On their 11th-century romp through the Holy Land, the Christians came upon a fabulous new foodstuff: sugar.
A few centuries, some genocide and a slave trade later, Europe had commandeered most of the Caribbean, turned cotton and coffee fields into sugar-cane plantations, and taught the slaves to distill the molasses into rum. It’s the booze with the bloodiest, most egregious history, but let’s not dwell on all that.”
Rum
The Japan Times, 25 Sept 2009
“Thank God for the Crusades, so to speak.
On their 11th-century romp through the Holy Land, the Christians came upon a fabulous new foodstuff: sugar.
A few centuries, some genocide and a slave trade later, Europe had commandeered most of the Caribbean, turned cotton and coffee fields into sugar-cane plantations, and taught the slaves to distill the molasses into rum. It’s the booze with the bloodiest, most egregious history, but let’s not dwell on all that.”