1

Barbadoes WaterCeltic-Afro-Caribbean Distilled Rum

15th Caribbean Eastern Island Cultures ConferenceUniversity of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas

Friday, November 19, 2012

Eva de Lourdes Edwards, PhDUniversity of Puerto Rico

College of General StudiesEnglish Department

2

Panel Session:Irish Indentured Labor in the Caribbean

• Stewart, Virginia (Roanoke College, USA). “Historical Background to the Influx of Irish to the Early Colonial Caribbean”

• Harris, Jo Ann (Georgia Gwinnett College, USA). “The Politics of Irish Indenture on Both Sides of the Atlantic”

• Edwards, Eva de Lourdes (University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras). “Barbadoes Water: Celtic-Afro-Caribbean Distilled Rum”

• Lawton de Torruella, Elena (Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, Puerto Rico). “Black, White, and Red Legs: Moving Beyond Racialized Dichotomies”

3

Waving Fields of MemoryCañas de la Memoria

TV Documentary Public Television

(available in YouTube in 6 parts)

Sugar cane cutterCortador de Caña

1950-51Rafael Tufiño

4

“Sugar’s ugly sister” (Parker 297)

• Parker, Matthew. The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies. New York: Walker P/Bloomsbury P, 2011. In Print

5

A rum, by any other name ...

• Rumbullion• Kill-Devil• Barbadoes Water• Rum• Aqua Vitae (Alchemy, for medicinal purposes)• Cachaça – Brazilian Portuguese• Rhum (French)• Ron (Spanish)

– Aguardiente (burning water) – Cuba– Pitorro (moonshine) – Puerto Rico

6

SaccharumOfficinarum(Sugar of the Apothecaries)

Karkara – SanskritSakkara – PakritSukkur – ArabicAzúcar – SpanishSucre - FrenchSugar – English (13th c.)

“A kind of honey made from reeds.” Pliny the Elder

(Aykroyd 6, 10)

7

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/201204/sugar.please.htm

8

Guanches Guanche mummy (right) and stone workers exhibit (bottom) from Canary Islands museum. The islands, north of the Tropic of Cancer, provided a good location for sugar cane cultivation, though not as optimal as the Caribbean.

9

Sugar Cane, Treacle, Molasses, Rum

New GuineaPlant origins

Barbados1637-1647

10

... and a bottle of rum

The first documented appearances of both the words kill-devil and rum surfaced in Barbados. In 1652, a visitor to the islands observed that “the chief fuddling they make in the island is Rumbullion, alias Kill-Divil, an 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 in any of the islands. (Laws governing liquor had previously been passed by the Barbadian assembly, but these referred only to “this country’s spirits.”).

Barbados can also claim to be home to the oldest-known continuously produced rum—from the Mount Gay distillery (Curtis 26).

11

Rum and Cognac

12

It was about rum, not tea

13

Pandora’s Box

14

Rum, Romance & Rebellion (1928)

“the Scums, Dregs and excrementitious Parts [of the sugar-cane juice] which are separated from the finer and more essential parts ...”and which were later found to be “of some value, for from the same being fermented and distilled, is extracted a strong Spirit which they call Rumm” Thomas Tenison, 1684 (Taussig 4)

15

• x

16

Distilling and Alchemy

17

18

Thank you

Molly, the serving girl at John Shaw’s Punch House, Manchester (founded 1735), stands in front of two bowls of punch and holds a box of spices. An illustration from FS Stancliffe’s John Shaw’s 1738-1938Manchester Public Libraries

19

The End