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Sugar refers to a type of sweet-tasting carbohydrate, which can exist in various forms at the molecular level. Sugar is made by plants though photosynthesis and is commonly used by humans in various foods and beverages in addition to being naturally present in many foods. Plants with high sugar yields such as sugarcane and beets are grown as crops from which sugar is extracted.[1] The production of sugar as a commodity has played a major role in world history and has been intertwined with colonialism and slavery.[2] The development of the plantation system of agriculture can also be traced to sugar cultivation.[3][4]
Production
Sugar cane accounts for approximately 80% of global sugar production while sugar beet accounts for approximately 20%.[5] Sugarcane and sugar beets require different growing conditions, with sugarcane growing in tropical climates and sugar beet growing better in temperate climates.[5]
Brazil is the largest producer of sugarcane. Other major producers of sugarcane are India, Thailand, China, Australia, Mexico and South Africa, among others. Among the largest producers of sugar beet are Russia, France, the United States, and Germany.[5]
Other than crystalized sugar for culinary use, other sugar products include molasses and pulp. Molasses has various applications, including uses in cooking, as well as in livestock feed and for fermentation. It can also be distilled into ethanol, which can be used in a variety of industries. Pulp can be dried and mixed with molasses as a fertilizer or as animal feed, among other uses.[6]
History
Domestication and spread of sugar cane
For the majority of the history of sugar cultivation by humans, sugar cane has been the primary source of sugar production, with beet sugar gaining traction in mass production only in the 19th century, and cane sugar still remaining the predominant source. Sugarcane is believed to have been domesticated in New Guinea by at least 6000 BC.[2] Methods of boiling sugarcane juice into crystals was developed in India around 500 BC. Knowledge of sugar-making later spread to Persia and eventually reached medieval Europe via trade routes.[2][3]
The spread of sugar and other crops to the Mediterranean region comprises part of what some historians call the Arab Agricultural Revolution, taking place circa 700–1100 CE during the Islamic Golden Age. For almost one thousand years, North Africa, Europe, and West Asia's sugar supply was produced in the Mediterranean region until the 16th century, after which point production began shifting to the Atlantic, particularly the Atlantic coast of Africa, to the Caribbean region, and to Brazil.[7]
Colonization and the trans-Atlantic slave trade
Production of sugar in the Iberian peninsula began around 900 CE, with its boom starting around 1300 and lasting until around 1500. The Portuguese would come to pursue sugar production on a world scale as they explored and colonized various regions, and enslaved people to work on sugar plantations.[2] Other European powers would also come to participate in this industry in a similar manner.[2][3]
From the start of Atlantic sugar production by European powers, enslaved people were the main labor force, with Europeans typically forcing the indigenous people of a colonized area into slavery, and then importing slaves from elsewhere as they continued to simultaneously ramp up production and devastate local populations. Atlantic islands off the coast of Africa once used for sugar plantations would later become hubs for shipping enslaved Africans to the Americas.[3] These activities, among others, were foundational to the development of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and played a major role in the colonization of the Americas. Brazil and the Caribbean would come to be major locations of sugar production over the course of this process.[2][3]
Further spread of sugar plantations
The first sugar plantation in Brazil was established in 1518, with production there reaching a peak in the 1620s. The colonizers first began with attempting to enslave the indigenous populations, and later shifted toward bringing enslaved people from Africa to work on the plantations. By the mid-16th century, enslaved Africans were the main source of labor on the sugar plantations of Brazil, though the enslavement of indigenous peoples of Brazil also remained ongoing.[3]
European colonizers in the Caribbean such as the British, French, and Dutch began to focus on sugar production as well, and, over time, sugar production in the Caribbean began to overtake production in Brazil. Barbados was an early example of the rising sugar production in the Caribbean. By the late 1600s, sugar production had become prominent on several islands of the region.[3]
Following the Haitian revolution, many sugar planters fled to Cuba and Louisiana. Cuba would go on to become a major center of world sugar production. Louisiana would become a major sugar production center for the United States. During the US Civil War, the colonizers started to move sugar plantations to Hawaiʻi.[3]
