efficient, squeezing as much juice as they could get. With that, they turned to labor maximization/optimization and technology, as earlier alluded to.

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Southerners adopting northern ways.

For most of the 125,000 slaves who labored in Louisiana’s cane fields prior to the Civil War, sugar production had been transformed within their lifetimes. The new steam-powered mills…frequently equipped with mechanical cane carriers that slaves fed with a steady supply of cane…these constantly moving conveyor belts established an early form of assembly-line production.

…the antebellum sugar mill stood with a transitional phase of industrial development, anchored in the social relations of slavery though mimicking aspects of northern capitalism.

New technology increased sugar production. The mechanization of sugar production now aided the manual process of cutting cane. Labor was split into regimented, classified gangs. Children were called the “suckling gang” (yikes). Older, “ruptured” enslaved people were often used as cooks, gardeners, nurses, carpenters, etc. Women were relegated to “hoe gangs,” characterized by simpler/lighter farm work. During the grinding season, enslaved people labored 18 to 20 hours a day, a “punishing order,” to say the least.

Follett highlights the Estate managers’ journals to demonstrate the precision of cane plantation operations. Journal entries ranged from employers’ fixation with record-keeping, daily activities, labor allocation, division of time, birth dates, deaths, and birthing intervals (i.e., to identify good breeders), among a host of other concerns.

“There is in a large and respectable plantation as much precision in the rules, as much exactness in the times of going to sleep, awakening, going to labor, and resting before and after meals, as in a garrison under military discipline, or in a ship of war.” – Timothy Flint, reflection after a 1820s tour of the sugar country

Plantation bells and signals dictated the flow of movement and work schedules. The bell’s commander required 100% obedience –

Bells and whistles demarcated the working day and codified a precise, organized vision of labor in which discipline and regularity advanced at the inexorable pace of the clock and according to the slaveholder’s behest.

Many of these practices were borrowed from northern industrial operations, which allowed the planters to flex their apparent modernity muscles. Note: Bells and horns were also prominent features of Caribbean sugar plantations. The image enslavers had of themselves needed to be sustained. A show of ‘being with the times,’ as it relates to labor practices and technology, would have gelled with their sense of being in total control.

The author dutifully notes that, although historians have tried to show the fracture between capitalism and slavery over the years, Louisiana’s operations revealed more of a convergence. Same stripes, different animal.

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The relationship changes when the output improves.

Through a network of compensation systems, slaves and slaveholders negotiated a series of compromises in which bonds people accommodated the machine age and secured their labor stability in return for prerogatives that extended African American rights on the mill floor and in the plantation commissary.

This “mutualism” enhanced the enslaved’s living conditions and autonomy. The development and practice of more skilled labor – craftsmen, teamsters, coopers, carpenters, masons, engineers, and sugar makers – allowed (mostly men) to ascend to positions of technical and managerial importance on sugar estates. This was strategic for plantation owners because it allowed them to develop in-home, long-term skills. Also, to “avoid the racially destabilizing presence of whites on the plantation.”

Historically, technically skilled positions were outsourced to white laborers. However, plantation owners thought them to be both itinerant and detrimental to slave discipline, which just means that they could not be controlled as easily. By now allowing the enslaved to develop these skillsets, plantation owners created a frustrated, displaced class of White workers during the antebellum era. Engineering a deep-seated race-class hatred played to the benefit of the plantation owners who could utilize the frustrated White workers for their own employment in the plantation system; This also played into some of the brutality that became organic to plantation operations. Strategic beyond comprehension.

More than any other factor, the sugar masters prioritized their wallets (i.e., saving money). Skilled (White) work could fetch $450 per season, or up to $3,000 on larger estates. If the plantation owner could repurpose slave labor into a higher order of work, they were going to do so, for no other reason than it cost less.

Nonetheless, the Black skilled enslaved people enjoyed semi-autonomous lifestyles because of their skillsets, eking out slightly more bargaining power/positioning than field hands. This elevated status was enjoyed pre-and post-emancipation. To be absolutely clear, this skilled-unskilled situation was very gendered: men dominated technical roles. Women were rarely (if ever) allowed to assume sugar maker or engineer status.

Plantation owners also provided more free time, since mechanization produced sugar faster and more efficiently. It became a crude game of give-and-take. All in the name of coercing labor into toiling for the plantation as earnestly as possible –

Slaveholders…knew from their extensive experience of paying African Americans for overtime work or the produce of their gardens that slaves seemed to work more diligently for themselves when the promise of wages, scrip, or credit lay in the offing. The challenge slaveholders confronted was to harness that energy for the plantation economy and to establish a compensation system of positive and negative incentives that would stimulate the slaves to toil even harder in the cane fields.

In addition to various types of payment, slaves and slavemasters negotiated specific holidays, improved housing, and the provision of whiskey and other goods for post-harvest celebrations. Each of these incentives served as part of a broader compensation system designed to maximize effort through the harvest season.

Whenever the give-and-take did not produce the results the plantation owner(s) were looking for, they resorted to old methods (“stocks, iron braces, and other ghastly tools in the planter’s armory of regulatory devices”). But the raw truth was that the implementation of mechanization and all other attempts to future-proof the sugar business were improvements that could not be undone. In other words, the relationship between enslaver and enslaved had a firm mutualism component that could no longer be ignored or brutalized away.

Yet no amount of additional earnings or goods procured changed the underlying dynamics of the relationship. The plantation owner’s short-term remuneration/benefits were understandably exploitative. What Follett dubbed “the veneer…of compensation.” In short, the brunt of slavery was still going to be felt by those under its shackles. Escaping sugar country (the South, broadly) was almost impossible because of the power of the local militia/Whites –

Patrols prowled the cane-producing parishes with fearsome regularity, and the criminal code was punitive toward slaves.

But resistance – on and off the plantation – was still a reality. What the author describes in the book demonstrates that those who were enslaved made sagaciously strategic efforts at disrupting the plantations’ operations:

• Running away in November (during the middle of grinding season, where any disruption could guarantee a massive loss for the plantation owner).

• Stealthy and intentional acts of sabotage (unscrewing and dismantling hardware at the mill, selling expensive items on the plantation to petty traders on the rivers and bayous, etc.).

“…we found several rents in the first boilers—it took five days to repair damages…but the syrup in the tanks and filters got sour and we made sugar of inferior quality for several days.” – H.B. Trist, Bowdon Plantation in Ascension Parish

• Stealing food supplies (e.g., chicken theft was rampant on Ellendale Plantation).

Remembering the days on Lasco Plantation, former slave Albert Patterson emphasized the slaves’ communal resistance…when he recounted how fugitives would return to the plantation and break into the meat house. Explaining how the runaways evaded the ever-present dogs, Patterson recollected that they “put bay leaves on de bottom of their feet and shoes” before walking in manure in order to disguise their scent and mislead the hounds. That way, the former bondsman reported, a fugitive man could come and see his family and obtain a meal come nightfall.”

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Paternalism.

In parts of the South before and after emancipation, a system of market paternalism served to motivate workers, reduce monitoring costs, and reaffirm the planters’ class power. Market paternalism, one historian argues, “must be built upon an illusion which conceals the commercially oriented nature of the employment contract.” Slaveholders accordingly had to veil their economically focused incentives beneath a façade of paternal reciprocity that seemingly bound the slave and his or her interests to the goodwill of the master…the sheen of paternalism.

Mutualism under the master-slave paradigm was a farce. The enslaved sold their labor for benefits (money, rewards, incentives, etc.). But these were imaginary gains in the grand scheme. Gains that ensured the enslaved never caught up with the master, but still labored to enrich the plantation owner. The feeling of inching forward in life, just a little bit, was what the owner relied on to keep the masses satisfied. But also, and this is not to be downplayed, the plantation owners were also psychologically soothing themselves, since they were fully bought into the idea of their being rulers of all things.

Christmas bonuses, for example, were regarded by plantation owners as a manifestation of their benevolence and Christian generosity. In truth, the Christmas bonuses were purely an attempt to make enslaved people work harder, police themselves, and forge a multi-chain dependency between them and the monetary interest of the planter.

Celebrations were another illusion. Hallmarks, such as a good cane cutting/grinding season, would result in much cheer, singing, and dancing (done by the enslaved) on the masters’ mansion steps. For those who were particularly strict, the celebration would presumably take place elsewhere on the plantation; The big house being too close for comfort. Here’s a firsthand view of the twisted nature of it all, though the people of the time would have seen this as normal –

Former slave Caroline Wright, who grew up on Warren Wortham’s plantation, likewise recalled that at Christmas, “The white folks give [allus] us presents and plenty to eat…slaves had a big dance “five or six times a year” and “de young missus learned us our ABC’s.” Caroline’s focus on her master’s generosity underscored the intensity of the paternalist bonds, which turned the meal and gifts into acts of bestowal.

Interestingly, alcohol distribution was heavily policed since it was believed that “whiskey might [enable] enslaved people’s self-consciousness, prompting many to question their condition and voice their resentment. Slaves [were] thus frequently banned from consuming alcohol.” At this juncture, I was scraping the pages for references to rum, but had to remind myself that I was, timeline-wise, well out of American Revolution territory. In other words, no luck. EVEN IN CANE COUNTRY. My only assumption, upon the heartbreaking discovery, was to hypothesize that rum, or some form of cane spirit, was being produced incognito by the enslaved. They were already so close to the operation anyhow. Let’s move on.

What Follet does note is that, practically, a lot of illicit drinking took place among those enslaved. They often traded along rivers with peddlers, which frustrated plantation owners because goods were sold at steeply discounted prices. Well, discounted to the plantation owner. If you can’t have something, it’s premium to you. As a call back to my last piece, I wonder if Leon Godchaux ever peddled in the way that Follett outlines.

One method the plantation owners undertook to intervene in the above goods-for-whiskey trade was to rely on bargaining chips and bending the reliance dynamic even further in the slavemaster’s direction. Given that whiskey became a form of currency-for-labor, the slavemaster began to utilize the liquid as a way to increase productivity, cut in on the peddlers’ prices, and do whatever else was necessary to ensure they had the better bargaining chips. To the extent that this worked in practice, I have no idea, but I can understand why it would have been a new tool in the arsenal. More than anything else, peddlers introduced the enslaved to the outside world, new ideas, and what-could-be. An unsavory reality for plantation owners.

But again, when all methods of conning did not work, they resorted to the lash, usually by way of the overseer they put in place. Men, we can assume, who were deeply miserable, by design of plantation operations, and took this frustration out on the helpless. John A. Hamilton, who “applied the lash with venom,” complained about the enslaved, saying, “To fight negroes nearly kills me—damn their skins I wish they were all in Africa.” And to that, we can also say that they were generally unaware of how the economics of their situation worked; No “negroes,” no money, no job for the overseer.

Some were more violent, “punching their [enslaved’s] faces and striking their sides, heads, and bodies.” Torture and fatal shootings were not off the table, especially for those who felt that there should be zero challenge to their authority. Daffney Johnson, formerly enslaved, “recalled that slaves were stripped to the waist before cats were released to claw and scratch “de blood out of our backs.” Others…faced brutal disfigurement.” Hangings were common, with bodies often left for display, and/or the person was buried nearby for everyone to walk by and see. Such was the case for a runaway who was known as “Old lady Carter.”

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Just north of the Caribbean.

The plantation commissary –

The establishment of plantation-owned stores and rum shops heightened the effectiveness of this system. Company stores and rum shops sold great amounts of rum to laborers, which created a large body of debt peons and ensured a stable workforce. Workers were compelled to return the next week or harvest in order to pay off their debts.

Now, the glaring giveaway to alert you that the quote is not from The Sugar Masters is that the greatest spirit known to humankind rum is mentioned. The above comes from Frederick H. Smith’s Caribbean Rum. However, back to the title of this section, this was replicated in Louisiana because shared knowledge was kicked around, demonstrating the effectiveness of this system. Follett notes that the enslaved often engaged in “overwork,” or what we today call overtime. But the truth driving “overwork” was as follows –

…if a slave ran into debt at the estate commissary or store, planters could utilize overtime work to force him or her to clear the account. In short…another tool with which to discipline their workers.

Overwork and the plantation store(s) had multiple, beneficial impacts for the plantation (owner):

• Dependence on the plantation for subsistence

• Attachment to a home base

• Enslaved growing their own corn and livestock to feed themselves, relieving the owner from doing so (some of the overwork went to tending their own plots)

The author spends a good deal of time also discussing topics of resistance and identity that are worth further exploration:

→ Self-empowerment through using currency to buy different clothes than what was given by the plantation owner (i.e., development of African-American fashion)

Whether in the Caribbean, in Louisiana, or elsewhere in America, bondspeople utilized their corn patches, poultry hutches, and free time to develop a flourishing internal market economy. Receiving payment for their produce…slaves derived both material and cultural capital from producing and trading their own commodities.

→ African freedom/rejoice through rhythm and dance

→ Blending and molding religious practices across denominations, while also borrowing from the enslaved who were sold to Louisiana from up north

→ Voodoo, which remained a predominantly New Orleans phenomenon, according to Follett

We’ll close with the author’s thought-provoking, seemingly disappointed tone regarding how things ultimately panned out. Sure to inspire necessary debates/interrogations, I’d like to think –

African Americans utilized their new expectations and duties within slavery to advance their own agenda, but by accommodating the planters, black Louisianans inadvertently and tragically fortified the sugar masters’ power and sway.

Or, as Audre Lorde once said –

…the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.

There you have it folks.

Just remember,

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

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We are now venturing into my favorite territory to explore American rum: Louisiana. And though we will not get to rum precisely (i.e., no mention of the spirit in this book), the raw material (sugar) and learning about a leading character in Louisiana’s historical business figures still whet the appetite for learning. I read this book before ever visiting Louisiana. Which means I was significantly lacking familiarity with the state and its jewel city, New Orleans (before May 2025 at least).

The smell of the air. The twang of the people. The food & beverage scene. The variety of musicality & raw talent. And the uncanny resemblance – in touch & flavor – to the Caribbean, I’d eventually come to appreciate once I felt the soil/driven across the state. From Cajun country to Creole towns, my five senses were being toyed with in all kinds of ways.

I read The Sugar King, understanding that all the nuances, subtleties, and references a native Louisianian would spot immediately would escape me. Down to the pronunciation of towns & cities. Long way of saying I went into this book with an eagerness to match my open-mindedness. After all, I’m chasing the liquid (rum). Whatever gets me there, or close enough, will have to suffice.

Wolf.

Peter M. Wolf, a child of New Orleans, was born on December 6, 1935. His education is varied, across institutions/coasts, though he eventually touched concrete in the greatest city of them all: “Metairie Park Country Day School, Phillips Exeter Academy, Yale University (BA), Tulane University (MA), [and] New York University (Ph.D).” Wolf also spent time in the military (“Air National Guard”).

I appreciate the author’s background. He flexed a multitude of intellectual, creative, and passionate muscles by testing the extremes (stereotypically speaking); a retired investment advisor isn’t typically a “School of Architecture” adjunct professor, a former Fulbright Fellow, or someone who dabbles in fine arts and design. Again, stereotypically speaking.

From the litany of books he’s written on topics like urban planning, land use/development, and much more, I suppose I am not all too surprised that Wolf would have taken an interest in Godchaux’s journey to the Big Easy, how the city developed through Godchaux’s life, and the ramifications this had on Wolf’s hometown.

As I coursed through Wolf’s bio, I couldn’t help but realize (this was pre-diving into the book), the man is writing about his elder (emphasis is mine) –

Roots: Father’s family (Godchaux, Weis, Wolf): first descendents came to New Orleans from Alsace [France] in 1830s.

More concretely, the author’s dad is Albert Jacob Wolf (1881–1968), who married Leon Godchaux’s first grandchild, Carrie Godchaux, in 1906.

I will admit, my skeptical antennas went up when I unearthed the connection. It is atypical, especially for folks of the older generations, to paint their ancestors in any negative light, even if that is the honest thing to do. I understand. But, as I do with any book/author, I gave it a fair chance.

The flip side is worth acknowledgment as well: Wolf writes more passionately than someone else likely would have (about Godchaux), given Leon is his elder. Understandably, Wolf takes personal family misfortunes, which shine in the words he puts down on paper. More than anything else, a thank you to Wolf for giving us a peek into your family’s history; you didn’t owe anyone that favor.

Many thanks to my boy for grabbing this book for me while in New Orleans. The Sugar King undoubtedly adds to the breadth of work that helps the world to understand Louisiana’s/New Orleans’ social & commercial development over time.

Note: the source of the information above is the author’s website.

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Who is (was) Lion Godchot?

He was my great-great grandfather.

A man from Herbéviller (northeastern), France, who grew up without means. His poor economic status only worsened when his father, “Paul Godchot, the village butcher, died when Lion was seven years old.” It seems as if Lion did his best to be additive to the family, serving as an “itinerant peddler selling yarn and scraps to nearby villages.”

The “white European Jew” with “almost no money” was, as we all are, a product of his generation. With that, his aspirations would have been of the time, constrained by the perceived universe of possibilities. One of which was: go to New Orleans for a better life. A not uncommon aspiration for those who had heard of their countrymen going off to current/former French territories and making a better life. That discourse must have been even more intimate in the smaller Jewish community Lion inhabited, one can assume.

In the 1840s, steamship agents stationed throughout Alsace-Lorraine were in business to sell cheap, belowdecks passage on the busy seaway from Le Havre to New Orleans. Targeted customers were would-be immigrants, many of them young, discontent, and ambitious Jews from poor families—families that had long clustered near the Rhine on the western edge of the former Holy Roman Empire.

More personally, Lion’s grandson, Walter Jr., surmised that his grandfather left France because there was not enough food for his family to share, and that his landing in New Orleans could have been because “it was the only ship he could find.” Now that is some good historical storytelling. Plain, boring, and practical.

Arriving in polyglot land.

Godchot’s journey aboard the Indus lasted 4 months. He arrived in the port of New Orleans on February 20, 1837. By this point, Louisiana was no longer a French territory, though the French influence remained strong. The Louisiana Purchase (France → America) took place in 1803. Statehood granted 9 years later. 13-year-old Lion may have viewed the American ownership favorably, given that freedom of religion under Catholic France was an uncertainty –

Thirty-four years before he landed, Louisiana was still a French territory: residents were subject to the French legislative act of 1724 called Le Code Noir, legislation that reflected pervasive anti-Semitic sentiment in France. Though the legislation was primarily focused on management of enslaved blacks, it forbade any practice of any religion other than Catholicism and specifically prohibited Jews from living in Louisiana.

Lion arrived to a small Jewish community in Louisiana (low thousands). But still of importance, as the safety of his (religious) community was surely the bigger draw to New Orleans than the residual benefits of being French. The Cajun community’s migration to Louisiana is an example/testament to that unfortunate reality of colonial France and its ramifications. Lion’s community, or what it was to become (rather) –

By the early twentieth century, some 7,500 Jews inhabited Louisiana, two thirds living in New Orleans, which by then had become home to the largest Jewish population in the South.

To be fair, it is also worth noting the practicality of Lion’s decision to go to New Orleans: people still spoke French in Louisiana. The timeline for making a better life for yourself tends to be faster if you arrive in a foreign land where you are already familiar with the tongue. Moreover, it seems that there was a consistent transit line going from France to New Orleans, so it would have been cheap(est) to get there from French ports. The economics of New Orleans, even if the teenage Godchot was not intimately familiar, would have had a buzz and attraction that would have been difficult to ignore if you were eager/determined –

The port of New Orleans, crucial to Lion’s eventual success, was the fourth most active in the world, eclipsed only by those of London, Liverpool, and New York.

When Lion arrived, New Orleans was the most heterogenous city in the country. It teemed with denizens of every background, religion, and nationality—African, French, German, Spanish, Caribbean, and Native American. Long-standing ethnic and economic diversity had created an environment of religious and social tolerance for free people that was not to be found elsewhere in America.

