Sweetness And Power: Place Of Sugar In Modern History

After reading Sidney Mintz’s book Sweetness and Power: The place of Sugar in Modern History sucrose will never be a simple commodity. The reader will most likely never enjoy coffee with sugar or a single desert without a deep reflection of the political nature of their choice. The Sweetness examines the power of consumption and its underlying social implications. The idea that the growth of sugar consumption in Britain reflected and resulted from the capitalistic development and creation of a world economy with centers and peripheries is one of the most notable overarching theories in the book. While the meaning of sugar was both “intensive” and “extensively” developed as Mintz termed it, sugar was also a sign of the growing authority of choice
in the world. The most interesting evidence for this is that while many upper-class individuals chided the lower-classes for spending what little money they had on sugar, the lower classes still continued to consume sugar at a growing rate. In many ways, Mintz is terming sugar a weapon against the patronizing tone of the upper classes towards the lower classes and signalling the transformation of power.