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Sweetness and power: the place of sugar in modern history
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Sugar Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Although a lot of people do not realize that every single gram of sugar decreases the healthiness of the product by a large percent. From the moment infants first taste lactose in the milk, humans seem to find sweetness alluring. The refined sucrose we usually call “sugar” is very popular product on the market. Even though this product considered very unhealthy and sometimes harmful, I think it still plays its role and still make the world spin. It gives people a lot of energy; it gives us joy and happiness. But in this world, everything has its consequence. After the joy and after the happiness comes diabetes, tooth decay, excess body fat. It’s really hard to believe that something so sweet can produce that kind of damage. So how did sugar became such an important commodity in our community and the rest of the world? Sugar is one of the oldest and best documented of all of the medieval commodities. Exactly what form, quality and price this commodity achieved could be variable enough to create material for disagreement whenever the product is discussed. What we do know is that it was much more widespread than is commonly believed. The discovery of sugarcane, from which sugar, as it is known today, is derived, dates back unknown thousands of years. It is thought to have originated in New Guinea, and was spread along routes to Southeast Asia and India. The process known for creating sugar, by pressing out the juice and then boiling it into crystals, was developed in India around 500 BC. In 510 BC, hungry soldiers of the Emperor Darius were near the river Indus, when they discovered some "reeds which produce honey without bees". Evidently this early contact with the Asian sources of sugar cane made no great impression, so it was left to be re-discovered in 327 BC by Alexander the Great, who spread it's culture through Persia and introduced it in the Mediterranean. This was the beginning of one of the best documented products of the Middle Ages. The sugar wasn’t cultivated in Europe until the Middle Ages. Arabs traders were first to bring sugar to Spain. Christopher Columbus’s voyage to America was the way sugarcane made it to North America. It was a gift from him to “West Indians”. There this plant found a great environment to spread in.
Kit-kats, Hershey bars, Skittles, and Jolly Ranchers. The reason these sweets, and many other products, are so popular is because of their sugar content. It’s hard to imagine that something used in nearly every food today was practically nonexistent at one point. But this is true- sugar wasn’t introduced globally until the 1500’s. Following this introduction, the trade that sprung up would come to be one of the most successful and profitable in the world. The Sugar Trade’s success was driven by many factors. Out of those several factors, the ones that promised success were high consumer demand, willing investors with a lot of capital, and the usage of slave labor.
The French and Indian War (1754-63) altered the political, economic, and ideological relations between Britain and its American colonies. It changed the political relationship between England and its colonists because the English forced taxes on the colonies, due to their economical struggles, and impose regulations on colonial life. Ideologically, the war brought up feelings of anger from the colonies toward Britain
From as early as 1100, Europeans employed the services of slaves to grow sugar in the eastern parts of the Mediterranean. During the 1400s and 1500s, Portuguese and Spanish introduced sugar farming on islands in the easter...
Sugar in its many forms is as old as the Earth itself. It is a sweet tasting thing for which humans have a natural desire. However there is more to sugar than its sweet taste, rather cane sugar has been shown historically to have generated a complex process of cultural change altering the lives of all those it has touched, both the people who grew the commodity and those for whom it was grown. Suprisingly, for something so desireable knowledge of sugar cane spread vey slow. First found in Guinea and first farmed in India (sources vary on this), knowledge of it would only arrive in Europe thousands of years later. However, there is more to the history of sugar cane than a simple story of how something was adopted piecemeal into various cultures. Rather the history of sugar, with regards to this question, really only takes off with its introduction to Europe. First exposed to the delights of sugar cane during the crusades, Europeans quickly acquired a taste for this sweet substance. This essay is really a legacy of that introduction, as it is this event which foreshadowed the sugar related explosion of trade in slaves. Indeed Henry Hobhouse in `Seeds of Change' goes so far as to say that "Sugar was the first dependance upon which led Europeans to establish tropical mono cultures to satisfy their own addiction." I wish, then, to show the repurcussions of sugar's introduction into Europe and consequently into the New World, and outline especially that parallel between the suga...
Sugar has been the basis of Europe and America where very few Europeans knew about sucrose in 1000 A. D. but shortly after cane sugar was highly sought after but why? Was sugar only loved because of its sweetness? By 1650 the English nobility and wealthy were very inve...
The French and Indian War, otherwise known as the Seven Years’ War was an imperial war conflict between Great Britain and the French. “The French
The French and Indian war was a 7 year war. The war lasted from 1756 to 1763 it formed a chapter in the imperial struggle between Britain and France called the Second Hundred Years War. The French and Indian War resulted an ongoing tensions in North America and both French and British imperial officials and colonists wanted to extend each country’s province of influence in frontier regions. In 1753 the outbreak of hostilities Great Britain controlled 13 colonies in the Appalachian Mountains. The Anglo American colonists and the Iroquois Confederacy controlled most of upstate New York and parts of northern Pennsylvania. The border between French and British goods was not defined and one territory was the upper Ohio River valley. The French had constructed many forts in that region to strengthen their claim on territory. The war didn’t go good for the British. The British Government had General Edward Braddock go to the colonies for commander in chief of British North American forces. He disaffected Indian allies and colonial leaders which failed to cooperate with him.
