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SUGAR CHRONICLE
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Sugarcane
that we eat is a grass that can grow to a height as
tall as 15 feet. This perennial plant grows best in
warm tropical climates. Morphologically, it
has leaves at the top and a hollow stalk filled with
sweet sap from which sugar is extracted. It matures
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for harvesting after 10 to 15 months. In India, the
sugar-manufacturing season starts in October and
continues in March or April.
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Sugarcane originated in
China and India several thousand years ago. Its
starting point dates back to 510 B.C. when the
soldiers of the Persian Emperor DariusI saw cane
growing on the banks of the River Indus. They
called it the
"reeds, which produce honey without the bees." Very
soon,
sugarcane
traced its route into
Persia and later the Arabs led it into Egypt.
Needn't we forget that the word 'sugar' is
itself derived from an Arabic word? Alexander,
the Great (356-232 B.C.) introduced sugar to the
Mediterranean nations from where it spread down
the east coast of Africa.
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By 600 A.D. the practice of harvesting the
sugarcane, extracting its sweet
juice, and boiling it to produce raw sugar
crystals became popular. Almost six hundred
years later, when Marco Polo visited China, he
saw many prosperous sugar mills. Around the
middle of the fifteenth century, there were cane
plantations in Madeira, the Canary Islands, and
St. Thomas. These supplied sugar to Europe until
the sixteenth century, when sugar manufacture
spread over tropical America. In the seventeenth
century, there were considerable sugar exports
from the West Indies. Sources state that raw
cane sugar was refined in Dublin and Belfast in
the middle of the seventeenth century.
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SAD BUT TRUE: SUGAR INDUSTRY FUELED SLAVERY?
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The uniqueness of sugar is
that it can be manufactured from two unique and
independent sources. These are the sugar beet
and the sugarcane.
The former is conveniently grown in the
temperate zones and the latter in the tropics.
This indicated that sugar, whether from cane or
beet, could be produced in most regions.
Sugar beet, although known as a
'sweet vegetable',
was not used as a commercial source of sugar
till the second half of the eighteenth century.
It was Margraf, who, while working in Berlin,
discovered a technique for extracting sugar from
the beet. His pupil, Achard, further developed
this.
Nelson's victory at Trafalgar in 1805 was
followed by a cut off of Europe from cane sugar.
Napoleon, as he came to know about the new
technique for extracting sugar from sugar beet,
decided in 1811 that sugar beet was to be the
source of sugar for Europe.
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