The little bowl of sugar on our table is often something we take for granted. The history of sugar is a history of violence, greed and oppression. Through the triangular trade between Africa, Europe, and the Americas that began in the 1600s, it can be argued that slavery and capitalism spread to the Western Hemisphere due to the European desire for sugar. Since the beginning of humanity, we have craved this sweet substance known as sugar. The sweet taste, the boost of energy you get after eating a small amount, made our ancestors crave it. The difficulty of obtaining this product led Europeans to look for a way to satisfy their craving for sweets. The discovery of the Caribbean – an area of ​​ideal climate – led to the rise of mercantilism from Europe. In the search for cheap labor to maximize profits, slaves – previously a relatively small industry – were in high demand. Therefore, the high demand led to an increase in the slave trade. As the plantation system became increasingly diverse in its products, this practice spread across the Americas into the moderate climate of the South, in an effort to maximize profit and meet population demands. It can be argued that the increased demand for sugar started the global slave trade, which made European colonies in America prosper, but made life worse for Africans. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In the modern world, sugar is not normally listed as one of the most valuable commodities the world has to offer. Because sugar is so abundant and cheap today, we often don't think about sugar's history or appreciate its historical significance. To reach the current state of oversupply, several changes had to occur in the world. Originally a small crop native to New Guinea, it slowly spread throughout the world, as an aristocratic delicacy used as a spice before becoming a commonly used item. This development was largely due in part to the global trade and social changes that occurred between 1450 and 1750. During this time period, trade routes expanded and intensified, allowing for the spread of diverse products from various cultures to reach Europe, including sugar. This transformation, along with European expansion into the Caribbean, was the catalyst for sugar to become more available to common people. Furthermore, Europe's merchant class flourished as consumers purchased this sweet luxury that had become a staple. However, although the increase in sugar had positive effects on Europe, it had negative effects on the civilizations they took advantage of. It can be argued that the increased demand for sugar started the global slave trade, which made European colonies in America prosper, but made life worse for Africans. To analyze the prosperity of European merchants who traded in sugar, the history of sugar's rise as a commodity in world history must be understood. For much of human history, the flavor known as sweetness has been sought after, with the first humans already using honey and local, seasonal fruit. This phenomenon was so unusual and divine that many world religions describe the afterlife or heaven as a land of milk and honey, of which milk is a part due to its use as subsistence from birth (Mintz 1985). Since sweetness was considered a divine sensation, it would be understandable that thecontrol of sweetness by elites in societies was commonplace. The origins of sugar cane, the plant from which the white crystals we know today come from, can be traced back to New Guinea. National Geographic's Rich Cohen (2013) describes:…about 10,000 years ago, people harvested cane and ate it raw, chewing on a stalk until the flavor hit their tongue like a starburst. An elixir of sorts, a cure for every ailment, an answer for every mood, sugar has figured prominently in ancient New Guinea myths. In one the first man makes love to a cane stalk, giving up the human race. In religious ceremonies, priests sipped sugar water from coconut shells, a drink since replaced in sacred ceremonies with cans of Coca Cola (section Marzipan Mosques, par. 1). A systematic interpretation of this passage can reveal much about the history and importance of sugar from coconuts. the beginning of its cultivation. Typically, a society's myths revolve around an aspect of society considered essential to life, such as the Egyptians worshiping the Nile, or the Mayan and Aztec myths revolving around corn. However, the fact that these myths involve sugar is a little disconcerting. Why would a society worship a food product that is neither essential to life nor easy to obtain? Perhaps the “starburst” of taste made people feel as if they had experienced a divine event, unbeknownst to anyone but themselves. This belief that sugar had a divine connection continued as it spread into the Indus River Valley civilizations of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro. According to Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos, Hinduism held sugar in the highest regard, as shown in a special sacrifice ceremony to appease the gods, where "...Five ingredients were selected for this special burning: milk, cheese, butter, honey and sugar,” (p. 12). The continuity of sweetness as a sacred aspect is shown both in the selection of sugar, and also in the continuity of honey as a divine object thanks to its sweetness it was indeed a symbol of divinity and power. The true power of sugar was demonstrated in its use in the Muslim empires of the Middle East, and their influence spread throughout the lands they conquered, as well as those nearby historian Sidney Mintz (1985) states that, "...everywhere they went, the Arabs brought with them sugar, the product and the technology of its production" (p. 25). Due to the distant conquests of the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, Muslim empires were