Specifically, I am concerned with a single substance called sucrose, a kind of sugar extracted primarily from the sugar can, and with what became of it. The story can be summed up in a few sentences. In 1000 A.D., few Europeans knew of the existence of sucrose, or can sugar. But soon afterward they learned about it; by 1650, in England the nobility and the wealthy had become inveterate sugar eaters, and sugar figured in their medicine, lit...
The French and Indian War or the Seven Years War was one of the major events that led to the American Revolution. The French and Indian War started in 1754 when George Washington and General Edward Braddock tried to defend the British land that they felt the French were taking with their expansion into the Ohio River valley. In 1755 Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts had many French settlers in the Nova Scotia region moved from that region to avoid any confrontation if these settlers sided with their home country. These people were exiled from their home and moved into British colonies in a very cruel and violent fashion. This is one of the first examples of Britain’s oppressive nature towards people they consider a threat to what they feel is the best solution. The British military effort, at this time, was not as impassioned or successful. Both George Washington and General Braddock suffered major defeats at the hands of the French and their allies, General Braddock was even killed in one of the early battles before this war was officially started. It was not until later in the war that the British were able to successfully defeat the French. The war officially began in 1756 and ended in 1763 but this war is far less important than the major event it caused. More than anything this war was the first step to the American Revolution.
By 700 A.D., it was seen that sugar was diffused to the Mediterranean region by Islamic expansion and trade as sucrose was viewed as an exotic spice and medicine (Nunn, Nathan). In 1452, Portuguese sugar production began on Madeira, an uninhabited island off the northwest coast of Africa. Indigenous peoples were the first workers brought to island of Madeira to work on the sugar mills, but the need for labor was too much. To get help with more labor, the enslaved African Americans were brought in and they became the main labor force for the sugar industry. By 1500, Madeira became the largest exporter of sugar in the world (Dunn, R.). With the success of the cash crop and the labor provided by the African Americans, sugar production was seen to have spread to other Atlantic islands; first it was the Canaries, then Santiago in the Cape Verde islands but these islands lacked the required rainfall for good cane culture. This is where the Portuguese, and then later the Spanish, Dutch, and English came to set their sights on other areas to continue this white gold sugar industry hoping to expand the production and gain
...ent was a fight between three nations, and until the late 18th century it was not at all certain which one would win. The Indians, especially the Five nations of the Iroquois, were exceptionally good at playing the French and the English against each other in order to maximize their own benefits. The French and Indian War was a guerrilla war of small skirmishes and surprise attacks. The terrain was unfamiliar to both the French and the English; the involvement of the Indian nations as allies in battle made an enormous difference. In fact, some historians have hypothesized that the turning point in the war came when many of the Indian nations changed their war policies and turned their backs on the French. Faced with the greater resources of the British and lacking the advantage of their Indian allies, the French were left with little hope, and soon lost the continent.
If you had money you could get land if you had land you could get slaves, if you had slaves you could get sugar & if you had sugar you could get money. If you wanted to grow sugar you needed a lot of land and good hot and humid climate for growing sugar. Everyone started to move to the West Indies to get sugar and money. Lastly Consumer Demand was a huge factor that drove The Sugar Trade.
From 1754 to 1763, the French and Indian War took place. This war altered the political, economic, and ideological relations between Britain and its American colonies. It was the last of four North American wars waged from 1689 to 1763 between the British and the French. In these struggles, each country fought for control of the continent with the assistance of Native American and colonial allies. The French and Indian War occurred to end the land dispute between the British and French. Whoever won, in reality, gained an empire. It was a determined and eventually successful attempt by the British to get a dominant position in North America, the West Indies, and the subcontinent of India. Although Britain had won all this land, political, economic, and ideological relations between Britain and its American colonies were totally annihilated.
Pope John Paul II was not just a revolutionary Pope, but was also a revolutionary influence from the 20th century. His actions changed the course of history, ranging from the end of communism in Poland to improving the Catholic Church's relations with other religions. John Paul II witnessed humanity at its worst. He lived through the Nazi occupation of Poland. He also experienced the Soviet occupation of Poland. Even through these dark times, John had managed to keep on his faith and humanity.
With such an obsession with sweet foods, there is an obvious desire for an explanation of how such a once unknown substance took center stage on everybody's snack, dessert, and candy list. That's where Sidney W. Mintz comes into play. He decided to write this book Sweetness and Power, and from the looks of all the sources he used to substantiate his ideas and data, it seems that he is not the first person to find the role that sugar plays in modern society important. By analyzing who Mintz's audience is meant to be, what goals he has in writing this book, what structure his book incorporates, what type, or types, of history he represents within the book, what kind of sources he uses, and what important information and conclusions he presents, we can come to better understand Mintz's views and research of the role of sugar in history, and how much it really affects our lives as we know them.