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Rum-running, or bootlegging, is the illegal business of transporting (smuggling) alcoholic beverages where such transportation is forbidden by law. Smuggling is usually done to circumvent taxation or prohibition laws within a particular jurisdiction. The term ''rum-running'' is more commonly applied to smuggling over water; ''bootlegging'' is applied to smuggling over land. It is believed that the term "boot-legging" originated during the American Civil War, when soldiers would sneak liquor into army camps by concealing pint bottles within their boots or beneath their trouser legs. Also, according to the PBS documentary ''Prohibition'', the term "bootlegging" was popularized when thousands of city dwellers would sell liquor from flasks they kept in their boot leg all across major cities and rural areas.〔Mary Murphy. "Bootlegging Mothers and Drinking Daughters: Gender and Prohibition in Butte Montana." American Quarterly, Vol 46, No 2, 1994.〕〔Prohibition (miniseries), Episode 1, "A Nation of Drunkards". Directed by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick. Distributed by PBS.〕 The term "rum-running" most likely originated at the start of Prohibition in the United States (1920–1933), when ships from Bimini in the western Bahamas transported cheap Caribbean rum to Florida speakeasies. But rum's cheapness made it a low-profit item for the rum-runners, and they soon moved on to smuggling Canadian whisky, French champagne, and English gin to major cities like New York City and Boston, where prices ran high. It was said that some ships carried $200,000 in contraband in a single run. ==History== It was not long after the first taxes on alcoholic beverages that someone began to smuggle them. The British government had "revenue cutters" in place to stop smugglers as early as the 16th century. Pirates often made extra money running rum to heavily taxed colonies. There were times when the sale of alcohol was limited for other purposes, such as laws against sales to American Indians in the Old West, Canada West, or local prohibitions like the one on Prince Edward Island between 1901 and 1948. An irony of the history of prohibition in North America is that industrial-scale smuggling flowed both ways across the Canada-U.S.A. border at different points in the early twentieth century. Though Canada never had true nationwide prohibition, the federal government gave the provinces an easy means to ban alcohol under the ''War Measures Act'' (1914) and most provinces and the Yukon Territory already had enacted prohibition locally by 1918 when a regulation issued by the federal cabinet banned the interprovincial trade and importation of liquor. National prohibition in the United States did not begin until 1920 (though many states had statewide prohibition before that). For the two year interval, enough American liquor entered Canada illegally to help undermine support for prohibition in Canada such that it was slowly lifted, beginning with Quebec and Yukon in 1919, and including all of the provinces but Prince Edward Island by 1930. As well, Canada's version of prohibition had never included a ban on the manufacture of liquor for export. Soon the black-market trade was reversed with Canadian whisky and beer flowing in large quantities to the United States. Again, this illegal international trade undermined the support for prohibition in the receiving country, and the American version ended (at the national level) in 1933. One of the most famous periods of rum-running began in the United States with the Prohibition began on January 16, 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect. This period lasted until the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed with ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, on December 5, 1933. At first, there was much action on the seas, but after several months the Coast Guard began reporting decreasing smuggling activity. This was the start of the Bimini–Bahamas rum trade and the introduction of Bill McCoy. With the start of Prohibition Captain McCoy began bringing rum from Bimini and the rest of the Bahamas into south Florida through Government Cut. The Coast Guard soon caught up with him, so he began to bring the illegal goods to just outside U.S. territorial waters and let smaller boats and other captains such as Habana Joe take the risk of bringing it into shore. The rum-running business was very good, and McCoy soon bought a Gloucester knockabout schooner named ''Arethusa'' at auction and renamed her ''Tomoka''. He installed a larger auxiliary, mounted a concealed machine gun on her deck and refitted the fish pens below to accommodate as much contraband as she could hold. She became one of the most famous of the rum-runners, along with his two other ships hauling mostly Irish and Canadian whiskey, as well as other fine liquors and wines, to ports from Maine to Florida. In the days of rum running, it was common for captains to add water to the bottles to stretch their profits, or to re-label it as better goods. Any cheap sparkling wine became French champagne or Italian Spumante; unbranded liquor became top-of-the-line name brands. McCoy became famous for never watering his booze, and selling only top brands. Although the phrase appears in print in 1882, this is one of several folk etymologies for the origin of the term "The real McCoy." On November 15, 1923, McCoy and ''Tomoka'' encountered the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter ''Seneca'', just outside U.S. territorial waters. A boarding party attempted to board, but McCoy chased them off with the machine gun. ''Tomoka'' tried to run, but the ''Seneca'' placed a shell just off her hull, and Bill McCoy's days as a rum-runner were over. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rum-running」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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