When one eats a cake, a pie, or even a candy bar today, it is easy to understand the dynamic role of sugar. Sucrose is in almost everything, and it remains an active part of most diets to this day. Sugar has not always been readily available, though. In fact, throughout history, there have been periods of time when sugar was not discovered or fully contemplated. In other time periods, sugar has been a hot commodity, with people of means adding it to their diet while others have had limited capacity to enjoy its effects. Sidney Mintz writes that the story of sugar is relatively simple, with it starting as a known commodity, growing into something available to only the British nobility, and finally ending up as a part of the diets of almost every British person, even if it often threatened to break their budgets.
Around the year 1000, sugar was largely an unknown commodity to people in Great Britain and the rest of the Western world. While there had been some evidence that ancient Greeks and Romans had understood the power of sugar as a healing spice, it was not widely understood that sugar could be cultivated. What this meant, then, was that British people around the year 1000 scarcely knew about the product, and as a result, demand for it was incredibly low. Few institutions existed to provide for the trade of sugar, and even in those places that did have it, sugar was largely a domestic enterprise.
India had been an early adopter of sugar cultivation techniques, and sometime just after the year 1000, Arab countries began to learn about sugar from the Indians. As sugar spread to the Arab world, it was not long until sugar became a part of reality for those in Latin-speaking countries. Around 1100, people in the Latin-speaking world began to import sugar. The Arab world had gone through something of an agricultural revolution during this time. As a result, they had established the kinds of large plantations that were necessary for the efficient cultivation of sugar. Because Medieval Europe did not produce its own sugar, it had to pay premium prices to import the spice from these Arab nations. In fact, as the Arab sugar trade became a much bigger focus in the 1400s and 1500s, the prices for sugar were just as high as the prices for some of the fine spices that came from various remote islands around the world.
Bentley argues that during the Crusades, those from the Western world engaged culturally with people in Arab countries (Bentley). What they found was a rich culture where sugar was the norm, and as the Crusaders won their fight, they brought home a tremendous amount of sugar to Medieval Europe. This helped to fuel the desire for sugar in this part of Europe, but it still contributed to what Mintz described as a very difficult sugar-buying market for the average person (Mintz). Even with Crusaders bringing home sugar, there was only enough to barely whet the appetite of people in Europe, and supply remained so low that with a demand spike, prices for sugar were particularly high.
What the Crusades did do, however, was provide more exposure to sugar for people in Medieval Europe during that time. This is why, by 1650, nobility in countries like England began to consumer more sugar both as a part of their diet and as a means of medicine. As the nobility grew in their desire for more sugar, it became clear that the richest and most powerful in society would need to use their power and influence to bring about more production. The period leading up to 1650 saw some European countries use their colonies to produce sugar, and they began to use the slave trade to bring in more individuals to make sugar production more efficient. This was necessary, of course, because the production of sugar proved to be very labor-intensive. Pomeranz and Topik argue that violence was often used in order to force people of the lower classes – including slaves and servants – to work in the sugar plantations that provided sugar for the upper classes (Pomeranz & Topik). This system tended to perpetuate itself, as well. When more people showed a desire for sugar, and when, as Mintz puts it, knowledge of sugar’s many benefits became more evident, capitalists seized on the opportunity to produce more both in their colonies and in their home nations. Complex systems of import and export were established, and the wheels of the slave trade were regularly greased in order to continue providing the upper crust with their fair supply of sugar.
Sometime between 1650 and 1800, sugar had morphed into a symbol of social status. Those who were able to buy sugar had better diets, and they were also the sort of people who, in British society, had the power and influence necessary to get what they wanted. Things began to change as things inched closer to 1800. Mintz notes in his work that as the Industrial Revolution truly took hold in Europe, workers needed to have the kind of sustenance necessary to work the long days demanded of them by their overlords. This could have contributed to a wider distribution of sugar, as it became a staple in the lives and in the diets of all people rather than just nobility. Many within society discovered that sugar, while not a perfect driver of human energy, was actually a very good source of calories. Even though it was still quite expensive, it was less expensive than other calorie-dense foods like meat. With this in mind, one might note that even when those on the lower end of the social spectrum were provided access to sugar, it was still done in order to further the goals of the upper class, as sugar was essentially used as fuel to keep the workers working.
Overall, sugar’s development has been quite important to the development of European society. In some ways, it has been a commodity that has mimicked the development of society. Sugar began as a total unknown, and once people found that it could be both tasty and valuable, only the very rich could afford its high price. Over time, something changed, and sugar became widely available, though it still came at a price. A number of structures and events played a role in shaping this history, from the Industrial Revolution to the Crusades and the general class wars between the exploited proletariat and the cushioned bourgeoisie.
- Bentley, Jerry. Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times.
- Mintz, Sidney, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History.
- Pomeranz, Kenneth and Steven Topik, The World that Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy 1400 to Present.
