Rum Rebellion - Causes

Causes

Michael Duffy, a journalist writing in 2006, says

The Rum Rebellion has slipped into historical oblivion because it is widely misunderstood. It is popular belief that the autocratic Bligh was removed because he threatened the huge profits that were being made from trading in spirits by the officers of the NSW Corps and by businessmen such as John Macarthur. This view suggests it was nothing more than a squabble between equally unsavoury parties.

The conflict had greater depth than that of a mere squabble, however. Essentially it was the culmination of a long-running tussle for power between the government and private entrepreneurs, a fight over the future and the nature of the colony. The early governors wanted to keep NSW as a large-scale open prison, with a primitive economy based on yeomen ex-convicts and run by government fiat.

Duffy goes on to say that the Rebellion was not thought of at the time as being about Rum:

... 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.

The Biography of Early Australia dismisses Macarthur's complaints as ridiculous and quotes Evatt as saying that legally Macarthur was guilty of two out of the three charges brought against him including sedition. Both consider that Bligh was wholly justified in his actions because he was the legitimate authority. In addition, imprisoning people and threatening to do the same to the court when they failed to yield to the will of said authority would seem to be legally problematic. Duffy states that had Johnston arrived when summoned on 25 January the Rum Rebellion probably would never have happened.