If someone says that sugar comes from Cuba, then the answer is wrong. Have you ever read western scientists honestly say that, “We owe a lot to the East”. Or “We must admit that the knowledge of many Muslims is the basis for the progress of western civilization”. Or “Our country is currently becoming rich and prosperous is actually starting from spices and “white gold” from the East”. As sad and miserable as being colonized, there is still a little painkiller, because there is still the voice of honest scientists. This is the scientific work of honest western scientists. Want to reveal the greed and colonialism that was once done by the ancestors of the western nation.
Alexander the Great’s military expeditionary delegation was astonished to discover a type of sweet-tasting reed along the landmass around the Indus River in 327 BC. The reeds they call “bee-free honey producers.” Now we know it as cane sugar (Saccharum officinarum L). Although the plant is native to Southeast Asia, sugarcane was not really cultivated and chemically processed until 800 BC in India. The discovery of sugar in India by the armies of Alexander the Great is thought to have been the first contact of sugar with the Western world, but sugar did not reach the Blue Continent until centuries later. Sugar first spread to various regions such as China, Persia and especially the Islamic territories in the Middle East.
Islamic civilization developed a sugarcane farming system for mass production of sugar until sugar finally spread to the Mediterranean Sea region: Sicily, Malta, Morocco and Spain. Europeans only really interacted with cane sugar during the First Crusade (1096–99). They studied sugar cane plantations from territories conquered during the war. When it arrived in Europe, sugar was nicknamed “white gold” because of its rare, luxurious status and only owned by the nobility. Sugar’s scarce status faded slowly when Europeans brought sugar cane plantations to the colonies in the 15th century. The Portuguese began experimenting with sugar cane plantations on the island of Madeira in 1425. The Spanish did the same in the Canary Islands. It wasn’t until 1492 that Christopher Columbus brought sugar cane plantations from both regions to America and the Caribbean. This period marked a shift in sugar production from the Islamic civilization in the Mediterranean to the colonial civilization in the region around the Atlantic Ocean.
Since the 15th century, the expansion of sugar cane plantations began which motivated European colonizers to compete for colonies, massacre indigenous peoples, trade slaves, and clear forests. Cane sugar, which was originally used to feed pigs by Polynesians and Austronesians in Southeast Asia, turned into a driving force for genocide, slavery and the destruction of nature at the hands of European colonizers.
The sugar that we are so familiar with today in a packet of candy, a bottle of soda or a cup of tea was once one of the engines of European colonialism.
Sugar Kills You
Anthropologist Sidney Mintz in his book Sweetness and Power (1985) traces the history of sugar bitters at least for the last 500 years. The pioneer of food anthropology traces the history of the production, distribution and consumption of sugar and the social upheavals it has caused. Sugar is considered one of the biggest factors influencing the world’s demographics. “Sugar has been one of the greatest demographic-changing forces in world history,” Mintz wrote. “Because of sugar, millions of Africans were enslaved to the colonies in the “New World”, which was also followed by the migration of East Indians, Chinese, Portuguese and many others.”
However, the demographic change is not just about migration. Mintz also mentions the bitter story of depopulation caused by sugar production. If the current consumption of sugar kills 184,000 people per year through the diseases it causes, such as diabetes or heart disease. Centuries earlier the production of sugar had claimed the lives of millions of people who were entangled in the iron chains of the invaders. As a result of sugar production, millions of people are swayed in overcrowded ships in the Atlantic Ocean to be traded. This population is the victim of the roller coaster that ran colonialism: slavery.
They are generally people from Africa who are enslaved to meet the needs of cheap, even free labor, on European-owned Caribbean and American sugarcane plantations, as well as for other plantation needs such as coffee, tobacco and cotton. As Mintz puts it, demographically the scale is enormous. One version of the calculation of Joseph E. Inikori and Stanley L. Engerman in David Northrup’s book The Atlantic Slave Trade (1994) records the total population of Africans enslaved during the colonialism period at 15.4 million. Even though there are other calculation results, but approximately not less than 12 million and not more than 20 million.
