A treatise on sugar-refining (the dreariest subject I can think of ) could have been given a more lively appearance.
Joseph Conrad, Within the Tides
Luckily, the story of sugar is about more than sugar refining. It is a sprawling tale that covers 9000 years, about 150 countries that produce beet or cane sugar, and a product that has influenced all our lives. In telling this story of many threads, the choices I have made from among the many issues help to show how sugar has been involved in world history, although I do not suggest that sugar caused the world to be as it is today. Rather, the human greed, frailty and misjudgment that have in part shaped our world have also operated around the profits to be made, one way and another, from sugar. If sugar had not been available, some other valuable item would have been squabbled over in a similar fashion.
Religion, in a number of guises, has played a part in the story of sugar as well. Sugar probably travelled from Indonesian Hindus to Indian Hindus, and later was made by Nestorian Christians in Persia. After that, sugar followed Islam around the Mediterranean, so it could be discovered by the Crusaders who spread a taste for sugar across Europe. When Catholic nations and Protestant nations competed and warred in the New World and in the east, one of the things they fought over most was sugar.
Later, the wealth to be gained from growing and manufacturing sugar attracted men who sought power, some of whom justified their acts of inhumanity towards other humans, their slaves, in terms of a perverted version of their religion. It is, however, their selective interpretations that we must blame, not religion itself.
The story of sugar has very few heroes and many villains. The villains’ consciences remained clear, because they believed that what they did was for the ‘common good’, as well as for the good of their pockets. Likewise, those who peddle strange ‘scientific’ claims about sugar and artificial sweeteners today believe that by doing so, they are saving lives. They may be wrong, they may be dishonest, but they seem to believe in their hearts that they are doing good.
Perhaps, before we judge any of sugar’s historical figures too harshly, we need to look at ourselves today, and ask how we will be judged by our descendants. It is better to look at the evil men have done, in an effort to ensure that we do not repeat it, than to look upon past evils with a sanctimonious superiority. We are different, but it is doubtful we are that much better, for few things change as little as human nature.