“for free people” is a very important distinction here because New Orleans was also an epicenter of one of the largest slave markets in the nation.

The 20,000 or so free people of color, or gens de couleur libres, would fit into what Wolf is referring to around social tolerance. All is/was relative, of course. Not very straightforward to modern-day sensibilities, either –

New Orleans was home to more than a quarter of all the freemen and -women of color in the nation. Some were slave owners.

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How the teenager fared.

Now, you must be asking yourself, “What in the world is a thirteen-year-old boy doing by himself in New Orleans in the late 1830s?” A city with a sub-tropical climate where diseases like yellow fever claimed the lives of roughly 2,000 people the year Lion arrived. What is he doing there?!

The answer: looking for Mr. Leopold Jonas. Originally from Lorraine, Jonas was a Jewish immigrant and wholesale merchant. Lion was probably acquainted with his family back in France. Jonas would have been a default mentorship option for Lion, who was in desperate need of acclimating sooner rather than later. It is suggested that Jonas encouraged Lion Godchot to change the spelling of his name to Leon Godchaux, “so that he would fit in with the dominant French community.” Note: I will use the latter spelling going forward. Wolf also suggests that Jonas taught him a bit of English.

Two critical points regarding Jonas and Godchaux –

1. Jonas taught him how to peddle goods, though Leon had some experience back in his Old World, and informed him of which countryside routes were best for selling his wares.

2. Jonas provided him with the most critical help of all: CREAM. Or as the French say, d’argent (MONEY!).

On point #2, we can understand that the prospect of help in this new land would also have been a driving factor behind Godchaux’s decision to choose New Orleans rather than somewhere else. And with the d’argent in hand, Godchaux had some fuel in his tank to begin enterprising.

If I recall correctly, the funds and goods – mirrors, combs, small household items, etc. – were mostly borrowed. But it seems Leon did well on his first runs and was able to repay Jonas. According to Walter Godchaux Jr. (Leon’s same grandson referenced earlier) –

He asked Mr. Jonas to send his profit to his mother in France…this established his credit. He got another pack and prospered and later was able to buy a mule and wagon.

With the mule and wagon, Godchaux was able to increase his territorial reach (countryside/places people weren’t willing to trek to). This, of course, expanded his clientele: plantation owners, small farmers, free Blacks, and enslaved people. You did not read that incorrectly: many plantation societies allowed enslaved people minimal participation in the economy within specified bounds, as a means of providing (1) an illusion of semi-independence, and (2) a means to reduce the amount of money/effort the plantation owner had to expend to provide resources to the enslaved.

Godchaux trudged along, making do –

For three years, Leon traveled the mud-caked tracks between the various plantations…living hand to mouth and at night spreading his breeding in barns and sheds…

Lion concentrated his territory in St. John the Baptist and St. James parishes, strung along the Mississippi, some 30 miles north of New Orleans. He was providing a critical service for this period of time –

In the rural South, especially before the Civil War, peddling created fertile opportunity because the population (White, Black, and everyone in between) was spread far apart and because transportation options were severely limited….Peddlers thrived in south Louisiana because they performed an essential service fulfilling a specialized need—goods delivered by door-to-door service…

Apparently, Godchaux would ask plantation owners for permission to visit slave quarters once he had completed displaying his new wares and delivering goods. In fact, one of Leon’s regular stops was at the plantation property owned by Jean-Baptiste Tassin and his wife, Clarisse. While he was likely making good money from the Tassins, there was also Thérèse, an enslaved woman who was spared field labor because –

Her job was to be clean, rested, and available whenever the master, exercising his droit de seigneur, sent for her.

What is droit de seigneur you ask? I asked the same thing, so this is for both of us –

…a feudal right said to have existed in medieval Europe giving the lord to whom it belonged the right to sleep the first night with the bride of any one of his vassals. – Brittanica

Fancy French way of saying sexual ownership. Same practice in every colonial society. This was merely the Francophone characterization. All the same exploitation in the end. Thérèse’s other job was caring for her son, Joachim, who was 8 years younger than Leon (14). Joachim was a six-year-old, light-complexioned child, which means –

[he] was surely the unacknowledged bastard son of Jean-Baptiste.

Wolf says that Godchaux developed a big-brother affection for Joachim and a platonic one for Thérèse. My spidey man senses are telling me that pubescent Leon had more than just a platonic affection for Thérèse, but how would I know, right? All of these characters are vitally important to the story. Stay tuned.

As it relates to Godchaux’s commercial prospects, the important takeaway is that he was honing his scope – relationships and territories. Exposure to rural life in Louisiana allowed him to be in proximity to sugarcane plantations, where “he became acquainted with storekeepers and the local laborers—both free and enslaved and some of them plantation overseers and their bosses to whom he sold goods.”

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Moving on up.

True to form, Godchaux saved his coins and put them into the professionalization of his peddling. In 1840, at 16 years old, Leon opened a modest brick & mortar (general store) 40 miles northwest of New Orleans in a town called Convent.

But Godchaux was one to maximize his circumstances, so he still traveled/peddled part-time, despite the fixed base. Leon had good reason to make his rounds, given that “[h]e felt at home with Thérèse.” Wolf argues that it may have been “possible that Leon began a clandestine intimate relationship with his attractive friend.”

Back to the store. In a very forward-thinking manner, Leon used the operation as a warehouse as well, which helped him establish a wider consumer base (i.e., deeper inventory of stuff to sell since he had the room for it). Staying the course, Godchaux continued traveling from settlement to settlement, expanding his personal contacts, making friends with the up-and-coming children of plantation owners, merchants, local government representatives, tax collectors, notaries, sheriffs, etc. According to Wolf, these people would become vitally important to Leon later in life. What the modern-day corporate world dubs “growing up in the business (industry) together.”

Gotta hop over to the center of it all.

New Orleans, that is.

“It was the cosmopolitan city in the South…”

1844. A long recession was wrapping up. Real estate prices were depressed. A young Leon made a move he undoubtedly anticipated, but needed the market to shapeshift to his favor to execute. What exactly was his next move? Well, he got himself into a 2^nd retail operation, leaping into the clothing business. His store was aptly named the French and American Clothing Store, reflecting “that both languages were routine” in and around New Orleans –

There was a lot of competition in the New Orleans clothing game. Everything from retail and wholesale merchants, many of whom were first-generation Jewish; in total, approximately 250 established Jewish businesses were operating in the town, half of them selling general merchandise, clothing, or dry goods. Godchaux had a community and examples to pull from.

What helped New Orleans maintain its economic reality as the commercial hub of the South was the steamboat innovation, which expedited the movement of goods to and from (e.g., the time from New Orleans to St. Louis was reduced from three months to 10 days).

Leon leased a store/location between the vibrant port of New Orleans and the densely populated French Quarter, which, at that time, was a combined retail and residential hub. He started out offering just men’s and boys’ clothing, focusing on a niche to gain competitive advantage/differentiate himself as a specialty clothier. To get a proper start, Godchaux found himself another Leopold Jonas –

As a first and essential commercial step, Leon sought and obtained financing to stock his enlarged inventory. He formed a perversion with Jean Hahn, a local Jewish merchant and financier who had confidence in the young man.

Hahn, a silent partner, handed him $3K. The money served not only to increase inventory, but also to open another clothing store. Leon continued to succeed, so he opened more stores. Godchaux sourced a lot of goods from the East Coast, NY(C) in particular. He began to also develop a contact rolodex of financiers/merchants from the east, as well as abroad.

In 1845, as business continued on the up-and-up, Leon brought his older brother, Mayer, over from France to join his operation. As a result of the newly blossomed family partnership, Leon renamed the company “Godchaux Frères.”

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Explaining “His Creole Slave” in the title of the book.

Remember the plantation owned by Jean-Baptiste and Marie Clarisse “Russel” Tassin? The one where Joachim and his mother, Thérèse, were enslaved? Well, on November 3, 1849, that estate went on the auction block. As you probably guessed, Leon and Mayer made their way up to the plantation with the sole intention (per Wolf) to “claim the mixed-race eighteen-year-old slave known in the list of family assets simply as “Joachim.””

The brothers went to the St. John the Baptist Parish Office of notary, Charles Boudousquié, to present proof of the $1.7K funds available to purchase “the Creole mulatto aged about eighteen named Joachim.” Who provided the brothers with 100% of the money (loan) to finance the purchase? Hahn did.

Throughout the book, Wolf paints his great-great-grandfather as someone who detested slavery. Entirely. And without question. Wolf supposes that the conversation between Joachim and Leon, when Joachim was released to the brothers, was that Godchaux needed Joachim never to divulge his slave status to anyone, and that Leon would ensure Joachim was taken care of. To me, it felt a bit odd, then, to note “His Creole Slave” in the title of the book. That aside, this moral narrative feels a bit too…convenient.

The likelihood of someone coming from France, adapting to the ways of the South/Louisiana, especially in an attempt to build wealth, and be of the times, was less likely not to hold (or learn) discriminatory racial beliefs. Buying into the lucrative (but harsh) discriminatory mentality of the time was more likely to yield Godchaux wealth, unfortunately. The degree to which, that’s obviously something I can’t ever put a finger on. But if we are to take Wolf and his family at their word, then we have to believe that Godchaux held a completely clean resume on the topic of race/slavery.

A book I read about 3 months after The Sugar King called Reconstruction in the Cane Fields: From Slavery to Free Labor in Louisiana’s Sugar Parishes, 1862—1880, spoke to some of this skepticism I carried while reading Wolf’s book (emphasis mine) –

…Leon Godchaux typified southerners who had not owned slaves or plantations before the war…Godchaux, founder of the future sugar conglomerate, immigrated to New Orleans from France in the 1830s and became a merchant. He purchased his first plantation in 1862 and by century’s end owned twelve plantations that comprised more than thirty thousand acres. The upheaval of war gave men like…Godchaux, who possessed the talent and business acumen to succeed, entry into the planter class, something that had been denied them during the late antebellum period. As products of slave society, they undoubtedly harbored racial prejudices consistent with their backgrounds. Nonetheless, in addition to possessing the necessary financial resources they were also unhampered by the experience of having commanded slaves. – John C. Rodrigue

Two things can be true. Godchaux was unlikely to be blindly feudalistic in his mindset, especially given his socio-economic & religious background in France. But given the circumstance change (socio-economically) for Leon in Louisiana, it’s likely that his mentality shapeshifted as well. Remember, this is the Louisiana we’re talking about –

Before the end of the antebellum period…New Orleans became the largest slave market in America.

The slave market at Esplanade and Moreau, according to Erin Greenwald, an authority on New Orleans slave markets, was “a slave pen, with a showroom, like an auto dealership, and a yard where enslaved people would sleep, exercise and cook. These pens were basically jails. And the eating-well and physical activity was all so that the traders could sell their property—humans—at the highest possible profit.” The slave market business in New Orleans had swelled as the century [18th] matured.

All of the above aside, Wolf reminds us that Joachim was still a businessman, and commercial priorities remained top of mind. Part of the strategy for acquiring Joachim was so that he could attract the “affluent free Black and mixed-race customer base in New Orleans, a base that was still significant at around 10,000 residents, down from some 20,000 a decade earlier.” The reduction was caused by many fleeing the oppressive South to Mexico, the Caribbean, and up North. This would turn out to be a great investment for Leon: the “purported freeman of color” did well with that clientele once he began working for Godchaux in late 1849.

Pre-Civil War.

Leon Godchaux meets Justine Lamm, who is also from Lorraine, not too far from Herbéviller. She must have felt like home to Leon. Despite Rodrigue’s assertion that Godchaux did not own “slaves or plantations before the war,” Wolf shows that they purchased an enslaved person dedicated to house duties on February 19, 1851, three months before he and Lamm’s wedding; The pair would engage in a similar human purchase once Lamm became pregnant.

In legal proceedings before a notary, recorded in French, he purchased from Lucien and Augustine Arceneaux “une négress nomineé Francoise ageé d’environ cinquante” (a Negress about fifty years old called Francoise).”

On May 24, 1851, the pair married. One strategic, non-romantic benefit the author believes Justine provided to Leon was her ability to read, which made up for his (now) famed illiteracy.

Increasingly, Leon’s New York business interests/connections occupied his time and attention. And for good reason –

…in the 1850s, close to sixty thousand people were at work in the industry.

In addition to building his book of contacts and business, he began shielding his assets via NY enterprises. He had “funds on deposit in New York exchanged for silver and gold,” diversifying his assets. Wolf paints this in all too prescient way, given the gravity of what’s going to unfold in the next decade.

Regardless, Leon continued to ride out the retail wave, braving epidemics (yellow fever) and other economic hazards. In the late 1850s, he started a wholesale operation alongside his retail services. And at the end of 1857, he leased a string of five stores (instead of buying); Wolf claims that Leon remained cautious because of “the real possibility of a terrible war.”

In this expansionary period, Leon grew to depend on Joachim Tassin, who rose to become a master tailor, star salesman, final voice on business matters, surrogate manager, etc. This was strategically beneficial for Godchaux’s expansion of his customer base because Tassin was accepted into the free Creole community as a member of the talented and successful free Black people of New Orleans.

Man, scratch that. Where is Thérèse?!

Well, I suppose that detail is no longer relevant because Leon is a married man.

Christmas, 1959. Leon takes the family to New York. He also exchanges most of his liquid funds into gold (i.e., out of New Orleans’ institutions). I suppose the prescient feeling holds some merit, or this was required of him if he were to maintain good standing in the New York business community. He set up shop at 171 Duane Street to replicate his work/living arrangements. Today’s Tribeca is where Leon opened his manufacturing operation, a business move that had been on his mind for some time.

He adjusted operations accordingly:

→ The New Orleans arm was dedicated to the wholesale and retail of clothing (named after Mayer).

→ The New York side of the business was dedicated to the manufacturing of clothing and named after Leon.

The brothers made this announcement to their New Orleans customers to assure them that things would continue as usual, despite their expanding operations. Enter a new era – M. GODCHAUX, FRERE & CO. (Louisiana) / L. GODCHAUX, FRERE & CO. (New York).

Someone always wins in tough times.

Spearheaded by Thomas Overton, a staunch secessionist governor, Louisiana voted for removal from the union — to join the confederacy — on January 26, 1861. Fast forward to the Battle of New Orleans on April 18, 1862: the city was captured without a fight. The white flag was hoisted –

On May 1, 1862, to escape destruction, the city sensibly acceded to occupation without military engagement.

We’ll engage the Civil War and Louisiana in more detail in later book reviews.

Eventually, Leon brought his family back from New York to New Orleans.

During the first half of 1862, while national turbulence prevailed, the Leon Godchaux family got reestablished in New Orleans and Leon severed his New York operations.

Ever the astute find-a-deal kind of guy, Leon, with Mayer’s oversight, purchased a building at 81 Canal Street, establishing (what would today be called) a fulfillment center. He was able to purchase the real estate because of depressed (“giveaway”), war-level prices. He continued down his real estate buying spree, acquiring two more buildings on Canal Street.

Godchaux also brought back a Singer sewing machine with him from the East Coast. Mayer eventually left the business to pursue real estate full-time, which is probably why Leon was able to find such good deals in the first place. And Mayer did well at his new venture. Not Leon, though. He was locked in. No more East Coast hugging. No more direct brother involvement. Just a man and his retail aspirations, for now.

Notably, however, Leon and Mayer made a speculative bet in 46,000 pounds of raw cotton (out in Woodville and Summit, Mississippi) at ten cents per pound. They were banking that, at the end of the war, prices would boost back up to 45 cents per pound (or higher). I would suggest that this bet was less speculative, especially for someone like Leon, because he was deep in the clothing business and knew a thing or two about cotton/material pricing anyhow. To be fair, the question marks were really around what would come of southern societies after the war.

What’s Joachim up to you ask? He marries another f.p.c. (Free Person of Color), Marie-Madeleine-Elene Coustat, on Aug 12, 1863.

We know the outcome of the Civil War. But what about Leon, his expanding family, and his enterprise in the post-Antebellum South?

I’ll tell you.

Prosperity continues, for Leon at least.

Leon’s financial prudence – rebalancing his wealth into gold/silver and not having any Confederate currency – served him well by the end of the Civil War; he was wealthy in a “profoundly devalued world.” So, what does he do with this wealth? Buys more real estate. This time, a family home on Esplanade Avenue, the stomping grounds of the French and Creole elite (St. Charles Avenue was characterized as the domain of the Anglo elite).

The home purchased in 1865 –

Leon and Justine lived at 1240 Esplanade for 34 years (until Leon’s death). If you’ve been reading this and wondering why the book is titled The Sugar King, rather than, I don’t know, The Retail King, that would be a valid concern. I mean, he did go on to have “the first general clothing-manufacturing enterprise based in New Orleans.” Affectionately known as the Leon Godchaux Clothing Company. But let’s march on over to cane land.

Pre-Civil War, sugar production levels had reached all-time highs (1861). But “marketing and distribution of refined sugar” became “practically impossible” once the North “blockade[d] the mouth of the Mississippi [River].” Many farmers, sitting on worthless land, and lenders, sitting on worthless credit (collateral, land, and other assets denominated in Confederate currency), needed some form of bailout. Apparently, many of these families were people Leon had peddled goods to two decades earlier (the children of plantation owners, etc.). Here is an example of Leon providing credit to a Creole family to prevent them from going into complete financial distress –

Leon spared Sophie Boudousquié the ignominy of foreclosure and bankruptcy. On May 28, 1866, along with a fifty-fifty partner, Francois Valcour Labarre, a member of a distinguished Creole family, Leon bought the…mortgage plus twelve other smaller mortgages that Sophie Boudousquié had outstanding. This refinancing amounted to a consolidation of notes owed to Godchaux and Labarre and others.

Wolf says that Sophie probably approached Leon pre-war to ask for help, and he would’ve denied assisting because her family’s enterprise depended on slave labor. However, after the emancipation, she would’ve approached him again at which point Godchaux would have said, “[y]es…now I can.”

Sophie was unable to manage the credit, and on “June 1, 1869, Leon purchased Reserve [Plantation],” hoisting Godchaux into the sugar business. One of his first orders of business was to completely mechanize the “backbreaking operation” that was still in place – hand-cut, manual loading into carts, pulling cane to the boiling house by mule – since the 1700s. Part of this improvement was the adoption of Norbert Rillieux’s transformational invention in sugar refining (“the multiple effect evaporator”).

Leon was not only operating with good cash flow (from his retail business and now the sugar business), but he was also competing with people who were financially reeling from the Civil War’s consequences. Simply put, those former/existing plantation owners could not compete. The new Northern entrants, now that’s a different story (and for a different piece altogether). More cane plantation prosperity for Leon meant more ‘good problems to have,’ but conundrums that ultimately needed solving –

The factory at Reserve was so efficient that it was capable of handling more cane than grown on the place. Leon was suddenly able to process cane grown at nearby plantations.

So, what did he do? Began acquiring as many properties as possible near existing holdings. And with that, Leon became central to a process of cane cultivation familiar to those in Louisiana: the centralized factory (sugar mill) where individual farmers bring their cane for processing into sugar.

…Godchaux created the centralized factory whereby one efficient mill would service the cane production of several plantations rather than…each individual plantation undertaking its own manufacturing.

Note: I don’t know if Godchaux “created the centralized factory,” or popularized it. Here’s a view of where things stand today: American Sugar Cane League x Raw Sugar Factories. If you want a good show to watch that touches on the sugar factory centralization dynamic, watch this –

Godchaux’s operation eventually transitioned into end-state packaging of the refined sugar, ready for retail and wholesale distribution. He was having so much success that he closed sugar mills on his other plantations near Reserve, while expanding cane-growing capacity. Ultimately, he consolidated all 14 of his plantations into 3 manufacturing districts (again, centralization).

The plantations he owned were Reserve, Star, Diamond, LaPlace, LaBranche, Belle Pointe, New Era, Cornland, Elm Hall, Utopia, Upper Ten, Mary, Madewood, Foley, and Greater Raceland. All fourteen properties comprised 72,000 acres (10,000 of which were sugarcane fields). That’s an immense amount of acreage.

