Sugar

Arguably the most important foodstuff produced in mass quantities during the early modern period, the European demand for sugar transformed the terrain of islands across the Atlantic Ocean and much of Brazil and encouraged those with capital to export bound laborers to produce the crop for distant markets.

At the turn of the first Christian millennium, sugar was a rare commodity, at least for Europeans. Although humans across the planet had consumed sugar (dextrose or glucose) in some form for millennia in fruits as well as the sugar to be found in honey (fructose), sugarcane (sac-charum officinarum) itself probably originated in the South Pacific, possibly in modern-day Papua New Guinea. The indigenous peoples of Easter Island, the Solomon Islands, and elsewhere include legends about sugarcane in the stories of their origins. References to sugarcane can be found in India possibly as early as 1000 B. C. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote about sugar in the fifth century B. C., and Alexander the Great had some exported from India to Europe in 327 B. C. References to the plant became more common during the first Christian millennium. By A. D. 800 Persians had made improvements to the refining process, and by 1218 a Chinese ambassador to India reported the cultivation of sugarcane, which locals used to make wine. Marco Polo wrote about sugar in India during the late 13th century, and Ibn Battuta also mentioned it in his 14th-century chronicle of his travels to the East. By the late 15th century, when Vasco da Gama had landed in Calicut, sugarcane cultivation was widespread. Sugarcane had reached China by approximately 1000 B. C. The 16th-century encyclopedist Li Shih-chen offered specific details about sugar production and its history in his Pen-t. s’ao-kung-mu. Cultivation was never guaranteed, of course; mice devastated the Egyptian sugarcane crop in 1174, and caterpillars ate their way through sugarcane in Sicily in 1239.

Europeans acquired sugarcane later than much of the world, but when the crop and the knowledge for producing it spread, they eagerly pursued production. Prince Henry the Navigator arranged for the transportation of sugarcane to Madeira in the early 15th century, and the colony’s sugar soon reached all of Europe. Extant documents reveal that Madeira sugar reached Bristol in 1456, Florence in 1471, and Ulm in 1490. SAo Tome, first seen by Europeans in 1470, became a major production center for sugar soon after its founding; by 1522 there were 60 sugar factories on the island. Sugar planters extended production to Fernando Poo soon after.

When the Portuguese crossed the Atlantic Ocean, they believed that they had found an ideal locale for sugar. Although there is no clear evidence for the first production of sugar in Brazil, by 1526 merchants in Lisbon were receiving sugar from that Portuguese colony. By the early 1530s sugar had become a staple export, and as a result the colonists who received captaincies often built sugar factories on their holdings. To produce the sugar, the Portuguese soon turned to slave labor (see slavery). The need for slaves to produce sugar was yet another by-product of the Columbian Exchange: Europeans purchased African laborers because their diseases had destroyed the indigenous peoples on many of the islands. By 1584 the slave population in Brazil reached 10,000, primarily as the result of the success of sugar. Those slaves helped boost the colony’s annual sugar exports from 2,470 tons in 1560 to 16,300 tons in 1600.

Other Europeans, too, raced to produce sugar. The Spanish established their first sugar works on Palma, in the Canary Islands, in 1491, although it is possible that they had begun to transport sugar to Gomera, another island in the chain, as early as 1480. Christopher Columbus took seed and skilled farmers from Gomera to Hispaniola in 1493 (on his second voyage) and thereby began a lucrative export business. Columbus and his chronicler, Pietro Martire d’Anghiera (Peter Martyr), each claimed that the soil and climate on the island were ideal for sugarcane. Over the course of the 16th century sugar production on Hispaniola expanded, as it did in the Portuguese colonies. In 1589 planters exported 892 tons of sugar from the island, although their output decreased over time; by 1608 sugar factories once capable of producing 2,225 tons were together exporting only 222 tons. A generation later English planters began to produce sugar on Barbados, and they, too, then needed to import slaves to maintain production after the demise of the indigenous population.

Once sugar production took hold, those eager to profit from it transformed once bountiful tropical islands into agricultural factories. By the mid-17th century planters on the English islands in the Caribbean often had to import food to feed themselves and their laborers because they had denuded the islands and eliminated potential sources of nutrition. Because sugar could be processed into various products, such as rum, its markets could not easily be saturated. As a result, sugar became, along with tobacco, rice, and wheat, one of the principal crops produced in the Americas shipped to Europeans. The success of the business, at least success for the Europeans who profited from the sale of sugar, was a testament to the farsighted vision of colonial planners such as Richard Hakluyt the Younger, who had argued that the Western Hemisphere was an ideal place for the production of agricultural goods to supply European markets. Of course, neither Hakluyt nor any other 16th-century promoter of colonization anticipated the extent of the slave trade that would develop to serve the seemingly unquenchable European demand for sugar, nor could they have known that the economics of sugar and slavery enabled European planters to work slaves to death because the profits on sugar were so great that they could purchase more humans to produce the crop.

