“Sugar has always been central to industry and empire, and has transformed global economic history. Slave driven sugar mills of the seventeenth century were one of the earliest factories. But the history of sugar predates these modern developments. It is a history that witnesses the transformation of an unassuming plant into a global commodity. For most of its existence, sugar in the human diet was a luxury that came in the form of sucrose extracted from sugar cane. Only in the nineteenth century did sugar beet become a competitor to sugar cane. And only starting in the 1970s did sucrose start losing out to high-fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners that dominate the contemporary industrialized [agricultural] diet.
What began as a grass native to Southeast Asia was picked up in Persia by Arab traders. They were the first to introduce sugar to the European palate, as the Umayyad Empire expanded into Europe through Spain and Sicily during the seventh and eighth centuries CE. Later, crusaders established sugar plantations in the Levan and Mesopotamia, and brought new of what was considered and exotic spice from the Orient. European nobility then started to incorporate sugar as a luxurious additive, elevating the flavor of food and forming part of the stock for apothecaries. By 1440, sugar began replacing honey in the diet of European nobility. [Fernand] Braudel notes [in Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol, II: The Wheels of Commerce (1982)] that in 1544 there was a German saying, Zucker verderbt keine Speis (‘sugar spoils no dish’).
Sugar first came to the so-called New World on Columbus’s second voyage in 1493. This set the foundation for centuries of African slave labor sustaining sugar cane plantations in the Americas. By the seventeenth century, the French and British had acquired a voracious appetite for coffee, tea, and cocoa; because of this hot beverage revolution, sugar was no longer a luxury item and became an everyday good. The British were one of the first nations to move away from a starch-rich diet towards a sugar-rich diet. By the end of the eighteenth century, sugar was a staple in Britain, as many cups of sweet tea were incorporated into the diets of workers, providing a ‘calorie-laden stimulant that warms the body and blunts the pangs of hunger.’ [Sidney] Mintz notes that this change in diet coincided with the Industrial Revolution, exemplifying one sort of modernization. [….]
Sugar is central to the colonial history of the formation of many states and territories, such as Hawaii, Louisiana, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Indonesia, India, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Some suggest that sugar was the driving force of imperial expansion. Others propose that imperial expansion reduced the price of sugar, enabling popular consumption. Regardless, sugar (along with coffee, tea, and cocoa) played an important part in the expansion of the British and other European empires.
Sugar may very well have been central to the history of modern trade law because the nature of sugar production lends itself to competing transnational interests. Sugar cane harvested from the fields must be processed into raw sugar. The mill that processes cane into raw sugar must be close to the fields to ensure that the cane does not spoil. One mill would be a center of power fed by multiple peripheral sugar cane fields. As such, mill owners often constituted a sugar elite within their own country, with ties to international capital, or were owned by foreign investors. People could eat moist, raw sugar, but the demand was highest for white, refined sugar. Refining was also where much of sugar’s economic value was added. Most refineries were located in industrialized countries. One refinery might source its raw sugar from different points around the world. Thus, there was also a global pattern of an industrialized center drawing sugar from mills in the periphery. All of this created a relationship of dependence and disparity of power between sugar growers and sugar refineries.” — Michael Fakhri, Sugar and the Making of International Trade Law (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
A mere taste of the relevant literature:
- Abbott, Elizabeth. Sugar: A Bittersweet History (Penguin Canada, 2008).
- Ayala, César J. American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean, 1898-1934 (University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
- Beachey, R.W. The British West Indies Sugar Industry in the Late Nineteenth Century (Basil Blackwell, 1957).
- Blackburn, Robin. The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (Verso, 1997).
- Dye, Alan. Cuban Sugar in the Age of Mass Production: Technology and the Economics of the Sugar Central, 1899-1929 (Stanford University Press, 1998).
- Fakhri, Michael. Sugar and the Making of International Trade Law (Cambridge University Press, 2014).
- Galloway, Jock H. The Sugar Cane Industry: An Historical Geography from its Origins to 1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1989).
- McGillivray, Gillian. Blazing Cane: Sugar Communities, Class and State Formation in Cuba, 1868-1959 (Duke University Press, 2009).
- Mintz, Sidney W. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (Viking Penguin, 1985).
- Richardson, Ben. Sugar: Refined Power in a Global Regime (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
- Richardson, Ben. Sugar (Polity Press, 2015).
- Schwartz, Stuart B. Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550–1835 (Cambridge University Press, 1985).
- Sheridan, Richard. Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies (Caribbean Universities Press, 1974).
- Sitterson, J. Carlyle. Sugar Country: The Cane Sugar Industry in the South, 1753-1950 (University of Kentucky Press, 1953).
- Williams, Eric. Capitalism & Slavery (University of North Carolina Press, 1994 [1944]).
The three images above are found on the website Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora.
My bibliography on slavery is here.
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