The World of Sugar : How the Sweet Stuff Transformed Our Politics, Health, and Environment over 2,000 Years
Language: English Publication details: Cambridge Belknap Press 2023Description: xi, 448p. illISBN: 9780674294073 (HB)Subject(s): Food and Beverages -- History | Sugars -- History | Commerce | Sugar trade -- History | General![](/opac-tmpl/bootstrap/itemtypeimg/npl/Rare-Book.gif)
Current library | Home library | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode |
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IMSc Library | IMSc Library | 641 BOS (Browse shelf (Opens below)) | Available | 77794 |
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
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.
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