The Relationship between Sugar and Slavery in the Early Modern Period

"No commodity on the face of the Earth has been wrested from the soil or the seas, from the skies or the bowels of the earth with such misery and human blood as sugar" ...(Anon)
Sugar in its many forms is as old as the Earth itself. It is a sweet tasting thing for which humans have a natural desire. However there is more to sugar than its sweet taste, rather cane sugar has been shown historically to have generated a complex process of cultural change altering the lives of all those it has touched, both the people who grew the commodity and those for whom it was grown. …