Sugar Cane: Christopher Columbus's Second Trip To The New World

Making sugar as it was discovered in the 17th century was a hard process. That is why it was believed to be an investment during this time. The sugar had to be boiled 3-4 times before the process was over, and the water was removed. What drove the sugar trade was the demand as it became such a huge stimulant. Everyone wanted it, and that's why people spent all their time growing it across the sea.

Today we take sugar for granted. But do we really know how it became the enormous product that it is now, do we really know what drove it to become this monster of trade? When Christopher Columbus came to the new world, he brought cane sugar. He quickly discovered how wonderful the land and climate were for growing sugar. In England, many rich merchants realized how successful it could become with the number of slaves available. Before the trade took root in central America, sugar had been considered a delicacy. Now, as it became more affordable, the consumer demand increased. All three of these factors drove the sugar trade to become the most successful and rapidly growing trade in history. The sugar trade was driven by consumer demand, cheap labor and fertile land.

By the mid-1500s in Spanish Caribbean islands and Portuguese Brazil, colonists had turned to the quick and highly profitable cultivation of sugar, a crop that required constant attention and exhausting labour. They tried to recruit native Americans, but many were sick and eventually died from diseases brought by Europeans, such as smallpox, diphtheria, and

One of the most interesting questions to ponder: is can a link be drawn directly to show the causation of why and when countries adopted customs or habits that are now fundamental in the present day. With secondary sources, these correlations can be shown and provide statistics as proof, based upon analysis of important primary sources. The journal article The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food and Ideas is a secondary source detailing what occurred in the years after the voyage of Columbus and how both the New World and the Old World were affected during this period of colonization. An interesting perspective was given in this paper, unlike many others that describe the same topic, in which the authors chose to focus on how the Old World was affected more so than what transpired in the areas being colonized. There was an extravagant biological exchange of both crops and disease, which provided serious lifestyle changes for both Europeans and the native people of the Americas, and there were also consequences elsewhere in the world associated with the Columbus exchange in the years after its commencement. Secondary sources are also very important to historians and this is a source that is very well written, backed up by diagrams and detailed evidence found in primary sources.

The Columbian Exchange was important to everyone around the world, it brought all sorts of new food to America and Europe. Chicken Alfredo has ingredients that were from China, Italy, and India so when the Columbian Exchange took place someone decided to mix these ingredients together to make Chicken Alfredo. Most of the stuff in Chicken Alfredo was from Italy so when it was brought down to America many people were shocked about what has just been brought to them. Pasta was not actually from Italy, it was originally from China but people have brought it over. Also chicken was originally from Thailand, China, Vietnam and other Asian

The long-term effects of the Columbian exchange included the swap of food, crops, and animals between the New World and Old World, and the start of the transoceanic trade. In order to produce a profit, Portuguese explorers were the first to established sugar cane plantations in Brazil. They then sold this crop to the Old World where it was a popular commodity because it provided Europeans with a sweetener for foods. In addition, European produce was brought to the New World, including “…wheat, vines, horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens… Where they sharply increased supplies of food and animal energy.” This fusion of crops between the Old and New World became fundamental in enhancing the diets and food of both populations.

When the Americas were just beginning to form, spirits accelerated their colonialism. At first, sugarcane production was introduced to the Western Indies or Caribbean Islands by Christopher Columbus. The West Indies land was not suitable to grow wine vines or grains for beer, instead Columbus introduced sugar canes to the Indies, creating a major sugar plantation in the West

Sugar is one of the most important items that was discovered in the new world back in the 1300’s. The reason for this is that in the 1300’s hardly anyone knew what sugar was until Christopher Columbus went to the Bahamas and came back to Spain with sugar in the 1400’s. So what drove the sugar trade?, well there are many factors that drove it some of them were Land meaning the natural resources used to make sugar, Labor, meaning human resources that are needed to make sugar, and Investment Capital which is money used to buy tools and land. Sugar could have become such a desired good due to the fact that people in Europe found out that there is such a thing with the qualities of sugar or maybe it could be because of the low cost of slaves

The sugar trade succeeded due to the increasing demand for the product, along with the advent of European colonization of the Caribbean, and the use of slavery as an efficient workforce. The rise in demand for sugar was partially a result of the addictive properties it had, which caused people to want more of it. The islands on which the Europeans were colonizing were ideal for the growth of cane sugar, the plant that is processed into the finished sugar product. With the use of slaves, the production of sugar was happening at a much quicker and cheaper rate than before, thus creating more sugar to supply the demand. During the sixteenth century, the Europeans colonized the Caribbean islands, which were perfect for running sugar plantations.

