History of sugar

Thehistory of sugarhas five main phases:
Sugarwas first produced from sugarcane plants in India sometime after the first century AD.The derivation of the word "sugar" is thought to be fromSanskritशर्करा(śarkarā), meaning "ground or candied sugar," originally "grit, gravel". Sanskrit literature fromancient India, written between 1500 and 500BCprovides the first documentation of the cultivation of sugar cane and of the manufacture of sugar in the Bengal region of theIndian subcontinent.
Known worldwide by the end of themedieval period, sugar was very expensiveand was considered a "fine spice",but from about the year 1500, technological improvements and New World sources began turning it into a much cheaper bulk commodity.
There are two centers of domestication for sugarcane: one forSaccharum officinarumbyPapuansinNew Guineaand another forSaccharum sinensebyAustronesiansinTaiwanand southernChina. Papuans and Austronesians originally primarily used sugarcane as food for domesticated pigs. The spread of bothS. officinarumandS. sinenseis closely linked to the migrations of theAustronesian peoples.Saccharum barberiwas only cultivated inIndiaafter the introduction ofS. officinarum.
Saccharum officinarumwas first domesticated inNew Guineaand the islands east of theWallace LinebyPapuans, where it is the modern center of diversity. Beginning at around 6,000BPthey wereselectively bredfrom the nativeSaccharum robustum. From New Guinea it spread westwards toIsland Southeast Asiaafter contact with Austronesians, where it hybridized withSaccharum spontaneum.
The second domestication center is mainland southern China and Taiwan whereS. sinensewas a primarycultigenof theAustronesian peoples. Words for sugarcane exist in theProto-Austronesianlanguages inTaiwan, reconstructed as*təbuSor**CebuS, which became*tebuhinProto-Malayo-Polynesian. It was one of theoriginal major cropsof theAustronesian peoplesfrom at least 5,500BP. Introduction of the sweeterS. officinarummay have gradually replaced it throughout its cultivated range in Island Southeast Asia.
From Island Southeast Asia,S. officinarumwas spread eastward intoPolynesiaandMicronesiaby Austronesian voyagers as acanoe plantby around 3,500BP. It was also spread westward and northward by around 3,000BPto China and India by Austronesian traders, where it further hybridized withSaccharum sinenseandSaccharum barberi. From there it spread further into westernEurasiaand theMediterranean.
India, where the process of refining cane juice into granulated crystals was developed, was often visited by imperial convoys (such as those from China) to learn about cultivation and sugar refining.By the sixth century AD, sugar cultivation and processing had reached Persia. In theMediterranean, sugarcane was possibly brought through the Arabmedievalexpansion."Wherever they went, themedievalArabs brought with them sugar, the product and the technology of its production."
Spanish and Portuguese exploration and conquest in the fifteenth century carried sugar south-west ofIberia.Henry the Navigatorintroduced cane toMadeirain 1425, while the Spanish, having eventually subdued theCanary Islands, introduced sugar cane to them.In 1493, on his second voyage,Christopher Columbuscarried sugarcane seedlings to theNew World, in particularHispaniola.
Sugarcane originated in tropical Indian subcontinent andSoutheast Asia.Different species likely originated in different locations withS. barberioriginating inIndiaandS. eduleandS. officinarumcoming fromNew Guinea.Originally, people chewed sugarcane raw to extract its sweetness.Indiansdiscovered how to crystallize sugar during theGupta Empire,c.350 ADalthough literary evidence from Indian treatises such asArthashastrain the 2nd century AD indicates that refined sugar was already being produced in India.
Indian sailors, consumers of clarified butter and sugar, carried sugar by varioustrade routes.Travelling Buddhist monks brought sugar crystallization methods to China.During the reign ofHarsha(r. 606–647) inNorth India, Indian envoys inTang Chinataught sugarcane cultivation methods afterEmperor Taizong of Tang(r. 626–649) made his interest in sugar known, and China soon established its first sugarcane cultivation in the seventh century.Chinese documents confirm at least two missions to India, initiated in 647 AD, for obtaining technology for sugar-refining.In India,theIranandChina, sugar became a staple of cooking anddesserts.
Early refining methods involved grinding or pounding the cane in order to extract the juice, and then boiling down the juice or drying it in the sun to yield sugary solids that looked likegravel. The Sanskrit word for "sugar" (sharkara) also means "gravel" or "sand".In Persian:  shakar (Traditional Persian: شکر ) (the root of the world word sugar from Persian shakar,which   is from Sanskrit śarkarā) means sweetening seeds in Farsi.Similarly, theChineseuse the term "gravel sugar" (Traditional Chinese: 砂糖) for what is known in the  west as "table sugar".
