https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-sugar-266189
"A few thousand years ago, sugar was unknown in the western world. Sugarcane, a
tall grass first domesticated in New Guinea around 6000BC, was initially chewed
for its sweet juice rather than crystallised. By around 500BC, methods to boil
sugarcane juice into crystals was first developed in India.
One of the earliest references to sugar we have dates to 510BC, when Emperor
Darius I of what was then Persia invaded India. There he found “the reed which
gives honey without bees”.
Knowledge of sugar-making spread west to Persia, then across the Islamic world
after the 7th century AD. Sugar reached medieval Europe only via trade routes.
It was extremely expensive and used more like a spice. Indeed, in the 11th
century Crusaders returning home talked of how pleasant this “new spice” was.
It was the supply potential of this “new spice” in the early 16th century that
encouraged Portuguese entrepreneurs to export enslaved people to newly
discovered Brazil. There, they rapidly started growing highly profitable sugar
cane crops. By the 1680s, the Dutch, English and French all had their own sugar
plantations with enslaved colonies in the Caribbean.
In the 18th century, the increasing popularity of tea and coffee led to the
widespread adoption of sugar as a sweetener. In 1874, prime-minister William
Gladstone abolished a 34% tax on sugar to ease the costs of basic food for
workers. Cheap jam (one-third fruit pulp to two-thirds sugar) began to appear
on the table of every working-class household. The growing demand for sugar in
Britain and Europe encouraged further growth and profit, earning the name
“white gold”.
Britain’s per capita sugar consumption skyrocketed from four pounds in 1704 to
90 pounds by 1901. While slavery was eventually abolished, the supply of cheap
labour was sustained by new flows of indentured workers from India, Africa and
China.
Britain’s naval blockade of Napoleonic France at the start of the 19th century
prodded the French to seek an alternative to Caribbean sugar supplies. It gave
birth to the European sugar beet industry.
Sugar beet is a biennial root crop grown for its high sucrose content, which is
extracted to produce table sugar. The 20th century has seen this traditionally
heavily subsidised and tariff-protected industry grow to produce approximately
50% of Europe’s sugar. This includes the UK’s consumption, which is now around
2 million tons of beet (60%) and cane sugar (40%) annually."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
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mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
