Sugar and Slavery, Obesity, Suicide.
Gravel sugar or table sugar, from the sugarcane plant.
Sugar and Slavery.
The History of Sugar (2020) states the use and trading of crystalline rock or gravel sugar, table sugar, from the sugarcane plant can be dated back to the 1st century AD, with trade between India and the Greek and Roman Empires. It was very valuable but labour intensive to produce and was classed amongst the expensive spices being traded and was also solely used as a medicine.
Because of its medicinal properties or more likely because of its highly palatable nature, its popularity spread as did the demand for sugar.
By the 18th century sugar was extremely popular in Great Britain with much of the sugar being consumed in tea, with later popularity in chocolate and confectionary.
At that time plantations of sugarcane were established in the West Indies, with sugar being Britain’s most profitable import. The greatest limitation to producing large amounts of sugar and thus profits, was labour availability for the manual work of intensive farming and grinding of the cane to extract the juice.
This labour shortage was over-come by capturing people along the African West coast and forcing them to work as slaves in the West Indies and Caribbean Islands…
