Boston : Clarion Books, c2010.
ix, 166 p. : ill., maps ; 25 cm.
Just as Kurlansky's book on cod makes the case for the often overlooked importance of cod in world affairs and US history, so too Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos' wonderful book on sugar brings this common food item to life by telling its bloody & compelling history. There is a painful irony that such a sweet substance is so inextricably tied into the immense holocaust of the African slave trade in the Americas - especially in South America and the Caribbean.
For example, in Sugar Changed the World we learn that in just over 100 years between 1701 and 1810 years, nearly a million slaves were shipped into just two "sugar" islands in the Caribbean - the British sugar/slave islands of Barbados and Jamaica. The book reveals that sugar slavery was an especially brutal and lethal fate for slaves. Up to the time of Emancipation in the US, about 500,000 slaves were brought into North America, while more than 2 million were taken to the various "sugar" islands - and yet at Emancipation, the slave population in North American had risen 4 million, while the slave population of the islands was 670,000. The sugar plantations of the Caribbean were places where most slaves were worked to death.
The book conveys the hell that was the sugar plantations of the Caribbean (and eventually of Louisiana in the US) in ways that are factual without being overwhelming for middle to high school readers. In detailing the workings of the sugar slave plantations the book would make an excellent pairing with The Poet Slave of Cuba by Margarita Engle. A strength of Aronson and Budhos' book is that it not only chronicles the horrors of the the sugar slave world, but presents the culture and resilience of the people who lived and died as slaves in the sugar plantations and as workers in the sugar industry after slavery officially ended.
Aronson and and Budhos do an excellent job of giving the global history of sugar (where it came from, and how it became cultivated), explaining how sugar is processed, and revealing that sugar was an economic engine for the emerging imperialist states of Britain, the US, and France.The authors also devote a significant section of their book to the successful slave revolt in Haiti and the contradictions of the US relations with Haiti.
The book has excellent photos, maps and graphics which make the story interesting and very clear. I would highly recommend this book for any student interested in the fascinating and brutal history of sugar. Lastly, for any teachers considering using the book in their classrooms, there is a great website for the book - including a Teacher's Guide!
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