On this day 1808…the Rum Rebellion

On this day in 1808 Australia experienced its first and only military coup reputedly against a governor who tried to control liquor sales – but was that the real reason?

Governor Bligh ‘covered in cobwebs’ is arrested by the rebellious troops

The most commonly told story holds that the “Rum Rebellion” happened because governor William Bligh attempted to stop the illegal rum trade that was controlled by the local militia.

Bligh’s own self-aggrandising and dictatorial and belligerent attitude towards a growing number of powerful businessmen who were profiteering from the rum trade and who feared losing their monopoly led to their rebellion and the ousting of Bligh.

It’s a simple and straightforward tale of powerful, corrupt men turning on each other but how accurate a picture is it?

There are many elements of the tale that are true. Bligh was a fractious and controversial figure, already infamous for having been a cause of the mutiny on his ship The Bounty in 1789.

Even on his trip to Australia to take over as governor he had chafed at command of the convoy being given to a junior naval officer, Captain Joseph Short, and so wilfully disobeyed his orders (which led to Short firing a literal shot across his bows) before finally arresting Short and taking over the little convoy himself.

His attitude in Australia did not endear him to many. He arrived in Sydney in 1807 and his confrontational dictatorial manner made him powerful enemies.

He dismissed important men from their positions for no reason, he gave out fewer land grants than his predecessors – and principally gave them to himself instead, he evicted the poor and appropriated their land, he imprisoned those who wrote to complain and then he tried to stop the New South Wales Corps’ rum trade which made its members and local businessmen large profits.

So rum was an element of the rebellion as a whole but it would be mistaken to try and establish it as the root cause. Rum was an important part of daily life in the colony, it was the most common drink in part because the convicts were part-paid in rum and it was used as a currency where money was in short supply.

It is important here to briefly note that while per capita alcohol consumption in the colony was indeed heavy (and spirits based), it was not abnormally so for the time. Indeed, drinking hit a peak in Australia in the 1830s when per capita consumption is estimated to have been around 13 litres of pure alcohol per head.*

To return to the thread of the importance of rum however, although the New South Wales Corps that protected and controlled the colony had access to the rum supply and did indeed grow wealthy, it was only for fairly short period of timea time. It has been argued by various scholars that the heyday of rum profiteering was in the decade or so prior to the 1808 rebellion and in fact the work of previous governors to take control over the rum trade and rising prosperity of landowners and businessmen involved in the burgeoning wool industry meant that by 1808 rum was not as important as it had been at the colony’s founding.

In truth, it is argued, the tussle over rum was just a small part of a much wider and longer-running feud about the nature and future of the colony; between those who essentially wanted to maintain it as an open prison and those wishing to make it into something more profitable and habitable.

The Australian journalist and historian Michael Duffy has even argued that rum’s role in the rebellion was blown out of proportion by teetotal Quakers who saw alcohol as the root of all social ills. He wrote: “Almost no one at the time of the rebellion thought it was about rum. Bligh tried briefly to give it that spin, to smear his opponents, but there was no evidence for it and he moved on.

“Many years later, in 1855, an English Quaker named William Howitt published a popular history of Australia. Like many teetotallers, he was keen to blame alcohol for all the problems in the world. Howitt took Bligh’s side and invented the phrase Rum Rebellion, and it has stuck ever since.”

So while rum may not have been the driving force of the uprising, a rebellion certainly did happen. Matters came to a head when Bligh clashed with the irascible John MacArthur, formerly an officer in the Corps (through which he had made a lot of money in the rum trade) and now an important wool tycoon.

A disagreement over landing regulations led to MacArthur’s arrest. He was bailed on 25 January and the next day, under threat of arrest, he and supporters from the Corps and other prominent colonists marched against Bligh when he accused them of treasonous actions.

Marching to Government House with colours flying and the band playing ‘British Grenadiers’, the troops stormed the house looking for Bligh. Despite his normally habit of meeting matters head on, in this instance Bligh was reportedly found hiding under the bed, “covered in cobwebs”. A rebel government was established in which MacArthur played a key part but the arrival of a new governor and regular troops brought the crisis to an end.

After a period of house arrest Bligh was sent back to Britain, though he unsuccessfully tried to get help from the lieutenant-governor of Tasmania to help reinstate him on his way back.

MacArthur and Major Johnston of the NSW Corps went back to Britain too. MacArthur because he faced arrest back in NSW and Johnston because he faced a court martial.

Both eventually returned to Australia and lived there for the rest of their lives. The NSW Corps was recalled to Britain and replaced by the 73^rd Foot. It was essentially disbanded upon its return. Major-General Lachlan Macquarie became governor on 1 January 1810.

Bligh was tried and acquitted by court martial over the incident (for the second time in his career) and he ended his career an admiral, though he never held an important command again. He died in 1817.

*It has been argued that the growth of the wine trade in Australia was kickstarted – at least in part – out of a desire to wean the inhabitants off hard alcohol.