In Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, Sidney Mintz analyzed the cultivation, trade, and use of sugar prior between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. He presented a description of the introduction and popularization of sugar around the world; however, he focused on Europe, specifically England and her American colonies. Mintz used a plethora of primary and secondary sources, showing both sides of the arguments, in order to present an economic analysis in a consumption rather than a production based argument of the sugar industry. Mintz hoped “to explain what sugar reveals about a wider world, entailing as it does a lengthy history of changing relationships among people, societies, and substances” (xxiv-xxv). He …show more content…
Mintz asserted that the need for cheap, abundant labor led to the use of forced labor to meet those needs for sugar production in Crete, Cyprus, Morocco as early as the fifteenth century after the plague disrupted the population (29). He discussed the needs of European countries as they explored the possibilities and ventured forth to produce sugar in the colonies they established. He explored how this need for labor caused the British to look to Africa and other places to find cheap or free labor, which resulted in the Atlantic slave trade. The Atlantic trade provided Caribbean sugar plantation with slave labor; it provided the British aristocracy with sugar—and other raw materials—which in turn were used for consumption or in the production of other goods—clothe, tools, and torture devices—that were used by or on the slaves “who were themselves consumed in the creation of wealth” (43). With the use of slave labor by the mid-1700s sugar was produced cheaper, in turn became accessible to the lower classes, even a poor farmer could use sugar to sweeten tea (45). Sugar was consumed and identified as a spice, which many used to alter the flavor of flood (79). In the sixteenth century, sugar was also used for decoration (87). However, the use of slave labor in the production of sugar, which made it more accessible to a larger group of people caused demand to grow and took away the prestige and power it gave prior to mass production (95). It is interesting that because sugar was originally something that was rare, precious, and difficult to acquire, when it did become cheaper and accessible to the working class it maintained its rareness and luxury status. The working class felt that they were partaking in a kingly luxury as they purchased and consumed sugar
Sugar plantations have a field where sugar cane stalks are cut and grown and then there are boiling house where sugar cane stalks are crushed and boiled which is all runned by slave labor. Because slaves planted the cane stalks, harvested sugar stalks, crushed them, and boiled the sugar stalks sugar was made(8). According to David richardson the slave Trade, Sugar, and British Economic growth, “An Average purchase price of adult male slave on west African coast in 1748 was 14£ and in 1768 was 16£”(9a).Because slaves were so cheap slave traders may profit by, selling adult male slaves to sugar plantation owners for twice as much as they bought them in Africa. John Campbell Candid and Impartial Considerations on the Nature of the Sugar Trade describes the slaves as “so necessary Negro slaves purchased in Africa by English merchants”(11). Because africa trade slaves to English merchants Africans got things they did not
Kit-kats, Hershey bars, Skittles, and Jolly Ranchers. The reason these sweets, and many other products, are so popular is because of their sugar content. It’s hard to imagine that something used in nearly every food today was practically nonexistent at one point. But this is true- sugar wasn’t introduced globally until the 1500’s. Following this introduction, the trade that sprung up would come to be one of the most successful and profitable in the world. The Sugar Trade’s success was driven by many factors. Out of those several factors, the ones that promised success were high consumer demand, willing investors with a lot of capital, and the usage of slave labor.
The purpose of this experiment was to identify which brand of mint gum holds its flavor the longest. The four brands I chose were Orbit, Trident, Ice Breakers, and Wrigley's Doublemint My hypothesis was that Trident brand would last the longest and Wrigley's Doublemint would last the shortest. I did not use any people in my test. I chewed the same amount of gum at a time and the gum was all the same flavor, mint. All the gum was bought at the same time from the same store. I chewed the four brands of gums between periods of time. When chewing, I timed myself with a stopwatch. When I believed the gum ran out of flavor, I stopped the timmer and recorded the time. My hypothesis was incorrect. Instead of Trident, Orbit lasted the longest. However
The trading of products and goods between the old world and new world led to economical and population issues. Although they benefited from trading at first, it introduced several problems (Doc 1, Doc 5, & Doc 7). The Americas shipped sugar, rice, wheat, coffee, bananas, and grapes to the Europeans and in return, the Europeans shipped enumerated articles back such as tobacco, beans, maize, tomato, cacao, cotton, and potato (Doc 5). Through the trading of products and goods, diseases were introduced by the Europeans (Doc 5). Not too long after diseases began to spread, the economy shifts to a large scale of agricultural production resulting in slavery, using black slaves to harvest cash crops such as sugar cane (Doc 1). Two specific products,
Lustig, Robert, Laura Schmidt, and Claire Brindis. “The Toxic Truth About Sugar.” The Norton Sampler: Short Essays for Composition. Ed. Thomas Cooley. 8th ed. New York: Norton, 2013. 284-289. Print.
Cotton, spices, silk, and tea from Asia mingled in European markets with ivory, gold, and palm oil from Africa; furs, fish, and timber from North America; and cotton, sugar, and tobacco from both North and South America. The lucra¬tive trade in enslaved human beings provided cheap labor where it was lacking. The profits accrued in Europe, increasingly in France and Britain as the Portuguese, Spanish, and then Dutch declined in relative power. It was a global network, made possible by the advancing tech¬nology of the colonialists.
