Dbq Sugar Trade

1253 Words3 Pages

Azaan Haider
5/6 A
Bailey
The Sugar Trade

The Adventure of Sugar

Sugar is something we all have some love for. We know it’s not the best for us, but it’s seems impossible to escape in modern times. Because it is in some many things, we consider the value of it to be very low. But there was a time when the demand and price was way higher than the average person could afford. This time was called the Sugar Trade. It lasted from 1655 to 1833. It was a big time in history as many people became rich. But many factors drove it. But in the main, the three factors that drove the Sugar Trade were the brutal forced labor of slaves to harvest and gather the sugar to spread it to Great Britain, the high demand of sugar that Britain needed to keep the …show more content…

In document 3a, you can see a huge mad rush. There is a hogshead barrel with sugar in it, and people are jumping into, licking the barrel, and just trying to get as much sugar as they can. What makes it even more shocking, is that the barrel has already been emptied! They are getting the last little grains left over when they dumped it out of that hogshead barrel. You can see that the people jumping in are mostly kids. This means that the demand for sugar was super high, because if people are willing to jump into a barrell and lick it clean, that says something. The reason it was so high was not only for its sweet taste, but because it's easily to be addicted to. This is proven in document 3b, when Benjamin Mosley says:”...such is the influence of sugar, that once touching the nerves of taste no person was ever known to have the power of relinquishing the desire for it”. What this is basically is saying is that once you get your hands on a bit of sugar, you will never have enough of it. Your desire will keep increasing and never go down. Going back to document 3a, even though children were the ones diving in, sugar was most used with the adults. For one, they were the ones who bought it, but more importantly, they used it in their everyday consumables. It made everyday foods and drinks taste better. Once people started realizing and using and wanting to use sugar in these drinks, 2 things happened. One is that the demand skyrocketed. And two that these foods and drinks were not it without sugar. Tea was not tea without sugar. Coffee was not coffee without sugar. This is a big reason why the demand when so high so quickly. As shown in document 5, as years went by, from 1700 to 1770, the annual per capita consumption (How many pounds of sugar per person consumed)of sugar rose. In 1700 it was 4.6 pounds, and it rose to 16.2! That’s a 11.6 pound difference! Along with

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