"The Notorious Triangle": Rhode Island Rum Runners

Image above courtesy of http://riroads.com/history/ri_rum_runners.htm

The “notorious triangle”, dubbed thus by Jay Coughtry (James’ review of his essay is cited below), forever changed the prospects and culture of tiny Rhode Island. When the port cities - Newport, Bristol, South Kingstown, and, slightly inland, even Roger William’s beloved Providence – partnered with the rum and slave trades, the people of the tiny and previously overlooked colony to experience an economical boom such as had not been seen in the colony yet. Soon Rhode Island became the leading colony in slave trade activity. In fact, Coughtry argues that Rhode Island merchants were almost completely responsible for the triangle trade (though James seems to believe this is an exaggeration.) A quote from a Rhode Island historian (slavenorth.com) explains the involvement of the Rhode Islanders in the gritty business:

"All together, 204 different Rhode Island citizens owned a share or more in a slave voyage at one time or another. It is evident that the involvement of R.I. citizens in the slave trade was widespread and abundant. For Rhode Islanders, slavery had provided a major new profit sector and an engine for trade in the West Indies."

While 204 investors may not seem a huge number, one must take into consideration the generally small population Rhode Island boasted in general, only several thousand people until the late 1700s. But it was not only slaves that made Rhode Island rich. Rum, distilled from Caribbean molasses, soon became the wampum (so to speak) of Rhode Island, used to trade for slaves in Africa, who were went to the West Indies, who worked the sugar plantations, from whence came the molasses in the first place. This New England-Africa-West Indies-New England ship and trade line formed a pattern dubbed the “Triangle Trade” and the “Rum Triangle.” This West Indian rum was soon the toast of Africa, some of whose citizens were willing to sell their own fellows for a bottle of the stuff. And more, besides being good for trade in Africa, rum became immensely popular among the colonists themselves.

It seems the Spanish had started this “rum-running” tradition, when Columbus found himself no Asian treasure-laden plains in his “India.” To appease the Spanish crown, who had fronted a large sum of money to pay for his multiple voyages, he began to take “Indian” slaves and also sugar back to Spain. The first attempt at distilling a liquor from this raw sugar was a failure, but within a few years, success resulted from the venture. And as usual, British adventurers soon followed suite. I apologize for the following lengthy quotation, but its conciseness makes it worth repeating:

“Between 1709 and 1807, Rhode Island merchants sponsored at least 934 slaving voyages to the coast of Africa and carried an estimated 106,544 slaves to the New World. From 1732-64, Rhode Islanders sent annually 18 ships, bearing 1,800 hogsheads of rum, to Africa to trade for slaves, earning £40,000 annually. Newport, the colony's leading slave port, took an estimated 59,070 slaves to America before the Revolution. Bristol and Providence also prospered from it. In the years after the Revolution, Rhode Island merchants controlled between 60 and 90 percent of the American trade in African slaves.” (slavenorth.com)

And so, the “notorious triangle” gave eighteenth century Rhode Island’s economy a makeover it would never forget.

SOURCES

James, Sydney V. “Review: Of Slaves and Rum.” Reviews in American History, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1982): 168-172. Online. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2702323.

http://64.251.194.106/archives/2004-july-aug/wine_rum_revival.htm

www.slavenorth.com