JAN 2015
This event was a major turning point in my academic
career. Since 1991, I had conducted fieldwork in
alcohol industries, slavery and slave emancipation,
temperance movements, and globalization.
different parts of the Caribbean and during these visits
My book also examines the social and sacred uses of
had the opportunity to observe the central place of rum
rum and identifies the forces that shaped alcohol
and other forms of alcohol in Caribbean society. I had
drinking in the Caribbean. While the enormous
also come across numerous references to rum in the
amounts of rum available in the Caribbean contributed
primary documents I was reading. During the
to a climate of excessive drinking, levels of alcohol
excavations at the Pierhead cemetery in Bridgetown,
consumption varied among different social groups.
however, I was an actual
The
participant in an event that
patt erns reflect more than
embodied and
expressed
simply access to rum. For
centuries of alcohol-related
example, levels of drinking
traditions in the Caribbean,
and drunken comportment
which inspired me to pursue
conveyed messages about
further study.
the underlying tensions that
which were driven by the
of alcohol in the Caribbean
coercive
from the sixteenth century
based on class, race, gender,
religion, and ethnic identity.
Americas, it contributes to
growing
field
Moreover,
of
epidemic
new ground in using an
that
living
approach
ethnographic
evidence.
It
investigates the economic impact of Caribbean rum on
multiple scales, including rum’s contribution to sugar
plantation revenues, its role in bolstering colonial and
post-colonial economies, and its impact on Atlantic
trade.
A
number
of
poor
natural
international
conflicts, and unstable food
documentary,
and
tensions
disease,
conditions,
disasters,
incorporates
archaeological,
these
were often magnified by
Atlantic studies and breaks
interdisciplinary
of
contentious social hierarchy
Africa,
Europe, and throughout the
the
exploitation
labor and set within a highly
to the present. Drawing on
from
drinking
existed in the Caribbean,
My book explores the role
materials
different
political-economic
supplies.
While
nearly
everyone in the Caribbean drank, the differing levels
of alcohol use by various social groups highlights the
ways in which drinking became a means to confront
anxiety.
trends
Frederick Smith is author of Caribbean Rum: A Social
determined the volume and value of rum exports from
and Economic History.He teaches Anthropology at the
the Caribbean, especially war, competition from other
College of William & Mary.
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