People domesticated sugar around 8,000 BCE in New Guinea. The technique of chemically refining sugar first emerged in India about 2,500 years ago, and this knowledge spread towards China, Iran, and the early Islamic worlds.

"By the fourteenth century, Cyprus and Sicily had become important Mediterranean producers of sugar for the Europeans. This success encouraged Europeans to expand the sugar industry to the Atlantic Islands, South America, and the Americas. By the time of Elizabeth I’s and James I’s rule, increasing amounts of sugar was brought from sugar plantations (engenhos) in Brazil. These engenhos demanded the enforced labour of indigenous peoples, and, increasingly, enslaved Africans, who would work in appalling conditions to crush the sugarcane, extract the juice, and boil this juice at a hot temperature to produce sugar molasses, which would be shipped to Europe in large barrels called hogsheads."

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/sugar/

#sugar #history #Brazil #raceMaking #racialization

Plantations industrialised with capitalism.
Let's spin a sugary yarn 🧶

@economics @histodons @geography

#EstelleSays #sugar #tobacco #accumulation #racism #extractivism #landGrab #raceMaking #lineofColor #racialization #rapeCulture #systemicRacism #capitalism #whiteSupremacy #whiteFragility #Discovery #Encounter #Columbus #plantations #America #history #slavery #England #UnitedKingdom #GreatBritain #Bristol #Liverpool #London #decolonial #antiRacism #sweet #sweets #Caribbean #marketing #commOdon