Safe to say, the man didn’t slow down. No reason to cut this momentum and clear advantage –

In St. James Parish alone, between 1875 and 1881, Leon bought land in nineteen separate transactions.

His land in the countryside was composed of deep nutritious soil deposited over the ages by the river floods. He bought what later-day agronomists would call class 1 agricultural soils, the most productive and rarest cropland in America.

Wolf understandably lobs some high praise over to his great-great-grandfather for his stature and reputation in the history of Louisiana’s sugar industry –

Leon Godchaux is universally credited with transforming what had been, worldwide, an antiquated and piecemeal industry saddled with disorganization, decentralization, and primitive refining methods. He pioneered the transformation of sugar processing into an agricultural-industrial hybrid…The age-old way that sugar had been produced—a separate sugarhouse on every plantation, each separate and discrete in all its processes and equipment—was on the way out by the time Leon Godchaux retired.

But we must remember, sugar cane is a crop that bends man to its whims, not the other way around. That is to say, Leon operated a business that was oppressively labor-intensive for those in its employ. Hard labor can be honest, to be clear, really all depends on who is running the show –

“As they work an overseer watches them, and a timekeeper goes along beside them and sees that every man and every woman is at work. The wages are very low. They get from 60 cents to $1 a day, according to their skill and are boarded on the plantation. They sleep in cabins, several of them lying on the floor and getting their rest as best they can. The hours are from daylight until dark, and there are few stops.” Frank G. Carpenter on Leon Godchaux’s sugar plantations, Los Angeles Times, x 1896

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Eventually, a man’s time must come to an end.

“The Duke of Clothing” was also The Sugar King. What a life. He had worked hard and cemented himself, brick by brick, and eventually cane seed by cane seed (or takeover by takeover, however you want to look at it). He augmented the cane business through his children’s academic/professional training by expanding rail access for his operations. This expansion helped with the continued shipment of the finished sugar. But also, he was feeding himself in the process –

…a whole new set of customers could transport cane conveniently and cheaply to the Godchaux mills.

As age and time took over, as they are guaranteed to do, Leon ensured that his sons were trained and that business know-how was passed. His daughters were largely excluded from the ‘you will run the business when I’m gone’ conversations. However, they received “equal shares in his financial legacy. That is how it was—then.” Godchaux, firmly wealthy as we approach the 20^th century, also leaned into charity/philanthropy. Unfortunately, Leon would not see the 1900s: he passed away at the age of 75, on May 17, 1899, in his home.

His beloved, Justine, died in 1906 and was buried next to him. Their passing represented “the end of the first generation of the Leon Godchaux family in New Orleans.”

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Au revoir.

I usually take us to the end of the text, but I think it’s worth leaving you wanting. In other words, go grab yourself a copy of the book. Some juicy tidbits I’ve left out of this piece (a preview):

• Joachim Tassin broke off from Leon (amicably, apparently) to open his own store, which unfortunately succumbed to “a disastrous fire” in August 1865; Tassin was welcomed back to work with Leon at Godchaux’s continued growing retail enterprise.

• The Godchaux store became a full-service department store (men, women, and children), though they eventually shut down the manufacturing division; 1940, the store celebrated its 100^th anniversary.

• The business went bankrupt in the late 1980s.

• A business saga familiar to those in family enterprises that grow to a certain size, and surpass a specific number of generations (i.e., who controls what, who deserves what, etc.).

I’ll say this, Wolf, understandably, is not pleased with how this all played out –

Leon’s notorious humility combined with his third-and fourth-generation successor’s inability, have left nothing except the Godchaux-Reserve House as a tangible vestige of Leon Godchaux’s vast and multifarious achievements. Within a hundred years of Leon’s death, his retail stores, his clothing manufacturing operation, his extensive country properties, and the sugar refiners are no longer. Like a whiff of the sweet scent of night-blooming jasmine upon the morning breeze, they are gone.

Kudos to the author for the undertaking.

There you have it.

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In my last piece (And A Bottle of Rum), I highlighted Curtis’s coverage of New England’s role (or lack thereof) in the Triangle Trade, the vicious and interconnected transatlantic bartering of humans and goods between the West African Coast (primarily), the “New World” (Caribbean/American Colonies), and Europe. The author’s gut-check for readers, to caution giving New England too much undue credit, which sounds a little twisted, was the following –

The smooth-running and sinister New England Triangle Trade is, in large part, an overblown myth. For starters, no New England traders are known to have completed a single circuit of that triangle. Historian Clifford Shipton spent years of sifting through hundreds of New England shipping records, yet couldn’t recall “a single example of a ship engaged in such a triangular trade.” — Wayne Curtis, And A Bottle of Rum

Note: Different Clifford. Both historians. Both sons of Massachusetts. Both wrote extensively about the history of the state and the New England region (mainly colonial history).

As you can imagine, picking up Alderman’s book got me excited. I knew reading Rum, Slaves, and Molasses would be a nice academic exercise in rounding out my learning on New England & the Triangle Trade by getting the information from all sides. I wonder if Curtis interacted with Alderman’s work at all.

Let’s get into it.

The book and the man.

I consider myself lucky to have found a hard copy of this book. Used and all. Rum, Slaves and Molasses was published in 1972. The copy I have was once the possession of Quinney School Library –

I looked up Quinney and first landed on the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law. That sort of makes sense. The book is centered on a very adult-oriented topic. But then I looked at the back of the book –

This Quinney “was Wisconsin’s first public school teacher and a member of Wisconsin’s Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans.” I could not locate the middle school, only an elementary school, donning Electa Quinney’s name. However, I think it is safe to assume that the school was (or is) in Wisconsin. Thank you, Electa Quinney Middle School, for allowing me to retrieve a copy of this book that was once in your library. You cannot have it back.

Alderman’s book being in a middle school library makes a lot of sense, in retrospect, because he has a deep inventory of work (especially non-fiction) that he wrote for a young(er) adult audience. Middle School isn’t young adult, to be clear. There was also, I assume, much less of an urge/desire to conceal information around race and history during the time of this book’s publishing. An “era of aggressions-aggressions,” if I may quote Zadie Smith for a second, versus one of passivity. Middle School is a little crazy for this book, but you get my drift.

In most cases, I summarize the authors' bios, but The University of Southern Mississippi did a fantastic job. Here’s my CTRL + c, CTRL + p –

Clifford Lindsey Alderman, born in 1902 in Springfield, Massachusetts, graduated from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1924. He did graduate work in chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but spent only a short time in chemistry and engineering fields. He served on the staffs of naval units at Columbia University, Holy Cross College and Millsaps College during World War II, eventually commanding an officer training school at Middlebury College in Vermont. After the war, he worked as an editor and did public relations for shipping and foreign trade industries.

An avid student of American history, Alderman wrote historical novels for adults, and both fiction and nonfiction for young adults. He wrote under his full name, Clifford Lindsey Alderman, as a sentimental tribute to his mother, whose maiden name was Lindsey. Alderman believed that his mother could have become a fine novelist in her own right were it not for her family responsibilities and untimely death at a relatively young age. He also believed that his own interest in the American colonial and Revolutionary periods was a natural occurrence since he was a direct descendant of John and Priscilla Alden and had two ancestors who fought in the American Revolution.

Alderman believed in the importance of visiting the places of which he wrote. He and his wife, Mildred, traveled extensively in their native New England, and took repeated research trips to Canada, England, Ireland, France, and the Caribbean.

The Aldermans lived most of their married life in Seaford, New York, close enough to Manhattan for him to do weekly research at the New York Public Library. The beauty and warmth of Florida appealed to them by their retirement years, however, and they moved to an adult community in Pinellas Park, Florida in the mid-1970s. Cliff Alderman died in 1988 at the age of 86. – U of Southern Mississippi, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, Clifford Lindsey Alderman Papers

Alderman’s sentiment on the consequences of a racially-charged history vis-à-vis the Triangle Trade and the transatlantic world is a simple but powerful one –

The story of the New England Triangular Trade is a shameful tale of greed and inhumanity. It is not a pretty story, but one that should be told because its repercussions are still being felt today. The Legacy that it left—of anger, conflict, and mistrust between blacks and whites, both in this country and abroad—remains a major problem to be solved before there can be equality and freedom for all throughout the world.

Let’s explore Alderman’s work.

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Bristol, Rhode Island.

Note: Alderman covers the mid-1700s to about the early 1800s in this work, with a few references existing outside the range.

We start with a central figure, Captain Jim deWolf. When you learn that Alderman dabbled in both fiction (historical) and non-fiction, you have to remind yourself to double-check the names/facts of what he’s laid out. deWolf was a real person, “engaged in extensive commercial ventures, principally trading in slaves, with Cuba and other West Indian islands.” (source: Biographical Director of the United States Congress). Check.

Alderman also centers deWolf’s cargo boat, the Sukey, which I believe is a fictitious name, unclear. In any case, the Sukey is essential to the story because it is the principal vessel that would leave Bristol for the Caribbean, where the deWolfs “owned plantations.” The Sukey served as a home base ship for “the evil trade in which they were engaged.”

The deWolfs owned a distillery on Thames Street (Rhode Island), so they had a strong interest in the flow of people and goods across the Atlantic. Their activities would have presumably looked something like this:

→ The rum from their distillery was loaded on carts and brought aboard the Sukey.

→ Hogsheads of other goods were loaded onto the boat, which sailed to the coast of West Africa.

In West Africa, she [Sukey] would work her way down the Guinea Coast, probably finding it necessary to stop at port after port as she exchanged her trade goods and precious rum for even more precious black slaves, and perhaps also for gold dust, ivory, ebony and other African products.

Once the Sukey reached the Guinea Coast of West Africa and the trade goods were disposed of, the ‘tween decks would be used for an entirely different purpose.

→ That “different purpose” is the loading of human beings (Africans) on the ship to endure the Middle Passage.

→ The Sukey would then make its way back to the Americas, delivering humans for payments (of various extensions, I imagine).

If what Alderman outlined is verifiably true, then he would be ruling out Curtis’s notion that “no New England traders are known to have completed a single circuit of that triangle.” Also, if there are “ship-people” among us, Alderman pays a great level of detail to the outfitting – “bilge, ‘tween decks, the cabin, or officers’ quarters” – of the vessel.

The Sukey had to have set sail post-1787 (pre-1800s) because its voyage was illegal: as of 1787, the Rhode Island State Assembly strictly forbade slave trading, “though everybody knew perfectly well that it was.” Laws on the books, especially during this period, were treated as suggestions for influential families like the deWolfs. More importantly, and I think this is a critical learning, slave trading was an industry of massive proportions/consequences for Rhode Island (and New England more broadly). Many depended on it for their survival, which made restrictions largely unenforceable –

There were the Bristol sailmakers and carpenters, the caulkers who sealed the wooden ships’ joints…the ship chandlers who sold provisions…and the owners and workers of the ropewalks that made cordage—the great number of ropes used in holding, hoisting, lowering and controlling the sails of a ship. And there were many more who depended upon the Bristol shipowners for profit and wages.

The perilous voyage the Sukey initiated was therefore eagerly awaited by those who benefited from its residuals.

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New World-ers, old school machinations.

New England colonists engaged in what they knew to be true. And for this time, riches obtained through violent exploitation, capture, and trade likely felt par for the course. For centuries, Europeans had known war, capture, and expulsion (or absorption). Alderman leans into the fact of slavery being an old industry, one that Europeans, and later New-Europeans (Englanders), mimicked in pursuit of profit –

Slavery is as old as the earlier records of history…Every race, at one time or another, has had slaves. Slaves were used to build the famous pyramids of Egypt, which took nearly two thousand years, from about 4750 to 3000 B.C. The ancient Romans captured and enslaved many thousands of their enemies during their conquest of all the Mediterranean, most of Europe and part of Asia. The ancient Greeks had slaves. So did the warlike Carib Indians, who inhabited the long chain of small West Indian islands called today the Windward and Leeward groups of the Lesser Antilles. They often raided the four big islands of the Greater Antilles—today Puerto Rico, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Cuba and Jamaica—where the Arawak Indians lived.

To the above, I would add Africa. For instance, “Mali[’s] Golden Era” in the 14^th century: Mansa Mūsā’s opulent entry into Egypt prompted many historians to dub him the wealthiest man of the time. A core feature of his entourage was his slaves –

…accompanied by a sixty-thousand-person delegation, including twelve thousand slaves, each of whom reputedly carried a wand like fan of gold weighing four pounds. Mūsā’s senior wife, Ināri Kunāte, is said to have been catered to by five hundred maids and personal slaves devoted to her needs alone. Camels and horses carried hundreds of pounds of gold dust. – Howard French, Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War

Alderman provides a strategic overview (timeline) regarding slavery and its implications for the New World and New England. Everything from the Portuguese kicking things off with the capture of islands like “the Cape Verdes [and] Madeiras” in the early-to-mid-1400s, and the Spanish following up thereafter. In this outline, we also witness the voyage/transport of sugarcane from these Portuguese-controlled islands to the Americas.

Christopher Columbus is believed to have brought sugar cane to Hispaniola on his second voyage.

And with the transport of agricultural goods followed the transport of human beings. Fast-forward to Rhode Island/New England. They largely depended on sea trade and fishing for their livelihood (initially). With their fishing enterprise, the New Englanders were able to trade for other goods needed, such as dried fish, beef, pork, flour, bread, lumber, products made of wood, “particularly the staves, hoops and heads from which hogshead could be made for molasses.” Lots of local trading within the colonies initially, though they also traded with the Caribbean for molasses, tropical fruit, etc.

But New England would not hold off from engaging in the slave trade once they realized the profit potential, which is what families like the deWolfs chased. It was only a matter of time, not to mention the region’s default inclusion by way of being a former British colony –

The first American slave ship show in the records was the Rainbow, which sailed from Boston for Africa in 1645.

Once New England placed itself in the mix, their industries boomed from the profits generated from its involvement in the slave trade. Fisheries expanded. Textiles and lumber industries grew. Turning back the dial was not to come until much later. Once the wealth was already generated. Alderman makes a misstep, by my estimation, in classifying early New England rum as of a superior quality than the Caribbean’s, since most historical records (opinions) show otherwise. But as a child of New England, I understand that he may have felt pride in the assertion –

French brandy had been in the greatest demand there, but New England rum, produced at low cost and far better than that made in the Sugar Islands, just about put the brandy trade out of business. And the wretched, captive black people brought high prices in the Caribbean, where molasses was cheap.

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The (human) source of the riches generated.

Guinea Coast. Sukey, Captain Almy, and crew would set sail for her land.

After braving bad weather, food shortage, ship damage, and whatever precarities came with this type of journey –

…the ships would go on to the African coast and begin the long, slow progress along the shore of the Gulf of Guinea. There stood many trading posts or “factories,” as they were called on the Grain Coast (today the Republic of Liberia), Ivory Coast (now the Ivory Coast Republic), Gold Coast (now Ghana) and the Slave Coast (including the modern republics of Togo, Dahomey and the Federation of Nigeria.

To musically reiterate, Dave, take it away –

Black is people namin’ your countries on what they trade most

Coast of Ivory, Gold Coast, and the Grain Coast

But most importantly to show how deep all this pain goes

West Africa, Benin, they called it slave coast

Once on the coast, most enslavers could not pull in close to shore unless they already had “factories” and forts set up.

Payment to the Africans for favors and allowance to come in closer to shore was commonplace. Often, there were middlemen (or factors) who came out in small boats to meet ships like the Sukey.

A dash was a kind of gift, a tip or bribe, usually a bottle of rum or perhaps a musket. Slaver captains never failed to dash a factor. Otherwise the trader might cheat the slaver or save his better slaves for the next ship.

Hogsheads of rum…were always in demand.

This is the moment where, if you have any literature/resources on Africans and rum, you send it to me asap. Please and thank you.

Factor examined the goods/dash. If satisfied, the Sukey would have been brought to shore and on to the factory for trading. There were Baracoons, holdings or stockades for those brought in from the interior, lining fortified and non-fortified “factories.” Weeks of negotiations often took place, since each side would inevitably aim to get one over on the other in the transaction(s). For those aboard the Sukey, their concerns were monetary and practical (i.e., whether their journey would be worth it based on who/what they brought back). They would presumably pay a lot of attention to their “cargo” –

One diseased slave might infect everyone aboard a ship and slaves who came down with such an illness at sea were almost always thrown overboard.

So, when all was said and done (trading wrapped), the Sukey headed back to familiar waters –

At last, after five months that seemed to all more like five years, the Sukey, with 120 slaves, left the African coast and sailed westward over the Middle Passage for Cuba.

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From interior to the coast.

Long Before Europeans first came to West Africa in the fifteenth century, powerful, rich black empires existed there.

And it was these rich (often military) empires that captured and provided humans for trade with the hungry, floating ships off the coast. This is an age of very little (if any) shared identity among Europeans and Africans. Someone’s Portuguese took precedence over their being European, in the same way that someone from the Mandingo empire (today, Mali) would have identified as such rather than African.

As Alderman aptly outlines, empires inevitably rise and fall. Greeks. Romans. British.

And so it happened with Ghana, as well as other West African empires.

A glimpse of the various African empires –

Ghana was first replaced in the eleventh century by the empire of the Mandingos, called Mali. The Mandingos founded Timbuktu, but were replaced in turn by the Songhai Empire. In 1590 the Moors of North Africa crossed the Sahara Desert, overthrew the Songhai and captured Timbuktu. Located on the long Niger River, which flows southeastward into the Gulf of Guinea, the city was a natural trading center. Under the Moors it became rich and famous. The Moors brought with them their culture and the Mohammedan religion. They founded a university at Timbuktu that became known throughout the world its faculty of scholars, whose knowledge rivaled that of the foremost scholars of Europe.

The might of these empires depended on trading. Pre-Europeans, that trade would have been conducted based on proximity (i.e., within the borders of what we today classify as Africa). The location of empires dictated the trade they were most likely engaged in. It was only natural that those closer to the coast/water would be the first point of contact for those coming to trade in humans. Also, on/near the coasts were notable towns and cities, which helped lubricate the trading –

Near the coast were a number of towns as large as some important European cities. West Africans had their own imaginative style of architecture. They could weave cloth into beautiful patterns and colors. They raised great herds of cattle, sheep and goats. They could smelt iron and work it into useful tools and utensils. They worked in brass, too, and were expert sculptors and wood-carvers. Examples of African craftsmanship are among the prized possessions of museums the world over. Also important was their music, which West Africans slaves brought with them to the West Indies and the American colonies. Much of our jazz and other forms of modern American music developed from it.

The Gold Coast was considered to have the “most prized slaves,” many being of “the Ashanti Kingdom.” They were also known to be a proud, independent people, prone to military action, which is understandable given that part of their reality was defending against routine capture/conquer attempts. Notably, many Ashanti people – otherwise referred to as Coromantees – would rebel and commit suicide vs. submit to capture. They were known to be the source leader(s) that led many of the slave wars in the Caribbean. I cover this in depth in my write-up on Tacky’s Revolt. To cement the (reputation) point –

“There was never a rascal or coward of that nation…no man deserved a Coromantee that would not treat him as a friend rather than a slave.” – A governor of the Leeward Islands in the 18th century

The Sukey would have been abreast of these stereotypes/realities and accounted for them in their calculations of who they brought aboard, how much they could sell them for, and how tight security needed to be aboard the ship. Interestingly enough, there was probably an odd cohesion among the traders and those they traded with. While many of the New World-ers had aspirations of building out vast enterprises, they were often engaging with groups of people that were already schooled in these enterprises, of which slave labor was integral –

The Mandingos were justly famous; some owned vast plantations like the white planters of the West Indies, and like these white planters they had many slaves.

