A history of sugar - the food nobody needs, but everyone craves
This need was met by a transatlantic slave trade, which resulted in around 12,570,000 human beings being shipped from Africa to the Americas
Britain and the Caribbean
[In the 17th and 18th centuries, Sugar was made from sugar cane]
Ponting 2000, p. 510.
Great Britain, for example, consumed five times as much sugar in 1770 as in 1710.
Triangular_trade.jpg
Caribbean Export Sugar to New England
Rönnbäck, K. (2021). Governance, value-added and rents in plantation slavery-based value-chains. Slavery & Abolition, 42(1), 130-150. Governance, value-added and rents in plantation slavery-based value-chains
3 grams of silver per kilogram of sugar
Historical Silver Prices
1 oz of gold = 15.1 oz of silver --> 28.3495 gram of gold = 428.0778 grams of silver --> (428.0778/28.3495=15.1) --> 1 gram of gold = 15.1 gram of silver
Historical Gold Prices: 30 BCE to Today
1664: 4.05 £ = 1 gram of gold
So, 4.05 £ = 1 gram of gold = 15.1 grams of silver = 5.03 kg of sugar
So, 1 £ = 1.24 kg of sugar or 1 kg of sugar = 0.8 £ (1700s) :
Currency converter: 1270 - 2017
£106.98 (2017) = £1 (1700)
£85.584 (2017) = 0.8 (1700) = £98.95 (2022) = 4,277.45 Thai Baht (2022) = 16,336.30 Japanese Yen
Summary: 1 kg of sugar = 4,277.45 THB
How Slavery Helped Build a World Economy
More than half of the enslaved African in the Americas were employed on sugar plantations.