able to absorb technology and goods from other regions and inadvertently bring them closer to Europe. The proximity of the Muslim empires to the Mediterranean Sea allowed for cultural diffusion in Europe, in addition to the crusades in Jerusalem. The development of sugar that made it a commodity and therefore profitable for European traders in the Americas most likely stemmed from the use of sugar in Muslim empires, such as full-scale mosques made of marzipan, a sugary delicacy (Cohen 2013). Through this continuity of using sugar for great products, sugar developed a demand among the wealthy, and merchants learned that they could sell it and get rich. But how were they supposed to produce sugar? This is where the fertile Americas come into play. The sugar trade planted the seeds of economic prosperity for the European colonies in the Americas, which in return created large profits for the European homelands. The profit made by the colonies was amplified through the use of mercantilism by European countries. The purpose ofMercantilism was to unify and increase a country's wealth and power through strictly government-regulated trade. Francis (n.d.) states: “The organization of trade in the 16th century was entrusted to a company which was granted the exclusive right by a particular nation to trade slaves and erect and maintain forts.” In this system, the colonies provided the raw materials to be sent to the mother country which would send the manufactured goods back to the colonies. According to Stockdale (2014), “mercantilism drove the economy of 17th- and 18th-century colonialism and forced the colonies into a relationship of dependency in which they were economically weaker than the 'mother country', which controlled the triangular trade” (par . 5). The mercantilist system allowed European countries to make maximum profit from the resources produced in the colonies. In the sugar trade, sugar produced in the colonies of the Americas was shipped to Europe where it would be sold to Europeans. Europeans would use the capital gained from this to purchase slaves from Africa and send manufactured goods to European colonies to be sold. The colonies provided a new market for manufactured goods. With the development and intensification of the slave trade, capitalism replaced mercantilism as the new economic system in Europe. Mercantilism was not efficient because it limited imports to retain profits from enemy and rival states, which was a regressive system and prevented the world from moving forward. Adam Smith saw the problems of mercantilism and developed the theory of capitalism which emphasized free trade and competition and called trade without government involvement. Smith (1776) argues: “To forbid a great people, however, from making all they can out of any part of their produce, or from employing their resources and industry as they judge most advantageous to themselves, is a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of man” (p.470). Smith believes that free trade constitutes the fundamental rights of men. This is the ideology that eventually replaced mercantilism. Mercantilism failed to support the slave trade because the monopolies “had two principal opponents: planters in the colonies, who complained of insufficient quantity and poor quality of high-priced slaves, and merchants at home. The inability of monopolies to ensure sufficient trade led to free trade” (Francis, n.d.). Sugar produced by African labor would be exported from the colonies to the capitalist system in Europe. This allowed for even cheaper slave labor, which in return created a larger population of slaves in the Americas and, therefore, larger profits. Since sugar was in high demand in Europe, the colonies were extremely valuable and important to Europeans. According to Stuart (2013), “The Caribbean sugar islands were more than precious to their colonial masters: they were priceless…their ability to generate obscene profits led many to describe them as 'the best of the West'” (p. 130) . Not only were the colonies profitable for the mother country, but more importantly for the colonial plantation masters. This is because the masters would have made a large profit from the production of sugar. Although they existed to enrich the homeland, the colonies had their own internal economy based on trade. Stuart states (2013): “According to Biet, the elite sugar planters 'all lived like little princes', riding around in big coaches and wearing the best clothes. Since they could delegate most of the work of the estate to their servants and slaves. these men led pleasant lives” (p.96). Because these colonial masters had such wealth, they dominated politicslocal. Plantation-owning families became an aristocracy by marrying merchants, bureaucrats, and officials who allowed them to run local institutions (Stearns, Adas, Schwartz & Gilbert, 2001). Having control over the economy and politics in the Americas gave plantation owners immense power. This led to harmful effects on the people who allowed the cultivators to obtain their wealth. Plantation farmers were able to establish this wealth on the backs of slaves. Originally, Indians were used as slaves on sugar plantations, but due to disease, most of the Indian population died out and was replaced by African slaves. Stuart (2013), “the economic structure of the island was totally based on the labor of enslaved Africans. Its political structure as well as its system of government were organized around the control and management of an enslaved majority” (p.83). The entire society in these colonies was based on slavery: politically, economically, and socially. The main result of the sugar trade was the development of racism. Cohen argues (2013): “Africans, in other words, were not enslaved because they were seen as