Sugar has been a staple in the diets of Europeans for centuries. From desserts to tea, sugar has been added to everything. While it is unhealthy in large doses, the demand for the saccharide does not falter. Before sugar could be mass produced by machines, much of the labor was done by slaves. While this benefitted white Europeans, they were the only ones to have profited from this new sugar craze. The African population suffered immensely from the sugar industry as the working conditions of sugar plantations were brutal and they had no civil rights as slaves.

The modern sugar industry began with Christopher Columbus, the misguided sailor who set sail from Palos de la Frontera, Spain, westward toward China on August 3, 1492. He got as far as Cuba. As planned, Columbus landed at the Canary Islands a short time after leaving Spain, to load up provisions, however Columbus fell in love with the land's ruler, the beautiful Beatriz de Bobadilla y Ossorio. They had a month-long affair before he finally sailed away. She gave as a gift some sugarcane cuttings, which he planted in what he thought was land near China, but which were really the islands of San Salvador, Cuba and Hispaniola.

In 1493, one year after his voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus introduced cane sugar to the islands of the Caribbean. At the time, sugar was practically unknown to most people in Europe. This would soon change. But what drove this booming market of refined sugar and endless amounts of wealth.

Nearchus mentioned sugar cane in western India in 325 BC. Sugar cane was probably introduced into China around 110 BC when a botanical garden was founded near Pekin for the introduction of exotic-plants (Deerr 1949). Theophrastus described 'honey produced from reeds,' while Dioscorides, in the first century AD, described 'a honey called sakkharon collected from reeds in India and Arabia Felix with the consistency of salt and which could be crunched between the teeth'. The mountains and deserts of Afghanistan, Baluchistan, and eastern Persia served as natural barriers against the spread of cane to other areas for centuries. It eventually reached Persia in the sixth century. The Arabs were responsible for much of its spread as they took it to Egypt in 641 AD during their conquests. They also carried it with them as they advanced around the Mediterranean. Sugar cane spread by this means to Syria, Cyprus, and Crete, eventually reaching Spain around 714 AD. The sugar industry in Spain was very successful, with about 30,000 ha of cane being cultivated by about 1150 AD. Around 1420 the Portuguese introduced cane into Madeira, from where it soon reached the Canary Islands, the Azores, and West Africa (Purseglove 1979). Columbus transported sugar cane from the Canary Islands to Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic) on his second voyage in 1493 (Deerr 1949, Purseglove 1979).

Christopher Columbus was determined to find new trade routes to India and so, in 1492, after gaining permission he set out in order to accomplish this task. However, what Christopher Columbus would actually encounter was not new trades routes to India, but a whole “new” world. What exists, however, when you travel to a new country is the possibility of a language barrier between you and the native individuals. This barrier existed when Christopher Columbus first made contact with the native indigenous inhabitants. Luckily, letters from Columbus’s first voyage have survived, and have offered a look into his encounters with the different languages of the indigenous people. Through his accounts a question arises: how does Christopher Columbus describe language and communication is his late 15th century letters? In this essay, I will discuss how Columbus’s use and description of language and communication was a way to show superiority among those Indigenous people he encountered.

The two major features of seventeenth century agriculture in the Caribbean was the ever-growing need for plantation systems and the mass migration of millions of people from Africa, Asia and Europe to the islands to work on these plantations. The Sugar Revolution in the West Indies began in 1650 and pushed this phenomenon along dramatically (cite). Sugar quickly became the most sought-after commodity in both Europe and the Americas. Up until around 1650, the British and French colonies were attempting to conceive an ideal crop that they could be used to increase their exports to their respective metropoles across the Atlantic (cite). This crop needed to be high in value, able to be produced in bulk, survive the journey to Europe and lastly, had to be able to be produced on the available land with available labour. (cite) The problem faced by the colonists was that they had no knowledge of agriculture in a tropic climate, so they needed to figure out something that was familiar and could be grown on Caribbean soil (cite). They attempted to produce and export cotton, indigo and tobacco at first but each of these were deemed unsuccessful due to their northern counterparts in America making the same crops (cite). Eventually, the decided that sugar would be the optimal crop that they could use to export to Europe. The process of producing and cultivating sugar was incredibly precarious. The conditions of labour were horrendous and many died on sugar plantations (cite the