How did the Spanish break Arab control
of the sweet spice?
By Chelsie Vandaveer
November 6, 2001
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Suggested Reading—>Click here.
All plants produce sugars, but there are only two that produce and store the sugar, sucrose, in enough quantity to make it feasible to extract and refine, sugarcane and sugar beet.
Sugarcane is a tropical genus of grasses with six species, four of which are cultivated. The species cross-pollinate freely, so commercial varieties today are probably complex hybrids, but generally known under the name Saccharum officinarum.
Sugarcane was used by the prehistoric peoples of Southeast Asia and the Oceanic Islands. It was cultivated in India for several thousand years; they were the first to produce sugar by boiling the cane juice.
Soldiers of Darius I of Persia saw sugar cane growing on the banks of the River Indus, but it was not cultivated in the Middle East until Alexander the Great introduced it sometime after 326 BC.
It was the Arab traders who were responsible for sugar's introduction to Africa and eventually Europe. Arabs took sugarcane to Egypt, down the east African coastline, and along the southern shores of the Mediterranean. Sugarcane was imported to Spain after the conquest by the Berbers (Moors, Islamic North Africans) in 711, but it remained somewhat obscure.
Western Europeans did not know of sugar until the Crusades in the Twelfth Century. Returning Crusaders spoke of the "sweet spice". Overnight, sugar became an expensive, in-demand commodity, controlled by the Arabs and Moors. When the Moors were overthrown by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, sugar demand remained a problem. Spain had the cane and the equipment, but the farmers and tradesmen who understood sugar production fell to the Inquisition or were expelled.
To break the Arab control of sugar, Columbus took sugarcane to the New World around 1493. Sugarcane grew very well, but it took until 1516 before the Spanish had an operating sugar mill in the West Indies. A sugar plantation could make one wealthy, but the cane was a labor-intensive crop. Sugar more than any other commodity was responsible for the slave trade. Two countries, Spain and Portugal, now controlled sugarcane production and the prices. Sugar became known as "white gold".
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a series of historical photographs of sugar production in the Virgin Islands during the 1940s. To view these historical photographs, click on the link:
http://www.usda.gov/oc/photo/agri10.htm
killerPlants Tendrils: ~~1~~2~~3~~4~~5~~
Suggested Reading:
Something about that cane sugar Plants that Changed History - February 17, 2004
Could a natural horror benefit sugar beet growers? Renfield's Garden - November 14, 2001
What twelve plants supply most of the food our world consumes? Plants that Changed Hist - 8/21/01
How did the Spanish break Arab control of the sweet spice? Plants that Changed History - 11/06/01
How did sugar beets help a woman win two Nobel Prizes? Plants that Changed History - 11/29/02
What medicinal root is a common vegetable today? Herbal Folklore - November 12, 2001
Lord Nelson, Napoleon, and the Silesian Beet Plants that Changed History - November 13, 2001
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