Rum’s dark and stormy history

In modern society, rum is associated with parties, revelry, and generally good times. However, the spirit has a dark past, as Douglas Blyde of The Standard explains. Rum didn’t start out with daiquiris, mojitos, and pina coladas. Instead, its history involves slavery, the British navy, colonization, and profiteering.

Blyde’s recounting of the sugar cane spirit is lively and gets right to the point. “Rum was never just a drink. It was a crude, caustic, and brutally efficient solution,” says Blyde. In its early incarnation, rum was a crude, harsh liquor that was not seen in respectable society. Daily rations of rum were given to sailors in the British navy as a way to placate them, and – with a slug of lime juice added – as a method to ward off scurvy. It wasn’t until the late 19th century that rum developed an air of respectability, and it took the repeal of Prohibition to really polish rum’s image.

These days rum is enjoying somewhat of a renaissance, with artisanal varieties that extol the terroir of the sugar cane fields where the spirit is born. New rum cocktails are constantly being created, but the standards are also worth celebrating. Here are some of the most popular rum drinks in the EYB Library:

• Dark and stormy from BBC Good Food
• Ted Allen’s watermelon mai tai from Food Network Magazine
• No woman no cry from Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails
• Banana-rum old-fashioned from Food & Wine Magazine
• The old Cuban from Serious Eats by Audrey Saunders (pictured)