Colonial molasses trade

Molasses was a major trading product in the Americas, being produced by enslaved Africans on sugar plantations on European colonies.

The good was a major import for the British North American colonies, which used molasses to produce rum, especially distilleries in New England.

[2] Sugar plantation owners in the Caribbean often sold rum on discount to the naval ships so that they would spend more time close to the islands, providing protection from pirates.

The French West Indies had a large supply of molasses at this time, but the area was lacking in lumber, cheese, and flour.

In the triangular trade, slave traders from New England would bring rum to Africa, and in return, they would purchase enslaved Africans.

To combat this problem, many English planters on the islands developed their own local distilleries in order to deal with the large surplus of molasses.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Dutch possessions in the West Indies began to encourage trade with the islands and New England.

This combination of importing foreign product to the English colonies caused England a lot of agitation in the years to come.

[5] This act was meant to force the colonies into buying molasses from the British or stop producing rum in North America.

This was clear in Massachusetts where it "...imported legally less than half as much molasses and rum as it exported..."[6] These illicit operations would continue for several decades.

This was proven by the fact that annually, the British West Indies exported about a million gallons of molasses to the colonies.

Molasses, however, was also used in the colonies for kitchen purposes, such as for baked beans, brown bread, Indian pudding, pie, and soft drinks.

At the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812, the Americans used barrels of molasses, among other items, as hasty barricades to provide cover from the advancing British.

Massachusetts and Rhode Island together made up three-quarters of the mainland's domestic rum exports by the end of the colonial period.

[9] Rhode Island supported around thirty distilleries, and after the Sugar Act was repealed, produced about 500,000 gallons of rum annually.