The Rule of Rum

The Rule of Rum

Food historian Cynthia Clampitt shares the reason rum arose where it did and when it did. She'll talk about how pirates got involved, and who really said “yo ho ho” (not the pirates), but also how rum helped unite the 13 Colonies, as it became one of the issues that led to the American Revolution. She'll also talk about how it also led to a revolt in its next home after the Caribbean: Australia, and how it affected culture and history after that.

Cynthia Clampitt is a writer, geographer, and food historian. She has written textbooks for every major educational publisher in the U.S., including the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and National Geographic Learning. She is the author of Midwest Maize: How Corn Shaped the U.S. Heartland and Pigs, Pork, and Heartland Hogs: Wild Boar to Baconfest, as well as of the award-winning travel narrative, Waltzing Australia—and it was in Australia that she first became aware of the international impact of the rum trade. Clampitt is a member of the Culinary Historians of Chicago, the Society of Woman Geographers, the Society of Midland Authors, and the Agricultural History Society.