Sugar, "The History"
Sugar, the word was derived actually from Arabic and Persia.
Sugar definitely has a long history. It is believed by historians, that cane sugar was first consumed by man in Polynesia and then spread to India.
In 510 BC .the Emperor Darius , of Persia, had invaded India, where he found " The secret of cane sugar". This was closely guarded by them, while the finished product, was exported for a rich profit.
It was the Arab peoples in the seventh century AD, that led to uncovering the secret. When they invaded Persia in 642 AD, they found the sugar cane being grown.Through their expansion, sugar production, moved into other lands that they conquered including North Africa and Spain.
The western Europeans discovered sugar as a result of the Crusades in the 11th Century AD.. The Crusaders after returning home spoke of this "new spice" and how pleasant it was.
The following centuries saw a major expansion of western European trade with the East, including the importation of sugar. Sugar at this time was still very much a luxury.
In the 15th century AD, European sugar was refined in Venice, within the same century, Columbus sailed to the Americas, and his records indicate that in 1493, he took sugar cane plants to grow in the Caribbean. There the climate was so advantageous for the growth of the cane, that the sugar industry was quickly established.
By 1750 there were many sugar refineries operating in Britain, sugar was still a luxury and vast profits were being made so much, that sugar was called "white gold".
Governments recognized the vast profits to be made from sugar and taxed it highly.
In Britain for instance, sugar tax in 1781 totalled £326,000, a figure that had grown by 1815 to £3,000,000. This situation was to stay until 1874 when the British government, under Prime Minister Gladstone, abolished the tax and brought sugar prices within the means of the ordinary citizen.
The Sugar beet was first identified as a source of sugar in 1747.By now, the already invested interests in the cane sugar plantations were made, so surly it (Sugar Beets) stayed just that, a curiosity!
Not until the Napoleonic wars, the start of the 19th century, when Britain blockaded sugar imports,to continental Europe, that the sugar beet had replaced sugar cane as the main source of sugar on continental Europe.
The introduction of beet sugar in England was not until the First World War when Britain's sugar imports were threatened.
Today's modern sugar industry is under scrutiny by numerous regulations and I will leave that for some one else to divulge.
Sugar , its annual consumption, is now running at about 120 million tons and is expanding at a rate of about 2 million tons per annum. The European Union, Brazil and India are the top three producers and together account for some 40% of the annual production.
Now with hundreds of years of world Industry and profits, just like in those years when the sugar beet was just curiousity, man has strived with science and technology to find yet another product or products to compete or replace the Sugar market as its been known for centuries.
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