A residue of the sugar production process and an important ingredient in producing rum.
Molasses emerged as a vital part of the economic system that developed within the various European colonies in the Americas. In the 1400s, as the Portuguese ventured down the western coast of Africa in search of a sea route to the Far East and the gold mines of West Africa, they transferred the plantation complex, a lucrative cash crop–producing agricultural system, from the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic. During this period of Portuguese expansion, Portuguese caravels carried sugarcane and Portuguese explorers quickly found that some of the islands off of the African coast possessed the proper climate and soil for growing sugarcane. On Christopher Columbus’s second voyage to the Americas, he carried sugarcane aboard his ships and the Spanish quickly discovered that sugarcane flourished in the West Indies. Sugar, like the spices of the Far East, was in great demand among the European elite because of its taste and the social status that its consumption denoted. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, because of increasing demand and limited supply, sugar remained a luxury commodity, thus making its production highly profitable yet capital and labor intensive.
The Dutch intensified American sugar production, including its by-products of molasses and rum, when they became involved in the Portuguese possessions in Brazil and then carried their capital and improved production techniques into the West Indies, where the production of sugar flourished. While sugar grew well in the West Indies, the problem with growing sugarcane and then turning the cane into sugar, molasses, and rum was that it was an extremely labor-intensive process. The West Indian planters attempted to use the local indigenous people, and then European indentured servants, until they finally moved toward purchasing and utilizing African slaves, as this system allowed them to own the slaves’ labor for their entire life, along with that of their children.
Molasses quickly became an important part of the mercantile system of the Americas, and its use increased as the price of rum decreased and its appeal spread. Molasses became especially important to the merchants of New England, who discovered not only its profitability, but also the opportunities the trade in molasses presented. These involved the continuous avoidance of England’s mercantile system, especially its taxes, and the chance to participate in the transatlantic slave trade. The New England merchants had no problem avoiding Parliament’s 1733 Molasses Act and in fact continually increased the amount of molasses they imported into New England and the amount of rum that they exported. By 1770, North American merchants imported over 6 million gallons of molasses per year that allowed them to produce 5 million gallons of rum in approximately 140 New England distilleries. The Sugar Act of 1764, which reduced the duty on molasses in North America, served as an example of the American argument concerning the rela tionship between taxation and representation, along with economic freedom.
Ty M. Reese
See also: American Revolution; Columbian Exchange; Illegal Trade; Indentured Servants; Labor; Mercantilism; Rum; Slavery; Spices; Sugar.
Dunn, Richard S. Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972.
McCusker, John J. Rum and the American Revolution: The Rum Trade and the Balance of Payments of the Thirteen Continental Colonies. New York: Garland, 1989.