The Origin of Sugar, Its Use

Erik Gilbert and Jonathan T. Reynolds chronicle the sugar and slave trade quite well in their book Trading Tastes: Commodity and Cultural Exchange to 1750. They cover the origins of sugar, its uses, how the plantation system came to be, and how the slave trade was affected by the rapidly growing sugar industry. Gilbert and Reynolds approach this subject with a very informative technique and deliver information to the readers in an extremely effective way. The authors’ purpose for this section of their book was to explain how sugar became “so ubiquitous today that it is impossible to avoid completely.

” Gilbert and Reynolds approach the subject of the sugar and slave trades strongly and informatively.

They discuss on page 84 how we as humans use sweet foods as a bigger part of their diet than other mammals, and how some countries, depending on location, indulge in sweet foods more than others. For instance, India, the Arab world and Western Europe were the biggest consumers of sugar during that time, compared to Southeast Asia who did not use as much sugar, despite the fact that they grew more of it.

That proves that environment does not explain people’s consumption of sugar. On page 85, Sidney Mintz states “some people eat larger amounts of sugar than others because macroeconomic and social forces push them in that direction.” Mintz sees a strong link between the emerging industrial working class in Britain and the rise in sugar consumption. The authors state that his explanation works better for Europe than it does for India and the Arab world.

Get quality help now

Writer Lyla

Verified

Proficient in: Slavery

5 (876)

“ Have been using her for a while and please believe when I tell you, she never fail. Thanks Writer Lyla you are indeed awesome ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

Gilbert and Reynolds talk about why sugar was so dominant on Page 85. They explained it as because the plant “grows nine or ten feet in height, and its thick stem is full of juice that is rich in sucrose. Like other grasses, it grows back when cut, so once in production cane fields do not need to be replanted.” On Page 88, the authors discuss how dangerous it was to be a worker in the processing factory. These factories usually ran around the clock to ensure that there was no delay in processing the sugar cane. “The crushing equipment could crush human limbs as easily as it crushed cane. Axes were kept handy to sever crushed arms. The boiling houses were hot and as the juice thickened, it became viscous, sticky, and the source of dangerous burns.”

Gilbert and Reynolds write about how two small tropical sugar hot spots named Madeira and Sao Tome. These two islands were the world’s main sugar producers until a town in Brazil called Bahia came along. Bahia had close to 4,000 square miles of ideal sugar land. All these islands producing sugar made it much more commonplace for Europeans. It was used in tea, coffee, and chocolate, all of which were introduced in the seventeenth century and became very popular in the eighteenth century. On page 97, the authors write “Europeans drinking a coffee in a café were enjoying an African stimulant (caffeine) mixed with a sweetener from the New World (sugar.)”

Slaves made up almost all of the workers in the sugar processing plant. An increase in sugar production was proportional to an increase in slave labor. Many of these slaves either died on the boat trip over, or died from diseases that were introduced to them in the New World. On page 100, Gilbert and Reynolds state “The influx of African slaves into Brazil and later into the Caribbean had a huge economic effect. By replacing Indian laborers, who were dying out and were legally protected from enslavement (though the law often yielded to economic pressure), and European laborers, who played a role in Barbados but enjoyed too many legal protections for their employers’ comfort, Africans were coerced into producing sugar in such huge quantities that it became increasingly commonplace in Europe”

The authors’ main positions and arguments on the subject of sugar and slavery are sugar cane and its use in sweet foods, the origins of the plantation complex, sugar in the new world, and slavery and sugar. They feel that there is a direct relation between the increase in sugar production and an increase in slave trade and labor. Gilbert and Reynolds argue that sugar cane is the cause of the “Hot Drinks Revolution” and that without it, coffee, tea, and chocolate would not be as popular as they are today.

Gilbert and Reynolds use their primary sources to help strengthen their argument that sugar is “so ubiquitous today that it is impossible to avoid completely.” They use books such as Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados, and An Impartial Description of Surinam to help defend their positions on the Portuguese motives within the sugar industry, the sugar production in Barbados, and to discuss the use of slave labor on sugar plantations in Surinam. The authors also sample Thomas Phillips’ Journal of a Voyage Made in the Hannibal 1694-4 to peer deeper into the horrible conditions on slave transporting vessels. This particular story taught me all about the beginning and continuation of the sugar trade in Western Africa, the New World, and Western Europe. I learned about how quickly the sugar industry boomed and how dangerous it was to work in processing plants. The fact that the majority of slaves were used to work on sugar plantations and not cotton plantations was a surprise to me.

This story was very helpful and informative in feeding me information on the slave and sugar industry. Gilbert and Reynolds both do an excellent job in chronicling the sugar and slave trade during the 15th century through the 18th century. Their method of writing kept me very interested and I wanted to keep reading it. Their information is directly related to the topic and does not stray at all, while providing interesting facts. These authors do a superb job in Trading Tastes: Commodity and Cultural Exchange to 1750. The world would not be the same without that sugar boom in the 16th century. Sugar is most definitely “so ubiquitous today that it is impossible to avoid completely.”