In 1792, sugar prices soared inGreat Britain. On 15 March 1792, his Majesty's Ministers to theBritish parliamentpresented a report related to the production of refined sugar inBritish India. Lieutenant J. Paterson, of theBengal Presidency, reported that refined sugar could be produced in India with many superior advantages, and a lot more cheaply than in the West Indies.
There are records of knowledge of sugar among the ancient Greeks and Romans, but only as an imported medicine, and not as a food. For example, the Greek physicianDioscoridesin the 1st century (AD) wrote: "There is a kind of coalesced honey calledsakcharon[i.e. sugar] found in reeds in India andEudaimon Arabia[i.e. Yemen] similar in consistency to salt and brittle enough to be broken between the teeth like salt. It is good dissolved in water for the intestines and stomach, and [can be] taken as a drink to help [relieve] a painful bladder and kidneys."Pliny the Elder, a 1st-century (AD) Roman, also described sugar as medicinal: "Sugar is made in Arabia as well, but Indian sugar is better. It is a kind of honey found in cane, white as gum, and it crunches between the teeth. It comes in lumps the size of a hazelnut. Sugar is used only for medical purposes."
During the medieval era, Arab entrepreneurs adopted sugar production techniques from India and expanded the industry. Medieval Arabs in some cases set up largeplantationsequipped with on-sitesugar mills or refineries. The cane sugar plant, which is native to a tropical climate, requires both a lot of water and a lot of heat to thrive. The cultivation of the plant spread throughout the medieval Arab world using artificial irrigation. Sugar cane was first grown extensively in medieval Southern Europe during the period ofArab rule in Sicilybeginning around the 9th century.In addition to Sicily,Al-Andalus(in what is currently Spain and Portugal) was an important center of sugar production, beginning by the tenth century.
From the Arab world, sugar was exported throughout Europe. The volume of imports increased in the later medieval centuries as indicated by the increasing references tosugar consumptionin late medieval Western writings. But cane sugar remained an expensive import. Its price per pound in 14th and 15th century England was about equally as high as imported spices from tropical Asia such as mace (nutmeg), ginger, cloves, and pepper, which had to be transported across the Indian Ocean in that era.
Clive Pontingtraces the spread of the cultivation of sugarcane from its introduction intoMesopotamia, then theLevantand the islands of the eastern Mediterranean, especiallyCyprus, by the 10th century.He also notes that it spread along the coast of East Africa to reachZanzibar.
Crusadersbrought sugar home with them to Europe after their campaigns in theHoly Land, where they encountered caravans carrying what they called "sweet salt".Early in the 12th century, Venice acquired some villages nearTyreand set up estates to produce sugar for export to Europe, where it supplemented honey as the only other available sweetener.Crusade chroniclerWilliam of Tyre, writing in the late 12th century, described sugar as "a most precious product, very necessary for the use and health of mankind".The first record of sugar in English is in the late 13th century.
Ponting recounts the reliance on slavery of the early European sugar entrepreneurs:
During the 1390s, a better press was developed, which doubled the amount of juice that was obtained from the sugarcane and helped to cause the economic expansion of sugar plantations toAndalusiaand to theAlgarve. It started inMadeirain 1455, using advisers from Sicily and (largely) Genoese capital for the mills. The accessibility of Madeira attracted Genoese and Flemish traders keen to bypass Venetian monopolies. "By 1480 Antwerp had some seventy ships engaged in the Madeira sugar trade, with the refining and distribution concentrated in Antwerp. The 1480's saw sugar production extended to the Canary Islands. By the 1490's Madeira had overtaken Cyprus as a producer of sugar."African slaves also worked in the sugar plantations of the Kingdom of Castile around Valencia.
The Portuguese took sugar toBrazil. By 1540, there were 800cane sugar millsinSanta CatarinaIsland and there were another 2,000 on the north coast of Brazil,Demarara, andSurinam. The first sugar harvest happened inHispaniolain 1501; and many sugar mills had been constructed inCubaandJamaicaby the 1520s.
The approximately 3,000 small sugar mills that were built before 1550 in the New World created an unprecedented demand forcast irongears, levers, axles and other implements. Specialist trades in mold-making and iron casting developed in Europe due to the expansion of sugar production. Sugar mill construction sparked development of the technological skills needed for a nascentindustrial revolutionin the early 17th century.
After 1625, theDutchtransported sugarcane from South America to the Caribbean islands, where it was grown fromBarbadosto theVirgin Islands.
Contemporaries often compared the worth of sugar with valuable commodities includingmusk,pearls, andspices. Sugar prices declined slowly as its production became multi-sourced throughout theEuropean colonies. Once an indulgence only of the rich, the consumption of sugar also became increasingly common among the poor as well. Sugarproductionincreased in the mainland North American colonies, inCuba, and inBrazil. The labour force at first included Europeanindentured servantsand localNative American, and African enslaved people. However, European diseases such assmallpoxand African ones such asmalariaandyellow feversoon reduced the numbers of local Native Americans.Europeans were also very susceptible to malaria and yellow fever, and the supply of indentured servants was limited. Africanenslavedpeople became the dominant source of plantation workers, because they were more resistant tomalariaand yellow fever, and because thesupply of enslaved peoplewas abundant on the African coast.
