Hello and welcome to the Pleasant Vices series, my name is Tasha Marks and I'll be your host.
Today we're going to look at sugar, one of my favourite topics
not just because I have a very sweet tooth but because it has a very interesting history.
Sugar first came to this country in the 12th century before then it was honey
that was our main source of sweetness. Generally as humans we have a sweet
tooth we are drawn to sweet things it's on a very primal level it's about energy
and carbohydrates and being drawn to stuff that is going to sustain us.
We might grow out of our sweet tooth but we're certainly always born with one.
When sugar was first introduced to the UK in the 12th century it was as a
medicine and a spice to a point where the the phrase an apothecary without
sugar meant a state of utter desolation. Sugar as medicine was always really
important both in medicines themselves and in the energy that sugar gives you.
It was a sort of miraculous material. A few hundred years later after we've got
to maybe the 15th century sugar is starting to be seen as a sweetener and
the dessert as we know it is beginning to be born.
Sugar was coming originally from the Middle East through trade routes, through places like Istanbul
and Venice. In this early period it was generally in a sort of gritty form
it was just sort of dried in the sun and allowed to crystallise and so sugar was
a really expensive luxury really only afforded by the very, very wealthy.
Like tea and coffee and salt and pepper it was kept under lock and key so that
really restricted its use it wasn't available to the middle or lower classes at all.
Up until the 16th century it was really a luxury an art form. It was a an
artistic medium of tremendous flexibility so things like sugar
sculpture, desserts these were places in which people could have set their status,
their political leanings, their power all through desert. So today we can go to the shops
and buy a kilogram of sugar for about a pound but back then a sugar sculpture
something about this size, would cost an average person's year's salary so very, very different.
I've been exploring the British Museum collection to look for items related to sugar and sugar history.
There was an amazing series of illustrations of sugar sculptures
these were created or commissioned by
Earl of Castlemaine for James the second visit to Rome in 1687 and every
single sculpture was there for a reason the idea of sugar is not just something
for decoration it was there as a storyteller. this one here is a supposed
This one here is supposed to be an allegory for Britain returning to the Catholic Church.
So we start to see sugar sculpture and sugar itself as a
luxury that wasn't just there as a disposable thing or as entertainment
necessarily it was there to show power and dominance sugar sculpture was
theatre it was power and it was spectacle.
One of the most intriguing objects was print by Jan van der Straet, which was done between 1580 -1605.
It shows the process by which sugar is made and in this image we see sugar cane
in the background being cut down in the front we have the sugar cane being cut
up into smaller parts and the mill here would crush it to extract some of
the sucrose juice out of the sugar cane it's then going into these big vats here
where it was refined so all the moisture all the liquid is boiled off and the
remaining sucrose starts to crystallize and we have something more closely
resembling what we would imagine is sugar the remaining liquid which is a
concentrate but not a solid quite yet is poured into these molds these
sugar loaf molds where is then transported around Europe and beyond.
It encapsulates a time period that was pre slave trade and when we
think about the history of sugar, the history of sugar in the 17th and 18th
centuries it was really dominated by this idea of sugar and slavery being
linked together you can't really talk about one without talking about the other.
The transatlantic triangle saw people and produce being treated very much the same, as commodities.
In the 17th and18th century in Europe slavery was a
devastating consequence for our desire for luxury goods, sugar, tobacco, tea and
coffee were all supplemented by free labour.
So it's thought there were 46,000 slave owners in the UK
and this could be from a couple of shares owned by a middle class worker
to Sir Hans Sloane himself owning several slaves which he inherited through his wife's family.
For the most part, the slaves that were owned by by British people were working overseas in the plantations.
So in some ways it's a history but one that must be engaged with because it's as relevant in Britain
as it is in America or in the Caribbean in any other part of the world.
So the slave trade and luxury goods went hand in hand with the cost of luxury goods like sugar being reduced
because of the enslaved labour.
For many consumers this reduced price was not worth the human cost
and as the abolition movement gained momentum slavery free sugar began to be
a feature of many confectionery shops so George and confections would proudly
display that they used only sugar not made by slaves or slave free sugar.
There's an amazing Bowl in the British Museum collection from 1820 is inscribed
proudly with 'East India Sugar not made by slaves' this is one of the first
examples of really consumer choice affecting policy.
People were willing to pay more for sugar that was not made by slaves and in doing so they
drove the market towards that area. Suddenly cheap sugar no longer seemed so appealing.
This still has resonance today with things like the fair trade movement being very important with food and beyond.
So we hope you've enjoyed the series if you'd like to watch any previous episodes, click here.
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