Molasses and rum were integral to the international slave trade as exchange commodities.

Evidence

Sugar was incredibly profitable, but molasses became an indispensable exchange commodity, too. It was crucial to the manufacturing of desserts, sweet rolls and buns, and other processed foods. It was also the key ingredient in the making of rum. And rum was the lubricant that helped make the international slave trade run like a well-oiled machine. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 287

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how everyday commodities (like the tamarisk trees, silk, cedar) quietly underwrite larger systems — here rum’s role in the slave economy parallels infrastructure that runs a system. — connects to: Linnaean botany’s founding collections depended on slave-based world trade — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 766