The origin of sugar: From sugar cane to “sweet salt”

Sugarcane is a large grass of the genus Saccharum, tribe Andropogoneae, family Poaceae. Sugar cane is indigenous to Southeast Asia, in particular New Guinea. Sugar cane was first domesticated between 6000 and 8000 years ago; the stalks at this time were chewed so as to extract the sugar.

The earliest known historical record of sugarcane and sugar is from Indian writings from 3000 to 3400 years ago, but sucrose was practically unknown in Northern Europe until around 1000 AD.

By 800 B.C., sugarcane cultivation had spread across India, Mesopotamia, China, and the Pacific Islands; by 800 A.D., crude methods for extracting and processing cane sugar were in place. Soldiers of Alexander the Great are known to have carried it to Europe from India about 325 BC.

According to Nöel Deerr, author of History of Sugar in 1949, claimed that Nestorian Christian monks at the mouth of the Euphrates river were the first to refine the crude raw product into a form of “white” sugar about 450 AD.

A century birth of Islam established from Arabian Peninsula to Southern Spain, an administrative and culturally allowed the development of the sugar industry technology required to successful production of the novel sugar cane crop. Sugar industry began about the time of the Arabian conquest of Egypt in 640 AD. They spread it across North Africa and into Spain by 750AD, where it was important for many years, with 30 000 ha under cane by 1150 AD.

Between 1096 to 1099 AD sugar was first introduced to Europeans by crusaders returning from the Holy Lands. They called it “sweet salt” and soon traded at prices reserved for other rare spices such as saffron and pepper.

Sugar began to reach Europe in sizeable quantities, both overland and via the Mediterranean. In the mid of 8th century, sugar cane was planted for the first time, sugar made from it, on European soil along Spain’s southern littoral.

It is only since the Caribbean islands and tropical north and south Americas were colonized by Europeans, that sugar became available on the world market in a large enough quantity and at acceptable prices for everyday use.
The origin of sugar: From sugar cane to “sweet salt”  

History of sugar cane

The generic name Saccharum was given to sugar cane By Linnaeus in 1753. When the Arabs introduced sugar cane from India via Persia to the Middle East, the word became Sakkar or Sukkar. Possibly the first mention of ‘sugar’ as a commercial product occurs in95 AD in ‘Periplus Maris Erythraei’ (Guide Book to the Red Sea), where the quote ‘Exported commonly … honey reeds which called sakchar’ made by a merchant.

When the Greeks introduced it from Asia Minor it became known in ancient Greece as Sakchar or Sakcharon.

The first recorded use of sugar came leads is from New Guinea in 8000 BC. The peoples of the South Pacific Islands undertook long sea voyages and among the foods which they carried was sugar cane which was thus spread throughout the Pacific and from there to India and Southeast Asia.

Sugar cane

Cane sugar first achieved dominance on the subcontinent of India more that 2500 years ago, and it was in that country and China that commercial sugar was first produced from sugar cane. At about that time sugar cane was spread to Persia, Egypt and countries on the borders of the Mediterranean sea.

The Indian started processing and boiling cane to crystallize sugar around 300 AD and by 540 AD the Persian had learnt the art of sugar making.

It was not until the early eighteenth century, however, that sugar began to become widely used in Western Europe. Sugar cane was unknown in the New World until Columbus introduced it on his second voyage in 1493.
History of sugar cane

History of Sugar Cane

History of Sugar Cane
Sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum) is a giant, thick, perennial grass of the plant family Graminae.

Raw sugar is derived from the sweet sap in the stems, which can grow up to 4.5 m (15 ft) tall and 2.5 – 5 cm (1 – 2 in) in diameter.

The plant needs a minimum of 1,250 mm (49 in) of rain annually and a short dry season to aid maturation. It is grown in moist of the world’s tropical regions; it can be planted and harvested by hand, so was suited to areas where labor was plentiful.

The cultivation of sugar cane probably originated in the South Pacific and spread from there to India and then to the Arabian countries and Europe.

Christopher Columbus (1451 – 1506) is believed to have brought sugar cane to the New World on his second voyage west across the Atlantic in 1493, though it is possible that it had already introduced to the Arawak and Carib peoples of the Caribbean by a rout across the Pacific.

By the 17th century sugar plantations had been established throughout the West Indies, Islands such as Jamaica and Barbados were developed by British colonizers primarily for their ability to produce sugar for the home market, and were part of the notorious “Atlantic triangle” that linked Britain, West Africa and the West Indies in trading slaves and sugar.

Ships sailed from British port to collect slaves from West Africa to work on the sugar plantations. They then return to their home port laden with cargoes of refined sugar, rum and molasses.

The colonial plantations were adversely affected in the 19th century by slave uprisings and the eventual emancipation of the slaves, which made labor more expensive, as well as by soil exhaustion, competition from Cuba and the other Hispanic islands, and by the growth of the European sugar beet industry and loss of monopoly access to the British market.

However, the modernization of plantation, made possible by more capital and land, more efficient management and more sophisticated technology, ensured the survival of a substantial sugar economy in the Caribbean.
History of Sugar Cane