Chapter Four Sweet Nexus: Sugar and the Origins of the Modern World!

Today I read Chapter Four Sweet Nexus: Sugar and the Origins of the Modern World. The beginning talks how so many people rely on the world trade. When I think about it, we as Americans take so many luxuries for granted! If you take a step back in time only the elites of hierarchy were the only peoples allowed to receive traded items. "The goods along the trade routes were consumed only rarely." Mass consumption started in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and that's when rarely traded items became commonly traded items.
The chapter talks about the origin of sugar, where it came from, the impact it had on the modern world, and sugar and the world. The Greeks had a concurrence with sugar in North western India in the fourth Century. Ancient Europeans referred to it has "honey from reeds". However, sugar was very common in China. In the seventh century when Muslims began to expand sugar gained global importance and was a luxury good in the Middle Ages.
In my opinion sugar is still important today! Almost everyone you will ever meet has had sugar at some point in their lifetime! Sugar can make nasty things taste good, and okay things taste great! However, even though many people still use sugar, many people don't! There are disease that prevent certain people from regular sugar intakes. Also many health conscious people are not into sugar and have sugar substitutes, such as guava, splenda, and even no sugar at all!
There are four aspects of caned sugar. "First, sugar cane grows in hot, moist areas." I used to live in Belize for a couple of years and during that time I found that sugar cane was commonly grown there. My family had fresh sugar cane growing on the farm so we were able to obtain fresh sugar and sugar cane whenever we wanted. Sugar cane itself is very sweet as well and can be eaten without the process of being turned into sugar! This is really cool! "Second, sugar production is exceptionally labor-intensive, requiring labor too be available year round," While reading the statement said earlier I was a little surprised that making sugar can be so time consuming and calls for so much labor! "Third, sugar is commercially viable only when it is produced on a relatively large scale." So if one has a small farm they would not be able to sell commercially because it is very unlikely that they will make the suggested amount. "Fourth, production of sugar for the market requires an initial stage of processing, making it, at least partially, an industrial enterprise." At this point I realized how much I did not know about sugar! Plantations were used to grow sugar cane and create sugar before it went to America. Before the crusades no one in Europe really knew about sugar which I found to be strange due to the fact that I can't drink my tea without sugar. Did they use honey? Did they even know about honey? My questions need to be answered!
Slavery played a large role in the creation and distribution of sugar as well. I don't like any idea of slavery modern or not. Don't get me started on the middle passage! I can't even begin to imagine what those people must have went through! What horrors they must have experienced all for some land owner's personal gain. I found this to be extremely upsetting not only because it actually happened and was such a horrific form of racism, but also because I have experienced racism throughout my life due to the color of my skin, which wouldn't have happened if racism didn't exist! The whole thing made me so sick! In my opinion none of it was worth a human being having to serve another human being and not being paid and being treated less than dirt while getting beaten for making mistakes which all human beings do! It's what makes us humans!  I honestly don't think sugar was or is that important and I can live without it if I have to! Not to mention all the people that died during the journey to become slaves and while being slaves! Not only was it in the Americas, it was in the Caribbean too!
"The connection between slavery and sugar was broken in the nineteenth century." It doesn't mean that slavery ended though. Sugar is still very popular today and it's crazy to think about how sugar used to be produced and that there are people out there that wouldn't mind having slaves do all the work. It's still a large part of the global market and sugar is also very important to this day! I will never understand why people have to complicate things by involving race or being too lazy or thinking to highly of oneself. One day maybe all of it will begin to make sense but for now we look back on this historical story and I am pleased to see how far we have come as human beings, not just Americans.