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Sugar and Its Inseparable & Connected History with Coffee, Tea, Opium, Pepsi … Tim.Keirn@csulb.edu

Sugar and Its Inseparable & Connected History with Coffee, Tea, Opium, Pepsi … Tim.Keirn@csulb.edu. Cultivating a ‘ New ’ World Historical Perspective. The Disciplinary Origins of World History “ People without History ” (Eric Wolf, 1982) Eurocentric perspectives

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Sugar and Its Inseparable & Connected History with Coffee, Tea, Opium, Pepsi … Tim.Keirn@csulb.edu

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  1. Sugar and Its Inseparable & Connected History with Coffee, Tea, Opium, Pepsi…Tim.Keirn@csulb.edu

  2. Cultivating a ‘New’ World Historical Perspective • The Disciplinary Origins of World History • “People without History” (Eric Wolf, 1982) • Eurocentric perspectives • Comparative cultures and area studies perspectives • The New World History • Transnational and transregional approaches • Examining history on larger (global) spatial sales

  3. The ‘New’ World History • The ‘New’ World History cont. • Focus upon cross-cultural exchanges and interactions • Comparative History • Environmental History • Vehicles of encounter -- trade, migration and empire • Consequences of encounter -- adoption, adaptation and resistance

  4. Obstacles to Teaching ‘New’ World Historically • Situating the California Framework and Standards in the current historiography of World History • Textbooks and state tests • Teacher certification and preparation issues

  5. Teaching with ‘Food’ and Commodities &‘New’ World History • Expands the spatial scale of instruction and makes spatial connections explicit • Address a multiplicity of new world historical themes: encounter, trade, migration and cross-cultural exchange • Engages students who eat and buy stuff! • With proper framing – it works with state standards!

  6. The Travel of Sugar…A Narrative • The spatial and temporal movement of sugar was both cause and consequence of global developments in trade, migration and imperial formation • The movement and commoditization of sugar connects and integrates hemispheres, regions and nation states and is an important agent in early and modern ‘globalization.’ • The history of sugar is inseparable from shifting global patterns of demand & production of other commodities (e.g, coffee, tea, sugar, silver and opium) and the development & migration of coerced and free forms of labor

  7. Sugar…a Narrative (cont.) • The history and movement of sugar also informs (and is informed by) state and imperial formation and significant human modifications of the environment -- all significant new world historical themes • The history and movement of sugar is also relevant to the teaching of world history at all grade levels and indeed to that of American history as well

  8. Sweetness and Sugar • Mammals like sweetness and sugar provides significant calories and also energy • Humans historically use sugar in a variety of ways • Physical energy and calories • Flavor enhancer for foods and beverages • Binder and preservative • Recently fuel -- methanol from sugar cane (Brazil)

  9. Sweetness and Sugar (cont.) • Sugar (sucrose) can be extracted from a wide variety of plants and humans have cultivated sugar cane, sugar beets and date palms to produce sugar • ‘Sweetness’ is also extracted commercially from other plants and entities -- honey, maple and fructose syrup (maize) • Our focus here is upon sucrose

  10. Environment vs. Culture? • Consumption of sugar and sweetness is culturally conditioned-- • South Asia, Arab-Persian and Europeans are historically the largest consumers of sugar • Southeast Asia -- little consumption despite multiplicity of sugar sources • British > Italians • Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power (1985) • Tied sugar consumption to labor energy and productivity with industrialization • This does not explain high levels of consumption in South and West Asia

  11. The Early Predominance of Sugar Cane • For most of human history, sugar cane is the most important source of cultivated and commercially available sugar • In tropical conditions -- sugar cane easily proliferates once planted • Member of the grass family and grows back when cut allowing for multiple harvests per annum • Sugar produces 10 times more calories per acre than wheat

  12. Labor Intensive Production • Temperamental plant -- irrigation even in tropics, requires weeding • Laborious to harvest -- thick plant, nine to ten feet tall • Once cut -- sugar diminishes quickly • Stripping, chopping and bundling

  13. Capital Intensive Production by Pre-Modern Standards • Chopped cane is milled (mill) • Juice is boiled two to three times to crystallize and extract sugar (boiler) • Sugar is ‘loafed’ to further gravity-extract molasses (storage sheds) • Molasses in the Americas was also processed • High sugar content but also vitamins and minerals • Distilled into ‘kill devil’

  14. Coercive Labor Systems • Sugar Plantations as early ‘factories’ of production • Cultivation and ‘manufacture’ took place in one location (Brazil versus Barbados) • Brutal conditions -- physical and dangerous year-round work in a tropical environment • Involuntary over free forms of labor

  15. Southernization • Linda Shafer (1994) & ‘Southernization’ • Afro-eurasia in Classical and Postclassical Periods (500 BCE to 1450 CE) impacted by South(east) Asia • Pioneering trade routes • Spread of cultural influence, technologies and new forms of agricultural production • Much of Afro-eurasia was ‘southernized’ before it was westernized (southernization informed westernization) • The early history and spread of sugar cane was an important component of ‘southernization.’

