Invented in two separate parts of the world, wine and spirits have their differences, but are also intertwined throughout history, and are seen on shelves next to each other today. Both were influential drinks in their origin, as well as around the world. Wine and spirits influenced their peoples’ way of life in ways such as socially, religiously, and economically.
First and foremost, wine and spirits are underlying figures in how they shaped their respective cultures. The history of wine traces back to King Ashurnaspiral of Assyria around 870 BCE. This lavished king held a celebratory feast in honor of the inauguration of his new capital at Nimrud. Just as extravagant as the king himself, “a palace at the center of the new city encompassed
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This feast included some of the most exquisite meats of the time such as calves, sheep, lamb, duck, and fish. Ashurnaspiral wanted to ensure the guests of his wealth by serving wine, a rarity of the time. This propelled wine as a sophisticated drink, unfit for the poor. By 1000 BCE, wine propelled itself to the civilized drink. People in Greece would go out of their way to drink wine to prove their sophistication. Wine became the symbol of Greece during that time. Standage expounds on this perfectly stating, “For the Greeks, wine drinking was synonymous with civilization and refinement: What kind of wine you drank, and its age, indicated how cultured you were” (Standage) Overtime, wine maintains it’s stereotype as a fancy drink, often advertised at high class restaurants. Moreover, spirits also induced aspects of culture on the other side of the planet. First used as medicine in the form of brandy, or burnt wine, spirits would soon have popularized itself into everyday life. More alcoholic beverages soon followed brandy in the Americas. Abundances of sugarcane were discovered in the Americas, calling for the first form of slavery in the New World. These loads of sugar lead to the invention of rum, short for rumbullion,
Sugar was first grown in New Guinea around 9000 years ago, which New guinea traders trade cane stalks to different parts of the world. In the New world christopher columbus introduced cane sugar to caribbean islands. At first sugar was unknown in Europe but was changed when sugar trade first began. Sugar trade was driven by the factors of production land which provided all natural resources labor what provided human resources for work and capital which includes all the factories and the money that’s used to buy land. Consumer demand was why sugar trade continued to increase.
Tom Standage has described the beginnings of six beverages: beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola and has found many connections, and information helpful in finding out history of the drinks themselves but also their impacts on the growth of civilization as a whole. This book connects everything with society both past and present, it makes learning about history and the way drinks connect fun and interesting. Like learning without even realizing you are. A History of the World in Six Glasses is more than just talking about each beverage as a single but as a whole, it’s connections, uses, relations, and growth they started.
The Roman writer and naturalist Pliny the Elder, in his treatise Naturalis Historia states “there is nothing more useful than wine for strengthening the body, while, at the same time, there is nothing more pernicious as a luxury, if we are not on our guard against excess.” Years before he wrote those words, wine had in fact come from humble origins outside Italy itself. Furthermore, the process of fermenting grapes goes back thousands of years, and its beginning can be traced to where the wild grown grape-vine, vitis vinifera, flourished and was actively utilized for this reason.
The Romans drank a lot of wine but not straight or quickly. “Diluting wine and drinking with restraint were ordinary courtesy. The purpose of a dinner party was relaxed enjoyment, not getting drunk.” (166) A Roman was supposed to manage this temptation. If Trimalchio and his guests didn’t consume so much alcohol then maybe the night would have gone a lot smoother.
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...
Geographically, sugar made its way around the world rather rapidly once it first left Indonesia. Sugar cane was first found in New Guinea around 8000 BC. One of the most significant causes that came out of sugar production was the Atlantic Slave Trade. “The vast majority of the African captives transported across the Atlantic, some 80 percent or more, ended up in Brazil and the Caribbean (Strayer 568).”
Almost all of the medications that we have today are due to the ancient greeks who were the first to use potions for healing and a wide variety of other reasons Herbs were used widely across the world but were especially used in greece. Many things from the greeks we can still find in our daily lives today. Ancient greek potions were one of the most important items in greek culture because they had an interesting mix of ingredients, were used for different reasons, and are the baseline of many of the medications we have today.
...nd the development of sugar cane in the Caribbean. Their wealth began with rice production and sales to England. Georgia, a colony founded by James Oglethorpe and named in honor of King George II. The land between Atlanta and Savannah rivers was considered to be the headquarters to the “south seas” and served as a border to Spanish Florida. It was settled in 1732 and slavery along with alcohol was banned until 1750.
...hundred years ago, the Portuguese established a sugar cane empire in Brazil, one of the largest plantations on earth. Around the same time Diego Velasquez conquered the islands of Cuba creating the Havana also one the earth’s largest plantations. The two countries both Brazil and Cuba brought the first Africans to their countries as specialized workers in the sugar cane production. The establishment of the sugar cane production caused a high demand on workers that they did not have at the time to keep the economies booming. So they’re so called specialized workers became known as African slaves. Millions and millions of African slaves were shipped through the middle passage to work on the fields and plantations of Brazil and Cuba. An estimated 10-20 million slaves were brought to Cuba and Brazil at this time period shaping their countries economy forever.
The cotton gin was invented in 1793 by Eli Whitney while he was in Georgia working as a tutor for Catherine Greene. After looking at the slaves working tiresomely trying to remov...
By 1830, it increased to half. Cotton quickly became a big money-making cash crop for the South and North economy alike. But the demand also revived the need for slaves. The plantations had to be worked, and blacks were a cheap, efficient way to get the cotton picked. To make their jobs easier, Eli Whitney took advantage of the new idea, and invented the cotton gin(short for engine).
After the discovery of sugarcane from the Arabs, European nations began establishing plantation communities throughout the Americas which were rich with sugarcane. With the creation of these plantations, which focused on mass production of various products, a large amount of cheap human labor was necessary in keeping up with production quotas. Therefore, the Europeans found the best option was to import boatloads of African slaves, who were skilled, non Christian, and immune to many of the diseases that the Native Americans had previously perished from. Mexico, under the rule of the Spanish at the time, had previously relied on Aztecs acquired from warfare for human labor. However, as foreign diseases started to contaminate the enslaved in unsanitary conditions, and the Aztecs began to perish at uncontrollable speeds, the Spanish had had to rely on slaves exported from West Africa to fulfill their agricultural needs in plantations, and their economical needs in mines.
...e to the invention of the cotton gin that made it possible to clean 50 times the amount of cotton then previously. The once dwindling practice of slave trade gained new wind and brought many more into slavery.
Earlier it was practiced by the Greeks; Romans & Babylonians to the Egyptians, in these regions people have derived wine out of grapes. Wine was a royal drink that kings use to drink, it was extracted from Vineyards. One of the oldest-known winery was discovered in the "Areni-1" cave in “Vayots Dzor”, Armenia. Since then wine was flourished all across the world. From a local consumption Wine became an International trading commodity.
Generally speaking, other alcoholic beverages can be viewed as being a substitute for wine. However, specific substitution of wine in the New World is low because most individuals prefer to purchase wine from a retail facility instead of producing their own. Where as in the Old World the option of producing wine...