Sugar Changed the World

“Sugar created a hunger, a need, which swept from one corner of the world to another, bringing the most terrible misery and destruction, but then, too, the most inspiring ideas of liberty.” 

Along with the first quote, this passage helps set up a major theme of the book: that the story of sugar has both negative and positive implications. Aronson and Budhos argue that the history of sugar involves inhumane systems of labor like slavery and indentured servitude. However, it also made the modern world more diverse and interconnected, and it prompted activists and revolutionaries into expanding our ideas of liberty and human rights.

“The ever-curious Greeks were glad to learn of sugar cane, but it was just one more interesting fact about the natural world, the way a postcard from a summer vacation might list the sights a family had recently seen. No one could have imagined that those ‘reeds’ would bring an end to the entire buzzing world of the Age of Honey.”

This quote discusses a key source of irony in the book’s narrative: that something as small as sugar could cause such great change over the centuries. It also explains that the potential of cane sugar was not immediately apparent. It took centuries of social, cultural, and technological change and events like the expansion of Islam to make the Age of Sugar possible.

“The traders who came up from Italy offered items they had bought from Muslims, which were not available in Europe: fruits such as oranges, apricots, and figs; dyes such as cochineal, which produces a rich red; rare fabrics such as cotton and raw silk. Many of the fabrics that we know of today came to Europe via the Muslims, and their names will show their origins: damask from Damascus, muslin from Mosul, gauzes from Giza.” 

An important recurring theme in the book is how, even before the Age of Sugar, societies were interconnected. They frequently exchanged ideas and goods. This passage is a good example of how Aronson and Budhos present world history as dynamic. 

“The only way to make a lot of sugar is to engineer a system in which an army of workers swarms through the fields, cuts the cane, and hauls the pile to be crushed into a syrup that flows into the boiling room. There, laboring around the clock, workers cook and clean the bubbling liquid so that the sweetest syrup turns into the sweetest sugar. This is not farming the way men and women had done it for thousands of years in the Age of Honey. It is much more like a factory, where masses of people must do every step right, on time, together, or the whole system collapses.” 

To understand why sugar is seen as the basis for “Hell”, it is important to understand what was involved in the cultivation and refinement of sugar. This description and other similar details given by Aronson and Budhos explain why processing sugar was such a labor-intensive process requiring a system like the plantation. Further, it helps explain why the invention of alternative sources of sugar did much to bring the system to an end. 

“As the common saying went: ‘Without sugar, no Brazil; without slaves, no sugar; without Angola, no slaves.’” 

Aronson and Budhos continually stress how interconnected the countries involved in the sugar trade were and how dependent certain countries became on the sugar and slave trades. This quote summarizes that network of dependence, with Europe depending on Brazil for sugar and Brazil depending on Angola for the slaves to make the sugar.

“The sugar that piled up on the docks near the plantations was something new in the world: pure sweetness, pure pleasure, so cheap that common people could afford it. Scientists have shown that people all over the world must learn to like salty tastes, sour tastes, mixed tastes. But from the moment we are born, we crave sweetness. Cane sugar was the first product in human history that perfectly satisfied that desire. And the bitter lives of the enslaved Africans produced so much sugar that pure sweetness began to spread around the world.” 

This is an explanation as to why sugar became such a powerful commodity: its inherent addictiveness. Also, this quote stresses one of the key ironies in Aronson and Budhos’s narrative: Despite the inherent sweetness of sugar, the trade created misery and bitterness. 

“Sugar plantations were farms, but they had to run like factories—with human beings as the tireless machines. The lives of sugar workers were ruled by the cane, and by the relentless pace of work.” 

Understanding the plantation system and how it worked is key to appreciating Aronson and Budhos’s argument. This passage brings home the point that plantations were a lot like factories, with work that was not only physically demanding, but also strictly regimented. 

“While the masters enjoyed the life of wealth in Europe, the daily routine of the plantations was left in the hands of the overseers. Most often poor men who came to the New World to make their fortunes, the overseers had not the slightest sympathy for their enslaved workers.” 

Aronson and Budhos argue that what made plantations Hell was not just the reality of slavery, but also the control held by overseers. The system was designed to ensure that Africans would not try to escape or fight back. For that system to work, it gave absolute power to and encouraged cruelty from poor, desperate men who migrated from Europe. 

“Sugar plantations were Hell because of the endless labor they demanded from slaves. They were Hell because of the many dangers and the injuries that they caused. They were Hell because the slaves who labored without end got nothing for their work—except to live another day, to work more. But none of these miseries was the true reason the plantations were so evil. The plantations were Hell because the masters and overseers were treated as gods—which turned them into devils.” 

As noted above, the plantation system placed no restrictions or regulations on what plantation owners and overseers could do to slaves. Along with the harsh working conditions, this made slavery in the sugar colonies even more brutal than many other forms of slavery practiced previously. 

“Starting around 1800, sugar became the staple food that allowed the English factories—the most advanced economies in the world—to run. Sugar supplied the energy, the hint of nutrition, the sweet taste to go with the warmth of tea that even the poorest factory worker could look forward to. Sugar was a necessity.” 

While by the time of Islamic expansion sugar was a luxury, in the Age of Sugar it became a necessity for workers. This quote also shows how sugar had become affordable, even to the working classes.

“Why were the English the first to build factories to mill cloth? Because of the wealth they gained, the trade connections they made, and the banking systems they developed in the slave and sugar trade. Indeed, the cheap cloth from the factories was used to clothe the slaves. English factories, you might say, were built, run, and paid for by sugar.” 

Aronson and Budhos argue that the history of sugar is mixed together with that of industrialization. The profits and trade that came from sugar made the factories possible, while sugar also provided workers the energy needed to work long, hard shifts at the factories. 

