High Spirits, High Seas Summary

     Between perhaps the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries, the greatest innovations in the world stemmed primarily from Europe. Europe pioneered the Age of exploration, the Industrial Revolution, and generally crafted history through there actions. Yet around the year 1000, it was not the Europeans who was advancing the world, but the Arabs. Arabic cities existed all over the Middle East, even in places as far as Spain. The Arabs were leading the world in the realms of Science, mathematics, chemistry and more. It was the Arabs who first discovered and later perfected the process of distillation, which was used to generate a significantly higher alcohol content in beverages. Once the Europeans learned of the closely guarded secret however, distillation spread like wildfire. This caused the rapid proliferation of spirits throughout Europe, and later the New World. While Europeans were delighted by the high alcohol content of the drinks, they're practical application didn't stop with mere consumption for pleasure. Distilled wine, more commonly known as aqua vitae (water of life) was administere as medicine. Once colonies had been established and sugar asserted itself as the dominant commodity, spirits were used to barter for slaves. 

Aqua vitae