Sugar Trade DBQ:
This question is based on the accompanying documents. It is designed totest your ability to work with historical documents. Some of the documents havebeen edited for the purposes of the question. As you analyze the documents, takeinto account the source of each document and any point of view that may bepresented in the document.
Historical Context:
From the 1400s to the present, the production of sugar has influenced theworld’s economy, governments and social structure. Sugar set people inmotion throughout the world for the purpose of building wealth, withunattended consequences of building global connections still felt to thisday and facilitating cultural diffusion.
Task: Use the information from the documents and your knowledge of globalhistory; answer the questions that follow each document in Part A. Youranswers to the questions will help you write the Part B essay in which you willbe asked to:
• Identify how the sugar trade has affected the global economy.
• Identify how the sugar trade has influenced society or government
Document #1 – Excerpted from Sugar Changed the World, p. 29
In the 1400s, Spain and Portugal were competing to explore down the coast of Africaand find a sea route to Asia. That way, they could have the prized Asian spices theywanted without having to pay high prices to Venetian and Muslim middlemen. Spanishand Portuguese sailors searching for that sea route conquered the Canary Islands andthe Azores. Soon they began building Muslim-style plantations on the islands, somestaffed by slaves purchased from nearby Africa. One sailor came to know these islandsparticularly well because he traded in “white gold” – sugar. And then, as he set off onhis second voyage across the sea to what he thought was Asia, he carried sugar caneplants from Gomera, one of the Canary Islands, with him on his ship. His name was Christopher Columbus.
1a. What motivated the Spanish and Portuguese to begin exploring in the 1400s?
1b. How did sugar shape early Spanish and Portuguese exploration?
Document #2 – Excerpted from Sugar Changed The World, p. 35:
By 1753, British ships were taking an average of 34,250 slaves from Africa every year,and by 1768, that number had reached 53,100. The sugar that piled up on the docks near the plantations was something new in thisworld: pure sweetness, pure pleasure, so cheap that the common people could afford it.
Scientists have shown that people all over the world must learn to like salty tastes, sourtastes, mixed tastes. But from the moment we are born, we crave sweetness. Canesugar was the first product in human history that perfectly satisfied that desire. And thebitter lives of the enslaved Africans produced so much sugar that pure sweetnessbegan to spread around the world.
Between the 1600s and the 1800s, sugar drove the entire economy lining Europe,Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The true Age of Sugar had begun – and it was doingmore to reshape the world than any ruler, empire, or war had ever done.
2. What did the global demand for sugar impact the people of Africa?
Document #3 – Excerpted from Sugar Changed The World, p. 37:
Textbooks talk about the Triangle Trade: Ships set out from Europe carry fabrics clothesand simple manufactured goods to Africa, where they sold their cargoes and boughtpeople. The enslaved people were shipped across the Atlantic to the islands, wherethey were sold for sugar. Then the ships brought sugar to North America, to be sold orturned into rum – which the captains brought back to Europe. But that neat triangle –already more of a rectangle – is completely misleading.
…for example, [trade] could cut out Europe entirely. British colonists’ ships set outdirectly from New York and New England carry the food and timber that the islandsneeded, trading them for sugar, which the merchants brought back up the coast. Thenthe colonists traded their sugar for English fabrics, clothes, and simple manufacturedgoods, or they took their rum directly to Africa to buy slaves – to sell to the sugarislands.
3. According to the authors, why is the idea of Triangular Trade misleading?
Document #4 – Excerpted from Sugar Changed The World, p. 67:
Why did the English, in particular, need a low-cost, filling hot drink [tea with sugar]? In aword: factories. England was the first country in the world to shift from making most ofits money in traditional places, such as farms, mines, or small shops, to factories. In theearly 1800s, the English figured out how to build machines to weave cloth, and how toorganize workers so that they could run the machines. Factory workers needed toleave their homes – to go to work – they were not on farms where they could grow theirown food, nor were they in ships where they could stop when they wanted and have asnack. Instead, theyworked together in long shifts, taking breaks when allowed. Factory workers needed cheap food that was easy to transport and gave them theenergy to last until the next break.
