Sugar is a relatively new addition to our diet. Like many of the world's resources, the discovery and widespread uptake of sugar led to the exploitation of millions of people.
Most processed food contains sugar but that hasn't always been the case, and its history is steeped in slaveryMost processed food contains sugar but that hasn't always been the case, and its history is steeped in slaverySugar is everywhere. Nearly every packet of food sitting on the supermarket shelves or in your home pantry contains processed sugar.Listen to the podcast
Because early production of sugar was limited, it was considered an extreme luxury and "a sign of power and wealth". Then gradually the Canary Islands, Madeira, eastern Atlantic Islands, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Latin America and the Caribbean region all became sites to grow sugar for the European market.From the mid-15th century, more than 12 million men, women and children were captured in Africa and transported by European slave ships to the Americas.
In Cuba and Brazil, slavery continued, while the British, French and Dutch transitioned to contract labour, recruiting immigrants from China and India to work in the Caribbean.A decade after Britain abolished slavery, Australia began its own slave trade, which became known as blackbirding. "This is a family story of more than three centuries and their sales became very successful and very powerful because they were able to shift from the actual plantation economy … to financing the slave trade to financing other plantations. And eventually they ended up as a kind of aristocracy in Britain, " Bosma says.
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