Mintz Sweetness And Power Analysis

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

employed an anthropological approach to show the interactions that accompanied the widespread use of sugar between 1650 and 1900, which illustrated the dependency of people on sugar. He argued that sugar went from a luxury commodity to a necessity for most people (xxix). Mintz divided his work into five sections: “Food, Sociality and Sugar,” “Production,” “Consumption,” “Power,” and “Eating and Being.” Mintz attempted to build a base of evidence to illustrate how people have identified with and sought to consume sugar over the past 1000 years as well as how that has affected society.
Mintz asserted that it was not enough simply to understand the use and exploitation of labor, but to truly grasp the gravity of the impact sugar had, it is necessary to comprehend the evolution of production and the demand for sugar. He implied that in the historiography of western consumers and colonial producers that the individuals who became dependent on sugar were typically white, male, and claim to be part of the civilized world. In this work, he discussed both the primitive and the civil as well as production and consumption, which necessitated a rejection of the prevailing colonial narrative of the colonizers as the main characters in the action and the colonized barbarians as marginal figures who are tossed about by the whims of the colonizers.
Mintz began the body of his work with a caution to the reader as to the potential problems that may arise when analyzing the history of something as ever-present and common placed as sugar. He claimed, "Studying the varying use of a single ingestible like sugar is rather like using a litmus test on particular environments. Any such traceable feature can highlight, by its intensity, scale, and perhaps spread, its association with other features with which it has a regular but not invariant relation and in some cases can serve as an index of them. Such associations can be broad and important—as between rats and disease, or drought and famine, or nutrition and fertility—or they may seem trivial, as between sugar and spices" (7). He continued and claimed that sugar was usually associated with a variety of things; “during its history with slavery in the colonies; with meat, in flavoring or concealing taste; with fruit, in preserving; with honey, as a substitute and rival. And sugar was associated with tea, coffee, and chocolate” (7). He also claimed it was originally associated with the wealthy and the nobility (7). Despite this, he argued that every human had a sweet tooth; however, the degree with which a person desired the sweets changes from person to person.
Mintz then moved to discuss the production of sugar. He asserted that sugar was present in most plants, specifically fruits; he also claimed that sugar cane, as a source of sugar has been known from ancient times. He provided evidence from two botanists to trace the domestication of sugar back to New Guinea as early as 8000 BC (19). He explained how it was disseminated throughout the Middle East; it gradually spread throughout the Islamic world and reached Europe by 996 AD. Cultivation required tropical conditions with a good deal of water and a warm climate free of cold spells. Hence, it could be raised in northern Africa and in parts of the Mediterranean (i.e., Crete and Cyprus), but yields were low due to the fact that there was still a chance of frost in the region, which did not allow for the proper growing season (25-26). Thus, inability to produce massive amounts of sugar due to environmental issues made sugar rare and expensive in Europe, which meant it was sweetener of the wealthy. People found ways early on to satisfy their sweet tooth. Mintz explained that people in Europe used honey and American Indians used maple sugar.
The Spanish and Portuguese experimented with sugar cane cultivation colonies in other places, especially the Canary Islands and the Atlantic with some success. Once Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, sugar cane quickly became one of the commercial crops that evolved in the Caribbean and in parts of South America due to the ideal climate in which to grow the sugar cane (32). The introduction of sugar to the New World changed the dynamics and increased the need for laborers, which in turn brought a large number of people to the New World.
Sugar was always a labor-intensive endeavor, from the mill, to the distillery, to the storehouse all takes an enormous labor force, which was not always easy to find.

Mintz asserted that the need for cheap, abundant labor led to the use of forced labor to meet those needs for sugar production in Crete, Cyprus, Morocco as early as the fifteenth century after the plague disrupted the population (29). He discussed the needs of European countries as they explored the possibilities and ventured forth to produce sugar in the colonies they established. He explored how this need for labor caused the British to look to Africa and other places to find cheap or free labor, which resulted in the Atlantic slave trade. The Atlantic trade provided Caribbean sugar plantation with slave labor; it provided the British aristocracy with sugar—and other raw materials—which in turn were used for consumption or in the production of other goods—clothe, tools, and torture devices—that were used by or on the slaves “who were themselves consumed in the creation of wealth” (43). With the use of slave labor by the mid-1700s sugar was produced cheaper, in turn became accessible to the lower classes, even a poor farmer could use sugar to sweeten tea (45). Sugar was consumed and identified as a spice, which many used to alter the flavor of flood (79). In the sixteenth century, sugar was also used for decoration (87). However, the use of slave labor in the production of sugar, which made it more accessible to a larger group of people caused demand to grow and took away the prestige and power it gave prior to mass production (95). It is interesting that because sugar was originally something that was rare, precious, and difficult to acquire, when it did become cheaper and accessible to the working class it maintained its rareness and luxury status. The working class felt that they were partaking in a kingly luxury as they purchased and consumed sugar

(96).
While the British focused their efforts on sugar production, the Spanish and Portuguese fixated on bringing back precious metals such as gold and silver; however, they saw the value in sugar production as well. In 1625, Portugal’s sugar plantation in Brazil was the leading sugar supplier in Europe (38). On the other hand, the British and the French also proved to be major force as sugar colonists. They originally focused on tobacco as the main cash crop of the area, but by the end of the seventeenth century both embraced sugar as the dominant crop in the British and French West Indies. Barbados and Jamaica were their major producers. Soon, England pulled ahead became the leading supplier (55). The British found sugar as well as rum and molasses worth transporting, and it turned out the market expanded as supplies increased (157). People of all socio-economic groups wanted and needed sugar, even working class families had to have sugar in their tea. Mintz indicated that the British and Americans had an intense sweet tooth; they loved sugar. He asserted that currently, the consumption of sugar in France per capita is one tenth that in Britain. According to Mintz, this illustrates a fundamental difference between French and British cuisine and the French have different tastes. The English and Americans apparently prefer their food sweeter. (188-189)
According to Mintz, sugar processing has changed little over the years (22). The book contains illustrations, but they are not detailed descriptions of the processes used to process the sugar cane; however, this is not part of the scope of the monograph. Mintz does provide a brief explanation of the process; it must be chopped, grounded, pressed, pounded or soaked, then it is to be heated which caused evaporation and crystallization (20). This was a lengthy and difficult process, but he indicated that in the middle ages a three-roll mill was invented that improved crushing efficiencies (27). He indicated that sugar is refined by dissolving and recrystallizing. Currently, sugar producers use various additives and processing techniques to purify and whiten the sugar (193).
Mintz does a nice job of providing evidence to support his argument and sufficiently illustrates the dependency of people on sugar. He covered the production aspect as it applied to the use of forced labor and the impact the demand for sugar had on a variety of people groups. He looked at how it influenced the wealthy, the middle class, the poor as well as the slaves. He used a wide variety of sources in his work to help support his assertions. He was very convincing that sugar was and still is a powerful force with a far-reaching impact that has influenced humanity both currently and historically. Not only has sugar production caused the physical relocation of a multitude of people—both voluntary and non-voluntary—its consumption caused the formation of class and psychological identity.