In SUGAR, a couple embarks on a relationship that starts off as more of an arrangement, but ends with them falling in loveÑat a cost. Neither has ever done anything like this before, and the emotional swings they face threaten to undo what could be a perfect match in this companion book to both SUNSTONE and SWING.

“[A] tour de force of global history...Bosma has turned the humble sugar crystal into a mighty prism for understanding aspects of global history and the world in which we live.”—Los Angeles Review of Books The definitive 2,500-year history of sugar and its human costs, from its little-known origins as a luxury good in Asia to worldwide environmental devastation and the obesity pandemic. For most of history, humans did without refined sugar. After all, it serves no necessary purpose in our diets, and extracting it from plants takes hard work and ingenuity. Granulated sugar was first produced in India around the sixth century BC, yet for almost 2,500 years afterward sugar remained marginal in the diets of most people. Then, suddenly, it was everywhere. How did sugar find its way into almost all the food we eat, fostering illness and ecological crisis along the way? The World of Sugar begins with the earliest evidence of sugar production. Through the Middle Ages, traders brought small quantities of the precious white crystals to rajahs, emperors, and caliphs. But after sugar crossed the Mediterranean to Europe, where cane could not be cultivated, demand spawned a brutal quest for supply. European cravings were satisfied by enslaved labor; two-thirds of the 12.5 million Africans taken across the Atlantic were destined for sugar plantations. By the twentieth century, sugar was a major source of calories in diets across Europe and North America. Sugar transformed life on every continent, creating and destroying whole cultures through industrialization, labor migration, and changes in diet. Sugar made fortunes, corrupted governments, and shaped the policies of technocrats. And it provoked freedom cries that rang with world-changing consequences. In Ulbe Bosma’s definitive telling, to understand sugar’s past is to glimpse the origins of our own world of corn syrup and ethanol and begin to see the threat that a not-so-simple commodity poses to our bodies, our environment, and our communities.

In SUGAR, a couple embarks on a relationship that starts off as more of an arrangement, but ends with them falling in love—at a cost. Neither has ever done anything like this before, and the emotional swings they face threaten to undo what could be a perfect match in this companion book to both SUNSTONE and SWING.

Sugar Industry is the second largest agro based industry in India, next to textile. This is the only industry, located in the rural part of the country. About five crores of sugarcane farmers, their dependants and a large mass of labourers are involved in sugarcane cultivation, harvesting and other related ancillary activities. This constitutes 7.5 per cent of the rural population. Besides, over a five lakhs of skilled and semi-skilled workers, mostly from the rural areas, are employed in the sugar industry, and the annual wage bill of the industry is around Rs.1,000 crores, per year. Presently, Indian sugar industry contributes 15 per cent of the world sugar production. Though, there are more than 700 sugar mills in different stages of installation, almost 450 mills alone are in operation. The annual turnover of the industry goes to Rs.30,000 crores, and cane growers, use to get Rs.6,000 crores, as sugarcane price.

Sugar. It sits there, dormant, nestled in a small bowl or serving-size packet, waiting to be spooned into a cup of coffee or tea, spread across some cereal, or dropped into a recipe for cake, pie, or other scrumptious treat in the making. It is so readily available, so easy to use, and so irresistibly tasty. But few people stop to realize the enormous economic, social, political, even military upheaval this simple-looking, widely popular food enhancer has caused in many parts of the world. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, even into the nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth, sugar cane was a preeminent crop upon which economies succeeded or failed, societies grew, and money flowed like . . . well, sugar! A region particularly impacted by sugar was the volcanic islands of the Caribbean—virgin soil enriched by crushed coral and limestone and blessed by unlimited sunshine. The result was soil so rich for planting that the necklace of island colonies and small nation-states became a massive source of the world’s supply of sugar. Antigua’s 108 square miles, an island of undulating hills and indented coastline, fell into this category.