Millions of people were conquered and kidnapped by slave traders, then sold to Europeans to work on sugar cane plantations. Since their capture, slaves have been subjected to deplorable treatment, such as shackled in chains, starving, or diseased. However, conditions that are even more horror occur when they begin to enter the transatlantic voyage. During the one to six month voyage, the slaves were crammed under the ship’s deck with limited movement due to chains and cramped space. From capture to employment on plantations, millions of Africans have been killed. Still citing David Northup, it is estimated that out of 100 people arrested, only 75 made it to the slave market; only 64 made it to the port; only 57 made it to the ship; only 51 survived the voyage; only 49 came into the hands of the plantation owners; and during the 3–4 year period of planting in plantations only 28 to 30 survive. Where’s the rest? off and off.
Not only did they claim the lives of millions of Africans, colonial sugar plantations also robbed the lives of Native Americans. Brown University historian Linford D. Fisher says between 1492 and 1880, there were at least 2 million to 5.5 million Native Americans who were enslaved. Among the millions of people, there are hundreds of thousands if not millions more who died during the process of slavery, including those who were slaughtered when the invaders tried to conquer and seize their land.
According to Fisher, although slavery in America began to fade in the 18th century and was officially banned in December 1865, its legacy still continues. Summarizing the sufferings and miseries of those who were colonized by sugar production during the colonial period, Sidney Mintz quotes J.H Bernardin de Saint Pierre in 1773. “I do not know if coffee and sugar were an important part of European happiness,” the French writer said. “But I know very well that this product is contributing to misery for two great regions of the world: America is depopulating as a result of the land being used to grow the product; Africa is experiencing the same thing because its people are enslaved to grow these products.”
The Birth of Capitalism, The Destruction of Nature
Contrary to the general view that industrialization in the 18th century was the cornerstone of the birth of capitalism, Moore and Patel argue that the seeds of capitalism have been sown further, along with sugar cane being planted in the colonies. It was marked by massive social, economic and environmental changes that occurred after the opening of colonial plantations. To prove it, Moore looked at a small island in the Atlantic Ocean that was colonized by the Portuguese, namely Madeira Island. After the Portuguese cleared the forest and replaced it with sugarcane plantations in the late 15th century, Madeira was hailed by Moore as the first laboratory to create an ancient form of capitalism.
In contrast to the feudal economic system which depended entirely on the center of the colony, sugarcane plantations in Madeira were able to operate through funds from outside Portuguese investors. The capital investment of the Genoese and Flanders allowed the plantations to operate, of course also supported by exploited slave labor. In another article entitled “Madeira, Sugar, and the Conquest of Nature in the “First” Sixteenth Century: From “Island of Timber” to Sugar Revolution, 1420–1506” (Review, Vol. 32, №4, 2009) Moore recorded in 1472, the results of the injection of capital and the exploitation of slave labor on the island led to the export of 280 tons of sugar, with a peak of 2,500 tons in 1506. The largest of its time.
According to Moore, economic activity has shown different characteristics from the feudal economy. Another proof is that the plantation created an unprecedented transformation of nature. After plantations arrived, Madeira’s forests were cleared to clear land. The wood from the tree is used for combustion in the production process, as well as for shipbuilding in distribution. As a result, according to Moore, by 1530 all the forests on the island had been completely cleared. Not only deforestation, colonial sugar plantations also tampered with the entire landscape in Madeira for profit accumulation purposes. River flow, for example. In Moore’s account it is said that slaves were employed in a giant river engineering project called levadas. The goal is that the water can lead to the irrigation system for sugarcane plantations in the dry part of the island. The levadas project that cost the lives of many slaves spanned 2,100 kilometers and completely changed Madeira’s landscape. “The trees, water, soil, fauna and flora of Madeira and the seas around the island are treated as “free gifts”, to be turned into a series of input values in the production process,” Moore wrote.
Interestingly, Moore argues that even after the sugar plantations went bankrupt, the capitalistic relations that were destroying nature persisted. For example, when sugar production in Madeira plummeted due to running out of firewood in 1530, business turned to wine. The problem is that wine requires wooden barrels, while the trees in Madeira are nearing exhaustion. Large quantities of wood are then imported by clearing forests across the oceans: America and the Caribbean. Consequently, the destruction of nature continues. In a broader context, a similar process does not stop in Madeira, for five centuries the forests of the Caribbean and America, including the Amazon, have fallen victim to the expansion of sugar cane plantations and other plantations with an emerging economic model in Madeira. For that reason, Moore considers Madeira and its sugar plantations to have spawned a form of capitalistic society that continues to conquer nature for profit, even today. “The accumulation of endless profits means endless destruction of nature,” added Moore.
source : tirto.id
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