In the process of whitening sugar, the charred bones of dead enslaved people often supplemented the traditionally used animal bones.
During the 18th century, sugar became enormously popular.Great Britain, for example, consumed five times as much sugar in 1770 as in 1710.By 1750, sugar surpassed grain as "the most valuable commodity in European trade — it made up a fifth of all European imports and in the last decades of the century four-fifths of the sugar came from the British and French colonies in the West Indies."From the 1740s until the 1820s, sugar was Britain's most valuable import.
The sugar market went through a series ofbooms. The heightened demand and production of sugar came about to a large extent due to a great change in the eating habits of many Europeans. For example, they began consumingjams,candy, tea, coffee, cocoa, processed foods, and other sweet victuals in much greater amounts. Reacting to this increasing trend, the Caribbean islands took advantage of the situation and set about producing still more sugar. In fact, they produced up to ninety percent of the sugar that the western Europeans consumed. Some islands proved more successful than others when it came to producing the product. In Barbados and the BritishLeeward Islands, sugar provided 93% and 97% respectively of exports.
Planters later began developing ways to boost production even more. For example, they began using more farming methods when growing their crops. They also developed more advanced mills and began using better types of sugarcane. In the eighteenth century "the French colonies were the most successful, especially Saint-Domingue, where better irrigation, water-power and machinery, together with concentration on newer types of sugar, increased profits."Despite these and other improvements, the price of sugar reached soaring heights, especially during events such as the revolt against the Dutchand theNapoleonic Wars. Sugar remained in high demand, and the islands' planters knew exactly how to take advantage of the situation.
As Europeansestablished sugar plantationson the larger Caribbean islands, prices fell in Europe. By the 18th century all levels of society had become common consumers of the former luxury product. At first most sugar in Britain went into tea, but laterconfectioneryandchocolatesbecame extremely popular. Many Britons (especially children) also ate jams.Suppliers commonly sold sugar in the form of asugarloafand consumers requiredsugar nips, a pliers-like tool, to break off pieces.
Sugarcane quickly exhausts thesoilin which it grows, and planters pressed larger islands with fresher soil into production in the nineteenth century as demand for sugar in Europe continued to increase: "average consumption in Britain rose from four pounds per head in 1700 to eighteen pounds in 1800, thirty-six pounds by 1850 and over one hundred pounds by the twentieth century."In the 19th century Cuba rose to become the richest land in the Caribbean (with sugar as its dominant crop) because it formed the only major islandlandmassfree of mountainous terrain. Instead, nearly three-quarters of its land formed a rolling plain — ideal for planting crops. Cuba also prospered above other islands because Cubans used better methods when harvesting the sugar crops: they adopted modern milling methods such aswatermills, enclosed furnaces,steam engines, and vacuum pans. All these technologies increased productivity. Cuba also retained slavery longer than most of the rest of the Caribbean islands.
After theHaitian Revolutionestablished the independent state ofHaiti, sugar production in that country declined andCubareplaced Saint-Domingue as the world's largest producer.
Long established inBrazil, sugar production spread to other parts ofSouth America, as well as to newer European colonies inAfricaand in the Pacific, where it became especially important inFiji.Mauritius,NatalandQueenslandin Australia started growing sugar. The older and newer sugar production areas now tended to use indentured labour rather than enslaved people, with workers "shipped across the world ... [and] ... held in conditions of near slavery for up to ten years... In the second half of the nineteenth century over 450,000 indentured labourers went from India to the British West Indies, others went to Natal, Mauritius and Fiji (where they became a majority of the population). In Queensland workers from the Pacific islands were moved in. OnHawaii, they came fromChinaandJapan. The Dutch transferred large numbers of people fromJavatoSurinam."It is said that the sugar plantations would not have thrived without the aid of the African enslaved people. InColombia, the planting of sugar started very early on, and entrepreneurs imported many African enslaved people to cultivate the fields. The industrialization of the Colombian industry started in 1901 with the establishment ofManuelita, the first steam-powered sugar mill in South America, byLatvian JewishimmigrantJames Martin Eder.