inferior; they were seen as inferior to justify the slavery required for the prosperity of the early sugar trade." From the European perspective, Africans had to be seen as less than human to justify their horrible treatment, so as a result, racism developed. Stuart states (2013): “In this society, his colour, to which he would have paid little attention in his old life, was becoming the most important determinant of his identity” (p.86). “Black” and “White” did not exist until Africans were used as slaves in the Americas. Although slavery created economic prosperity for Europe and its colonies, it came at the expense of African lives. The effect of the increase in sugar was the slave trade, which deteriorated the lives of Africans by taking them away from their homes in Africa and bringing them to Africa. America through the Middle Passage. The rise of sugar caused Europeans to develop plantations in the Americas to grow sugar cane for a fee, but they needed a form of cheap labor to work the fields: slaves. European capitalists took Africans from their homes to use them to make money. Olaudah Equiano, a freed slave who wrote an autobiography detailing his life, describes: One day, as I was looking from the top of a tree in our yard, I saw one of those people go into our next neighbor's yard except one, kidnap, there being many strong young men. Immediately so I gave the alarm to the thief, and he was surrounded by the stoutest of them, who entangled him in ropes... and only I and my dear sister were left to look after the house, two men and a woman having passed our walls, and in an instant he grabbed us both. (Equiano, 2005) As Equiano describes, white Europeans arrived without warning and kidnapped Africans to use as slaves. A home should be a safe haven, a place where you are protected from external harm; however, Africa was anything but. People were driven almost mad by hunger for money due to their complete ignorance of morality. Africans were taken from their homes, taken from their lives, to fuel European greed. Foreigners invading their villages, violently capturing them and tying them up: this is what these poor Africans had to suffer through no fault of their own. This was driven solely by the sugar trade. Equiano later describes, “The next day it turned out to be aday of pain greater than I had ever experienced; for my sister and I were separated then, as we lay clasped in each other's arms” (2005). Captured Africans often experienced the worst pain ever: the emotional pain resulting from the loss of their families. Since Europeans were only interested in profit, they made absolutely no effort to keep families together; they only placed them where they saw fit. Before that, Equiano had been separated from his parents in his village and all he had left was his sister. Heartless Africans took away the only connection he had to his previous life, the only thing that meant anything to him. In addition to the terrible emotional suffering that slaves went through, they had to endure the tortuous Middle Passage to reach the Americas. Equiano describes conditions on a slave ship: When I also looked around the ship and saw a great furnace or boiling copper, and a multitude of black people of all kinds chained together, each of their faces expressing dejection and sorrow, I did not think the more I doubted my fate... so much so that, with the disgusting stench, and crying at the same time, I became so sick and dejected that I could not eat, nor had the slightest desire to taste anything. Now I longed for my last friend, death, to lift me up; but soon, to my displeasure, two white men offered me food; and, as I refused to eat, one of them took me by the hands, laid me, I think, on the winch, and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely. (2005)After captured Africans were cruelly separated from their families, they had to endure even greater physical suffering in the bowels of slave ships. On the slave ships, Equiano saw the complete look of misery and defeat on the other Africans, and he knew that he would be enslaved and would never see his home again. The conditions on the ships he described were unimaginable, with the stench unbearable and all the slaves chained together. Even worse, slaves were forced to eat or else they were whipped. This was because the shipowners wanted to get as much money as possible for the captured slaves. The slaves were so miserable that they preferred suicide by throwing themselves into the sea to slavery, but this too was forbidden. Any attempt to do so resulted in beatings. This was done for the same reason: the shipowners did not want their slaves to die because they would earn less money. This shows how ruthless the Europeans were, ruining the lives of Africans for their own economic gain, all because of the rise in sugar. And the torture didn't stop there; pain and suffering continued when slaves arrived in the Americas. In addition to taking Africans from their homes, the slave trade caused the lives of Africans to deteriorate into their new, terrible lives enslaved on plantations in the Americas. After crossing the horrific Middle Passage, African slaves were subjected to equally terrible conditions on the plantations where they worked. For example, Aronson and Budhos explain the grueling labors of slaves who often had to work ten hours a day with rats and vermin (2010, p. 38). Plowmen had to dig holes for cane, seeders had to plant cane, and weeders had to clear undergrowth that might inhibit sugar growth, and all of this had to be done extremely quickly to meet the high quotas (Aronson & Budhos, 2010, pages 36-38). Endlessly working in the hot tropical climate for countless hours was the reality for millions of African slaves. The demand for sugar has caused an increase in the number of.”