------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------  
Published by EH.NET (June 2006)  
  
Frederick H. Smith, _Caribbean Rum: A Social and Economic History_.   
Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006. xvi + 340 pp. $60   
(cloth), ISBN: 0-8130-2867-1.  
  
Reviewed for EH.NET by Russell R. Menard, Department of History,   
University of Minnesota.  
  
  
Frederick H. Smith, an anthropologist at the College of William and   
Mary, has written the most important study of the Caribbean rum   
industry since John McCusker's masterful 1970 Ph. D. dissertation   
_Rum and the American Revolution_. Smith combines economic history   
and anthropology in the tradition of Sidney Mintz. Indeed, _Caribbean   
Rum_ will surely remind readers of Mintz's _Sweetness and Power_   
(1985) for its focus on a commodity and skillful blending of economic   
analysis and ethnography. Smith goes beyond McCusker by tracking   
rum's history into the twenty-first century and by exploring the   
cultural dimensions of rum consumption in the Caribbean. Smith notes   
that rum is not the inevitable by-product of sugar, as early   
seventeenth-century planters were little interested in it. He then   
uses a wide range of sources, drawing on manuscripts in several   
archives, numerous published items, and the evidence of historical   
archaeology to trace rum's origins in the desires of Europeans and   
Africans to recreate the drinking patterns they had left behind in   
the Old World. He then goes on to trace rum's transformation from a   
small colonial activity, concerned largely to supply internal demand,   
to a major export traded throughout the Atlantic World and finally to   
a multi-billion dollar industry controlled by multinational   
corporations. This largely economic history is paired with a close   
reading of rum's changing role in Caribbean culture and society.   
Smith's analysis of differing levels of rum consumption over time and   
of variations in drinking patterns among several Caribbean islands is   
especially successful. It is a fascinating story, and Smith tells it   
well.  
  
While economic historians will find Smith's contribution useful,   
those interested in the Caribbean economy will still want to consult   
McCusker to understand how rum production functioned within the   
context of the Caribbean sugar industry. Smith does an excellent job   
of revealing productivity gains within rum production. Indeed, his   
analysis of the experiments of planters with methods of rum making   
puts yet another nail in the coffin of those who would argue that   
Caribbean planters were a class of seigneurs with no interest in   
their bottom line. As Smith's study shows, they were willing to   
experiment and take risks in order to raise profits. However, Smith   
is less successful in situating rum within the struggles of sugar   
planters to improve the productivity of their plantations in order to   
maintain profit levels in the face of falling sugar prices and rising   
costs. For that story one must turn to McCusker. On the whole, Smith   
's thoroughly researched and nicely written analysis of rum   
consumption is persuasive. He is particularly good in uncovering the   
ways in which African experience with alcoholic drink shaped the use   
of rum by slaves in the Caribbean. While I found most of Smith's   
conclusions in this area, persuasive, he does on occasion -- as with   
the notion of "alcoholic maroonage" (p. 118) step off the deep end.   
In sum, _Caribbean Rum_ is a welcome addition to the growing   
literature on the early Caribbean economy and a must read for all   
serious students of the early modern Atlantic World.  
  
  
Russell R. Menard is Professor of History at the University of   
Minnesota. His most recent book is _Sweet Negotiations: Sugar,   
Slavery, and Plantation Agriculture in Early Barbados_   
(Charlottesville, 2006). He is currently working on _Plantation   
Empire: Slavery and Plantation Agriculture in the Making of Britain's   
Empire in America_.  
  
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