All in all, the warring tribes/empires of the African coast vied for power, and much of that instability fueled the transatlantic slave trade. The more demand for slaves there was, which certainly increased as the decades carried on, the more incentive “rulers of the interior kingdoms” had to enact war on their neighbors. All would be strategically aided by the New World-ers when they realized they could pad their wallets by sowing dysfunction, since it would yield them slaves. Providing Africans with muskets and gunpowder became a valuable trading proposition –

However –

Most prized of all, however, was rum, which the white man had introduced into Africa…A slave-owner whose wits were befuddled by strong rum could be cheated more easily.

A little bit of exaggeration, in my opinion, but the point is made.

Where’s the Sukey?

Deadly waters, high hopes on the return.

According to Alderman, not much is known of Sukey’s voyage across the Atlantic (Middle Passage), but she reached Havana with most of the captives alive. A lucky occurrence in those times, given the all-around scarcity –

The Middle Passage could last as long as three months. At such times everyone aboard was on short rations of food and was allowed as little as a cupful of water a day…

For those captured, needless to say, their journey was particularly miserable, unkempt, and unsanitary. The captains of the Sukey had hard, cold economics at the top of their frontal, so the Africans were subjected to requirements that fit those aspirations –

The slaves were made to exercise every day by jumping up and down, or at least many days to keep them healthy and strong it was believed.

As you can imagine, this took its toll, and those captured responded (rebelled) accordingly –

Some went insane. Some suffocated…some slaves committed suicide…Some found ways to cut their throats. Others refused to eat.

Remember the discussion of privates/privateers in my piece on And A Bottle of Rum? Those assets of colonizing nations (privateers, mostly) were a thorn in the side of New Englanders in the human trading business. During times of war, which were very frequent in those times, this was particularly the case –

During the Seven Years’ War (called the French and Indian War in the American Colonies) from 1756 to 1763, 15 per cent of the slave ships sailing out of Newport, Rhode Island were captured by these French marauders. Insurance rates for the vessels…zoomed up by 25 per cent. But the trade went on.

Eventually, the Sukey landed in Havana, Cuba, where Captain Jim deWolf “owned sugar plantations and grinding mills.” He and his crew could load up on molasses (cheaply) while there, despite it being a Spanish territory, before heading back to Bristol, Rhode Island. Based on my readings, this would seem to be a colonial-era practice: get the raw materials (molasses) from the cheapest source possible, import or smuggle them in, and make the rum. Since this was post-1776, the deWolfs presumably did no smuggling, though privateers were likely on the prowl. Undoubtedly, the British would not be kind to deWolf and his crew in their waters.

The extent of the deWolf’s plantation operations is not immediately clear. But I suppose we can use our imagination, given the state of slavery and sugarcane in the Caribbean. For now, illustrations –

Although I did not take a lot of notes on plantation staffing/operations (i.e., overseers, gangs, absentee owners, “great gangs,” mills, punishments, etc.) because of my familiarity from prior readings, I couldn’t help but wonder – this is described with chilling precision, how was this book in a middle school?! Alderman even went in-depth on domestic/personal servants, and how that fluctuated depending on a family’s wealth. Imagine a middle schooler reading this and telling mommy about what they learned in school that day –

A slave who tried to poison his master would be pinched three times with red-hot tongs and then broken on the wheel, which meant he would be stretched across a wheel and tied to it while all his bones were broken by a man with an iron crowbar. A slave who threatened and struck a white person was pinched and hanged if the white person demanded it; otherwise his right hand was chopped off.

Jamaican slaves who rebelled or those who struck a white man twice were condemned to be burned [set on fire].

For what it’s worth, Alderman does give airtime to the wars/rebellions of the enslaved in the Caribbean, as a continuation of laying out what happened post-Middle Passage. He highlights the full spectrum: everything from the bidding centers where people auctioned and purchased enslaved Africans, to inevitable wars/rebellions by those who could not bear being subject to captivity and the harshness of plantation life. Despite all of this –

…the Triangular Trade continued to flourish and gold clinked wearily into the coffers of New England merchants and shipowners in their countinghouses.

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Back in Rhode Island.

Not the warmest welcome home for Captain Jim deWolf, initially at least. In 1791, he was charged in Rhode Island by a Federal grand jury for throwing an enslaved woman overboard because she had smallpox. Evidence to support the antislavery cartoon’s depictions. Reminder that the Rhode Island legislature passed a law prohibiting the slave trade in 1787. Jim deWolf fled/hid for four years until the case was dropped. He then returned “to his evil business and [remained] a rich slave ship owner.”

The man with the heaviest wallet was in the people’s favor. The church, too. Why? Because the deWolf family contributions bankrolled the Bristol Congregational Church and paid out the Parson’s salary, per the author.

Besides, in those days the slave trade was considered perfectly respectable.

More than that, New Englanders, and Rhode Islanders (specifically), would not have jeopardized the prosperity their towns/cities had achieved on the back of slave trading. A minority may have classified it as evil, but even they would likely have been in the affirmative camp if it ensured wealth for their state –

A walk though the commercial district of any of the five principal New England slave trading seaports in the latter part of the eighteenth century would have revealed much about the prosperity trade had brought to the town.

Alderman portrays these port towns as centered around wharves. Waterfronts. Recording houses. Merchants dressed in fine cloth, selling goods from their warehouses (i.e., molasses for sale to be made into rum, in particular). Cabinet makers. Joiners. Furniture for the rich. Silversmiths. You get the point. Given that much of this activity occurred during the pre-/post-Independence years, Alderman is careful to note when the colonists would have paid the “British tax.”

But as we are talking about rum, here is a glimpse of what things were like back then in New England –

In 1761 Newport had twenty-two distilleries turning out rum at top speed, as well as three sugar refineries. Other New England ports had as many distilleries or more. While rum was a favorite alcoholic drink of New Englanders, they could never have consumed more than a fraction of the Kill-Devil all the distilleries produced. Much of it must have been sold or traded elsewhere.

According to Alderman (and his sources), in 1763, Massachusetts had 63 distilleries in and around Boston and Salem, “making rum with all possible speed.” As we know, New England’s propensity to be associated with slavery began to diminish. But at that juncture, many had already made their riches in the slave trade. The deed was done. For instance, Peter Faneuil, whose Hall “still stands in Boston’s Dock Square.”

Eventually, the risk of punishment (i.e., the legal and financial costs of remaining in the slave trade) was too high. Merchants “began to look elsewhere for profit—to the China tea trade, the California trade and whaling over the seven seas.” Reputationally, the risk was too high as the court of public opinion began to “turn against slavery and the slave trade.”

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The show continued until it didn’t.

Just because slave trading became unpopular does not mean that the New Englanders completely abstained. For merchants, economics was the priority by any means necessary. The drying up of the waters (dollars) was mainly due to the unprofitability of remaining in the trade.

In other words, while Britain ended its slave trade in 1806–1807 (on the books), and the U.S. in 1808, many New Englanders still looked to Cuba as a last-ditch effort to reap some benefits. Hence, deWolfs and their Cuban plantations. Slavery was not abolished in Cuba until the late 19^th century, and slave trading activity remained active a few years after America’s Civil War.

Our tale ends here as well. Despite the length of this piece, Alderman’s book isn’t but more than 120 pages or so. One of my faster reads this year, but no less substantial than the others—whole lot of depth.

A fascinating piece of history, though unfortunate given the human cost/toll. But as the author noted, New England’s Triangle Trade “is not a pretty story, but one that should be told.”

I hope it is at least clear that there is a deep bed of history associated with America/New England and rum. That much is clear.

Peace.

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Title of the piece (Wayne’s words) a little bold? Well, here’s more –

A rum bottle serves better as a prism through which to see how America changed and developed from the arrival of the first European settlers to the present day. Rum didn’t necessarily change history, but history certainly changed rum, and if you but look you can see all of us reflected in each variation.

Mr. Curtis will be kicking off my (writing) foray into American rum. Not to suggest that’s his sole focus. Only that my coverage of his book will be a leap into American rum territory, more so than any of my other writings. I will also pay homage to his “Ten Cocktails” skeleton through my structuring of this piece. In other words, how he titles his chapters is how I will walk us through this thing. I hope this gives a good flavor (not a pun) of what the book is like overall.

Warning: Curtis’s writing is a sharp departure from the jargon/style of the Worthy Park historians/authors. For me, this is more refreshing than an indictment. I am not of the mindset that big words and complexity make you smarter. It does, however, make you deadly at obfuscation. Kind of like the unnecessary use of that word. See what I mean?

In all seriousness, it is an art to use humor and wit to explain centuries-old history. Where Curtis departs from modern-day sensibilities of “seriousness,” which I only think “traditional” historians would make that sort of judgment, he makes up for it by giving it to you straight. Sometimes, deep, rigorous analysis covers the truth that history ain’t always that interesting. In many cases, recounting the past reveals that humans were just behaving practically for their time. It is only later that history is written about in a ‘more than it actually was’ sort of way. All to say, levity is okay.

Alright, where were we? The book. Before we go chapter by chapter, you know what comes first.

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Wayne.

You can find Wayne’s professional bio on his Distiller Magazine profile linked under the picture. I don’t know how current this is, but the man may also be a lecturer at Johns Hopkins. And I discovered, via Hopkins, that he’s a journalist. I will repeat this every single time – when journalists write books, they’re usually great.

His work has appeared in American Scholar, New York Times, Wall St. Journal, American Archeology, Preservation, The Smart Set, and on the radio show This American Life. He’s the recipient of the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year Award, and was named Best Cocktail and Spirits Writer at the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards.

Here is Curtis’s love story with rum –

When I started researching the book 12-13 years ago, I sampled a bit of rum here and there, and wasn’t all that impressed by what I was tasting. Then I brought back a bottle of Havana Club Reserva from Canada, and thought, wow, that’s actually really good. And I expanded my search, which hasn’t stopped since. – The Rum Lab

Wasn’t all that impressed, eh? Must’ve been rum from…teasing. I actually love to hear stories of how people fell into the rum fold, largely because there is an entire crop of people that aren’t “children of the spirit” (i.e., Caribbean/wherever rum is a core part of the alcohol consumption). More simply, people who know rum to be mundane/always around, not in a bad way. Those on the opposite end of that usually have interesting (or predictable) how-I-got-here stories. Which is fine all around, drink up.

The book was originally written in 2006. Recent revision, 2018.

Alright, let’s talk rum with Curtis.

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Kill-Devil.

The author’s “Introduction” preceding “Kill-Devil” is aptly titled “Molasses.” Apt because if you don’t understand, or at least pay some attention to the fundamental base raw material of whatever you’re analyzing, you’ll skip over important details. Not that he dives into the by-product of sugar much in the “Introduction.” More so that he sets up the book in a nice chronological order by titling the intro “Molasses.”

What he does set us up with, however, is three pertinent questions that he aims to answer throughout the book –

1. How did it [rum] grow to become the most important spirit in the New World in the eighteenth century?

2. How did it come to be eclipsed by other drinks in the nineteenth century?

3. And how did it manage to find its way back?

On to Kill-Devil. Note: If you’re mind is telling you that you’ve seen me write those words before, then you are correct. Mentioned it in my first half coverage of Frederick H Smith’s “Caribbean Rum: A Social and Economic History.”

Curtis puts one big (funny) foot forward by stating that rum was “first invented in the early seventeenth century on the British island of Barbados. Or not.” My type of carrying on, a little dash of not-so-fast.

Some of my favorite follow-ups (to myself, really) when dissecting any piece of history are to inquire about a couple of things –

• How do we know something to be definitively true?

• Who is the messenger and what position/level of power did they maintain when they laid down their ideas (i.e., are we reading biased reporting from a certain period)? The answers are almost undoubtedly ‘in a position of influence’ and ‘yes.’

• Is the first written documentation of something the most legitimate way to define something as being first? Put differently, if you have the idea, but I patent it, am I really the inventor?

• If we believe something to be first, I like to always ask the question, “What or who could have influenced the development of something, so that we can get to the root of that first?” Inventors are outliers. Most people are influenced by knowledge – written, spoken, practiced – that preceded them. You know, like the Romans got it from the Greeks. But have you ever asked who influenced the Greeks? Let’s get back to rum, or Kill-Devil (rather).

In the case of rum, we have to do the impossible: walk down sugar cane alcohol – fermented and distilled – lane to best understand who could have possibly been first. My response is that we have no idea. And if someone were to give me a definitive answer, I would ask them who influenced the ‘definitive answer,’ and we’d go down a never-ending lane of historical figures/dates/places/etc. This is all to say…well, hear Curtis out –

…it may have been invented on the Spanish islands of Hispaniola or Cuba (where it would have been called aguadiente, or “burning water”), or by Portuguese colonists on the coast of Brazil (where it would later be called cachaça). Or possibly it was first distilled by the French on one of their Caribbean island strongholds (where the poorer grades of rum were known as tafia). On the other hand, it may have been first concocted in the 1400s somewhere in Europe by secretive alchemists searching for the elixir of life and feeding through their retorts whatever fermentable matter they could get their hands on. Or just maybe it was invented even earlier by an anonymous chemist tinkering near the cane fields of coastal India. The thing is, no one really knows when rum first appeared. If you want to know about the history of sugar, overflowing archives provide enough information to lead to mental obesity. But for rum, it’s a starvation diet.

I’m only shocked that Curtis didn’t say that the Portuguese/Brazilians probably got their influence from Madeira. That’s where Columbus brought the cane over from, right? Look, let’s give a shout out to Papua New Guinea for being the mother of the plant. Has anyone consulted them on the first cane alcohol consumed by their people? You see why this is never-ending, right?

My Bajan friend will read this, maybe, maybe not, and fight me on the above, claiming fervently that they are the home of our beloved spirit. If Jamaica could lay claim to the above, I would defend it with the force of Rikishi’s signature move (don’t Google that). I know you’re still wondering about this Kill-Devil thing, so I’ll get to it.

In 1652, a visitor to the island observed that “the chief fuddling they make in the island is Rumbullion, alias Kill-Divil, and this is made of sugar canes…” A 1658 deed for the sale of the Three Houses Plantation included in the sale “four large mastrick cisterns for liquor for rum,” which is the first known official appearance of the word rum on any of the islands.

So, the home turf of that Kill-Devil verbiage is Barbados. In the mid-1600s, its capital, Bridgetown, was apparently “bigger and more prosperous than Manhattan.” Sugarcane plantation societies ruled, as was the case in most American (North, South, and Central) colonies. Cane is where the vast majority of wealth was generated, though New Worlders mostly claimed its residuals; the lion's share of riches went back to the colonizing nation’s home base (Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, etc.). Colonizing nations also borrowed each other’s terminology for the spirit –

The term migrated over time from the English to the Danish, who called it kiel-dyvel, and to the French, who pronounced it guildive, a term that lives on today in Haiti. The origins of the word rum are no less a mystery. Rum is a blunt, simple word, and admirably Anglo-Saxon. In an 1824 essay about the name’s derivation, Samuel Morewood suggested it might be from British slang for “the best,” as in having “a rum time.” Morewood writes, “As spirits, extracted from molasses, could not well be ranked under the name whiskey, brandy, arrack, &c. it was called rum, to denote its excellence or superior quality.” Given what was known about the taste of early rum, this is unlikely. Among those unconvinced by this argument was Morewood himself, who went on to suggest another possibility: that it was taken from the last syllable for the Latin word for sugar, saccharum, an explanation that is often heard today.

And this Kill-Devil, while rudimentary, was very popular among early colonists. It showed up in the most random of places at times –

The British sea captain John Josselyn wrote of a dinner held on a ship off the coast of present-day Maine in September 1639, at which another captain toasted him with a pint of rum.

To add fuel to the Bajan fire(water), Mount Gay, at the northern tip of the island, may lay claim to its rum production dating back to 1663; the first solid piece of evidence, however, suggests February 20, 1703 –

On this date, a deed listed equipment transferred in a sale to include “two stone windmills…one boiling house with seven coppers, one curing house and one still house.” (In comparison, the oldest continuously operating Scotch distillery is believed to date to the 1780s, and the oldest registered whiskey distillery in the United States to the 1770s.).

In this chapter, Curtis spends some energy outlining the changing perceptions on molasses (i.e., when it became economical not to discard), the history of distillation equipment, the difficult life of those in the “New World” (disease, uncertainty, warring, etc.), and even going as far to make clear that much of the early rum was consumed locally since heavy exportation was not yet a thing. On that last bit, smuggling was (and always will be) a thing. That I’m willing to place a bet on.

Although robust export markets were nascent, the tide began shifting as the world entered the 18^th century. Rum became a common inclusion in cargo hauls to and from, alongside molasses, tobacco, and other goods. Yet, somehow those in (what we know today as) the U.S.A. still got theirs. The rum was flowing so much that laws were passed to control the supply of rum in various colonies: “Connecticut in 1654…Massachusetts in 1657.”

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Grog.

While Curtis transitions to the more pirate-y notions around rum and its history, which I will do everything in my power to deemphasize, I think it is a perfect setup. Why? Because he uses one of the most well-known, modern-day (rum) mascots, Captain Morgan, to showcase that the actual figure’s real importance was serving as an extension of the British nation-capturing efforts. In other words –

…at the age of thirty-two, Morgan was named head of the Brethren of the Coast, a loosely organized group of privateers. Privateers, unlike pirates, had the official blessing of their government to attack ships flying the flags of the enemy. Privateers weren’t paid by the government but got to keep a generous percentage of the spoils. The arrangement was a good deal for everyone except those attacked. England got an extended navy without putting up any hard cash, and the more rapacious privateers earned far more than a sailor could hope to see in the standing navy.

Between 1655 and 1671, Morgan sacked a total of eighteen cities, four towns, and thirty-five villages, and captured more than $100 million worth of gold, silver, and trade goods.

But in all the pillaging done by Morgan, apparently, “[a]t no time is rum ever mentioned.” Yet, rum and Morgan (which sounds repetitive to modern ears) is the story most people are sold. Which simply means that if you are a ‘sell as much as possible’ businessperson, you can bend a story in whatever direction you want and still reap the rewards. People love a good story. Captain Morgan has gotta be top 3 U.S. market share, at least historically speaking.

You know what beverages came up a lot? “Madeira and Canary wines and brandy.” The head honcho distilled liquids. The juice of the initial colonizing nations. Much revered and appreciated. I’d go as far as to say that the beverages served as liquid representations of things to aspire to (for other colonizers). Look at what they’ve accomplished, and look at what juice they produce as well. One must drink that if we have similar aspirations. You can also argue that wines and brandies were the preference of many nations (fruit brandies, in particular). Back to Morgan (the person), while keeping on theme –

During the long march to Panama City, “fifteen or sixteen jars of Peruvian wine” were uncovered in one village along the way. The men fell upon it “with rapacity” and consumed it without pause.”

Peru was controlled by the Spanish, so “Peruvian wine” = “Spanish wine”.

All in all, my suspicion is that Curtis brings in the pirate/privateer stories to show that it often had very little to do with rum, save a few outlier examples. In fact, pirates were likely not the most discerning of people anyhow. ‘Drink whatever’ was their motto, notwithstanding the notion of some liquids being seen as more prized possessions (your enemy’s wines/brandies). In other words, Captain Morgan should probably be called Edward Teach or Blackbeard –

The pirate most associated with rum was undoubtedly Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard. A privateer during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), he turned pirate and harassed merchant ships plying the seas between Virginia and the Caribbean…Blackbeard’s fondness for rum was legendary. He and his crew would make stops on islands between harrying raids for feasting and indulging in massive quantities of drink. “Rum was never his master,” wrote his biographer, Robert Lee. “He could handle it as no other man of his day, and he was never known to pass out from an excess.”

There is an American rum company (in Massachusetts) that pays homage to this privateering history associated with rum. And their name is, you guessed it – Privateer Rum. Here’s what they say about their history –

Our founder’s ancestor, the original Andrew Cabot (1750-1791), was a merchant, rum distiller and successful American privateer during the American Revolution. His fleet totaled more than twenty-five ships including the True American, for which our rum is named.

