Week 1️⃣ 3️⃣

Sugar has one of the most consequential histories of any commodity, tying together politics, labour, culture, and global trade.

The story begins in Papua New Guinea around 8,000–10,000 years ago, where sugarcane was first domesticated and chewed for its sweet juice. From there it spread into Southeast Asia and India, where techniques for boiling and crystallizing sugar emerged by the first millennium CE. Persian and later Islamic cultivators refined these methods, and by the Middle Ages, sugar was grown across the Mediterranean. Europeans first encountered it during the Crusades, where it was considered a rare and exotic luxury.

The Age of Exploration radically expanded sugar’s scope. Spanish and Portuguese colonizers carried cane to the Canary Islands, Madeira, and eventually the Caribbean and Brazil. The hot, humid climate proved ideal, but sugar was extremely labor-intensive. Indigenous peoples were quickly decimated by disease and violence, leading Europeans to turn to the transatlantic slave trade. Millions of Africans were forcibly transported to toil in cane fields and mills, where conditions were so brutal that the average life expectancy on many Caribbean plantations was only about eight years.

By the 18th century, sugar was at the heart of the triangular trade, a vast system linking three continents. Enslaved Africans were shipped across the Atlantic to the Americas, where they were forced to produce sugar, tobacco, and other plantation crops. Those goods, especially sugar and rum, were carried to Europe, feeding growing consumer demand. In turn, European merchants sent textiles, manufactured goods, and weapons to Africa, where they were exchanged for more captives. This cycle created immense wealth in Europe while devastating African societies and enslaving millions.

At the same time, sugar reshaped everyday life in Europe. Tea and coffee—bitter on their own—were transformed into pleasant daily beverages when sweetened. The sudden availability of cheap sugar fueled their explosive popularity, helping create new social rituals in coffeehouses, parlors, and workplaces. The pairing of sugar with these caffeinated drinks not only changed diets but also influenced routines of work and leisure across Europe.

The brutality underpinning this sweetness was laid bare in 1781 when the crew of the British slave ship Zong threw over 130 enslaved Africans overboard to claim insurance on their “lost cargo.” The case, treated in court as an insurance dispute rather than mass murder, outraged the public and energized abolitionists. A decade later, in 1791, activists organized a boycott of West Indian sugar—the first large-scale consumer boycott in history— urging households to avoid slave-produced sugar. Symbols like “anti-slavery” sugar bowls spread the message that everyday consumption carried moral weight.

By the 19th century, geopolitics and innovation reshaped the market again. Napoleon, cut off from Caribbean supplies during British blockades, championed sugar beet cultivation in Europe. Unlike cane, sugar beet grows underground and can thrive in temperate climates. Once refining techniques improved, beet sugar became a viable alternative, reducing dependence on colonial cane.

Sugar’s influence did not end with empire. In the 20th century, internal documents later revealed that the Sugar Research Foundation paid Harvard scientists in the 1960s to downplay links between sugar and heart disease, instead shifting blame to dietary fat. This deception helped fuel the “low-fat” craze of the 1980s and 1990s, during which sugar quietly filled processed foods as fat was removed. The health consequences of that manipulation—obesity, diabetes, and metabolic disorders—continue to be reckoned with today.

From its roots in New Guinea to its role in slavery, global beverages, consumer activism, industrial science, and modern health, sugar’s history shows how one crop can reshape the world.