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Sugar and modernization
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Sugar is an important part of history in many ways. Sugar brought a lot of change to the world. The power of sugar molded the history and put many different nations on the map, which includes the Caribbean, South America, and the southern parts of the United States. Sugar Fueled the slave trade, brought sweetness to an era of sour, and brought different groups of people together. Originally, sugar started in Southwest Asia and made its way to the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492. He started to grow it in this new tropical environment and the plant grew rapidly. Due to the success of this plant, other colonies wanted to get their hands on it. The colonists spread the plant out to the European colonies, Spanish colonies, and the Portuguese brought sugar to Brazil. Sugar made its way all around the world. As sugar moved around the world, settlers realized that they were not enough to …show more content…
keep up with the planting and harvesting of this crop. This realization fueled the slave trade. Many of the slaves came from Africa and were sent too many different nations. The beginning of slavery was labeled as The Trade Triangle. This was when many slaves were sent to the New World. There the slaves worked on plantations. Eventually slaves were working on plantations in the Caribbean. The growth of sugar built the New World and became the most important overseas commodity. It contributed greatly to the European Economy. Over time, sugar grew the Southern parts of the United States. This success led to the departure of the thirteen colonies from Britain. Not only did sugar build the New World, grow economies, and fuel the slave trade; it also brought sweetness to a time of bitterness. Sugar brought sweetness to a time of sour. It became the most essential food ingredient. Sugar revolutionized taste all over the world. Different cultures added sugar to foods that might not have tasted well. It overcame the flaws of tea in Britain. Sugar also became a source of quick calories for the average worker. This new way of approaching sugar caused many socioeconomic unbalances. People of all classes were eventually able to afford this commodity. It brought the classes together. Sugar brought different groups of people together. Arab businesspersons became aware of sugar and its production from India.
The growing of the plant spread throughout the Arab world. The Arabs introduced sugar cane to Egypt after their defeat and spread until it reached Morocco. As time went on, Latin-Speaking countries imported sugar from the Arabs. During the middle Ages, crusaders got their hands on this crop. Sugar was a rare crop during this time. The Crusaders brought this sugar crop home with them to Europe. The spread of sugar was very important in the world. The uses of sugar was passed around by different cultures and nations. This made sugar very needed throughout the world. At one point, it became almost impossible to purchase this commodity. It brought preservation of fruit, sweetening of bitter foods, and was a source of quick calories for the underprivileged workers. It brought independence to nations and built great economies. Sugar grew the business of slave trade and expanded the production of such an important crop. Without the sugar commodity, world history would not be anywhere to where it is
today.
Slave labor is the final factor that drove the sugar trade and made it so successful. Slaves were the manual laborers on the plantations, doing the actual harvesting and boiling because the owner wasn’t there to do so (Document 8). Without the slaves working the farm, everything was pretty much useless. There is also a direct correlation between the number of slaves and the tons of sugar produced. This is shown in Document 9, where the island of Jamaica starts out with 45,000 slaves, and produces 4,782 tons of sugar. When the number of slaves increases by less than half to 74,500, the amount of sugar produced is more than tripled at 15, 972 tons. This clearly exhibits how slaves were essential to sugar
The sugar trade lasted from 1492-1700s. The Sugar Trade was a huge worldwide event. It caused African people leaving their country to go work on the sugar plantations. The Sugar Trade was drove by labor, land & consumer demand.
was only eight years old. Raw sugar was then imported to the Imperial Sugar Company refinery in Sugar Land. By the 1940s the population
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.
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...
the Portuguese had a sudden interest in Brazil because of French and Spanish invaders, and because of the economic downfall that was taking place in India. The Spanish were succeeding in Peru, which in turn made the Portuguese bitter, but the Portuguese still believed that Brazil had a value yet to be discovered. The thriving of Brazil finally came with the introduction of sugarcane during the mid-sixteenth century, but the Portuguese did not see much success until after 1570. Sugarcane trade was primarily in control of Muslims; prior to expanding their empires, the Europeans made a devastating political choice of expelling Moors from Europe, which in turn caused the Muslims to stop sugar trade with the Europeans. Therefore, sugar became
Sugar, also known as “white gold” was discovered in the Americas in the 1400s. As it became more popular, sugar set people in motion throughout the world for the purpose of building wealth; However, as a result of this, consequences of building global connections are still felt to this day. Sugar trade changed the global economy because it was a profitable resource in high demand-especially within the workforce. Consequently, it affected the worldwide working class, and also encouraged maritime trade.