And here are Curtis’s thoughts on Privateer –

Perhaps the most impressive new craft rum I’ve come across in recent years is Privateer Rum, distilled in Ipswich, Massachusetts. The distillery was founded by Andrew Cabot, a descendent of early New England settlers. In doing some family research, he learned that his ancestors once owned a rum distillery. Well, why not, he thought, and started a distillery in a small, charmless industrial park just off a salt marsh.

While all of the above is likely true and accurate, I would like to add some additional depth to the history associated with early American rum. I suspect that these pirates and privateers came in handy for the English American colonies (the original thirteen) when they needed their booze (rum). Because while a rich export market did not exist for the Caribbean colonies yet, their status as colonies meant that they still had to pay debts/taxes to their “Mother Country,” and just plain old survive. What rum and molasses were not consumed at home conveniently (i.e., behind the British’s back) ended up in places like Boston, Rhode Island, Maine, Pennsylvania, New York, etc.

So livestock and produce sailed south from the northern colonies, and rum, in turn, began to sail north. “Good Rume and Mallasces…is most vendable heare,” wrote a Newport, Rhode Island, merchant to his Barbados agent in the 1660s.

Demand for rum grew steadily. By 1699, the British writer Edward Ward noted that “rum, alias Kill Devil, is as much ador’d by the American English….This is held as the Comforter of their Souls, the Preserver of their Bodys, the Remover of their Cares, and Promoter of their Mirth; and is a Sovereign Remedy against the Grumbling of the Guts, a Kibe-heel [chilblains on the heel], or a Wounded Conscience, which are three Epidemical Distempers that afflict the Country.”

So, when you hear rum people shout that rum was the original spirit of our nation, this is some of what they’re referring to. I think that the palettes were a bit more varied, so it would be tough for any beverage to lay 100% claim to that. However, I think that it pays (for rum people) to have these stories told so that people can have accurate associations of the words “America” and “rum.” Significant juice flowed into the American colonies from places like Barbados and Antigua. In fact, Benjamin Franklin had a very specific phrase, among his “228 words and phrases” published in the Pennsylvania Gazette, to describe being drunk: “Been to Barbados.”

Another reason Curtis mentioned Pirates as much as he did was to highlight that the people with bad teeth and sickles were incredibly disruptive to the colonial planter/rum makers trying to get product across the seas in a non-disruptive manner. And plantation owners were ultimately strategic allies (agents, really) of the “Mother Country.” Many plantation owners in the Caribbean received credit/funding from businesspeople in London (for example). You can see then that the pirates were not seen as an asset in the flow of goods and money in this transatlantic relationship, or in the trading between mainland (American) colonies and the islands. Therefore, the British targeted pirates ruthlessly –

Between 1716 and 1726, an estimated four hundred to six hundred Anglo-American pirates went to the gallows. In 1718, eight pirates “swang off” at one hanging in the Bahamas. In July 1723, twenty-six pirates were hanged in Newport, Rhode Island, on a single day. England passed a law that harshly punished even passing contact with pirates, making it a capital offense.

Now, the title of this section is Grog. You must be asking, where does this fit in? Well, the marksmen aiming for the pirates were largely men of the British Royal Navy (which makes sense if you’re trying to get someone on the seas). Although Navy men had apparently received rum rations as far back as the late 17^th century (again, friends of the Caribbean rum makers/plantation owners), one can imagine that soldiers drinking a lot of rum were unproductive. So, Edward Vernon, a British Royal Navy leader in the West Indies from 1698 to 1730, aiming to build a disciplined maritime force, came up with a solution that would both satiate and prevent desertion: dilute the rum.

Vernon had a fondness for wearing a coat made of a material called “grogram,” a woven fabric stiffened and weatherproofed with gum. Vernon’s nickname among sailors was “Old Grogram,” and so his new rum was dubbed “grog.”

Even diluted, the grog ration was still equivalent to about five cocktails per day, assuming an ounce and a half of rum per cocktail. That’s an agreeable amount by any standard. Perhaps too agreeable.

Want another fun fact? Whiskey friends, listen up. George Washington’s Mount Vernon. You know, the place famed for its whiskey distillery/production way back when. Do you know which Vernon it’s named after? Edward.

Curtis gives some attention to Grog falling out of favor, as well as the rise and fall of Navy Rum. Soak up some of those interesting tidbits if you get around to the book. The context is interesting.

I know, a lot of talk about the British. America was once a British colony; if we want to be accurate, we gotta give the mates some attention. That’s just how it goes. In due time, we’ll drive full (American) force. Stay tuned.

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Flip.

Alright, full force. Here we go –

The British North American colonies had become a Republic of Rum. Starting about 1700, the colonial taste for home-brewed beer and hard cider began to fade and was displaced by an abiding thirst for stronger liquors. Rum turned up everywhere, in homes and doctor’s offices, in clattering seaports and rough-edged inland villages. With its arrival came a fundamental shift in the colony’s political, economic, and social alignments. If grog was an emblem of the triumph of order over disorder on the open seas, rum—especially in the form of a popular drink called “flip”—was a symbol of the new order displacing the old in the colonies.

I wouldn’t classify this as an out with the old, in with the new scenario. Ciders, brandies, wines, whiskeys, and rums were all still being imported, produced, and/or consumed. It’s just that rum had a higher order of priority relative to many of these beverages in that early 18^th-century period, or so it seems at least.

Barrels of rum soon clattered through teeming colonial ports of Boston, Philadelphia, and Newport, shipped in from the West Indies in great wooden casks from which storekeepers and taverners could dispense smaller quantities by jug or mug. The cost of imported Barbados rum fell by about a third between 1673 and 1687 as the supply soared…

It was a form of currency, serving practical trade purposes versus just being a beverage. I’m sure the citizens of colonial America preferred imbibing rather than using it as a medium of exchange. Rum was also used for nefarious reasons, like subduing Native Americans. I suspect the quote below provides historical context behind why much attention is given to indigenous communities and alcoholism (today). This is all notwithstanding the historically accurate personal reasons that Native Americans desired rum (enhancing existing spiritual practices, general consumption like everyone else, knowing it was a valuable trading commodity, etc.).

Rum also was often consumed during the business at hand, if for no other reason than the Indians asked for it, and the traders—having dispensed with the friendship and good faith part of the transaction—preferred to barter with someone whose power of reasoning was compromised. (John Lederer, in his 1672 account of trade with the Indians, boasted that with liquor one could “dispose them to a humour of giving you ten times the value of your commodity.”) Rum was also brought out for feasts and toasts: Indian traders were often happy to toast to King George, whomever he might be. An agent to the Choctaws estimated that liquor accounted for four-fifths of trade with the natives in 1770, and superintendent of Indian affairs in the southeast estimated in 1776 that ten thousand gallons of rum was moving in trade to the Indians every month. Most was exchanged for furs, but traders often held back a few bottles for buying sex with young “trading girls,” the exact cost of which was negotiated with the tribal leader.”

But make no mistake about it, conquest and expulsion were the foremost goals of those providing rum to Native Americans. In fact, it is said that Benjamin Franklin, in his “negotiations” with tribes in Pennsylvania, promised and later delivered rum to tribes (noted in his autobiography). Later, in places like Kentucky and Tennessee, much of the same was done with whiskey. A carryover tradition from the past, I suppose.

In his history of South Carolina and Georgia (1779), Alexander Hewatt noted that the downfall of the impressive Indian nation was due to many colliding forces…“But of all the causes,” Hewatt continued, “the introduction of spirituous liquors among them, for which they discovered an amazing fondness, has proved the most destructive.”

As for the colonists, the growth of taverns helped fuel the rum obsession –

One tavern keeper’s books for 1774 in North Carolina showed that of 221 customers, some 165 had ordered rum by itself, and another 41 ordered drinks that contained rum. In Philadelphia, the sales at the One Tun tavern for five months in 1770 show that drinks made with rum, including toddy, grog, and punch, outsold beer and wine combined.

But apparently, the title of this section – Flip – was one of the most popular American cocktails (I’d say mixed drinks, more appropriately) in the late 1600s/early 1700s. And, fittingly, one of the best flip-makers was based in Canton, MA.

Medford Rum.

Let’s stay in Massachusetts. For the initiated, it was obvious that I would do that. Why? Because Medford is in Mass –

But what does Medford have to do with rum? We’ll get to that. In the meantime, it pays to continue down the Americans-loved-rum lane. There were a ton of distilleries in the northern colonies (in particular) in the 18^th century, many of which were dedicated to rum production. The beverage became one of the “first mass-market products manufactured in America,” though the raw materials were largely coming from the Caribbean/West Indies; Some came from Louisiana, but that is another book, for another time = )

Indeed, rum distilling was the second most important manufacturing industry at the time, trailing only shipbuilding.

While I went on and on about history and not being able to definitively claim “firsts,” when it comes to the town (NYC), I turn a blind eye, even if it is Staten Island. You’ll get a good flavor of the mutual back scratching, via trade, that took place between the Caribbean and the American colonies –

The first distillery producing of any kind of liquor in the northern colonies dates to about 1640—roughly the same time rum was first produced in the West Indies. It was on Staten Island and was operated by William Kieft, a director of the Dutch colony of New Netherland…Molasses—a trash product—remained astoundingly cheap in the West Indies. This was especially true in newly settled British island colonies like Jamaica, where a rum industry hadn’t been established. But island planters—who had dedicated virtually every acre of arable land to sugar cultivation—needed to import all manner of food and provisions to feed themselves and their slaves. So timber, rope, livestock, dried cod, and fresh produce sailed south. Molasses, in turn, sailed north.

Molasses is used to make rum, to be clear.

1684 – chatter of rum production at a distillery in Providence, Rhode Island. But the 1700s are when things really took off. Many indentured (white) servants in the Caribbean and Britain fled to the American colonies in search of better prospects. Those newcomers contributed to the rum-making industry, especially those coming from the Caribbean, obviously. But one area and region eventually took the crown for rum distillation/production: Boston, MA. Why? They had a strong propensity for trading & port activity, could readily store imported molasses for a while, and were largely viewed as a favorable commercial center/region (New ENGLAND). See, Privateer didn’t just come out of nowhere; they got some history to back them up. Lots of distilleries popped up in the 1700s, and lots of rum was being produced –

Records show that in just six months of 1688, Massachusetts imported 156,000 gallons of molasses from the British West Indies, of which about half was converted into rum… By 1717, a customs officer in Boston reported that the colony was producing 200,000 gallons of rum annually, which is almost certainly an underestimate. Boston had at least twenty-five distilleries operating within the city by 1750; at least another ten distilleries were producing rum in other settlements of the Massachusetts Bay colony.

Massachusetts didn’t have a monopoly on the rum industry. Rhode Island was home to 20 rum distilleries, New York to 17, and Philadelphia to 14. (A merchant with the splendid name of Peacock Bigger built successful distilleries in both Philadelphia and Charlestown, Maryland.) The smell of fermenting molasses could also be detected in New Hampshire (3 distilleries), Connecticut (5), and Maryland (4). The southern colonies, with their tobacco plantation economy, didn’t have as active a merchant class. But even there 4 rum distilleries were built (in the Carolinas and Virginia). In 1763, by some estimates, New England alone had a total of 159 distilleries producing rum. (A more conservative tally finds maybe half that number in New England, but around 140 distilleries on the continent as a whole.) In any event, by 1770, the North American colonists were importing some 6.5 million gallons of molasses from the islands, which were distilled into about 5 million gallons of rum.

Note: There are rum makers in America that pay homage to some of the history, like Outer Banks Distilling and their “Kill Devil” product line.

While New England/American rum was regarded as halfway decent, it really caught on because it was cheap. Some of this inexpensiveness was helped along by (often illicit) trade with the French for their island colonies’ molasses. The French were happy to backdoor the English in this way, as the American colonists were “forced” to trade only with those the British allowed them to trade with (i.e., Britain and its colonies). I’ve talked about this a bit in prior pieces, so I won’t go too far down this route (i.e., Molasses Act of 1733, Sugar Act, Seven Years’ War, etc.). The history is important nonetheless –

Rhode Island had imported some fourteen thousand hogsheads of molasses annually before the Sugar Act, less than 20 percent of it from the British islands.

Note: Curtis goes into some good detail on the above, and how things led up to the American Revolution (i.e., taxation without representation centered very specific goods).

The quality of New England rum was never viewed as remotely close to Caribbean rum at that time, though you probably didn’t have too many discerning drinkers around either. As Boston continued to meet success, its neighbors – other states and nearby cities – got in the rum chase, too. So it usually goes. But there is one city/town that “rose to uncommon prominence in the rum world: the riverside village of Medford, the fourth oldest in Massachusetts.”

Apparently, the words “Medford Rum” became a signifier of quality, like “Javaun’s Substack.”

This “Medford Rum” probably became a highly sought-after juice leading up to (and during) the American Revolution. During the war, rum remained –

In one small example of rum’s role in the American Revolution, prominent New Hampshire politician John Langdon donated to the state some 150 hogsheads of rum to raise a militia…On a more practical level, rum was a provision of war, as essential in the field as black powder or barrels of salt pork. In November 1775, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia established rules for the newly formed American Continental Navy and followed the British model in issuing a “halfpint of rum per man every day, and a discretionary allowance for extra duty and in time of engagement.” Foot soldiers were also to get rum, to be distributed by mess officers.”

I’m usually not a fan of seeing American rum producers make “Navy” or “Queen Share” products because it doesn’t feel historically accurate. Rings of the trying-to-be-British variety, but I suppose connecting Britain and America (in a historically accurate way) is valid, too. As obvious as that may sound, history backs that up. But hey, how many things are truly original, right?

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Planter’s Punch.

“New England I know little about, except it be the trade and people….They import large quantities of molasses from the West Indies, which they distill and sell to Africa and the other Colonies, which goes by the name of Yankee rum or Stink-e-buss.” — NICHOLAS CRESSWELL, CA. 1777

All kinds of funky origin stories for rum punch. What we can firmly say is that it evolved over time, certainly so depending on the location. What we can also say is that, for practical purposes (i.e., you can’t waste what is limited), punch was kept deservedly simple: rum, lemon or lime juice, sugar, maybe a spice or two depending on your wealth/status. New England played a pivotal (location/trade facilitator) role in the transportation of people and goods used in the production of this punch. A famous example is Nicholas Brown and Company (the Brown Brothers). I believe this is the same Brown family who founded/funded Brown University, the school that dons their name. A preview of their ship and where New England played in the Triangle Trade –

The chief cargo aboard the Sally on the outbound voyage to the West African coast was rum, and dozens of casks were rolled aboard—some 159 hogsheads, plus another six smaller barrels, for a total of 17,274 gallons.

This wasn’t the Brown family’s first venture in the slave trade. Nearly three decades earlier, in 1736, the family patriarch, James Brown, was the first merchant in Providence to sign on with a consortium that backed a slaving voyage to Africa, then onward to the West Indies to trade for coffee and other goods

There must be some really rich history regarding how rum was integrated into pre-existing West African traditions. If anyone is aware, please pass that my way. In the meantime, from Curtis –

Merchants or their agents on the islands might have gotten the idea to trade rum for slaves after noticing how much of the West Indian liquor was destined for Africa’s coast. The Royal African Company shipped 182,347 gallons of rum from Barbados, Antigua, and Jamaica to Africa between 1700 and 1727. And Rhode Island traders were no doubt aware that rum costing a shilling on the islands could fetch five times that when sent to West Africa. So the rum and slave trade began to bend northward, as if through some implacable economic magnetism. New England had plenty of rum to trade, and abundant ships to move it. By 1772, about 75 percent of rum exported to Africa came from Boston and Rhode Island.

This history is really interesting, to say the least –

New England rum had been popular with African chieftains for two decades. “Guinea rum,” as it was called, was produced in New England specifically for the African trade, and was usually double-distilled and sometimes triple-distilled. As with Jamaican rum produced for England, the higher proof made it cheaper to ship. Guinea rum was meant to be watered down before being sold. Watering rum was an art, for too much water would make it of little interest to the Africans. Another trader, a Captain Burton, noted that African traders would visit with his ship between seven and ten each morning for negotiations and drinking rum. “If a glass of watered rum, which they detect more easily than we do watered milk, be offered them,” wrote the captain, “it will be thrown in the donor’s face.”

To bust up the folklore and myths (regarding the Triangle Trade and New England’s role) for a second, don’t confuse origins and destinations with anything more than being a source/stop off –

The Triangle Trade was horrifically elegant, easy for teachers to explain to students, and readily comprehended by sixth-graders. As an historical fact, it lacks only one thing: truth. The smooth-running and sinister New England Triangle Trade is, in large part, an overblown myth. For starters, no New England traders are known to have completed a single circuit of that triangle. Historian Clifford Shipton spent years of sifting through hundreds of New England shipping records, yet couldn’t recall “a single example of a ship engaged in such a triangular trade.” (Another historian drew the same conclusion after an exhaustive review of Philadelphia shipping records.).

Curtis pays a lot of attention to what life may have been like in plantation societies at the time. Put in a very crass, but honest manner –

Slaves made the rum, and rum made the slaves.

I don’t necessarily agree that without enslaved African labor, all wouldn’t have been possible, which is alluded to. I mean this mainly from the perspective that the hunger for more, the thirst for expansion and riches among the Europeans was too potent. The colonists would have found a way, another labor source.

Wait, where were we? Oh, yea – Planter’s Punch.

If there’s a standard planter’s punch, I’m guessing it can trace its origins back to the 1920s and to the Myrtle Bank Hotel in Kingston, Jamaica, arguably the most elegant hotel on the island in its day. “I soon found myself in the Myrtle Bank Hotel, and a planter’s punch soon found itself in me,” wrote a theater columnist for the New York World of his visit to Kingston in 1921. He went on: “A planter’s punch is made of pure Jamaica rum, a little cane syrup, cracked ice along with a slice of native pineapple and orange to make it more attractive. If one is at all fussy one can have a cherry in it too. The price is the same with or without the cherry at the Myrtle Bank bar.” The drink was popular enough that the Jamaican distiller who made Myers’s rum went on to label i[t] as “Planter’s Punch Rum,” words still emblazoned on some bottles today.

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Demon Rum.

Back to “Demon Rum.” Where did this title come from? Or, rather, who was it describing? Because demonizing things doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You need a physical scapegoat.

The “Romanists” (Catholics) were to blame! This was predictable. Post-American Revolution, the (now) Americans needed a new marker to blame for any and all problems. The muddying up of American ways/ideals was therefore shifted to a wave of undesirable immigrants from places like Italy and Ireland.

Well, it wasn’t necessarily a shift. The disdain was just a carryover tradition to demonize anything deemed other. In the American psyche, be it subconscious or not, there is an exacting/deep notion about rum being “not of the U.S.,” something associated with other places. The British were largely to blame (back in the day), as the Crown largely dictated the transportation of rum's raw materials to the American colonies. This was only exacerbated in 1807 when the American Embargo Act prevented trade with Britain and France. Bye-bye molasses. Today, rum in the broader American psyche is largely Caribbean and/or a sweet drink to be consumed in tropical settings. Much of this is largely amnesia and a de-emphasis of rum’s history in the country. By the 1800s, this was the state of rum for Americans –

…by the late nineteenth century, rum had fallen out of fashion…By the late 1800s, rum was no longer just the stuff made from sugarcane and its leavings. It was a name used to describe all drink—whiskey and gin and cordials and beer and Madeira wine. Anything that got you drunk was “rum.” And “rum” was much, much more. It was evil in a glass—a dark force that infiltrated families and tore them asunder, that broke good men and left them derelict, that had seeped into the underpinnings of American democracy and was working to rot it from below. In the nineteenth century, rum had become the devil incarnate.

It’s a dangerous thing when narratives catch on.

The price of rum skyrocketed once Emancipation took hold in many British colonies. If you don’t have free labor producing your goods, and your costs are therefore much higher, you pass those costs on to the purchasers. Americans shifted gears, and a priority/focus shifted to things that were more readily home-produced (i.e., cheap and not associated with England).