“When we talk about Atlantic slavery, we must describe sugar Hell, and yet that is only part of the story. Africans were at the heart of this great change in the economy, indeed in the lives of people throughout the world. Africans were the true global citizens—adjusting to a new land, a new religion, even to other Africans they would never have met in their homelands. Their labor made the Age of Sugar—the Industrial Age—possible.” 

Here, Aronson and Budhos get to the heart of their view of the history of sugar as having negative and positive impacts at the same time. While one could focus on the brutality of slavery, they also see the story of sugar as being the story of Africans changing the world through their presence in different regions.

“In the Age of Sugar, when slavery was more brutal than ever before, the idea that all humans are equal began to spread toppling kings, overturning governments, transforming the entire world.” 

This is one point at which Aronson and Budhos make explicit the link between sugar, slavery, and the revolutionary movements of the 18th and 19th centuries. Slavery provided a negative standard against which people like American colonists could view their own problems. Further, the movement against slavery gave strength to broader movements to expand the definition of human rights. 

“Why did people keep speaking of equality while profiting from slaves? In fact, the global hunger for slave-grown sugar led directly to the end of slavery. Following the strand of sugar and slavery leads directly into the tumult of the Age of Revolutions. For in North America, then England, France, Haiti, and once again North America, the Age of Sugar brought about the great, final clash between freedom and slavery.” 

Aronson and Budhos also acknowledge that people like the American revolutionaries continued to allow slavery, even though they spoke of human rights. Still, the tensions between ideas of property rights and human rights led into the revolutions and movements that would end slavery. 

“Free men were not the silent, dutiful children of a wise king-father; rather, they were adults who spoke up for themselves. This was a major step away from the old Age of Honey when a man’s job was to be useful, obedient, and content with his lot in life. To the Americans, owning and controlling property was the difference between freedom and slavery.” 

With this quote, Aronson and Budhos explain how the American revolutionaries perceived the issue of human rights. Even though slavery was maintained in the United States, the American Revolution still represented the broadening of human rights typical of the Age of Sugar. 

“The very fact that slave-made sugar was so popular made it harder for the English to ignore the reality of slavery.” 

A major advantage for abolitionists was the popularity and importance of sugar, which was no longer a luxury good. Using boycotts and raising public awareness of how sugar was made in the plantations formed an invaluable campaign for raising political pressure against slavery.

“Human rights versus property rights. That argument goes on today as, for example, we debate how closely to regulate coal mining. Is it best to let owners set rules, which is likely to give all of us cheaper coal, or to have the government set standards, which is more likely to protect workers and the environment?” 

“With their victory, the people of Saint Domingue announced that the conflict between freedom and property was over: ‘All men are equal’ meant that no men are property.” 

“With their victory, the people of Saint Domingue announced that the conflict between freedom and property was over: ‘All men are equal’ meant that no men are property.” 

The Haitian Revolution was a major achievement in the struggle between property and human rights. For the first time, slaves in the Americas overthrew their colonial overlords and founded their own nation. 

“Americans like [Thomas] Jefferson were proud of having fought for their freedom. But as long as they could still see Africans as property, they could not treat Haitians are equally brave and courageous human beings. For if Haitians could claim their freedom and be recognized by America, why couldn’t slaves within the United States do the same thing?”

Aronson and Budhos explain how “fear” was a problem for Haiti, even after Haitians successfully fought for their independence from French and British interference. Fear of slave revolts spreading elsewhere caused the United States and the European powers to refuse to recognize the government of Haiti. Unfortunately, this failure to recognize the country would irreparably damage Haiti’s prosperity. 

“Jazz was born in Louisiana. Could it be that a population of teenagers, almost all of them male, were inspired to develop their own music as a way to speak, to compete, to announce who they were to the world?” 

This is one of several examples in which the authors present a cultural innovation as having been brought about by the Age of Sugar. Specifically, jazz is the creation of slaves or ex-slaves. Spreading diversity and creating new cultures or combining different cultures are major positive impacts Aronson and Budhos discuss. 

“Indenture was not exactly slavery, but it was not exactly freedom, either.” 

Indentured servitude was an improvement over slavery. It paid a wage, and it was intended only for a period of some years, not a lifetime. However, indentured servants were open to great abuse and exploitation.

“By the turn of the twentieth century, the colonies were changing. Sugar still dominated the local economy. But now there were more and more ‘free’ workers those who had moved off the estates and lived in their own houses, splitting their time between sugar work and their own businesses. There were Indian shopkeepers, traders, and rice growers. The Africans, too, had migrated to the cities, where they became clerks, teachers, or servants in wealthy households. A new society was emerging one that had its roots in the dark history of slavery but was also moving into the future.” 

Aronson and Budhos refer here to the move toward the end of the Age of Sugar. The sugar trade still dominated the economy of these areas. However, the peoples who had moved around the world because of slavery and indentured servitude were establishing new communities and cultures. 

“Underneath the clash over rights, laws, and work rules, there was a deeper truth that the planters were sensing: The Age of Sugar was ending. On the one hand, the work on the plantations was now guided by a web of laws and rules that even an Indian coolie like Bechu could use to challenge the owners. Workers were individuals, not property. On the other hand, world sugar prices were plummeting. Owners no longer had the economic clout of being a mainstay of the economy. Instead, smaller plantations were going bankrupt. The old ways were simply not working anymore.” 

Here is a further explanation of how the Age of Sugar ended. Plantations were in economic decline, and their relationships to workers were under greater regulation. This regulation ended the exploitation of workers that was a cornerstone of the Age of Sugar.