111), a product that gathered both good and evil forces on its way, a drink that could not have become global without the use of the slaves on a mass scale. Along their existence, the spirited drinks were designated as medicine, recreational drinks for pastime, means of social control, and due to the high degree of addiction that set in as soon as they moderation went out of the way, a source of distress for those who became addictive and their families. Rum, the first to replace the ratios of beer of the British ships and the main ingredient in the first cocktail, became the favorite drink of the English settlers who came to Virginia hoping to find a new source of wealth for them and their country. The second cocktail based on rum came on the tables of the Englishmen in the New World, under the form of punch.

The spirits would inextricably link their name to the American Revolution, along with another famous drink: tea. The heavy import of sugar molasses from the French in order to sustain the rum industry in New England provided a serious reason of tension between the colonists and their mother country, England. Alcoholic beverages and most importantly, highly alcoholic chap beverages were a sore point in any dispute, especially since it provided the alleviation for the poor as well as for the rich who were living under the harsh conditions in the colonies. Rum ignited easily both physically and figuratively speaking. The first act passes in London in 1733, the Molasses or the Sugar Act, was the first in a series that will lead to the American Revolution. Scotch-Irish whiskey and then bourbon will soon take over and connect their name with the new independent nation forever.

Spirited drinks started to play a vital role once they started to be used on a mass scale. They offered those who produced and traded them a much sought precious currency and enabled them to negotiate...

Brandy, rum, whiskey, bourbon or distilled drinks made form sources available on site, essentially contributed to the way the European settlers dealt with the aboriginals in Africa and all over the New World. "Distilled drinks alongside with firearms and infectious diseases, helped to shape the modern world by helping the inhabitants of the Old World to establish themselves as the rulers of the New World" (a History of the World in Six Glasses, p. 129).
Since they came into mass consumption, as previously shown, distilled drinks have touched people at all levels of society. The industrialization brought a new stage in the development of spirit production and trade. Large manufacturers took over the small distilleries, improving their methods of promotion, advertising and distribution.

After centuries of using the spirits as a trade currency and means of alleviating during hard time, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the United States came to a stage when a movement that started by the middle of the nineteenth century will spread and end in the Prohibition era, with the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Health and religious reasons had led more and more people to believe that the only answer to the loss of moderation was to ban the production and consumption of alcoholic beverages altogether. Today, the period of fourteen years when the Eighteen Amendment was in use, is regarded as e period of experimentation that proved once again that any interdiction attracts the rise of illegal activities meant to work around it.

Standage, Tom. A History of the World in Six Glasses. 2005. Walker Publishing Company. New York

Drink: The History of Alcohol 1690-1920. The National Archives. Retrieved: Oct. 20, 2009. Available at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/events/calendar/drink.htm