A journey through the centuries
- AncientSugarcane was domesticated in New Guinea and spread from there across Asia. People chewed it and boiled its juice; there were no crystals yet.
- IndiaA method emerged for evaporating the juice into solid crystals. The word itself spread from here into languages around the world.
- Middle AgesSugar reached the Mediterranean through the Arab world. In Europe, it was as expensive as a spice and was sold by apothecaries.
- 17th c.Plantations appeared on Atlantic islands and in the Americas. The price fell, consumption grew, and plantation labor was forced.
The third entry explains the oddity of old texts. Sugar is mentioned in them as a remedy for coughs and as a rare spice: it was kept by apothecaries, sold by weight, and seen as a sign of wealth.
The fourth entry marks a turning point. Plantation production made sugar widely available within a few decades, and together with tea and coffee, it changed the diets of entire countries: cheap calories appeared where they had not existed before.
Beets and a broken chain
The second turning point was the sugar beet. A way to extract sugar from it was found in the late 18th century, and it became widespread during the Continental Blockade, when cane sugar stopped reaching Europe. This gave Europe a source of its own.
This also changed the geography. Sugar stopped being a colonial commodity: it began to be produced in temperate climates, closer to consumers, and dependence on overseas plantations weakened.
Today, both sources account for roughly comparable shares of global production, and the final product has the same composition: it is the same sucrose, and you cannot tell them apart in a cup.
This history shows clearly how a product's meaning changes. The same substance has been medicine, a luxury, a cause of trade wars, and a reason for slave labor, and is now an ordinary commodity.
Where did people learn to make sugar crystals?
What made sugar widely available?
Sources
- Sugarcane was domesticated in New Guinea, and sugar crystallization technology developed in India
- in medieval Europe, sugar was an expensive commodity and was also used as a medicine. Its widespread price reduction was linked to plantation production in the Americas, while industrial sugar production from beets developed around the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries
Next in the “Food Stories” series
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