History of the World in Six Glasses: Spirits & Society

Introduction: Six Beverages That Shaped Civilization

The great civilizations of the world have left among their achievements notable innovations related to one alcoholic or caffeinated drink or another. In his book A History of the World in Six Glasses, Tom Standage traces the history of the world through six beverages that each marked a decisive step in the development of human civilization. If beer and wine, as Standage points out in the first two parts of his book, were alcoholic beverages discovered more or less by accident in ancient times — and marked the way of life of some of the greatest civilizations in history — distilled spirits were deliberately developed in order to bring alcoholic beverages to levels of mass consumption. This achievement belonged to another great civilization: the Arabs.

Through the process of distillation, which they used to make perfumes and which appears to have been known as early as the fourth millennium BCE, Arabs in Córdoba obtained, during the first millennium CE, a new range of drinks called spirits. The irony is evident. The alembic — a relatively rudimentary yet efficient apparatus by today's standards — became famous and is still used in private households today. The television series M*A*S*H comes to mind when thinking of this invention. Three of the protagonists, Hawkeye, Trapper, and later B.J. Hunnicutt, live in a tent in a MASH medical unit near the Korean War front. A homemade alembic and their martini glasses are constant fixtures in their quarters. Spirits have kept people company in difficult times, and they have shared both the praise and the blame of the world for their influence on human behavior, much like the rest of the alcoholic beverages that preceded them.

The Arab Origins of Distillation and the Birth of Spirits

The leap from the way the ancient Greeks drank wine to the high-proof alcoholic beverages obtained through distillation of wine or fruit was enormous. The new drinks produced through distillation were easier to transport over long distances and for extended periods of time, and they soon became a medium of exchange — traded, alongside other European goods, for enslaved people supplied by African slave traders. Portuguese spirits were highly regarded in this context.

Rum, the Slave Trade, and the New World

Standage points out that the new stage in world history marked by the discovery of the Americas remained closely linked to the slave trade, sugar plantations, and spirits. As he writes: "Over the course of four centuries, around eleven million slaves were transported from Africa to the New World. […] Distilled drinks played a central role in this evil trade, which intensified as the British, French, and Dutch established sugar plantations in the Caribbean during the seventeenth century" (A History of the World in Six Glasses, pp. 103–104).

Just as the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians consumed the produce of their harvests in the form of bread and beer, the wealthy planters who came to farm the lands of Barbados derived both a solid and a liquid product from their sugarcane: cane sugar and cane brandy. This was the way the drink we know today as rum came into the world. By the mid-seventeenth century, rum had become the official beverage of British sailors, replacing beer in their daily rations. Before long, the first rum-based cocktail was developed — known today as grog, a name derived from the officer who first added sugar and lime juice to the very strong but unpleasant-tasting rum: Admiral Edward Vernon, whose nickname was "Old Grogram" (ibid., pp. 108–109).

Standage emphasizes the role rum played in the dramatic transformations that followed the addition of the New World to European maps. He presents it as the culmination of "several intersecting historical forces" (A History of the World in Six Glasses, p. 111) — a product that gathered both constructive and destructive energies along its path, and a drink that could not have become global without the mass use of enslaved labor.

Throughout their history, distilled drinks have been designated as medicine, recreational beverages, and means of social control. Due to the high degree of addiction that set in once moderation was abandoned, they also became a source of distress for those who depended on them and for their families. Rum, the first spirit to replace beer in British naval rations and the main ingredient in the first cocktail, became the favored drink of English settlers who came to Virginia. The second rum-based cocktail — punch — soon appeared on the tables of Englishmen in the New World.

Conclusion

Distilled drinks started to play a vital role once they began to be used on a mass scale. They offered those who produced and traded them a much-sought currency and enabled negotiation through the power of their high alcoholic concentration. Brandy, rum, whiskey, bourbon, and other locally produced spirits contributed essentially to the way European settlers related to indigenous peoples across Africa and the New World. From their Arab origins in medieval Córdoba to the saloons and speakeasies of twentieth-century America, spirits have served as a lens through which some of the most consequential chapters of world history can be understood.

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

Drink: The History of Alcohol 1690–1920. The National Archives. Retrieved October 20, 2009. Available at: