Genus Saccharum Officinarun, or sugar cane, was first cultivated in New Guinea, and first fermented in India as early as 350BC for medicinal purposes. Moving into 1400s, explorers had started to discover new world trade routes and discovering remote islands with the perfect climate for growing sugar cane, a highly valued product on the trade route. It required a lot of water and manpower to grow this giant grass and islands were perfect for an unlimited supply of water. However, for manpower, European colonists paid African slavers to provide the slaves to work on producing the spirit. Due to the level of sugar in this new spirit, it fared well along the trade routes and had a higher ABV than other beverages on the market.  

In the early 1600s, the island of Barbados was discovered which would soon lead to the popularity of rum all over the world. The island’s climate was perfect, so explorer Richard Ligon brought his expertise with all the necessary tools from Brazil as well as purchasing slaves to create a rum empire. In less than 10 years, the sugar barons of Barbados became some of the richest men in the world. There are indications that the spirit was referred to as Rumbullion or Rumbustion, referring to the upheaval and violent commotions the spirit would cause. Eventually, this was shortened to rum.  

Rum quickly became the drink of choice to many colonised countries due to the strength, but also because it was very cheap, much cheaper than brandy which was the other popular imported spirit of the time. New England was a colonised area of USA that struggled to grow anything because of the bad climate; therefore, when Barbados started to export rum, it allowed them to rely less on European imports. Soon enough those clever New Englanders got the idea to import molasses, a by-product of the sugar making process, from the islands instead of rum and start distilling themselves in the late 1600s, with towns like Salem, Newport, Boston and Medford becoming rum distillation epicentres with over 100 distilleries by the mid-1700s. With the momentum of production, it solidified a slave-dependent economic system as rum accounted for 80% of New England’s exports. This was all until England tried to impose an import tax on molasses from French colonised islands which led to the Sugar Act in 1764, where tax was levied on molasses, contributing to the political protest in 1773. The Boston Tea Party was started by American colonists who were angry at Britain for imposing ‘taxation without representation’.