Other centers of sugar production in the mid-to-late 19th century included British and Dutch Guiana (Guyana), East Africa, Mauritius, Natal (South Africa), and Queensland (Australia). The Dutch were also heavily involved in sugar production in Java.[3]
Initially, plantations in the Caribbean used a combination of various forms of slavery and forced labor by indigenous populations and indentured Europeans, then shifted to enslaved Africans as the main labor force. After the formal abolition of slavery in the areas of the Caribbean colonized by the British, a workforce of indentured laborers from Asia was incorporated into the system. In the areas colonized by the Spanish, "agregados, colonos, and transitional forms between sharecropping and wage labor characterized the plantations" after the formal abolition of slavery. By the 20th century, wage workers would comprise the main labor force on sugar plantations.[8]:21
Following the Spanish-American War of 1898, US-based capitalists invested heavily in sugar production in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. As noted by sociologist César J. Ayala: "The colonial transfer of the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico from Spain to the United States in 1898 and the U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republic in 1916–24 opened the way for massive U.S. investments in sugar plantations. The combined sugar production of the three islands doubled from 433,000 tons in 1900 to 1,127,000 tons in 1902. Sugar output then doubled again between 1902 and 1910, reaching 2,470,000 tons. Between 1910 and 1919, production doubled once more and reached 5,033,000 tons. At the end of World War I the three islands produced close to one-third of the sugar sold in the world market." Production continued to climb until 1925. As observed by Ayala: "Large parts of the islands were converted to cane agriculture, and the livelihood of millions of people became dependent on the international price of sugar. No region of the world ever experienced a process of expansion of sugarcane plantation agriculture comparable in scope and depth to that which took place in the Spanish Caribbean in the first three decades of this century."[8]:16
References
- ↑ "What is Sugar?" The Sugar Association.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Seamus Higgins (2026-01-26). "A brief history of sugar" The Conversation.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 James Hancock (2021-06-18). "Sugar & the Rise of the Plantation System" World History Encyclopedia.
- ↑ “Galloway and Charles Verlinden state that the precursor of the plantation economies of the New World was the irrigated Mediterranean sugar industry of southern Iberia. Sugar was grown commercially in Palestine, Egypt, Sicily, Cyprus, and Crete, in addition to North Africa. In Cyprus and Morocco plantations used slaves. Elsewhere it seems that sugar mills used mostly sharecropping systems. The extension into the Atlantic of these Mediterranean “plantations” give, according to Verlinden, a definite continuity to the process of colonization from the Middle Ages through the epoch of the Great Discoveries. The most likely precursors of the New World plantations are probably the Portuguese plantations in the island of São Tomé, off the coast of Africa.”
César J. Ayala (1999). American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean, 1898-1934. - ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "Cultivation and harvesting of sugar". World Sugar Research Organisation.
- ↑ "Sustainable sugar production". World Sugar Research Organisation.
- ↑ “Before arriving in the New World in a voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1493, sugarcane had been produced in the littoral areas of the Mediterranean. It had arrived to the coasts of the Mediterranean via Persia and forms part of the “Arab Agricultural Revolution” of A.D. 700–1100. Sugar reached the economy of the Mediterranean together with at least another sixteen crops introduced by the Arabs, mostly from India, and hitherto unknown to the Europeans: rice, sorghum, hard wheat, cotton, watermelons, eggplants, spinach, artichokes, colocasia, sour oranges, lemons, limes, bananas, plantains, mangoes, and coconut plants. For almost a thousand years until the sixteenth century, North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe received their supply of sugar from an industry located around the shores of the Mediterranean. At that point, the industry’s center was displaced to plantations in the Atlantic—to the coast of Africa, to the Caribbean, and to Brazil.”
César J. Ayala (1999). American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean, 1898-1934 (pp. 26-27). - ↑ 8.0 8.1 César J. Ayala (1999). American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean, 1898-1934.