Overproduction of sugar became an issue and in a way affected the entire Atlantic economy. The global economy has a sweet tooth which only encourages the emphasis put on the power of sugar. How could something so loved by the world not affect the economy? Besides the short term failures, the introduction of sugar into the world boosted the economy as a whole.
Sugar was first grown in New Guinea around 9000 years ago, which New guinea traders trade cane stalks to different parts of the world. In the New world christopher columbus introduced cane sugar to caribbean islands. At first sugar was unknown in Europe but was changed when sugar trade first began. Sugar trade was driven by the factors of production land which provided all natural resources labor what provided human resources for work and capital which includes all the factories and the money that’s used to buy land. Consumer demand was why sugar trade continued to increase.
However, what he found was not the East Indies but instead the West Indies, discovering an abundance of natural resources and new land. Columbus had paved the way for the colonization of America, not only for the English but for the French, Spanish, and Portuguese as well. This led to the establishment of trans-Atlantic connections, such as the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and many other trade routes, most of which are still used today. The world now had the final piece to begin a full-scale global trading economy. With the establishment of this new trading option, the exchange of new plants and animals began. Crops such as corn, tomatoes, cotton, tobacco, and potatoes were previously unknown to Europeans. These soon became staple food supplements in the diet of most Europeans, so much that the collapse of the potato crops, The Great Irish Famine in Ireland, caused the population to fall by as much as 25%. Similarly, farm animals such as sheep, pigs, cattle, and horses were introduced into the Americas. The Native Americans’ introduction to horses led to them becoming a large part of their hunting culture. Native Americans would also trade animal fur skins to the Europeans for items like beads or bronze jewelry. Both sides of these trades believed they were getting the better end of the deal thus resulting in a
Another impact on both the Native Americans and the Europeans was the sharing of native crops to each other. The Europeans brought back from the New World, tobacco, maize, beans, tomatoes, and potatoes, which provided food for the now greatly populated Europe. Other crops that were brought to Europe included blueberry, cranberry, papaya, wild rice, and pumpkin. In exchange for these great new crops the Europeans brought massive amounts of pigs, cattle, and horses. The horse highly effected the lives of the Native Americans by improving their hunting abilities. Another crop that did exceptionally well in the tropical climate of the Caribbean was the sugar cane brought over by Columbus.
In Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, Sidney Mintz analyzed the cultivation, trade, and use of sugar prior between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. He presented a description of the introduction and popularization of sugar around the world; however, he focused on Europe, specifically England and her American colonies. Mintz used a plethora of primary and secondary sources, showing both sides of the arguments, in order to present an economic analysis in a consumption rather than a production based argument of the sugar industry. Mintz hoped “to explain what sugar reveals about a wider world, entailing as it does a lengthy history of changing relationships among people, societies, and substances” (xxiv-xxv). He
Rum was one of the most desired commodities, viewed as a cash crop during that time and one of the leading European imports. It came to be a necessity in Europe and dominate economies in the New World colonies under the control of Spain, France, and especially England. (Smith, p.11) The domination of the sugar industry fueled the infamous Triangular Trade, a trading system among three ports that consisted of West Africa, the Caribbean and the American colonies. From the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century the sugar industry played a vital role in increasing the high demand for slave labor...
So when was the plant introduced to the Western Hemisphere? There is archeological evidence that the plant was brought toWestern Europe from Asia at around 1500 B.C., by the Scythian invaders and later reached the Mediterranean region. However, the people of western Europe didn't begin cultivating it as a plant crop in their area until about 500 A.
in England) to pay a less than half of the money needed for the army that would be permanently stationed in the Americas, so parliament introduced the Sugar Act.