Dinners and
balls were common among the elite and urban residents
throughout Gran
Colombia during the wars for independence and were an important vehicle
for expressing one’s patriotic sentiments and national
allegiances. When Gustavus Hippisley dined with General
Bermúdez at Angostura in 1818, both men drank to the health
of the King of
England and success to the South American patriots (Hippisley 1819:
248). Visiting Colombia in November 1822, Richard Bache
recorded a dinner given in his honour at which he was served
twelve or fourteen courses of food, exquisite wines, and had
to sit through long toasts or 'short patriotic speeches most
in vogue'. Everywhere he went during his journey, however, he
was pleased to note that Colombians exhibited an impressively
sober character that was in marked contrast to that of his
fellow citizens back home:
The
wines were excellent, rich cordials, Madeira, muscadel, and the inspiring champaign [sic]
flowed in abundance, yet our English vice of excess on these
occasions is never indulged in by the Colombians (Bache 1823:
52).
If Colombians
were considered to be a sober people, British observers
considered caraqueños
[residents of
Caracas] to be more riotous and prone to violent outbreaks.
Similarly, the Irish and the English were understood to be
habitual drunks. Mariano Montilla reported to the Governor of
Jamaica that the Irish soldiers had united dishonour with
barbarism at Riohacha and complained to anyone who would
listen about their rebellion, insolence and insubordination.
[14] Significantly, these are identical to the terms that
English critics applied to Irish rebels and Catholic agitators
in their domestic rhetoric.
Although there
were regular and severe shortages of most consumer goods and
foodstuffs, it seems that alcohol continued to flow freely.
Colonel Adam fondly remembered a dance at Angostura where he
enjoyed fruits, sweetmeats, fine wines and plenty of sangaree
[sangría], with the town’s patriotic young ladies (Adam 1824:
130). Gustavus Hippisley dined with the Governor of St.
Bartholomew and enjoyed meat, preserves, fruits, confections
and 'every sort of European wines, porter, cyder [sic]
and perry' (Hippisley 1819: 125). These elaborate meals,
however, were a dramatic exception to the life of privation
faced by average recruits. Soldiers regularly complained about
their constant hunger and recounted the horror of being
reduced to eating cats, rats and dogs. Alcohol was an
important source of nutrition and calories for the recruits,
and helped to distract them from the miseries of their current
condition. Daniel Florencio O’Leary noted that Colonel
Gregor MacGregor 'considered his loss and his fatigue and
dangers to be rewarded by the capture of the tobacco and rum
found at Chaguaramas' in 1816 (O'Leary 1969: 44). Captain Adam
faced heavy rains on his trek to Angostura in December 1819
'aided by a glass or two of rum' and found that liberal use of
spirits distracted him from the bad food and biting insects
(Adam 1824: 57, 94).
When the battles
died down and former enemies sat down to negotiate their peace
treaties, alcohol figured prominently at the events. Sometimes
the drinking was joyful and celebratory; other times,
excessive indulgence resulted in insults being added to
injuries. For example, when Spanish royalist general Rafael
Sevilla agreed to capitulate to British and Irish generals at
Margarita Island in 1820, he was already disgusted by the
liberal Riego revolt back in Spain that had ended support for
his regiment in America, but he became even more offended by
the pressure to toast his victorious hosts with rum and beer
into the early hours of the morning. At another meeting with
the British generals, Sevilla recalled the exuberant toasts
'repeated an infinite number of times, [with] the best Spanish
wines, until we had emptied many, many bottles [...] until we
were all drunk, we [Spaniards] more than the English' (Sevilla
1916: 194, 257). That same year, Simón Bolívar recognised
the great contribution that foreign recruits had made to his
Colombian campaign by frequently making toasts to the health
and continued success of the sons of 'the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland' (Recollections
1828 I: 246). He wrote to Francisco de Paula Santander that
his summit meeting with Spanish General Pablo Morillo had gone
well and had been punctuated by 'many courteous and clever
toasts.[...] Indeed it would take a volume to record the
toasts that were offered.' [15]
Rum, recruitment
and revolution flowed in tandem during the wars for Colombian
independence. A soldier’s life was hard and often short, and
he took meaning wherever he found it, whether it was the lofty
rhetoric of liberty and patriotism, or the dizzying depths of
a glass of grog. In differing circumstances, alcohol could be
used to motivate the troops, or to keep them sedated; it could
be used to fire them up for battle or to diffuse their
energies after it was over. Spirits lubricated every social
function, from meals in hotel taverns when the lucky recruits
were billeted in Colombian towns to the momentous diplomatic
summits where the fates of nations were signed with a pen and
a toast. In all these ways, alcohol use among the Irish and
British recruits in the service of Colombian independence
reflected broader trends on both sides of the Atlantic. Class status, masculine identity and leadership qualities
increasingly came to be identified with a man’s approach to
liquor. Similarly, drunkenness and sobriety were behavioural
traits that became associated with particular nationalities or
ethnicities. Colombians condemned the lawless and dissolute
Venezuelans much in the same way that English politicians and
pundits targeted the rowdy and rebellious Irish. Thomas Paine,
known to be a heavy drinker himself, was widely read
throughout Spanish America during the independence era, and
correctly gauged that those were, indeed, times that tried
men’s souls. Liquor, like liberty, could not be consumed in
moderation.
Karen
Racine
University
of Guelph, Canada
Acknowledgements
The
author wishes to thank her undergraduate research assistant
John Dickieson for his contribution to this essay.
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