American consumers had come to regard rum as an artifact of the ancient régime, a product associated with the imperious British, their fussy teas, and their high-handed ways. Rum had little role in the shaping of a new national political culture. Prior to the Revolution, drinking rum was a sign of the growing affluence and independence of the colonists. It demonstrated they were prosperous enough to purchase rum made abroad—and later to manufacture their own rum from raw materials acquired through trade of their lumber and livestock. But following the war, rum took on a whiff of national weakness and vulnerability, and became a small emblem of financial imprisonment. Why drink an imported product that aided one’s enemy when you could purchase a local product and advance your own economy?

Demon Rum. Even the Brown family switched to gin distilling; New England distilleries retooled. You know who didn’t retool and remained focused on Demon Rum? The good ol’ Temperance Movement folks. They doubled down (i.e., labeling any alcoholic drink “rum”). “Alcoholism” was considered one of the most vile “disease[s].” The Societies took off, Massachusetts, unsurprisingly, was host to plenty –

The Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance, which would become one of the most influential groups nationally, was founded in 1813. Dozens of other societies would follow, among them the powerful Washington Temperance Society, the American Temperance Society, the Congressional Total Abstinence Society, the Sons of Temperance, the United Order of the Golden Cross and Sons of Jonadab, the Marblehead Union Moral Society, the Order of the Templars of Honor and Temperance, the National Temperance Society and Publication House, and Catholic Total Abstinence. By 1833, a million Americans had signed pledges for temperance through six thousand temperance associations around the nation.

Apparently, New York was one of the most active in the “war on drink,” but I don’t like shaming my city, so I’ll leave that there. A lot of distillers at this time began marketing their liquids as unadulterated because the Temperance Movement followers charged that alcohol was littered with harmful substances (e.g., lead). There is some truth to that. Hey, if you ever wondered why some in the spirit community are so fervent about transparency, I want you to ingest some of this information as the historical backdrop.

The immigrants that flocked into the country pre-Civil War – Germans, Irish, etc. – cared very little about the Temperance Movement; they were going to continue drinking. The Temp. Movement had to come up with a new tactic: they shifted their rant/attention away from the rum drinker to the rum seller. Taverns and “dramshops” took a beating, though, in true American fashion, drinkers found their loopholes. Prohibition-era speakeasies didn’t create their hidden drink holes without inspiration. Nonetheless, the Movement made progress:

• In 1851, Maine was the first state to pass a Prohibition Law.

• Within 4 years, 13 states followed suit.

As the country neared the Civil War, activists shifted more of their focus to the emancipation of slavery vs. drinking. Post-war, there was more drinking than in the 1830s, which follows the trend of societies imbibing more in times of real/perceived prosperity. Between 1856 and 1879, not one state passed any laws banning liquor. Making too much money!

1865 to 1900 is considered a Golden Age of American Drinking: the advent and popularization of drinks like the Manhattan, Old Fashioned, Martini, and other classic cocktails. Fancy hotel bars exploded in big/small cities across the country. The word mixologist was coined in 1865. You get the drift.

What also exploded? Saloons (“the poor man’s clubs”) and their immigrant followers. Voila, the Temperance Movement was able to re-focus again now that they had another scapegoat. And voila, Anti-Saloon Leagues. Rum was no longer necessarily in the (American) Temperance Movement focus. This looks very different if you swim over to the Caribbean, where Rum has little to no competition (generally speaking). We know that the efforts of the Temperance Movement hit its zenith in that magic year of 1920 –

The Volstead Act created the mechanisms that would actually end the liquor trade, and Congress passed it quickly. Americans poured themselves a last legal drink. The temperance crusade, which began in the 1830s, was an eighty-year thunderstorm that concluded with a single thunderclap. On midnight, January 16, 1920, any American involved in the production, transfer, or sale of any liquor, beer, or wine would be jailed and his or her property confiscated. The Republic of Rum had fallen at last.

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Daiquiri.

People don’t stop drinking just because the law says so. One of the primary unintended consequences of “The Noble Experiment” was that there was likely an uptick in drinking. Imbibing just moved underground. You know what else got pretty bad? People drinking tainted/adulterated liquor, things made out of sight, but with thirsty patrons in mind. It was this era of botched drinks that produced the roaring nationalism of my countrymates to scrutinize transparency and ask, ‘but what’s in it’ about spirits.

Another ramification of Prohibition (for those who could afford it): we’re going to Cuba!

Not so far from here,
There’s a very lively atmosphere,
Ev’rybody’s going there this year;
And there’s a reason:
The season opened last July,
Ever since the U.S.A. went dry,
Ev’rybody’s going there and I’m going too
I’m on my way to

Cuba there’s where I’m going,
Cuba there’s where I’ll stay.
Cuba where wine is flowing

Note to reader: Music is an amazing way to contextualize the political/social atmosphere of any point in time. One of the best, in my opinion.

Even some of our notable publications aided, probably induced by some under-the-table ad dollars, Cuban (DRINKING) tourism –

The New York Times noted that not only was the sunshine and the Old World charm of Havana alluring, but that “nowhere…does the Eighteenth Amendment run or the Volstead Act have jurisdiction.” The paper added that “ ‘swizzles,’ ‘Daiquiris,’ ‘planters’ punches’ and other drinks may be consumed without subterfuge or fear of poisoning.” Ships soon disgorged thousands of parched American passengers on Cuban shores. At least twenty made weekly runs to Havana, and far more ferries shuttled Americans from Miami and Key West.

Now, we know what Cubans drink. The rum was flowing! Even the Bacardi variety. Yes, that family is originally Cuban. I won’t get into the saga here. You know what else was flowing? The title of this section: the daiquiri.

But it’s a bit odd that anyone would claim credit for a cocktail whose ingredients had been mixed well and often since at least 1740, when Admiral Edward Vernon issued his order to distribute limes and sugar with grog rations. Limes had mingled with rum for centuries aboard ships, and it wasn’t much of a secret that the puckery tartness of limes and the underlying sweetness of rum were born to marry.

The drink made headways in America –

Johnson brought his daiquiri recipe to the United States, where he introduced it to the Army and Navy Club on Farragut Square in downtown Washington, D.C. The drink caught on, and the club soon opened the Daiquiri Lounge. (Officers still order up daiquiris here.) This was the first step to making the daiquiri a proper cocktail in the eyes of Americans. It took Ernest Hemingway to give the daiquiri a more literary glow.

Fairy tales abound about the drink and its figures/migrations. We can stop there.

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Rum and Coca-Cola.

As you can probably tell by now (entering the mid-twentieth century), a lot of America’s infatuation with rum had largely died, much to the liking of Caribbean rum houses. Let them have their whiskey and leave us to our rum. During World War II –

Rum came flooding north in quantities unimagined prior to the war. The production of beverage alcohol increased fivefold in Puerto Rico, Barbados, and Trinidad. In 1944, Puerto Rico exported 3 million cases of rum to the United States. Cuba sent 5 million. And even the struggling Virgin Islands accounted for 1 million cases. (The U.S. War Production Board had mandated that distilleries in the U.S. territories, like those on the mainland, produce only industrial alcohol during the war. But the outcry from Puerto Rico—which stood to lose $12 million in taxes alone—forced the feds to relax the decree, so that distillers were permitted to produce 90 percent of their previous year’s rum output.).

There are mixed reviews/stories on this, but Curtis asserts that much of the rum produced and shipped to the U.S. at the time was done hurriedly.

As a result, rum was again dragged into the gutter, consumed by those who couldn’t afford better.

Maybe the notions about rum and dilution/sweetening rear a formidable head at this time.

Those familiar with the often-told origin stories of the Cuban highball will recall tales of Por Cuba Libre/Cuban War of Independence/American and Cuban soldiers drinking/etc. Per Curtis, these tales may not be very accurate: finding a legal affidavit for these inventions is near to impossible, and producers often have ulterior motives of self-promotion for crediting themselves for the invention. But we know how I feel about a document being the ultimate test to certify anything as first.

In any case, it’s worth mentioning that the book, keeping in mind America & rum, begins to thin out, similar to the preference for the beverage. Some saw this 20^th-century flattening of tastes as an opportunity. Bring back Bacardi (now, in Puerto Rico) –

By 1952, Puerto Rico had started to reclaim its stature among rum exporters, largely by leading the charge toward lighter and lighter rums. They took the Cuban experience—stripped out the more overbearing tastes and aromas—and built on it. So, tastes moved away from the distinctive toward the unexceptional, from full-flavored to light. “U.S. Taste Buds Want It Bland” read a 1951 headline in Business Week. Rum took notice. It was the era of Wonder bread and iceberg lettuce, when complexity of taste gave way to ease and convenience of preparation.

Vodka would also take advantage of the bland era, to the annoyance of whiskey distillers. Let’s keep on up the timeline.

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Mai Tai.

Fair warning – My preference is to track the history of the base liquid’s movement versus how it ended up in cocktails. Yes, I know that you will likely better understand the full spectrum of rum’s track(s) by following which drinks it ended up in. That makes a lot of sense to me. But I’m going the historically “Pure Single Spirit” route, so to speak, with my focus on just rum. And that, folks, is why we have varying approaches to things. There are lots of books out there on the history of cocktails. LOTS! Go and soak up those good stories, and then come back and share them with me. Simply giving you a heads up if you expect to read this section and anticipate a dive deep into the history of the Mai Tai cocktail. However, I’m a fair man, here’s me meeting you in the middle –

Donn Beach remained a fixture in Hawaii until he died in 1989 at the age of eighty-one. The New York Times ran a short obituary that painted him as a sort of Thomas Edison of the thatched-roof bar, the inventor of eighty-four bar drinks, including one immensely enduring libation called the mai tai. This was not without controversy. “There has been a lot of conversation over the beginning of the Mai Tai, and I want to get the record straight,” Victor Bergeron—better known as Trader Vic—once said. “I originated the Mai Tai. Anybody who says I didn’t create this drink is a stinker.”

The chief countervailing genesis tale comes, not surprisingly, from Donn Beach, who claimed he invented the mai tai at his bar around 1933. The Beachcomber’s version started with heavy Jamaican rum and light Cuban rum, then added lime, bitters, Pernod, grapefruit juice, falernum, and Cointreau. A newspaperman who claimed to have been drinking with both Beach and Bergeron in the early 1970s says that Bergeron admitted that Beach was the mai tai’s inventor. Maybe, maybe not. Donn Beach may very well have been the first to apply the name mai tai to a drink. But the one served at Trader Vic’s is the source of today’s classic mai tai, and is far and away the better drink. It deserves to prevail.

Hawaiian shirts and “exotic” mugs. Not my thing. HOWEVER, I would be remiss not to acknowledge how strong a culture “Tiki” is (bars, groups, etc.). It’s evolved over time: from ersatz renditions of what Pacific Island spots felt like to some American consumers, with hula-hooping women accompanying those locations, to more well-thought-out bar establishments, where the space's decoration is still given much attention, but the drinks and mugs are somewhat staples of the place. But this thing has come and gone in waves –

By the late 1970s, tiki was tacky. The thatched roofs were ratty, the hula girls passé, and the drinks too potent and elaborate for the emerging era of white wine spritzers.

You know what’s one thing that has remained prominent at Tiki spots?

El rum.

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Mojito.

Curtis leads us into the story surrounding the revered (in rum land) Stephen Remsberg (RIP). For the #paid folks, I made a slight reference to Gargano purchasing Remsberg’s gargantuan rum collection in my Collecting piece (ironically enough).

Today, the Remsberg collection resides in Genoa, Italy, alongside Gargano’s even larger rum collection.

Curtis had a chance to meet with Remsberg before his passing, which was clearly a life-changing moment for the author.

Stephen Remsberg’s house might be regarded as the Louvre of rum; that is, if the Louvre were built around a small kitchen, and then spilled into a small adjoining room with a bar. It was smaller than I expected, but he had fit so much into the space, mostly by attaching to the walls many linear feet of narrow but tall shelves about the height and width of, say, a rum bottle. What’s striking about the collection is not the sheer acreage of liquor—which is actually quite impressive—but that it’s an active tasting collection. “I don’t collect empties,” he said. “I collect rum, not bottles. And I’ll open any bottle that I have two of.” As such, Remsberg’s house is more than a mortuary of defunct brands. It’s a museum of tastes, some of which have been wholly lost.

And to get us back to what we were discussing at the beginning of the article, let’s take a trip back to New England. You see, as one of the most profound rum collectors there was, Remsberg had (what seems like) the last stretch of old New England rums lying about.

His Boston rums dated from the last gasp of the Boston rum era, with samples from the early to the mid-twentieth century. They included Caldwell’s, Pilgrim, Old Medford, Chapin, Il Toro, and one privately bottled rum that likely was collected by a butler right from the barrel at a distillery. We sampled Caldwell’s, and it was just as I hoped it would be—dense and cloying and filled with the rich, yeasty taste of molasses. “By 1900 they were making a serious rum in New England,” Remsberg said.

You would have to work very hard – and won’t succeed – trying to convince me that America doesn’t have a rich and storied history with rum. Any conversation in that direction is likely an emotional one, which I’m game for that type of sport (in the playful, back-and-forth sense). However, historically speaking, the books, documents, articles, and artifacts more broadly tell a different story, one predating our country’s formalized existence as the United States.

Before we go, Remsberg –

Let’s wrap (these are my words, not Curtis’s).

Good book. The man was playful with his stories, but he didn’t do much playing around when it came to uncovering some rich details on American rum history. At the back of the book, via his “A Thumbnail Guide to Rum” section, Curtis provides a sort of beginner’s guide to rum regions/countries, flavor profiles, what people often classify as “gateway rums,” etc. My favorite recommendation of his is on flavored rums –

But I assume that you’re interested in rum, not candy.

Not much on Louisiana and rum, which I always think is a shame. We’ll get there, or at least I’ll give it a valiant effort to try and revive those details. Let’s just say, there’s a reason that not much has been produced on the topic.

Let’s close with the words of James Beard (1956) –

Of all the spirits in your home, rum is the most romantic.

Salute to that.

#rumresponsibly

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Sipping tips: When you pick this 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.

Who is the Transcontinental Rum Line (TCRL)? They are a division/project/sub-category under La Maison & Velier (LM&V). LM&V is a combined entity whose two branches trace their respective spirit journeys back to the mid-to-late 20^th century, though they joined forces less than 10 years ago –

Established in 2017, La Maison & Velier was created to showcase the exclusive bottlings created and sourced by a team of passionate spirit lovers, headed by Luca Gargano of Velier (Italy) and Thierry Benitah of La Maison du Whisky (France). The company aims to share their combined expertise, discoveries, and unique perspective on fine spirits through a carefully curated brand portfolio.

So, TCRL is one of the many projects in their “curated brand portfolio,” which LM&V describes as such –

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.

I like the verbiage on the back of the box the bottle came in, it’s more descriptive –

Inspired by the rum casks’ historical trips between the New World and Old World Continent, the Transcontinental Rum Line highlights the fact that from the beginning of its existence, rum has always been shipped to Europe for nautical, economical and technical reasons. Nautical, because it allowed to avoid the consumption of stagnant water during long transatlantic crossings. Economical, as the angels’ share is lower and the rum matures more smoothly. Technical, thanks to the diversity of barrels having previously contained wine, whisky, cognac or other spirits, allowing for the creation of unique expressions.

If you read my final piece on A Jamaican Plantation: The History of Worthy Park 1670 — 1970, the “voyage of rum between the country of distillation and its ageing conditions,” and “rum has always been shipped to Europe” sentiments are screaming at you right now. Remember my very brief coverage of the legal battle between National Rums of Jamaica and the Spirits Pool? Well, the NRJ side of the house maintains that there is a history of rum traveling to and from, and that is one of the many (profitable) reasons that we need to acknowledge that piece of Jamaica’s rum history vis-à-vis classifying a liquid as “Jamaican Rum.” TCRL is somewhat ironic in this regard, as Luca Gargano is well known as a faithful proponent of “tropical aging” and its implications for authenticity. In other words, TCRL’s objective is to take liquid that has been “tropical aged” and further age it “continentally” (France in this case). Does this still produce unique-tasting juice? For sure. Is it historically relevant/accurate? That is also true. And with that, it seems to me that TCRL is an attempt to showcase (in a modern-day sense) what can happen when you play on that history. However, I’m not so sure the LM&V camp would want to be a mascot/supporting argument for National Rums of Jamaica. Okay, whoa, back to business. My analytical brain was on autopilot —forgive me.

Where did I get TCRL’s Guadeloupe 2013? Houston, Texas, while visiting a good friend. Not for him, but for my own imbibing while in the souf. But we don’t show up to people’s place empty-handed, so I got my boy a solid bottle of Irish whiskey, Redbreast’s 12-year-old (cask strength).

Because that pot still butterscotch love juice is one of my favorite whiskeys, I undoubtedly got a two-for-one: good rum and good whiskey. But we are not here to discuss the Irish. Our focus is Guadeloupe and France. Historical context: Guadeloupe became an overseas département of France in 1946. A “full region” of France in 1974. Culturally, I suppose we can draw an analogy that Guadeloupeans are to mainland France as Puerto Ricans are to mainland America.

Back to the rum, though we will get back to the French in Part B. It’s relevant, I promise.

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Part A – Nothing but the feels.

If you close your eyes and take a whiff of the Guadeloupe 2013 in a glass, you will think that someone dropped a small splash of water in a Hampden rum. That sweet nail polish scent. Hampden’s Great House series has a younger French-speaking cousin we may not know about. The smell is sour, in a rummy aromatic way, which is to say that it is pleasant for the initiated. Gives you a very anticipatory lead-in.

The taste does not disappoint. Though thin, there is a surprising amount of flavor intensity for something at a slightly lower ABV (43%). That sour-like note comes through in the taste as well (again, pleasant). You should not give this a dash of any water to “bring out the other flavors,” as I think it would destroy the liquid’s taste.

I recommend this contained French cousin of what feels like a high-ish ester rum (based on the taste). The rum feels like a kid who left the Caribbean and got soft after acclimating to European (Continental) soil. We’ll discuss the technicality of that last sentence in Part B. The Guadeloupe 2013 is exciting and very different than what you will usually anticipate receiving from a Guadeloupe cane spirit product. For my rum people, this is a bit of an enigma. Let’s discuss why.

Disclaimer: deep thoughts on the rum have largely escaped me since I tried this back in May/June. It was decent enough that I would have it again. Maybe a pour vs. buying another bottle, given I haven’t tried other expressions from the TCRL range.

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Part B – Historical, Technical.

Note: I will not split Historical and Technical for this portion because we are not reviewing liquid directly from a producer.

In the universe of rum, there is much fanfare for rhum Agricole (agricultural rum), that distinctive liquid from (only) fermented cane juice, which is the core legal specification (of many) required for a r(h)um to be classified as Agricole. I highlight legal because the French, in 1996, established their translation of a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), which they refer to as an Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC). To clarify, this was established for Martinique, though there are similar, but less stringent, rules for the manufacture of Guadeloupean rhums to fall under this agricultural rum classification. Other overseas departments of France, like Réunion Island, also claim the Rhum Agricole classification/protection. To confuse you a little bit more, Portugal’s Madeira Island has a Geographical Indication, which allows it also to lay claim to the term “agricultural rum” (as of 2011).

The further breakdown of the above—and pulling out the nuances around protections vs. designations vs. other -tions—would require a few more articles, which isn’t the goal of this piece. The primary context I want to establish is that the French, as they’ve done with a variety of brandies (Cognac, Armagnac, Calvados, etc.), have made clear that they own the term “agricultural rum.” I don’t care much to debate that; I only want to provide context for breaking apart something not necessarily rooted in French-ness, but instead done out of necessity and survival. A liquid storm of sorts that landed the French in a position of exercising protectionism in a historically apt manner.