Sugar was a luxury in Europe until the early 19th century, when it became more widely available, due to the rise ofbeet sugarinPrussia, and later inFranceunderNapoleon.Beet sugar was a German invention, since, in 1747,Andreas Sigismund Marggrafannounced the discovery of sugar in beets and devised a method using alcohol to extract it.Marggraf's student,Franz Karl Achard, devised an economical industrial method to extract the sugar in its pure form in the late 18th century.Achard first produced beet sugar in 1783 inKaulsdorf. In 1801, under the patronage of KingFrederick William III of Prussia(reigned 1797–1840), the world's first beet sugar production facility was established inCunern,Silesia(then part of Prussia).While never profitable, this plant operated from 1801 until its destruction during theNapoleonic Wars(ca. 1802–1815).
The works of Marggraf and Achard were the starting point for the sugar industry in Europe,and for the modern sugar industry in general, since sugar was no longer a luxury product and a product almost only produced in warmer climates.
In France,Napoleoncut off from Caribbean imports by a Britishblockade, and at any rate not wanting to fund British merchants, banned imports of sugar in 1813 and ordered the planting of 32,000 hectares with beetroot.A beet sugar industry emerged, especially afterJean-Baptiste Quéruelindustrialized the operation ofBenjamin Delessert.
The United Kingdom Beetroot Sugar Association was established in 1832 but efforts to establish sugar beet in the UK were not very successful. Sugar beets provided approximately 2/3 of world sugar production in 1899.  46% of British sugar came from Germany and Austria.  Sugar prices in Britain collapsed towards the end of the 19th century.  The British Sugar Beet Society was set up in 1915 and by 1930 there were 17 factories in England and one in Scotland, supported under the provisions of the  British Sugar (Subsidy) Act 1925. By 1935 homegrown sugar was 27.6% of British consumption.  By 1929 109,201 people were employed in the British sugar beet industry, with about 25,000 more casual labourers.
Beginning in the late 18th century, the production of sugar became increasingly mechanized. Thesteam enginefirst powered a sugar mill inJamaicain 1768, and soon after, steam replaced direct firing as the source of process heat.
In 1813 theBritishchemistEdward Charles Howardinvented a method of refining sugar that involved boiling the cane juice not in an open kettle, but in a closed vessel heated by steam and held under partial vacuum. At reduced pressure, water boils at a lower temperature, and this development both saved fuel and reduced the amount of sugar lost throughcaramelization. Further gains in fuel-efficiency came from themultiple-effect evaporator, designed by theUnited StatesengineerNorbert Rillieux(perhaps as early as the 1820s, although the first working model dates from 1845). This system consisted of a series of vacuum pans, each held at a lower pressure than the previous one. The vapors from each pan served to heat the next, with minimal heat wasted. Modern  industries use multiple-effect evaporators for evaporating water.
The process of separating sugar frommolassesalso received mechanical attention: David Weston first applied thecentrifugeto this task inHawaiiin 1852.
In the United States and Japan,high-fructose corn syruphas replaced sugar in some uses, particularly in soft drinks and processed foods.
The process by which high-fructose corn syrup is produced was first developed by Richard O. Marshall and Earl R. Kooi in 1957.The industrial production process was refined by Dr. Y. Takasaki at Agency of Industrial Science and Technology of Ministry of International Trade and Industry of Japan in 1965–1970. High-fructose corn syrup was rapidly introduced to many processed foods andsoft drinksin the United States from around 1975 to 1985.
A system of sugar tariffs and sugar quotas imposed in 1977 in the United States significantly increased the cost of imported sugar and U.S. producers sought cheaper sources. High-fructose corn syrup, derived from corn, is more economical because the domestic U.S. price of sugar is twice the global priceand the price ofcornis kept low through government subsidies paid to growers.High-fructose corn syrup became an attractive substitute, and is preferred over cane sugar among the vast majority of American food and beverage manufacturers.  Soft drink makers such asCoca-ColaandPepsiuse sugar in other nations, but switched to high-fructose corn syrup in the United States in 1984.
The average American consumed approximately 37.8 lb (17.1 kg) of high-fructose corn syrup in 2008, versus 46.7 lb (21.2 kg) of sucrose.
In recent years it has been hypothesized that the increase of high-fructose corn syrup usage in processed foods may be linked to varioushealth conditions, includingmetabolic syndrome,hypertension,dyslipidemia,hepatic steatosis,insulin resistance, andobesity. However, there is to date little evidence that high-fructose corn syrup is any unhealthier, calorie for calorie, than sucrose or other simple sugars. The fructose content and fructose:glucose ratio of high-fructose corn syrup do not differ markedly from clarified apple juice.Some researchers hypothesize that fructose may trigger the process by which fats are formed, to a greater extent than other simple sugars.However, most commonly used blends of high-fructose corn syrup contain a nearly one-to-one ratio of fructose and glucose, just like common sucrose, and should therefore be metabolically identical after the first steps ofsucrose metabolism, in which the sucrose is split into fructose and glucose components. At the very least, the increasing prevalence of high-fructose corn syrup has certainly led to an increase in added sugar calories in food, which may reasonably increase the incidence of these and other diseases.