Dear Jose:
        You wrote that your "inclusion of the Caribbean with the Americas
.. can be viewed as a methodological problem[, b]ut only, it seems to me,
if you look at the islands in isolation."
        One of the things that has frustrated my advisors here at the
University of Alberta has been my constant changes from one specialized
field to the other.  At some point, I have pursued British, European,
African, Latin American, American, Canadian and Caribbean histories of the
seventeeenth and eighteenth century.  I've roamed through that literature
primarily because of my need to understand why alcohol was so important in
these societies.  I do not, therefore, look at the islands in isolation.
I am well aware of the tremendous body of literature on these subjects
and I do think that I have an appreciation of the totality of the process.
        My concern however is, not to explore the South American world
where, incidentally, the matter of rum and slavery is dealt with very
differently from the North American but, to open a discussion on the
importance of rum to the North American world.  In order to do that, my
focus must necessarily be the West Indies, the area from which the vast
bulk of rum in North America originated.  But in concentrating on the West
Indies, I became aware of the many areas of history which have either been
excluded from the history of the United States and Canada or have not been
explored in these histories.  Historians have included the West Indies in
discussions of the Atlantic economy but they have not dealt with the ideas
that developed in that world.  American historians have exerted themselves
tremendously to explain the somewhat convoluted European origins of their
social and political world but they ignore or have not pursued the very
different un-European social and political developments which came into
their society from the West Indies.
        Thus, when I speak of the two solitudes which developed in the
United States, I am not speaking of hyphenated peoples such as
Euro-American and African-American, terms which I find objectionable for
the simple reason that such distinctions are divisive and not truly
representative of the whole or its parts.  My sense of history is
informed, rather, by that sentiment which was so well articulated by Derek
Walcott: "I who am poisoned with the blood of both,/Where shall I turn,
divided to the vein?/I who have cursed/The drunken officer of British
rule, how choose/Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?/Betray
them both, or give back what they give?/How can I face such slaughter and
be cool?/How can I turn from Africa and live?" As far as I'm concerned the
two solitudes which developed in the United States is North versus South,
so-called freedom versus slavery.
        But you are correct in raising the matter of the Amerindians.
Their situation cannot be explained without reference to rum and to the
slaves, slave holders, and traders whose combined efforts brought it to
the Amerindians.  American historians are becoming increasingly aware of
the significance of rum but they have not attempted reseach (as far as I'm
aware) which would firmly link it to specific West Indian plantations and
traders (North American and West Indian) who produced, transported, and
distributed it.  On the other hand, Canadian historians have not looked at
the subject and its importance to the trade in furs.  West Indian rum
became important to me because I was fascinated by the way one fur trader
used it in his pursuit of furs.  I could not understand why Alexander
Henry, the Younger, would hold this product in such high esteem.  I was
fascinated by the many ways he used it to control the behaviours of those
Indians who worked with him.
        In short, my work _West Indian Rum in the Canadian Fur Trade:
1670-1850_ seeks to explain one important aspect of what happened to the
other outsiders, the Amerindians, as they became enmeshed in that grand
unfolding of the frontier.
 
Anatol L. Scott
Department of History and Classics
University of Alberta