I’ll explain in a fly-by linear fashion –

1. Haitians gained independence (early 19^th century), causing France to lose its most valuable sugar colony.

2. Beet sugar explodes onto the market, which the French adopt, furthering the precarity of sugar plantations across French islands (most of which are SIGNIFICANTLY smaller than Haiti).

3. If sugar is failing, rum can be a viable substitute to prevent the unprofitable white gold from going to waste.

4. However, if you can’t sell your molasses on the global market as a viable competitor, you make use of your cane in some other way.

5. It was this survival alternative (i.e., taking cane juice and distilling rum) that the French islands have now, by way of the Continental dictate, codified.

As the 19th century wore on, the importance of cane sugar in France declined. Plantations across the Caribbean closed and the costly process of refining sugar in the French colonies was no longer viable for many. With less molasses available to ferment, distillers watched their business dwindle. That was until they began distilling the fermented juice from crushed sugar cane – a solution commonly attributed to Homère Clément, whose namesake distillery prospers in Martinique to this day. Incidentally, the continuous column stills that helped define this new style of rum – similar to those used in Armagnac – are another innovation funded by Napoleon. – The Whisky Exchange

And then, French mainland beverages were severely impacted by an insect that wiped out their go-tos. And just like that, cane juice rhums became a critical stopgap –

Rhum agricole continued to evolve through the late-19th and into the 20th centuries. When the dreaded phylloxera blight all but wiped out production of cognac and armagnac, agricole aged in oak became a popular digestif back in mainland France. During the First World War it was issued to French troops who would have erstwhile enjoyed a brandy with their rations and created an enduring affection for this unique style of rum that resonated through the generations. – The Whisky Exchange

So, when I see (what feels like) a pejorative term of “rhum industrielle” to describe molasses-based rums relative to cane juice rums…well, I don’t really pay much attention to the chatter because taste preferences are subjective. The only issue I take with the distinction, speaking to the French here, is that you must remember, it wasn’t always this way. These are not my feelings, fortunately, just what the history books have written in them. Because from the 1600s to the late 1700s, rum (everywhere) was primarily made from molasses rather than cane juice. Not to say cane juice went unused, that’s probably not entirely accurate. But molasses reigned supreme, even in the French-controlled territories.

1770 –

Thus Guadeloupe produced 3.5 gallons of molasses per hundredweight of gross muscovado and two gallons per hundredweight of finished white sugar for a total of 1,591,000 gallons. Wastage at 2-1/2% and internal consumption at 1.5 gallons per inhabitant left 1,347,000 gallons of molasses to be disposed of as best they could. Of this the planters exported 700,000 gallons, approximately 11% (75,000 gallons) of the export went to France. Another 575,000 gallons were sold to the North Americans or almost 40 hogsheads of molasses on each of the 126 ships. The remaining 50,000 gallons went to other customers. This left 647,000 gallons to be distilled into rum. – Rum and the American Revolution

The planters of Guadeloupe received back from their stills 100 gallons of rum for every 103 gallons of molasses sent there. In 1770 they had as a result 629,000 gallons of rum of which to dispose. Five percent leaked away. The planters, the free Negroes and the island’s slaves drank 558,000 gallons. The rest, only 56,000 gallons, was exported. – Rum and the American Revolution

Hey, look, the same is true of strict-rules Martinique –

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. – Rum and the American Revolution

What am I getting on about with all this information? Well, to bring us back to the center, TCRL’s Guadeloupe 2013 falls under the umbrella of “industrial rum” because it was produced from molasses. There’s no hiding this fact when you taste it. Dead giveaway.

Which takes us nicely to the more technical side of the house. Won’t go into too much detail, just enough to give you a sense of the what and the why.

On the front of the bottle, we have –

• Distilled in 2013

• Bottled in 2018

• 43% ABV

• 30% aged in continental weather

That last bit on aging is addressed on the back of the bottle –

• Aged for 3 years in Guadeloupe and “over a year in Europe”

• Total aging of ~4.5 years

• For the nerdier among us, it says “Batch” distillation, but that could be a column or pot. If Guadeloupe is producing majority Agricole rhums, and therefore using creole coffee stills…wait, are creole coffee stills continuous or batch? Man, I don’t know. Someone keep me honest.

• Basse-Terre is the largest island of Guadeloupe, where it was produced. Who is the producer? According to Excellence Rhum, the juice comes from “Bonne Mère artisanal distillery.” Note: go to DBM’s website, it’ll make you want to visit Guadeloupe immediately.

The only thing I think I would have added, but it is probably against the regulations that France has in place, is that the unaged distillate was likely a Grand Arôme (large aroma); That heavy aroma is some of what I discussed in Part A, with respect to its relative closeness to some of Hampden’s juice.

A special shout out to the liquor store in Houston (blanking on the name) that had this at a reduced price, likely because it was on the shelf for a while. Which means I’ll also shout out the residents of Houston for not purchasing/allowing me to secure the bottle at (what I would consider) a bargain price. Muchas gracias!

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Another quick shout out to H-Town.

Who knew that Houston had so many establishments with great rum?

Shout out to Anvil Bar, solid inventory. Went twice, no photos.

And then there was Lei Low. Heavy emphasis on Tiki drinks, not really my thing. What I did appreciate was them giving me half pours so that I could try more (didn’t mean for that to rhyme). The damage that night, excuse the dark imagery –

I also had some good glasses of whiskey while out in H-town (beyond Redbreast). The below is courtesy of Permission Whiskey.

To steal back the spotlight, the star of the show remains

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Till next time.

I left Houston and drove to Louisiana. Spent a night in Baton Rouge before I made my way to New Orleans. While in Baton Rouge, I shared the Guadeloupe 2013 with two strangers. Yes, I traveled with it. But only because my friend wasn’t a big fan of the juice, so I chose to bring it along for the ride. Anywho—the strangers loved the rum, they thought it was like nothing they had ever tasted. And I also had to explain what Guadeloupe was. Confusion further abounded when I tried to explain why France was in the mix.

I moved on to New Orleans, my final stop before heading back east. While on my rum pilgrimage to what I will don the (SHOULD BE) holy grail land of American rum, I left the bottle with a fellow rum lover, who happens to also be a producer. I will leave it at that. Because the next time I type up an article, the foray will be into American/Louisiana cane & rum land. For now, give it up to TCRL for this bottling. Was a pleasantly good sip. Leave it in Guadeloupe next time. Teasing.

I’m out.

Cheers and #rumresponsibly

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Part 3 closed with J.V. Calder, the 3^rd owner of Worthy Park, selling the estate in 1917—1918. What we did not cover was to whom he sold. This piece will answer that question and take us right up to 1970. I apologize in advance, Worthy Park rum lovers, but we will not go beyond that (would be outside the scope of the book, honoring the bounds). Things like the “state-of-the-art distillery” buildout in 2005, and launch of the Single Estate Reserve rum in 2017 won’t get any features. In fact, the authors would be taken aback by the global scale of Worthy Park’s prominence in rum today. Surprised, but certainly not caught off guard, given the art of the agricultural pivot(s) Craton and Walvin covered across the different owners of Worthy Park over the three centuries. Alright, enough on that. Let’s get into who purchased the asset next.

“Renaissance: The Coming of the Clarkes, 1918–1945.”

And that, folks, is what you title a chapter – 11, if you’re curious – when the family who commissioned you shelled out the big bucks, one can only assume = )

In 1918, the year World War I ended, Frederick Lister Clarke purchased Worthy Park for £44,000. Note: this is roughly £2.2 million, inflation-adjusted to today’s level (source: Bank of England); Worthy Park shows £2.8 million inflation-adjusted on the website, which I don’t think is necessary to reconcile for our purposes. Meaningful difference, though, I’ll acknowledge that. In any case, not pocket change and may even be considered a rich value during a time of global dislocation (war), which inevitably sowed economic hardships near and far. So, how did this come to be? We’ll take a trip down the Clarke family lane.

The Patriarch

Henry Clarke left England for Jamaica in 1846 at the age of 18, making his way to the western side of the island, Savanna-la-Mar (Westmoreland), where he became a schoolmaster, while doubling as a pastor at the local Anglican church. He had eleven children. Active.

Henry founded the Westmoreland Building Society with the initial aim of providing loans to small farmers. It seemed as if he was building the necessary political-economic foundation in that proven form and fashion of Jamaica at the time: like how the Price family kept economics, military duty, and politics as a blended aim, Henry was seemingly doing something analogous for posterity.

Interestingly, the Jamaica National Group notes that “The Westmoreland Building Society is the oldest society now operating in Jamaica.”

Because of his newcomer status, Henry is depicted as not remotely in the same wealth wheelhouse as the old, vanguard ruling class of Jamaica, understandably so. Even with that, he was able to leave a meaningful amount of resources for his children to carry on successful lives after he died. There are information gaps surrounding wealth, bequeathing, the vastness of the wealth gap (between him and the old guard), etc., that I can’t fill in. But here is the information we do have –

Henry Clarke did contrive to leave a small trust fund to provide each of his unmarried daughters with a modest independent income, while ensuring that each of his five sons enjoyed a practical livelihood. Four became involved in the management of sugar estates (of which there were 22 in Westmoreland alone at that time), combining this profitless occupation with some other. One followed in his father’s footsteps and became an Anglican minister, one was a lawyer in Savanna-la-Mar, and a third son, Hugh, the family’s best businessman, became an officer in the Westmoreland Building Society while also managing Henry Clarke’s estate. Frederick Lister Clarke, the family’s best and most fortunate farmer and the eventual purchaser of Worthy Park, was Henry Clarke’s fourth son.”

Reminder: “small trust fund” and “modest independent income” have to be contextualized against the immense wealth of the old guard, not of the average Jamaican, for things to make more sense.

Frederick L. Clarke.

I will do my best to avoid providing you with information that I find interesting, but is not entirely pertinent to your understanding. An example: Fred went to Munro College, which was originally called Potsdam, and something like that is interesting to me because (1) it’s in St. Elizabeth (where my family hails from), and (2) I have a family member who attended back in the day. “What’s that have to do with Worthy Park?!” would be a fair question if I continue down that information path, but I won’t. Alright, back to Fred (note: I’m using first names vs. last names to make things less confusing, as I imagine the Price article was a bit tough to follow outside of the family trees, hence the use of Henry before this).

At 15 years old, Fred became the boiling-house-bookkeeper at Barham Estate, Westmoreland, beginning his 30+ year journey of “gaining an immense knowledge of sugar estate management while painfully building up his own small fund of capital.”

At 35 (1903), “he became the manager of an estate, Richmond in St. Ann’s, and considered himself ready to marry, choosing a local girl just half his age.” His family went from two children to six in a short timeframe. In addition to expanding his family, Fred also expanded his professional responsibilities, taking advantage of his secured reputation as a “rigorous improving manager.”

In 1907, Fred began managing Black-heath estate in Westmoreland on behalf of his brother, Hugh, who purchased “the estate cheaply largely through his management of the Clarke Trust,” whatever that may actually mean. Safe to conclude, based on the authors’ analysis, that Fred had a knack for improving/managing estates. He stayed the course –

In 1911, Fred Clarke netted £1,500 from Coolshade, a small sugar estate in Westmoreland which he had built up from dereliction, and two years later was entrusted with Meylersfield, a decayed property on the banks of the swampy Cabarita River, by its mortgage-holders, Messrs. Thompson, Hankey.

Fred doubled Meylersfield’s production (quadrupled profitability), allowing the owners “to sell what had been regarded as a worthless estate for £45,000” in 1914, also helped along by the boom in sugar demand at the beginning of World War I.

By his late 40s, Fred was firmly in the “managerial class,” as the authors note, having proven himself adept at increasing the wealth of the economic/ruling upper echelon of Jamaican society (presumably). Remember that Westmoreland building society I had referenced earlier? These things come back around: keep it in the family, if you will.

With £6,000 in the bank, an excellent salary and a five-year contract, Fred Clarke at the age of 50 was a highly respected citizen, churchwarden, director of the Building Society, and trustee of several estates. He was not yet quite a planter, however, being still a member of that inferior stratum of white West Indian society, the managerial class.

Note: £6,000 in 1918 is today’s equivalent of roughly £297,000 (source: Bank of England). Numerically, in that “managerial class,” but a gargantuan amount of wealth when compared to the average Jamaican at that time.

That magic year of 1918, you will remember, is when Fred purchased Worthy Park. He was probably itching to ‘get to the next level,’ given all the wealth he had generated for others in his lifetime. He and his brother, Hugh, were having disagreements because Hugh wanted to sell Blackheath for £50,000, a valuation Fred felt was 100% inflated (literally speaking) because of the war. So, as we well know, that would not be the path Fred would go down –

Some ten years before, Fred Clarke had valued Worthy Park on behalf of the Westmoreland Building Society and was well aware of its potential worth. At the £40,000 which J. V. Calder was said to be asking, it ‘would be an infinitely better bargain than Blackheath at £25,000’.

That Society again. It literally pays (or saves) to have an “in.”

With a sizeable mortgage potential from the Society certainly guaranteed, the £6,000 in the bank, and friends in high places, Fred seemed comfortable that he would get the deal done, notwithstanding Calder’s urge to sell, given his poor health, having 3 of his 4 sons fighting in World War I, etc. Good timing, on Fred’s part, in other words.

Though Fred had to wrangle with some of his initial backers and their contingents, he was able to, in short order, become the sole owner of Worthy Park, putting up £4,000 of his funds, and selling some of his personal stock in Blackheath to fill any remaining gaps. And with that, Worthy Park was now firmly under the control of the Clarke family, by way of Fred.

True to form, Fred, like most recipients of Worthy Park prior to him, inherited a dumpster fire. We know Calder was a pen-keeper, interested much more in the diversification of the estate than the bread-and-butter, or I suppose sugar-and-rum. And that was the reality that Fred first stepped into –

There is no doubt about it that Worthy Park is a splendid property, but it has been very badly managed and is in bad order and the present cultivation will give a very poor crop for next year. I don’t see how I can make anything off it between now and the end of next year, but I hope to pay my way and to get in a good field of canes for 1920 crop. – Fred, 1 September 1918

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Worthy Park under Fred Clarke’s leadership.

Fred moved into Worthy Park, bringing his family from the western side of Jamaica to the east. He surveyed the estate, counted & inspected the cane, and planned for a better future. There were only 240 acres in cane when he got there, the lowest it had been since the lifetime of Colonel Charles Price. Moreover, the estate roads and rail conditions were not in great shape, which were the “only means of shipping out produce.”

‘Way of life’ was also a new paradigm that Fred had to contend with, as he brought his cultural nuances, staff, and modus operandi from Westmoreland (“country,” as it would be called in Jamaica). His notion of fair wages was out of whack with reality on the eastern side of the island, which was closer in operation to Spanish Town and Kingston (i.e., ‘city’ hubs with presumably higher wage standards). It also seems that Fred brought with him the prevailing attitudes and social hierarchy etiquette, which the authors were not shy about describing plainly –

The attitude of Worthy Park’s new master to his Negro labourers was much more akin to traditional paternalism than to modern industrial relations. To Fred Clarke’s mind, it seems it was never the question of a living wage which was at stake, but what the estate could reasonably afford. When, for example, the workers almost rebelled at planting time in 1919, he did not defend the average daily rate of 2s. 9d., but pointed out that he was paying an aggregate wage-bill far in excess of that of J. V. Calder; and later, when wages were cut in times of low prices, he was quick to explain that the estate could not otherwise avoid complete collapse.

As you can imagine, under this type of leadership, things came to a head early. Laborers struck, and Fred Clarke, using his power and position as Justice of the Peace, met them head on: he exercised the “archaic Masters and Servants Laws” to have the courts come down heavily on strikers, squatters, and tenants who didn’t pay rents. On the flipside, Fred Clarke was met with a court proceeding for his own misgivings, one of which was having ‘coolie barracks’ classified as uninhabitable.

Notwithstanding all the troubles, of which Fred seemed particularly competent at facing, given his tenure with estate management, he plowed full steam ahead to improve the estate over the next couple of years. All while strategically reinvesting in Worthy Park: land, transportation/railways, factory, drainage, etc. His tenure in the game afforded him the knowledge base to effect sensible change –

Increasing efficiency and expanding production with tireless ingenuity, he did not allow the record sugar prices of 1920 to waylay him into a fool’s paradise, but ploughed back income into improvements, so that Worthy Park was narrowly able to withstand later shocks…first action was to tear up the five miles of tramway 75 years old and sell them to the United Fruit Company for £2,000. Deciding that the mule wains caused uneconomic delays, he invested in Worthy Park’s first motor truck, a Federal costing £750, which reduced the journey to Ewarton railway station from a day to an hour. A second truck was added in 1920 to speed the collection of cane from the fields…reorganiz[ed] the factory…His first crop was laboriously ground by the water-mill dating from 1866, and then only after the Murmuring Brook dam-head and aqueduct had been cleaned and repointed. By taking the advice of a consulting engineer and employing more competent staff, however, he was able to revive one of the two old steam engines for the 1920 crop and the other in time for the crop of 1921. By that time, some money was available for vital replacements.

He needed no help with sugarcane cultivation, but did call in experts, and eventually carved out branches of the estate for the management of cattle, cocoa, and bananas (primarily); Sheep, pigs, and chickens seemed a secondary priority. With these expansions, Fred sold “mutton, pork, and chickens in the local markets, as well as small parcels of sugar and rum to local retailers.” But he was ultimately a “sugar man” through and through: production soared from 205 tons in 1918 (Calder’s last crop) to 510 in 1920. 1920 proved incredibly favorable for Fred and Worthy Park. It was the year he finally turned a profit after much uncertainty leading up to this point. He wrote in his journal –

How with only £6,000 I have purchased Worthy Park for £44,000… how all the attempts to block me were upset and turned to my interest—how Laddie James and his advisers compelled him to withdraw and leave me sole owner. How I have struggled through the first year and how I have cleared £30,000 in one crop is as a dream to me. That it was all God’s ordering I can have no doubt, but with what object I do not know. Anyway I am praying that his love and bounty towards us will make us all serve him better and love him more. I have paid off Laddie James’s loan of £10,000 today and am writing the Building Society to ask the Directors if they will take a repayment of £10,000….

Fred remained steadfast about not splurging the recent gains and again reinvested in the factory/operations at Worthy Park. Because if he met success, so too did others across the world, seemed to be his thinking. World War I was over, and the European beet sugar market rebounded, pressuring global sugar prices.

In 1921, the prices received for sugar and rum were only a fifth of those obtained the year before, and although there were slight recoveries in 1923 and 1925, the planters cleared less than £12 per ton for sugar and Is. 6d. a gallon for rum between 1927 and 1929.

Fred’s strategy shifted to producing sugar as cheaply as possible, for as long as he could. When the going got tough, Worthy Park was able to, given its years of frugality and strategic reinvestment, keep its head above water while capacity was strained. Of course, this was not a perfect strategy because other costs were “simply multiplied” when “wage and fuel bills and the cost of running repairs had to be met.”

Between 1926 and 1929, Fred decided to cease rum production at Worthy Park (too unprofitable). He believed that rum needed to account for 1/3 of the estate's income, which did not seem possible to him at the time. Rum production was revived in 1930, to which the authors note that “the estate might have foundered” if not brought back.

There are a ton of Fred’s diary entries from 1920 that would give true primary-source lovers a reading contact high. I ultimately think the entries – specifically for that year – are too detailed for this piece, but if you ever get your hands on the book, soak them up. A lot of insight into Fred's psyche as it pertains to the sugar market, prices, the credit crunch, escaping predatory merchants, unsold goods, future decisions, etc.

