Distilling Liberty: Reconsidering the Politics of Alcohol in Early New South Wales

Abstract

Distillation was both clearly banned and the ban widely flouted in early New South Wales. Colonial farmers frequently distilled their excess crops, utilising the expertise of Irish convicts who often came from a traditional rural drinking culture in which illicit distilling was widespread and celebrated. Due to legal ambiguities, the ban relied entirely on the authority of the governors, but was rejected as a breach of the longstanding right of farmers to profit from their crops. Illicit distillation resonated with an ideological critique of despotic colonial government in the age of revolutions, firmly grounded in popular understandings of liberty that were widely felt at all levels of early New South Wales society. In contrast to recent scholarly rejection of a ‘Rum Rebellion’, close analysis of these arguments about distilling shows that both rum and liberty were significant to the 1808 rebellion.