Sugar in its many forms is as old as the Earth itself. It is a sweet tasting thing for which humans have a natural desire. However there is more to sugar than its sweet taste, rather cane sugar has been shown historically to have generated a complex process of cultural change altering the lives of all those it has touched, both the people who grew the commodity and those for whom it was grown. Suprisingly, for something so desireable knowledge of sugar cane spread vey slow. First found in Guinea and first farmed in India (sources vary on this), knowledge of it would only arrive in Europe thousands of years later. However, there is more to the history of sugar cane than a simple story of how something was adopted piecemeal into various cultures. Rather the history of sugar, with regards to this question, really only takes off with its introduction to Europe. First exposed to the delights of sugar cane during the crusades, Europeans quickly acquired a taste for this sweet substance. This essay is really a legacy of that introduction, as it is this event which foreshadowed the sugar related explosion of trade in slaves. Indeed Henry Hobhouse in `Seeds of Change' goes so far as to say that "Sugar was the first dependance upon which led Europeans to establish tropical mono cultures to satisfy their own addiction." I wish, then, to show the repurcussions of sugar's introduction into Europe and consequently into the New World, and outline especially that parallel between the suga...
The Columbian Exchange was a critical episode in history that created the first truly global network between the Old and New Worlds (Green). Many goods were recognized for their value instantaneously while the potential profits that other assets could offer were overlooked (Mcneill). Modest in appearance, the cacao bean would eventually develop into one of the most delectable, sought-after beverages by the elite of Spain, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and eventually France and England. Nonetheless, the history of the cacao bean is a very bittersweet one. Its prominence among Europeans can ultimately be traced to the inhumane labor imposed on Native American captives and African slaves to cultivate cocoa beans as demand in Western Europe augmented by exponential numbers.
The movement of goods, people, and wealth in the late 17th and 18th centuries permanently changed societies across the continents of Europe, Africa, and North and South America, thereby increasing the reach of globalization in the modern age. Most influential to this movement was what is sometimes referred to as “The Atlantic Circuit”, a triangle of trade between Western Europe, western Africa, and the West Indies. Out of this circuit came the rapid growth of the Atlantic slave trade, which not only established multiple industries of agriculture, but significantly changed the economies of all countries involved. The agriculture industries, in combination with further colonization transformed the land of the Americas, and the impacted diets across the world. Capitalist systems and mercantilist policies provided structure to trade, and allowed both private investors and nations to profit from it. These systems laid the foundation for future economies by creating new levels of power and interaction between the private and public sectors and, in the process, generating many successes and failures.
	Sweetness and Power is a strong study relating the evolution of sugar to societal growth as well as to economic change. Despite the flaws contained within the structure of the book and the lack of fieldwork, the book is an excellent collection of data regarding sugar, a topic that most people do not think of as being a major factor in the lives they live today. Mintz forces the "educated layperson" to look around the world today, and really think about what it would be like without the luxury of sugar.
The Sugar Trade was drove by labor, land & consumer demand. In document 10, it tells how the British traded a little for a lot, this means the British traded finished goods that the African people didn't have, like powder, bullets, iron bars, copper bars, brass pans, british malt spirits etc… for slaves “but in the main, with very little that is not of our own growth or manufacture”.
Some of the earliest records of slavery date back to 1760 BC; Within such societies, slavery worked in a system of social stratification (Slavery in the United States, 2011), meaning inequality among different groups of people in a population (Sajjadi, 2008). After the establishment of Jamestown in 1607 as the first permanent English Chesapeake colony in the New World that was agriculturally-based; Tobacco became the colonies chief crop, requiring time consuming and intensive labor (Slavery in colonial America, 2011). Due to the headlight system established in Maryland in 1640, tobacco farmers looked for laborers primarily in England, as each farmer could obtain workers as well as land from importing English laborers. The farmers could then use such profits to purchase the passage of more laborers, thus gaining more land. Indentured servants, mostly male laborers and a few women immigrated to Colonial America and contracted to work from four to seven years in exchange for their passage (Norton, 41). Once services ended after the allotted amount of time, th...
The Slave Revolution in the Caribbean Colonists in the eighteenth century created plantations that produced goods such as tobacco, cotton, indigo, and more importantly, sugar. These plantations required forced labor, and thus slaves were shipped from Africa to the new world. “The Caribbean was a major plantation that was a big source of Europe’s sugar, and increasing economic expansion. The French had many colonies, including its most prized possession Saint- Domingue (Haiti). ”
The main problems that are affecting the company were the high level of labour turnover, below target production rates, high levels of scrap, the employees had little input in the decision making, therefore resulting in low motivation and job satisfaction, and didn't have enough feedback on there performance. Added to this was the conflict between the supervisors and employees in the production and packing areas, and the grading and payment levels wasn't satisfactory to the employees.
With such an obsession with sweet foods, there is an obvious desire for an explanation of how such a once unknown substance took center stage on everybody's snack, dessert, and candy list. That's where Sidney W. Mintz comes into play. He decided to write this book Sweetness and Power, and from the looks of all the sources he used to substantiate his ideas and data, it seems that he is not the first person to find the role that sugar plays in modern society important. By analyzing who Mintz's audience is meant to be, what goals he has in writing this book, what structure his book incorporates, what type, or types, of history he represents within the book, what kind of sources he uses, and what important information and conclusions he presents, we can come to better understand Mintz's views and research of the role of sugar in history, and how much it really affects our lives as we know them.