Sugarcane - History

History

Sugarcane is indigenous to tropical South and Southeast Asia. Different species likely originated in different locations, with S. barberi originating in India and S. edule and S. officinarum coming from New Guinea. Approximately 70% of the sugar produced globally comes from S. officinarum and hybrids using this species. It is theorized that sugarcane was first domesticated as a crop in New Guinea around 6,000 B.C. Crystallized sugar was reported 5,000 years before the present in the Indus Valley Civilization, located in modern-day Pakistan and north India.

Around the eighth century AD, Arab traders introduced sugar from South Asia to the other parts of the Abbasid Caliphate in the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, Egypt, North Africa, and Andalusia. By the 10th century, sources state that there was no village in Mesopotamia that did not grow sugarcane. It was among the early crops brought to the Americas by the Andalusians from their fields in the Canary Islands, and the Portuguese from their fields in the Madeira Island.

Boiling houses in the 17th through 19th centuries converted sugarcane juice into raw sugar. These houses were attached to sugar plantations in the Western colonies. Slaves often ran the boiling process under very poor conditions. Made of cut stone, rectangular boxes of brick or stone served as furnaces, with an opening at the bottom to stoke the fire and remove ashes. At the top of each furnace were up to seven copper kettles or boilers, each one smaller and hotter than the previous one. The cane juice began in the largest kettle. The juice was then heated and lime added to remove impurities. The juice was skimmed and then channelled to successively smaller kettles. The last kettle, the "teache", was where the cane juice became syrup. The next step was a cooling trough, where the sugar crystals hardened around a sticky core of molasses. This raw sugar was then shovelled from the cooling trough into hogsheads (wooden barrels), and from there into the curing house.

Sugarcane is still extensively grown in the Caribbean. Christopher Columbus first brought it during his second voyage to the Americas; initially to the island of Hispaniola (modern day Haiti and the Dominican Republic).

In colonial times, sugar formed one side of the triangle trade of New World raw materials, along with European manufactured goods, and African slaves. Sugar (often in the form of molasses) was shipped from the Caribbean to Europe or New England, where it was distilled into rum. The profits from the sale of sugar were then used to purchase manufactured goods, which were then shipped to West Africa, where they were bartered for slaves. The slaves were then brought back to the Caribbean to be sold to sugar planters. The profits from the sale of the slaves were then used to buy more sugar, which was shipped to Europe.

France found its sugarcane islands so valuable that it effectively traded its portion of Canada, famously dubbed "a few acres of snow", to Britain for their return of Guadeloupe, Martinique and St. Lucia at the end of the Seven Years' War. The Dutch similarly kept Suriname, a sugar colony in South America, instead of seeking the return of the New Netherlands (New York).

Cuban sugar derived from sugarcane was exported to the USSR where it received price supports and was ensured a guaranteed market. The 1991 dissolution of the Soviet state forced the closure of most of Cuba's sugar industry.

Sugarcane remains an important part of the economy of Guyana, Belize, Barbados and Haiti, along with the Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, and other islands.