Sidney Mintz in Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History interprets the Caribbean history by analyzing the Caribbean production of sugar and its European consumers. Mintz approaches the methodologies of cultural history, Marxism historiography, and anthropology in analyzing the production and consumption patterns, plantation slaves and industrial workers, and the usage and its meanings in modern culture. Mintz claims that sugar necessitated European imperialism, and that empire created European capitalism, white supremacy, and industrialization.
According to Mintz, sugar was first domesticated in New Guinea around 8000 B.C.E., and was brought to India about two thousand years later. Concentrated molasses appeared in Hindu …show more content…
Mintz focuses on sugar consumption in Europe, particularly Britain. Sugar consumptions in the days of scarcity was defined by monarch and social elites, symbolizing the meaning of power and prestige. Sugar functioned as “medicine, spice-condiment, decorative material, sweetener, and preservative” before the late eighteenth century. Not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, had sugar become a major source of carbohydrates as staple food for working-class in the growing industrial cities. The British became the biggest consumer of sugar in the world. By 1800, sugar had become a universal necessity in every English person’s diet. Mintz explains that sugar seems invisible and lost its symbol of power in contemporary context, but in fact it becomes more powerful than it has ever been in the society. West still experience other sources of sweetness, influencing people’s everyday lives. Mintz argues that “sugar has been one of the massive demographic forces in world …show more content…
But other historians might not agree with him on the sole determinant of sugar in neither the food history, the capitalism history, nor the white supremacy history. Schivelbusch in Tastes of Paradise argues that the emergence of the modernity in Europe was marked by the introduction of a succession of new spices, stimulants, and intoxicants, or substances of enjoyment. Sequentially these were pepper, coffee, chocolate, tobacco, liquor, and opium. Each fit into a changing economic and social structure and met the needs of an emerging social class: coffee for a sober bourgeoisie, liquor for a proletariat seeking to escape horrible working conditions, opium encouraged by the British to make the Chinese docile and to help pay for the tea
According to Mintz, sugar was first domesticated in New Guinea around 8000 B.C.E., and was brought to India about two thousand years later. Concentrated molasses appeared in Hindu …show more content…
Mintz focuses on sugar consumption in Europe, particularly Britain. Sugar consumptions in the days of scarcity was defined by monarch and social elites, symbolizing the meaning of power and prestige. Sugar functioned as “medicine, spice-condiment, decorative material, sweetener, and preservative” before the late eighteenth century. Not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, had sugar become a major source of carbohydrates as staple food for working-class in the growing industrial cities. The British became the biggest consumer of sugar in the world. By 1800, sugar had become a universal necessity in every English person’s diet. Mintz explains that sugar seems invisible and lost its symbol of power in contemporary context, but in fact it becomes more powerful than it has ever been in the society. West still experience other sources of sweetness, influencing people’s everyday lives. Mintz argues that “sugar has been one of the massive demographic forces in world …show more content…
But other historians might not agree with him on the sole determinant of sugar in neither the food history, the capitalism history, nor the white supremacy history. Schivelbusch in Tastes of Paradise argues that the emergence of the modernity in Europe was marked by the introduction of a succession of new spices, stimulants, and intoxicants, or substances of enjoyment. Sequentially these were pepper, coffee, chocolate, tobacco, liquor, and opium. Each fit into a changing economic and social structure and met the needs of an emerging social class: coffee for a sober bourgeoisie, liquor for a proletariat seeking to escape horrible working conditions, opium encouraged by the British to make the Chinese docile and to help pay for the tea