Further reading: Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperial-is-m: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Alan Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Noel Deerr, The History of Sugar, 2 vols. (London: Chapman & Hall, 1949); Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Viking Penguin, 1985).

Suleiman I (Suleyman) (1494-1566) monarch Ruler of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) who led his empire to its greatest territorial, scientific, literary, architectural, and artistic heights, known to Europeans as Suleiman the Magnificent and to Turks as Suleiman the Lawgiver.

Born in the Black Sea city of Trabzon on November 6, 1494, little is known about Suleiman’s early life. His father, Mehmed II, became governor of the province of Trabzon the year Suleiman was born and used his position as the ruler of the strategic region to position himself for becoming sultan. His mother was probably Hafsa Hatun, a daughter of the khan of the Crimean Tartars named Mengli Gray. As an elite child, Suleiman in all likelihood learned the Qur’an early, as well as Persian and Arabic. His father rose to become sultan by being able to persevere in a bloody struggle for the position. Once Mehmed become sultan, he appointed Suleiman to governor of Istanbul and later of Sarukhan, a post he held at the time his father died and Suleiman become sultan in 1520.

Over the course of his reign, Suleiman organized the internal forces of the Turks and then used his authority to wage military campaigns that added to the empire in Europe and Africa. By the time he died, his empire had expanded as far as Belgrade and Budapest and included such diverse territories as Algiers, Rhodes, and Baghdad. As he informed King Francis I of France in a letter written at Constantinople in 1526, he was “the Sultan of Sultans, Sovereign of Sovereigns, Distributor of Crowns to Monarchs over the whole Surface of the Globe, God’s Shadow on Earth, Sultan and Padishah of the White Sea and the Black Sea, of Rumelia and Anatolia, of Karaman and the countries of Rum, Zulcadir, Diyarbekir, Kurdistan, Azerbaijan, Persia, Damascus, Aleppo, Cairo, Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem and all Arabia, Yemen and many other lands” that he, his family, and his ancestors had “conquered by the force of their arms.” When his troops reached as far as Vienna, countless Europeans feared that Christendom itself would not be able to repel the Turks and Islam. At the time of his death, the Ottoman Empire was the most powerful in the world. Its lands included perhaps 35 million residents; Istanbul had a population of 700,000, far larger than any European city.

After he died he was entombed in a mausoleum designed by the famed architect Sinan and his memory celebrated by the poet Baki. “The Hungarian unbelievers bowed their heads before his flashing sword! The Franks knew well the cutting edge of his sabre!” Baki wrote. “The sun has come up; will the king of the world not awake from his sleep? Will he not leave his tent like the sky? Our eyes scan the road: no sign comes from the throne, the sanctuary of glory! The colour in his cheeks is faded, he lies with lips dried out, like a pressed rose without sap[.]”

Many Europeans feared Suleiman, but few doubted his abilities or his efforts to support culture and science in Turkey. Under his generous sponsorship the empire witnessed great advances in architecture, ceramics, painting, calligraphy, weaving, and poetry. He supported talented individuals such as Baki and Sinan as well as experts in Muslim law including Ebussuud and Kemalpasazade. After he was gone, the Ottoman Empire began its long collapse.

Further reading: Andre Clot, Sulei'man the Magnificent (New York: New Amsterdam Books, 1992); Metin Kunt and Christine Woodhead, Suleyman the Magnificent and His Age: The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World (London: Longman, 1995); Harold Lamb, Suleiman the Magnificent: Sultan of the East (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1951).

Dom. Crippled at birth, Sundiata miraculously recovered full health by adulthood, giving him the ability to lead the Kangaba into battle against the Sosso (see Ghana) kingdom, which had defeated his half brother and subjected his people. Under Sundiata’s leadership, the Kangaba revolt against Sosso domination culminated at a battle at Kirina in 1234. This battle between Sundiata and Sumanguru, leader of the Sosso, was a great contest of magic. Sundiata shot Sumanguru with an arrow affixed with a white feather, which was deadly to Sumanguru’s magic, killing him and guaranteeing Sundiata’s victory.

Sundiata needed more than a single military victory to gain control, so he cemented his political ties to other Mande clans in the region, bringing them under the protection of the new Mali kingdom. Sundiata established his capital at Niani and extended his empire’s territories westward from the upper Senegal Valley toward the Gambia. His kingdom prospered because of a centralized governing structure ruled by the mansa, or king, and because of its connection to and eventual control of trade routes and GOLD fields. Although Sundiata had converted to Islam, he reverted to his traditional religion. Islam remained a powerful influence in his kingdom, evidenced by his son Mansa Uli Keita’s devout adherence to the Islamic faith. According to the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, Sundiata reigned for 25 years and was succeeded by his son Mansa Uli in 1260.