Sugarcane is originated from New Guinea. It cultivated spread along human migration routes to Southeast Asia, India and Polynesia. Arabs brought sugarcane to Spain, during Middle Ages. Sugarcane only began at United Sates in the mid of the 18th century .
Sugar as a commodity in its own right can be traced back several thousand years in China and India. In 510 B.C. when soldiers of the Persian Emperor Darius saw sugar cane growing on the banks of the River Indus, they called it the reeds which produce honey without bees. Later it was grown in Persia and the Arabs took it to Egypt. The word sugar is itself derived from an Arabic word.
Alexander the Great (356-232 B.C.) introduced sugar to the Mediterranean countries, from whence it spread down the east coast of Africa. By 600 A.D. the practice of breaking up the sugar cane and boiling it to produce sugar crystals was widespread.
Then, Marco Polo visited China, he saw flourishing sugar mills.
By the middle of the fifteenth century there were plantations in Madeira, the Canary Islands and St. Thomas, and they supplied Europe with sugar until the sixteenth century, when manufacture spread over the greater part of tropical America, followed in the next century by the development of sugar exports from the West Indies. Old records show that raw cane sugar was being refined in Dublin and Belfast in the middle of the seventeenth century.Food History