  16. Early Sugar Cane Cultivation • Sugar cane is indigenous to the islands of Southeast Asia and first cultivated for chewing perhaps as early as 1000 BCE • By the Mauryan Period (c. 300-150 BCE) in South Asia -- evidence of cultivation and crystallization for use in sweets

  17. Sugar Production in the Eastern Mediterranean • Arab conquests of Sind in early 8th century CE brings Islamic contact with sugar • Arab cultivation of sugar in the Eastern Mediterranean, Sicily and Southern Spain for elite Arab, Persian, Turkic and eventually Russian consumers • Slave labor mainly from Black Sea labor markets (e.g. the word ‘slave’ in English) • First connections between the consumption and commodification of sugar with tea

  18. An Early History of Tea • After water the most consumed drink • Camellia sinensis native to hills of Southern China • Early cultivation and use in Han period (206 B.C.E. - 220 C.E.) • Medicinal use: stimulant properties and water purification • By the 8th century -- associated with Buddhist ritual and elite refined culture

  19. Tea As a Trade Good • Innovation and expansion in Chinese tea production under the Tang and Song (618-1279) • Drying, powdering and bricking of tea facilitated long distance trade • Origins and development of porcelain tied to tea (colors/styles to compliment hues of tea)

  20. The Global Spread of the Market for Tea before 1300 • Spread with Buddhism to Japan as did tea plants and production • Traded along the Silk Roads and the Indian Ocean, spreading tea drinking to Central Asia, Russia, India and Islamic West Asia and North Africa • Tea’s first contact with sugar in the Islamic World -- sweetened tea as a substitute for wine

  21. The Crusades and Sugar • The Crusades (1095-1291) were a conduit (with Umayyad Spain) to the ‘southernization’ of Europe • The diffusion of sugar (and its associated technologies) was part of this process • Elite European demand for sugar < 1500 • White sugar as a drug and toothpaste • Sugar used with other ‘new’ Asian spices (cloves, cinnamon etc.) to flavor savories • Sugar sculptures and elaborate desserts

  22. Sugar and the Italian Renaissance • From 1200-1500, Italian (and some Catalan) merchants develop sugar plantations in Cyprus and other islands in the Mediterranean • Establish the basic construct of the European sugar plantation system (centralized production, slave labor and capitalization) • Before the fall of Constantinople (1453) -- slaves were Muslims and Slavs in the main but also Sub-Saharan Africans

  23. Sugar and the Portuguese Origins of Atlantic Slavery • 15th century Portuguese maritime expansion of West African coast • Establish first Atlantic plantations (borrowing from the Italian model) in Madeira, the Canaries and Sao Tome > 1450 • Use of African slave labor (e.g., Sao Tome and the Kingdom of the Kongo) • By 1480, Madeira the #1 source of sugar • 1492 -- Sao Tome a ‘laboratory’ for the Atlantic Plantation Complex; the Atlantic slave trade pre-dates Columbus

  24. Sugar and the Atlantic Plantation Complex • Columbus recognized the potential of the West Indies for sugar (1493) and the Portuguese brought sugar & Africans to Brazil in 1501. • Brazilian sugar engenhos (factories) surpassing production of Madeira by the late 16th century • Portuguese develop the South Atlantic Slave Trade

  25. The Expansion of American Sugar Cane Production • High levels of European demand, declining costs of slave labor, and ‘virgin soil phenomena’ -- spread sugar cane production in the tropical environs of the Americas • 16th Century -- Brazil • 17th Century -- Lesser Antilles (e.g. Barbados) • 18th Century -- Greater Antilles (e.g. Jamaica and Hispaniola) • Early 19th Century -- Cuba

  26. Sugar and the Columbian Exchange • Sugar cane was arguably the most influential Eurasian plant to impact the American hemisphere • The environmental impact of monocultural agricultural • The economic impact of monocultural agriculture (inner colonial dependency) • Disease, sugar and African slavery -- the ‘failure’ of Amerindian and Irish slavery

  27. Sugar and the Atlantic Slave Trade • Why African labor? • Disease & agricultural traditions • Scaling and integrating with the pre-existing slave trade within Africa • Race • Africa and the Atlantic Basin

  28. The Atlantic Slave Trade • The Demographics of the Atlantic Slave Trade (1550-1830) • Philip Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (1969) • 10-11 million Africans survive the passage • 1 in 6 died in the middle passage -- declining over time • 1770s = peak decade • Portuguese (1500s), Dutch (1600s) and British (1700s) dominate the trade • Supply-sided economics and the declining price of slave labor

  29. Sugar and Slavery • 75% of Africans were brought to the Americas for purposes of sugar production • 50% to the Caribbean and 25% to Brazil • 85% male -- and populations do not reproduce themselves until circa 1800 • The Africanization of the Americas -- far more Africans > Europeans prior to 1800

  30. Hot Drinks Revolution • Demand-sided economics -- the spread of sugar production informed by the expansion and social extension of European consumption • 17th century -- coffee (Yemen/Ethiopia) and chocolate (cocoa) drinking with sugar • Coffee house culture and ‘middle class’ sugar consumption

