"Without projecting symbols against the differentiated class structures of the societies within which they are being manipulated, we cannot illuminate the link between sweetness and power". Through this declaration, Sidney Mintz, author of Sweetness and Power highlights the essence of examining classes and cultures in which how they correlate with sugar and exploitation. The juxtaposing terms, "sweetness" and "power", the former having a more amiable application than the latter, indicates the grappling dissimilarity between the projected familiarity with sugar and its positive reference in our culture, over the common historical erasure of the control of sugar by the European history. In the culturally anthropological novel, Mintz courses through
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The usage of sugar in our culture over time has exponentially increased as the product became a national favorite for the Europeans and the Americans, satiated by its applicable variety. The decrease of the price of sugar to the proletariat reveals the dismissal of the history over flavor or taste. Sugar in culture prevails in more positivity especially with the cake metaphor, which spoke on the importance of sugary desserts in celebratory events and festivities of culture. Sweetness revolutionized the market as the demand for sugar to match the regal sensation of the kings and the multiplicity of uses distracted customers from 19th Century England to worldwide consumers from the actual power of the authority, physically and internally. Mintz stated, "the English people came to view sugar as essential, supplying them with it became as much a political as an economic obligation. At the same time, the owners of the immense fortunes created by the labor of millions of slaves stolen from Africa". The glorification of the product subtly transformed in to an economic illusion and an indirect permission from customers to let megalomaniacs to exploit the labor of slaves, while prospering from the sales of sugar-related …show more content…
Unfortunately, only affluent and luxurious leaders possessed access to sugar, as the rarity of substance lead to its wealthy value. In colonial era, the mercantilist economic system encouraged the triangular trade, which foresaw the trade of Africans and sugar (saw back then as false commodities) and oversaw all of the nation's commercial interest. After 1650, sugar commerce exponentially decreased, which correlated with the increase in consumption for the proletariat. Progressively, power manifested in colonialism through the exploitation over miniature civilizations for control over the community and the fertile land. However, even since the ceasing of transcontinental slave trade and slavery, the power Europe possesses never dissipates, but transitions to capitalism. The power of the substance transitioned from those who owned the sugar to those selling the sugar, controlling the availability, consumption, and impact on society. With sugar possessing such gravity in societal consumption, the community's demand becomes endless, continuing a business with seldom caution nor care for the repercussions (disregard for slave labor/manual labor). Historical erasure displays heavily in chapter four, with the introduction of the terms of intensification and extensification. These terms, intensification-
The usage of sugar in our culture over time has exponentially increased as the product became a national favorite for the Europeans and the Americans, satiated by its applicable variety. The decrease of the price of sugar to the proletariat reveals the dismissal of the history over flavor or taste. Sugar in culture prevails in more positivity especially with the cake metaphor, which spoke on the importance of sugary desserts in celebratory events and festivities of culture. Sweetness revolutionized the market as the demand for sugar to match the regal sensation of the kings and the multiplicity of uses distracted customers from 19th Century England to worldwide consumers from the actual power of the authority, physically and internally. Mintz stated, "the English people came to view sugar as essential, supplying them with it became as much a political as an economic obligation. At the same time, the owners of the immense fortunes created by the labor of millions of slaves stolen from Africa". The glorification of the product subtly transformed in to an economic illusion and an indirect permission from customers to let megalomaniacs to exploit the labor of slaves, while prospering from the sales of sugar-related …show more content…
Unfortunately, only affluent and luxurious leaders possessed access to sugar, as the rarity of substance lead to its wealthy value. In colonial era, the mercantilist economic system encouraged the triangular trade, which foresaw the trade of Africans and sugar (saw back then as false commodities) and oversaw all of the nation's commercial interest. After 1650, sugar commerce exponentially decreased, which correlated with the increase in consumption for the proletariat. Progressively, power manifested in colonialism through the exploitation over miniature civilizations for control over the community and the fertile land. However, even since the ceasing of transcontinental slave trade and slavery, the power Europe possesses never dissipates, but transitions to capitalism. The power of the substance transitioned from those who owned the sugar to those selling the sugar, controlling the availability, consumption, and impact on society. With sugar possessing such gravity in societal consumption, the community's demand becomes endless, continuing a business with seldom caution nor care for the repercussions (disregard for slave labor/manual labor). Historical erasure displays heavily in chapter four, with the introduction of the terms of intensification and extensification. These terms, intensification-