4a. What economic change was taking place in Europe?
4b. How did this change effect where people worked?
Document #5 – Excerpted from Sugar Changed The World, p. 70:
When we talk about Atlantic slavery, we must describe sugar Hell; and yet that is onlypart of the story. Africans were at the heart of this great change in the economy, indeedin the lives of people throughout the world. Africans were the true global citizens –adjusting to a new land, a new religion, even to other Africans they would never havemet in their homelands. Their labor made the Age of Sugar – the Industrial Age –possible.
5. How could African slaves be described as true global citizens?
Document #6 – Excerpted from Sugar Changed The World, p. 83-84:
With their victory, the people of Saint Domingue [Haiti] announced that the conflictbetween freedom and property was over: “all men are equal” meant that no men areproperty. This idea terrified the English – and not merely because their sugar island of
Jamaica was just over a hundred miles across the water from Saint Domingue.
…It was a challenge to all ranking hierarchies… After all, in England only 3 percent ofthe population hand the right to vote. If this expanded idea of freedom spread, how safewere the kings and dukes, earls and knights, of England? Starting in fall 1793, Britishtroops began arriving in Saint Domingue to re-enslave people and return them to theirsugar plantations.
6. Why was the slave revolt in Haiti perceived as a threat by the British?
Document #7 – Excerpted from Sugar Changed The World, p. 104-105:
Why would any Indian risk going off to work in sugar [as an indentured servant]? At thetime, India was very, very poor, especially in the north, where famines and droughts hadswept across the countryside and people were pushed off their land. Leaving home tofind work was not a new idea. But there was a catch, a special problem, in sugar work. The people of India practiced many different religions: There were Muslims, Buddhists,Sikhs, Catholics, Parsees, Jains, and even Indian Jews. But must Indians were Hindus. And for traditional Hindus, leaving India and traveling on the ocean – it was called“crossing the black water,” the kali pana – was forbidden. Anyone who made the fatefulpassage became impure, polluted.
…A person who crossed the black water lost all caste… Anyone who left the country could not come back and be respected by his friends, his family, his fellow villagers,unless he went through a special ceremony.
7a. Why might an Indian choose to become and Indentured servant?
7b. What special problem would an Indian Hindu face?
Document #8 – Excerpted from Sugar Changed The World, p. 117:
In 1854, only 11 percent of the world sugar production came from beets. By 1899, thepercentage had risen to about 65 percent. By 1979, chemists discovered saccharine –a laboratory-created substance that is several hundred times sweeter than naturalsugar. Today the sweeteners used in the foods you eat may come from corn (high-fructosecorn syrup), from fruit (fructose), or directly from the lab (Splenda, created1976). Brazil is the land that imported more Africans than any other to work on sugarplantations, and in Brazil the soil is still perfect for Sugar. Cane grows in Brazil today, but not always for sugar. Instead, can is often used to create ethanol, much as cornfarmers in America now convert their harvest into fuel.
8a. How has science changed the demand for natural, cane sugar?
8b. How has science found a new use for sugar today in Brazil?
Document #9 – Excerpted from Sugar Changed The World, p. 123:
His work done, Gandhi returned to India, where Satyagraha (non-violent, civildisobedience) became the most effective weapon in the fight for Indian independence.
In India, Gandhi also preached noncooperation – refusing to use or buy British goods.
Just as the British abolitionists shamed people into not buy the blood soaked [sugar]crystals forged in slavery, he told Indians not to buy goods manufactured by theircolonial master. Gandhi’s love-force won. In 1947, India became the first British colonysince the United States to break free from foreign rule.
9. How did Gandhi help bring about Indian Independence from Great Britain?