Rum is the scorched brand of empire, the persistent hangover of colonial ambition. It has wet the lips of rogues and royals, sticky with sugarcane, soured with sin. Once the dockyard’s demon, now a pedigreed pretender — bottled, branded, and veneered with respectability. But no matter how fine the label, history knows a bastard when it sees one.
Rum was never just a drink. It was a crude, caustic, and brutally efficient solution. In the 17th century, the Caribbean heaved with sugarcane, its sap boiled down to crystalline wealth, leaving behind a black, glutinous residue: molasses. It was waste, unwanted, until it wasn’t. Left to fester in the heat, it frothed into something which burned like rage. Whether enslaved Africans first stumbled upon this transformation is uncertain, but the men who owned them — ruthless in their accountancy — saw the numbers. Waste could be wealth, and misery was always monetisable.
