Sweetness and power
by Sidney Wilfred Mintz, Tom Perkins · first published 1985
67% recommend33% neutral
In thid book the author shows how Europeans and Americans transformed sugar from a rare foreign luxury to a commonplace necessity of modern life, and how it changed the history of capitalism and industry. He discusses the production and consumption of sugar, and reveals how closely interwoven are sugar's origins as a "slave" crop grown in Europe's tropical colonies with its use first as an extravagant luxury for the aristocracy, then as a staple of the diet of the new industrial proletariat. Finally, he considers how sugar has altered work patterns, eating habits, and our diet in modern times.
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There is an excellent book about the history and anthropology of sugar by Sidney Mintz called Sweetness & Power. It documents the connection between the consumption and production of sugar by the West and the development of capitalism. It's fascinating.
on “Sugar: the evolution of a forbidden fruit” ↗https://amazon.com/dp/0140092331 Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power
on “Spices Have Made, and Unmade, Empires” ↗…version of industrialization. Of course, then you get into the whole debate about whether a slave society has an economic impetus to industrialize (I think they do, following Sidney Mintz's point in "Sweetness and Power" that Caribbean sugar plantations in the 18th century were proto-industrial, factory-like spaces, but that's another discussion).
on “Maps of the Roman Empire” ↗There is a book called Sweetness and Power by the anthropologist and historian Sidney Mintz with a thesis that the way we consume sugar is not actually so arbitrary. According to Mintz, the production of sugar was at the heart of the transition…
on “Mexican states are moving to ban the sale of junk food to children” ↗