Despite his hardest working efforts/strategic frugality, Fred could not outmuscle slumping global markets. He therefore had to turn to whatever capital markets would allow him to borrow at this time. And here is where you will get a peek into a Caribbean example of a “dog-eat-dog world” –

In July 1929, despite a crop of almost 1,500 tons of sugar, the Canadian Bank of Commerce refused to advance the short-term loan of £5,000 to see the estate through to the beginning of the subsequent crop which they had provided for the previous eight years. Consequently, Fred Clarke was forced to grant the handling of his entire crop to Messrs. Lascelles de Mercado, in return for a loan of £5,000 at 6 per cent. In this way he was liable to the payment of a commission of 2½ per cent on foreign sales and 5 per cent on island sales, a total of between £400 and £500, which he had hitherto saved by handling the sales himself. Lascelles renewed the loan in 1930, but in 1931 conditions had become so desperate that they would only advance £5,000 on the security of a second mortgage on Worthy Park and all its stock, as well as having the absolute control of all sales of sugar and rum.

The discerning rum historians among us will recognize the “Lascelles de Mercado” name immediately, as it was the entity that eventually gained full control of Wray & Nephew (and therefore Appleton). Lascelles wanting “absolute control of all sales of sugar and rum” was, in my opinion, a collateral play of seismically strategic proportions. The long game was being played since Lascelles eventually sold out all of Wray/Appleton to Campari in 2012 –

Italian spirits company Gruppo Campari has signed an agreement to acquire a controlling stake in spirits company Lascelles deMercado & Co., Ltd, the company announced in a release Monday. Lascelles deMercado is based in Kingston, Jamaica. Its portfolio includes the Appleton Estate, Appleton Special/White, Wray & Nephew and Coruba brands. The 81.4 percent stake came at a total cost of $414.8 million on a cash-free/debt-free basis. It is the third-largest acquisition in Campari’s history…” – Carib Journal

Here is Campari’s official press release on the 2012 acquisition, if interested.

Back to Worthy Park = )

It is worth mentioning Fred’s children here, as they will be critical to the ‘how Worthy Park kept going’ story.

→ Only one of three was sent to England for school after Munro. My read here is that Fred, as a first-generation Jamaican, was balancing his being fiscally responsible/priorities-oriented, with still engaging the culturally relevant schooling practices of the elite/elite-to-be (i.e., one child must go away for school). That child who went away was Clement.

→ Clement went back to Jamaica in 1922 to help his father (instead of going to college). So, all the madness of the 1920s you just read about, Clement muscled through it with Fred.

The other two boys, Owen and George, were given a technical education designed to make them independent of Worthy Park, and worked their way through McGill University in Canada to engineering degrees.

As we turn to the 1930s, Fred’s diary entries begin echoing a far more pessimistic sentiment. I will share some of these entries, yes.

Wednesday, May 6, 1931. … The boys write in great spirits about coming out for their vacation. Things are in such a depressed condition that they have not yet been able to secure any jobs in Canada. … I hope they will not be disappointed but life is, more or less made up of disappointments, and one’s expectations of the future are very seldom realised. …

Fred-erico with the ‘put that in your pipe and smoke it’ life lessons.

Monday June 15, 1931. … I still have a little money left which I am trying to hold on to until we start crop again at the end of July. Under the agricultural lien, Lascelles de Mercado and Co. will advance me on the unreaped portion of the crop. This will take us to the end of September. Then the question will be whether I will be able to get them to give me a further credit to carry on until I start reaping the 1932 crop in January. I have decided that it will be quite impossible to carry on under present circumstances and to pay the same rates of wages and most reluctantly I have notified all the employees today that there will be a reduction of 12½% on their wages and salaries. This is going to cause quite a lot of dissatisfaction and resentment, as in most cases they are not intelligent enough to realise the position, but I have no alternative and feel that I must make some effort to save the situation. …

Times are still tough. Feeling the weight of the Lascelles de Mercado debt. More tension on the horizon with workers.

Business conditions aside, Fred likely knew he was on his last stretch, which may have added to the pessimism. He may not have felt that he was leaving things in tip-top condition for his son(s). Or he himself had personal ambitions for the shape Worthy Park would be in by 1930. Maybe both. Regardless, there is no doubt that the less-than-ideal circumstances regarding the estate weighed on his mental, and maybe even spilled over into his overall health. As you can guess, the one thing we are all guaranteed eventually showed up at Fred’s doorstep: death.

Fred Clarke himself was never able to retire. Instead, his only indulgences were trips to sanitoria in the United States in 1922, 1923, 1930, and 1932 to recoup his deteriorating health, on the last of which he died.

August 1932, Frederick Lister Clarke passed away.

His sons would understand, even if not immediately, that despite the negative business conditions, journal entries, and overall sentiment, their father laid some serious (SERIOUS) groundwork to help them secure Worthy Park for many moons (reminder: they still own the estate). This is what I am referring to –

…creation of the Sugar and Rum Pools and Sugar Manufacturers’ Association of Jamaica between 1929 and 1932, in which Fred Clarke had played a vital part.

• 1929, Fred got the Jamaican government to provide a subsidy of £2 per ton on sugar and a further subsidy of £60,000 in 1931

• Fred was one of the seven original members of the Sugar Board

In 1930, the SMA did some serious ‘politics exists to serve business’ moves by fixing sugar prices so that the planters would squeeze out profits, while everyone else felt the burn. These things are routine. You just don’t hear about them often. UNTIL TODAY –

…in 1930 persuaded all planters to co-operate in fixing sugar prices for local consumption. By raising consumer prices to between 2d. and 3d. a pound while fixing commission for wholesalers and retailers at 7½ per cent and 10 per cent respectively (with ½ per cent to the managing broker), the Sugar Manufacturers assured the planters of between £14. 10s. and £22 per ton for the 20 per cent of their sugar destined for local consumption, at a time when the U.K. price was well under £10 per ton.

For my rum lovers, who keep up with the happenings around rum, your eye is twitching because you recognize the “Sugar and Rum Pools” name. The Rum Pool was created in 1932. Yes, the same one currently in a legal conundrum with National Rums of Jamaica over the Jamaican Geographical Indication.

For the people who read the above and said, “What?!” A crude summary:

• The “Sugar and Rum Pools” formed in 1932 is now the modern-day “Spirits Pool Association Limited.” The Spirits Pool wants the Jamaican Geographical Indication for rum to make clear that a rum can’t be called “Jamaican Rum” unless aged on the island. Simple enough?

• Well, the other side, National Rums of Jamaica (owned by the Government of Jamaica, Demerara Distillers Limited [Guyana], and West Indies Rum Distillery Ltd. [Barbados]) says that it should still be called “Jamaican Rum” even if not entirely tropically-aged.

• This gets messy when you realize that West Indies Rum Distillery Ltd. is owned by Maison Ferrand [France], which gives them a strong incentive to argue that “Jamaican Rum” remains authentic even when aged outside the country. MF’s business model would be severely disrupted, and they would no longer be able to produce products and make claims such as –

The Jamaican Observer has recently taken a clear side:

At first glance, Spirits Pool Association’s position has a compelling, romantic logic. What could be more authentic than rum aged entirely under the Jamaican sun? Their argument — that “tropical ageing” is essential to the spirit’s character — is a powerful marketing tool, one that aligns with global trends favouring terroir and protected designations.

The current ruling fails that test. The core of the issue is a false dichotomy; that rum is either entirely aged in Jamaica or it is not “authentic”. This ignores a more nuanced and ultimately more profitable path.

Back to Worthy Park, though I hope the above provided some good, modern-day context. The point was that Fred helped launch the organization that is kicking off with National Rums of Jamaica. But this would not have been remotely in his view at the time. He was focused on fixing prices to benefit the industry's survival and, more importantly, Worthy Park’s. That last bit was what helped his sons inherit the estate and continue it along. But history and the past don’t let each other go, so it’s important to know the then and now.

Let us continue up the Worthy Park timeline.

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In comes the second leg of the Clarke leadership.

Worthy Park was owned equally by each of Fred Clarke’s children, but Clement Clarke, as oldest son and one of his father’s executors, always remained the senior partner. Gradually, however, first Owen and then George assumed more equal responsibility…

Luckily for you, I don’t like taking pictures of myself, but I find great joy in capturing things I think are insightful. When I visited Worthy Park, I snapped a pic of Fred and his children in the waiting room right before the tour kicked off –

1930s onward, the sons kicked professionalization of Worthy Park into high gear. In 1934, Clement transferred their business from Lascelles to the Hankeys (London) and saved the estate “2½ per cent commission on sales which had seemed such a waste to his father.” In 1936, they firmly demarcated the estate’s functions into factory, farm, and pen, with regular (formal) meetings taking place to gauge the health of operations. This was further cemented in 1949 –

…divided into Worthy Park Factory Ltd. and Worthy Park Farms Ltd. for accountancy and taxation convenience some years later.

The results apparently spoke for themselves because “the estate began to make a modest profit, which increased steadily year by year.”

Investment in secondhand machinery between 1939 and 1945 totaled about £25,700, helping raise sugar production from 3,000 tons to 6,000 tons. In the 20 years after 1945, lots of funds were spent on new equipment, which expanded production to 18,000 tons a year.

It was only these improvements that enabled the factory to satisfy the tremendous increase in the demands made upon it between 1940 and 1945.

The “tremendous increase” in demand came into play as World War II began. Many producers globally (especially of European beet sugar) were, uh, occupied. The Clarke brothers were sure to take advantage of the market gap. Take a look at the sharp increase in Worthy Park sugar production between 1930 and 1940 –

Another reason they were able to produce so much more sugar is that local competition was continuing to fizzle out. In 1897, there were 134 sugar estates with factories. In 1920, 59. In 1930, 35. By 1945, only 20.

But, you see, all wasn’t smooth sailing.

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Worthy Park & the seesaw of global politics in the mid-1900s.

Friendly reminder, because I know that Worthy Park rum lovers are going to feel like things concluded with an unexpected suddenness: this tale stops in the year 1970 = )

Back to the show.

Unsurprisingly, the worldwide sugar shortage sustained for a while following the end of World War II in 1945. For Jamaica, the British kept a wartime quota to keep sugar prices stable/high. This, of course, would reverse once things stabilized.

By 1951, however, world production had soared once more and prices were falling towards a dangerous level, and when the British Labour Government—dedicated to low consumer prices—negotiated the ‘Black Pact’ with Cuba whereby cheap Cuban sugar was allowed to undercut British West Indian produce, a crisis impended. The situation was saved, largely through the lobbying of the British West Indies Sugar Association (formed in 1942), by the signing of the first Commonwealth Sugar Agreement in December 1951, shortly after the Conservative Government of Winston Churchill returned to power in Britain.

The Commonwealth Sugar Agreement referenced in the quote went into effect in 1953. And while it limited Jamaican sugar production, the Jamaican sugar producers felt this was a better alternative than true free trade. Local sales continued to be controlled by the Jamaican government, ‘on the recommendation of the Sugar Control Board, acting on the advice of the Sugar Manufacturers’ Association,’ which had been dictating these measures since the 1930s. For numerical context, “the prices received by Jamaican manufacturers averaged around £40 a ton, at a time when free market world prices fell as low as £15.”

To follow that up, Jamaican sugar producers (Worthy Park included) received a windfall of good luck spurred on by one of the most revolutionary events in global history. Enter, Fidel Castro –

…Castro’s coup in Cuba and the subsequent nationalization of the Cuban sugar industry. As the result of Cuba’s intransigence, the International Sugar Agreement broke down in 1962, and with the U.S. embargo on Cuban exports the free market world price for sugar soared to £93 per ton in 1963. In addition, a sugar-starved U.S.A. began to admit non-quota allocations of Jamaican sugar that averaged 91,000 tons a year between 1961 and 1965, at prices that averaged a highly lucrative £65 per ton. In 1965, Jamaica achieved an all-time record production of 506,348 tons of sugar, more than five times the level of 1940 (or 1805).

Worthy Park, as you can imagine, was overjoyed by the developments, even if in disagreement with what transpired with their closest island-neighbor (proximity). They took full advantage of being a part of this “all-time record production.”

If some of the information provided feels out of whack with modern-day sensibilities, I’ll continue to tap dance on that instability: Jamaica is still not an independent country. All this talk of World Wars and the Commonwealth should be thought of in the context of Jamaica under British control. Their grip was detangling slowly, for sure, but independence would not come for Jamaica until August 6, 1962. We’ll get to that point, but let’s first walk through the 40s and 50s.

In many respects, Worthy Park continued generating the requisite profits to plow back into growing the estate –

In the twenty years after 1948, however, more than £200,000 was spent on new tractors, trucks, and bulk sugar carriers, and Worthy Park’s perennial transportation problem has been solved in the most economical way possible.

But the lead-up to this was all but unpleasant amid heady political swings in the Caribbean and Jamaica. You see, everyone on the island entered the 1940s with wariness from the years that preceded it. In 1938, labor unrest hit a breaking point that ultimately culminated in the Frome Riots: workers across the island went on strike demanding better wages.

It seems that Worthy Park was less impacted than the westernmost parishes of the island, though the rebellious fever was still palpable in a country but so big. Alexandre Bustamante, the man whose name you would have noticed in that newspaper clipping and who became Jamaica’s first prime minister, played a critical role in some of these worker-versus-aristocracy upheavals. He formed the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (B.I.T.U.) to go after “corporation-owned estates” that he believed were “more easily unionized,” according to the authors, which is likely what spared Worthy Park the worst consequences of the riots.

Bustamante –

While Craton and Walvin conclude that, between the 1940s and 1970s, there were “largely unsuccessful attempts by the various unions to gain a monopoly at Worthy Park,” Bustamante did not take Worthy Park off his radar. Vitriol for Clement and Worthy Park was very clear on his part. A letter to Clement from Bustamante in March 1944 –

Interestingly, in March 1944, Bustamante broke away from the People’s National Party to form the Jamaican Labour Party as the political arm of the B.I.T.U. For the non-initiated, I will make some very broad ‘headline’ adjacent historical generalizations/stereotypes so that you have a mild understanding of the two parties. The PNP has generally been associated with more socially-focused democracy (equality for all, allyship with Cuba, particularly under the Michael Manley era, etc.). The JLP has typically been associated with more conservative values and has been America’s preferred party (which may be obvious given the PNP’s association with Castro). Currently, the JLP is in power under the leadership of Andrew Holness. This gets a whole lot more involved, but this is enough for our purposes. My intent here was not to take you through a lead-up to the Cold War/20^th-century political history of Jamaica. It’s to emphasize that, especially in (small-to-medium) sized island contexts, these sorts of political seesaws sink businesses and can bear witness to seismic alterations in society (to put it mildly). Coups, being on the right/wrong side of politics, etc., had (and still have) a fierce relevance in Caribbean contexts. Worthy Park was not exempt from these realities, even if it did not bear the brunt of the events.

In the context of Worthy Park, one can easily follow the throughline –

Lluidas Vale as a whole is strongly P.N.P. and most of the sugar workers are nominally members of the N.W.U.; but since Independence the management of Worthy Park, like that of most estates, has become more and more favourably disposed towards the J.L.P. and the B.I.T.U., particularly since the P.N.P. in opposition has drafted what the planters regard as a cynically radical platform of land reforms that include the nationalization and subdivision of sugar estates. The J.L.P., moreover, stands squarely for the American alliance which means so much for Jamaican security as well as Jamaican sugar exports, tied as it is to a policy of isolating Cuba economically as well as politically.

Clarke brothers continued to chug along, increasing yields across their cane acreage, while also correctly diversifying crops to generate alternative sources of revenue. If we fast-forward slightly, you’ll see how these investments paid off 10–20 years later –

…Worthy Park’s total revenue of £917,000 in 1968, £49,000 came from the cattle pen and £54,000 from citrus growing.

As you can see from that revenue distribution, sugar (and rum) remained their king (and queen). As the authors note, “no crop has offered the agricultural equivalent of the philosopher’s stone.” That is a bar!

The seasonal nature of cane cultivation still troubled the Clarkes throughout the 40s–60s era. Craton and Walvin note that mechanization would help to reduce some of these operational inconsistencies, though it would not be met without hostility, as is the case with Moneymusk toward the end of the 1950s –

Sudden switches to mechanization accompanied by a wholesale layoff of workers, such as that attempted by the West Indies Sugar Company at Monymusk in 1958, have understandably been followed by some social dislocation and considerable concern in the labour movement. Yet the present labour situation, even without full mechanization, is highly unsatisfactory to workers as well as estates.

For the uninitiated, this is Moneymusk rum (today) –

Back to Worthy Park.

I appreciate the author’s candor that the Clarkes did not deviate much from the past in providing busywork as an attempt to prevent disruption outside of the major cane harvesting timeframes –

…the estate constantly seeks ways—such as the custom borrowed from slavery days of staggering maintenance work wherever possible and in diversifying into crops such as citrus, coffee, and kola nuts which bear fruit out of the time of the sugar harvest—in which to ameliorate the situation.

Another ‘of the past’ practice deeply rooted in slave plantation work classifications was the breaking up of workers into “gangs.”

All the above notwithstanding, Worthy Park had achieved a level of growth that would have made Fred grin from ear to ear, if he were a smiling man that is. Not too many of them the further back you go. The revenue for the entire estate continued to go up and to the right, even topping 1M –

“…£22,656 [post-Fred’s death], and this had not reached £40,000 a year by the outbreak of the Second World War. By 1946, however, revenue had reached £150,000, and ten years later, £423,000. By 1966, receipts totalled more than three-quarters of a million pounds, and in the record year of 1968 this figure was exceeded by the income from sugar alone, and total revenue for factory and farms topped £1,000,000 for the first time.”

In overall efficiency, Worthy Park, for long one of the best of Jamaican estates, reached a position of absolute primacy in 1968, when the Research Department of the S.M.A. also reported that the estate’s record of producing sugar at a rate of 7·76 hundredweights per acre per month was ‘comparable with the best cane growing areas in the world’.”

Share Books, Rum, And Then Some

The end of an era.

Clement died in 1967, likely satisfied with where Worthy Park landed by the end of his life. Owen and George intended to pass the reign to their sons/nephews, which ultimately did happen. Given the state of global politics and how the Caribbean fits into the seesaw, the authors understandably posited whether Worthy Park would even be around for “even three [more] decades.” We know the response to that.

I could not help but hone in on the details/feelings/analyses of the authors as they relayed their thoughts on the future of the Jamaican sugar industry vis-à-vis (1) other economic avenues (many of which still remain today), and (2) their warnings to not end up like countries they viewed unfavorably –

The Jamaican Government, instead of receiving increased revenue from sugar, would likely be forced to subsidize agriculture from such exhaustible and fickle industries as bauxite mining and tourism. The aluminium companies, though they have contributed many benefits to Jamaica, would soon switch their bauxite operations to alternative sources in other countries if punitively taxed, and tourism would quickly evaporate if political and social unrest in Jamaica increased. The examples of Haiti and Cuba are warnings for Jamaica of the results of the removal of foreign capital, an almost exclusive dependence on peasant smallholdings, and nationalization.

In many ways it would be a tragedy if an estate such as Worthy Park, which has survived so many vicissitudes over three hundred years, were to perish now. But its survival must be justified not on romantic and sentimental but on cold hard economic grounds. Outworn modes and attitudes will not serve Jamaica’s future, which will contain enough pitfalls without inviting more bitterness and recriminations about the worst of the past.

“Political radicals” versus those dubbed ‘caterpillars of the commonwealth.’ Heady stuff. Ultimately, the Worthy Park story continued (as we know). But we will hold the line here, in 1970.

Let’s begin wrapping up with the authors’ words –

If this book has succeeded, it is not just the story of a single Jamaican plantation and its people over three hundred years; it is a history, from the inside out, of Jamaica, of the British West Indies, and of the sugar industry which dominated the economy so long and has done so much, for good or evil, to shape West Indian society.

In my humble opinion, the book more than succeeded. Especially so in a world of puffed-up narrations that only serve to show things through a glossy, folklore-ish lens. Thank you, Craton and Walvin.

This marks the end of the Worthy Park series.

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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.

This piece will be slightly different because you’ll get a two-for-one: Ten to One (I did that on purpose) and Ron Bermúdez. We will move quickly through the 2-for-1s, but I’ll still give you enough to fill your cup.

First up, Ten to One (TTO) x Five Origin Select.

The company + some history.