SUGAR

Sugar is a crystallized material nutritionally important as a source of dietary carbohydrates and it can also be used as a sweetener and a preservative. It is predominately derived from sugarcane and sugar beets. Other sources are sorghum (a tropical grass), maple trees, and palms. Sugarcane was cultivated by South Pacific island natives as early as 6000 b.c.. During ancient times it was also grown in India, where it was noticed around 325 b.c. by Greek soldiers under the command of Alexander the Great (356–323 b.c.). While cultivation and refinement of sugarcane spread from India, it did not reach Europe until a.d. 711, when Moors (North African Muslims) invaded the Iberian Peninsula (present-day Spain and Portugal). In the 1490s Portuguese explorers carried sugarcane with them into the New World and planted it in Brazil. The Spanish colonists planted sugarcane in the Canary Islands at about the same time. Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) took sugarcane cuttings to the island of Santo Domingo (present-day Dominican Republic) in 1493. About twenty years later the first sugar mill in the Western Hemisphere was built there. The Dutch introduced sugarcane cultivation and refining to Barbados. The French introduced it to Martinique; the British introduced it to the West Indies.

The crop became important to colonial economies throughout the Caribbean, where the Europeans used slave labor from Africa to work the fields. Sugar was the principle export of the region during the 1600s, but by the end of the century the economies of many Caribbean islands collapsed. Slaves were sold to growers on the North American mainland, where they were engaged in the production of other crops (such as rice, indigo, and tobacco). The sugarcane plant did not reach the North American mainland until 1751, when Jesuit (Catholic) missionaries brought sugarcane to Louisiana. A sugar mill was built there forty years later.

The cultivation of sugar beets dates back to ancient Babylonia (present-day Iraq), Egypt, and Greece. However, only as late as 1744 it was discovered that sugar beets are a source of the same sugar found in sugarcane. It was fifty years more before a practical method for removing the sugar from the beets was developed. In the early 1800s sugar mills were built across Europe and Russia. Sugar from beets was not introduced in the United States until 1838.

See also: American Plants, Triangular Trade