  31. European Tea Consumption in the Early Modern Period • Portuguese bring Chinese tea in the 16th century • Expansion with coffeehouse culture in the late 17th century in NW Europe • Coffee and increasingly tea were ‘excuses’ to consume sugar • Rising consumption of tea correlated with that of sugar • And with it the plantation system and Atlantic slavery

  32. British Tea Craze prior to 1750 • The greatest expansion of European tea drinking was in Britain, tied to • Rising luxury & middle class consumerism • Fascination with chinoiserie • British leadership in plantation sugar production • British East India Company was leading importer of Chinese tea and porcelain (followed distantly by the Dutch EIC) • British EIC gain trading privileges in Canton (Guangzhou) in 1716

  33. Silver and the Organization of the British Tea Trade • Organization of Chinese production w/ rising domestic and global demand • Innumerable peasant producers selling to peddlers and through them merchants • Qing state monopoly and ban on export of plants • Chinese demand for silver raises price and stimulates the second silver boom in the Americas • British positive trade balance with Spain • 90% of British tea purchased with American silver

  34. Tea in the late 18th Century • British & European tea and sugar consumption rises exponentially • Peak of Caribbean sugar cane production and the Atlantic slave trade • Tea duties slashed in 1784 • Tea (and sugar) become a staple of working-class diet • By 1800 tea is the largest export item from Asia to Europe and British EIC controls 80% of the trade

  35. From Silver to Opium • Late 18th century decline in the value of silver in China • Cost of production in Americas rises • Chinese demand falls with use of paper money etc. • Sophistication of Chinese economy -- Europeans have little to offer in the absence of silver • By 1800 the vast majority of EIC Chinese tea is purchased with profits from the sale of Indian opium • Integrating EIC activities in South and East Asia • Tying opium to sugar

  36. Sugar and Imperial Rivalry in the 18th Century • By 1770 -- in the context of mercantilism, sugar import duties were key to the revenues of European imperial powers • Sugar = #1 British import • War of the American Revolution (1775-1783) • Sugar colonies loyal and protected

  37. Abolitionism and Declining of Profitability in the Americas • 1780 - 1830 = declining profitability • British West Indies: loss of cheap North American provisions • Soil exhaustion • Global competition with spread of sugar cane and sugar beet production • Abolitionism in sugar cane regions, 1807-1840 • Exceptions Cuba (1862) where mechanization w/ British capital maintain profits and Brazil (1871) where slaves used in coffee and cocoa cultivation

  38. Imperialism and the Spread of Sugar Cane in the 19th Century • Virgin Soils: Spread to Guiana's, Pacific islands (Fiji and Hawaii), Mauritius, Sri Lanka and Southern Africa • Tied to global migration of indentured and contracted South and East Asian labor • Some mechanization and steam engines but even in 20th century -- 50% by hand tools • Industrialization -- after 1850 cane cultivation is separate from refining • Large urban ‘first world’ industrial manufacture (Domino Sugar Co, 1857) w/ transport revolutions

  39. Sugar Beet Production • Volume of sugar production increased from 250,000 metric tons to 4 million from 1800-1900 with spread of tea and also factory-produced sweets in circa 1900(Nestles, Hersheys, Roundtree, Wrigley etc.) • An important contributor was the sugar beet • German scientist Andreas Marrgraf (1747) discovered means of extracting sucrose from the beet • 1802 first sugar beet factory in Silesia

  40. Sugar Beets cont. • In terms of land productivity -- sugar cane is 4 times more productive, but beets have a much longer shelf life and are nitrogen-fixers (and grow in poor soils) • Beets are sliced and boiled -- juice is re-boiled to form crystals • Obstacles to the spread of sugar beet production -- high transport and fuel costs

  41. Sugar Beet Boom, 1860-1920 • Facilitated by rail transport and coal-fired boilers • Centered in Central Europe and Russia • Diffused with German, Ukrainian and Russian migrations of the late 19th century to North America as well as Chile and Argentina

  42. Contemporary Trends • Sugar consumption continues to rise (accounts for 9% of avg. human energy intake) in per capita terms and the growth is fastest in the developing world • 1960 Western Europe and USA = 60% • Asia = 25% • Africa = 5% • By 2000 -- the ‘West’ = 30%; Asia = 45%; Africa = 15% • Western consumption slowing impacted by rising fructose and artificial sweeteners

  43. Contemporary Trends Cont. • 1900 to 2000 -- global production from 4 million metric tons to 150 metric tons per year • Consequence of the ‘Green Revolution’ and complete mechanization > 1945 • Much local production with sugar produced in 110 countries and less than 25% of production is exported • 30% beet and 70% cane • Low tech industry with significant trade regulation • Top producers -- Brazil, India, EU, China and USA

  44. The End of Sugar? • High-Fructose Corn Syrup • Japanese origins in the late 1960s (cheap and liquid) • Multi-national corporations and industrially produced food • Sugar consumption in the USA and Japan has declined since the 1980s (and diabetes has risen) • HFCS – quotas in Europe • Sugar’s continued growth sustained by developing world and soft drink consumption! • 33% increase in the last decade

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