Run & Slave Trade

Rum and the Slave Trade

Amanda Ocasio

HIS 379

Cynthia Williams

July 18, 2011

Rum Trade

Although Rum was one of the great commodities in the New World trade, it had a great impact on people in the Atlantic World, namely the African Slaves. Rum has become one of the oldest commodities to come out of the New World trade that still exists today.

When the Spanish made their way to the Caribbean, they realized that sugar cane grew well there. Large amounts of labor would be required to harvest the plentiful crops, but the Spanish were quickly eradicating those able to harvest the crops by introducing disease to the New World. The native Amerindians were quickly becoming victims of a new found demise.

With the natives falling ill and dying around them, the Spanish knew they would have to turn to slavery in order to fill the need of harvesting the molasses which produced rum as well as filling the increasing demand for sugar in the Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. The Spanish quickly turned to the west coast of Africa, where they knew they would be able to acquire slaves. “during the whole period up to the time of the declaration of US independence in 1776, a million and a quarter of these slaves went to the sugar colonies of the West Indies, most of the rest went to the sugar colonies of the North American mainland, (Benjamin, Hall, Rutherford, p. 159) This, in turn, caused a triangular trade to be established.

The triangular trading of the transatlantic slave trade was functioning from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Crops, slaves and manufactured goods were the main commodities which were traded between the American colonies, the Europeans, the West Africans, and the people of the Caribbean.

With the Africans supplied slaves to the Caribbean, the Caribbean slaves were supplying sugar cane to the Colonies and the Colonies were supplying Rum to the Africans in exchange for slaves....