The World of Sugar : How the Sweet Stuff Transformed Our Politics, Health, and Environment over 2,000 Years / Ulbe Bosma.
Bosma, Ulbe, author.
2023
TX560.S9 B67 2023
Available Online

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Title The World of Sugar : How the Sweet Stuff Transformed Our Politics, Health, and Environment over 2,000 Years / Ulbe Bosma.
Author Bosma, Ulbe, author.
ISBN 9780674293311
DOI https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674293311
Published Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2023]
Copyright ©2023
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource (464 p.)
Other Standard Identifiers 10.4159/9780674293311 doi
Call Number TX560.S9 B67 2023
Dewey Decimal Classification 641.3/36
Summary The definitive 2,500-year history of sugar and its human costs, from its little-known origins as a luxury good in Asia to worldwide environmental devastation and the obesity pandemic.For most of history, humans did without refined sugar. After all, it serves no necessary purpose in our diets, and extracting it from plants takes hard work and ingenuity. Granulated sugar was first produced in India around the sixth century BC, yet for almost 2,500 years afterward sugar remained marginal in the diets of most people. Then, suddenly, it was everywhere. How did sugar find its way into almost all the food we eat, fostering illness and ecological crisis along the way?The World of Sugar begins with the earliest evidence of sugar production. Through the Middle Ages, traders brought small quantities of the precious white crystals to rajahs, emperors, and caliphs. But after sugar crossed the Mediterranean to Europe, where cane could not be cultivated, demand spawned a brutal quest for supply. European cravings were satisfied by enslaved labor; two-thirds of the 12.5 million Africans taken across the Atlantic were destined for sugar plantations. By the twentieth century, sugar was a major source of calories in diets across Europe and North America.Sugar transformed life on every continent, creating and destroying whole cultures through industrialization, labor migration, and changes in diet. Sugar made fortunes, corrupted governments, and shaped the policies of technocrats. And it provoked freedom cries that rang with world-changing consequences. In Ulbe Bosma's definitive telling, to understand sugar's past is to glimpse the origins of our own world of corn syrup and ethanol and begin to see the threat that a not-so-simple commodity poses to our bodies, our environment, and our communities.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Mai 2023)
In EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2023 English
EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2023
EBOOK PACKAGE History 2023 English
EBOOK PACKAGE History 2023
Harvard University Press Complete eBook-Package 2023
Available in Other Form print 9780674279391
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Frontmatter
Contents
Timeline
Dramatis Personae
Introduction
1 Asia's World of Sugar
2 Sugar Going West
3 War and Slavery
4 Science and Steam
5 State and Industry
6 Slavery Stays
7 Crisis and Wonder Cane
8 Global Sugar, National Identities
9 American Sugar Kingdom
10 Rising Protectionism
11 The Proletariat
12 Failed Decolonization
13 Corporate Sugar
14 Sweeter Than Nature
Conclusion
Notes
Acknowledgments
Image Credits
Index

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