The Roles of Globalization in Timothy Brook’s Vermeer’s Hat and Sidney Mintz’s Sweetness and Power

818189 The “Engine” of the Sugar Trade Over one generation in Britain, the consumption of sugar quadrupled, sending a shockwave to the economy. This was during the eighteenth century, when sugar was being produced at a fast rate as sugar cane was being harvested and processed in the Caribbean by slaves from Africa, then being shipped to Britain to meet the high demand of the British. The “engine” behind the trade of this sugar was the combined force of Britain’s demand for the sugar, the ever growing slave trade, and the money invested by British people.

Sugar was so high in consumer demand and addicting that in certain areas an average person would consume sixteen pounds a year. Evidence of this is shown in document G. The document conveys the annual per capita consumption ( in pounds ) from the year 1700 to the year 1770 in England. When analyzing document C, readers realize that the high amount of consumption is due to sugar’s highly addictive property. This document written by Benjamin Moseley, M.D. in the year 1800 states, “¬¬¬The increased consumption of sugar, and increasing demand for it, exceeded all comparison with any other article,

Document A, “Sugar Cone and Tongs”, with natural resources sent from America, England used its manufacturers to mass produce sugar tongs and sell them to the colonists expensively. To colonists sugar was an everyday necessity. So inevitably they continued to buy the sugar tong( the sugar tong is used to put sugar into tea) to fill their sugar cravings. England not only sold the thing used to put the sugar into tea, the sugar tong, but the created and enforced the Sugar Act, which put a tax on sugar. The sugar tong and Sugar Act made the enjoyable hobby of consuming sugar, very expensive and outraged

Sugar was relatively unknown to Europe until the fourteenth century. After its introduction to the people of Europe, it gradually spread across the continent until it eventually reached the Atlantic nations. After the “discovery” of the New World, Europe was eager to expand its territories. Sugar was soon brought to the Americas with the explorers, and the global sugar trade was born. The sugar trade was driven by the high demand for sugar in Europe, its appeal to European investors, and competition between European nations.

In the beginning of the 18th century, the British government’s administration of this system had been lenient. The Sugar Act of 1764 was the first attempt to regain control over colonial trade, which had been neglected. This act halved the

In Vermeer’s Hat: The seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World, Timothy Brook uses Vermeer’s paintings to show the effects of trade on the world and the overall globalization occurring. Brook argues that this globalization had begun in the seventeenth century. He takes a look at Vermeer’s paintings, and uses them as windows into seventeenth century history to discuss further topics of interest. Through every painting, it leads to a door that

Prior to 1500, there was very little contact between peoples who lived in different areas of the world. Some lands were distant and isolated from each other that they were not even aware of each other’s existence. During the Middle Ages, Europe had operated under the feudal system: peasants worked the land for nobles in exchange for protection. As the Middle Ages drew to a close, one of the most drastic changes that the world experienced was the growing interactions between people of different cultures and the spread of people and goods around the globe. Timothy Brook’s book Vermeer’s Hat, analyzes the objects found in the paintings of a seventeenth century painter from a small Dutch town to explore the extent to which things moved across geographical and cultural borders. Of the people who were making their way across the globe at this time, many did so freely as explorers, traders, and settlers. There was significant portion, however, who were forced to migrate and serve as laborers to ensure cash crops grown in the New World reached European markets. Marcus Rediker’s Slave Ship describes in graphic detail how the Trans-Atlantic slave trade operated. Whereas Brook examines the bigger picture of how capitalism spread goods across the globe and brought different peoples together materially, Rediker analyzes the details: how the inherent hierarchy of the system affected the individuals. Thus, Rediker’s argument that capitalism is a dividing force is much more compelling than

For my comparison book review, I chose to focus on the Atlantic Slave Trade Second Edition by Herbert S Klein and The Economic Consequences of the Atlantic Slave Trade” by Barbara L. Solow. My focus of the trade is labor demands, effects on Africa, European organization of trade, and economy leading up to the end of the trade and after. Together, the two books demonstrate that the Atlantic Slave Trade was more than just the trading of Africans to different continents, but was a historical point that heavily impacted the world socially, economically and politically. While acknowledging the similarities of the two books in my essay, I will also address differences and points that may challenge each other. Before the institution of slavery was confined to only Africans, there were also indentured servants and other forms of caste workers that involved other races. Until the 15th century, the Mediterranean world use slaves as domestic servants, soldiers, mining and agriculture production. But according to Solow, when colonization moved to the Atlantic, plantation slavery became black and blacks became plantation slaves. Solow says that European colonization was associated with sugar; sugar was associated with slavery; and slavery was associated with blacks. (Solow, pg.5)

Europe, Africa, and North and South America societies were permanently changed by the movement of goods, people, and wealth in the late 17th and 18th centuries; by doing this it pushed the world closer to globalization. The biggest influence on this drive was referred to as ‘the Atlantic Circuit’, a triangular trade between Western Africa, the West Indies, and Western Europe. This circuit opened up so many industries of agriculture, mostly because of the quick growth of the Atlantic slave trade, but in the end drastically changed the economies of all involved. The Colonization, in combination with the agriculture industries renovated the land of the Americas, and influenced nutrition and diets around the world. Not to mention that the capitalist

In document 4 it says “ sugar is sweeter came to the force in connection with three other exotic imports tea, coffee, and chocolate.” As tea, coffee, and chocolate being the most things people are trading, they needed sugar to make them sweet. Also tea,coffee,chocolate, and sugar are being the biggest things that are being traded, they are also becoming additive. The things that are put in these products, they are considered drugs. All the effects were new to England, so they just kept using

Throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, the world witnessed a global expansion as well as a compaction of people, cultures, and ideas. The need for goods, as well as the process of mercantilism to inflate economies, was instrumental in the advancement of seafaring technologies, the need to spread religion, and the eventual globalization of the slave market. The four major regions in the world, which were the stepping stones of globalization, are Africa, Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, the Americas, and finally East Asia.

Richards is writing the article to discuss the fact “too much sugar does not just make us fat; it can also make us sick”. The position Richards is taking in this article is: sugar can be debilitating and is “the public enemy”.

Some of the most brilliant minds have made many unorthodox suggestions. This is the case with Sidney Mintz’s thesis in Sweetness and Power: The Place of Modern History. Mintz’s suggestions that industrial capitalism originated in the Caribbean sugar plantations may seem to contradict the European version of world history fed to most of the Western world, but is nevertheless supported by substantial evidence. In general, Western education has conditioned students to believe that everything productive originated in Europe.

This essay will further the notion that globalisation occurred during Christopher Columbus’s journey to the Americas as it formed the basis for wider commercial activity to occur. The debate in question is marked by various views. One argument is that globalisation began prior to Columbus whereas other scholars believe the structure of a defragmented economy was the cause. Furthermore this essay will aim to analyse the concept of globalisation as being valued for demonstrating the interaction and interconnectivity in the human past. This facilitated the structures of the new world. However the definition of globalisation must be noted in order to come to a suitable judgement of its effectiveness in the human past and when it began. Globalisation

In Mintz’s book, “Sweetness and Power,” we are introduced into the history, production, and consumption of sugar. Sugar comes from two sources: sugar cane and beets (Class Notes October 6, 2016). In discussing the history of sugar, Mintz says, “The sugar cane was first domesticated in New Guinea […] around 8000 B.C.” (Mintz 2016: 19). Yet, sugar was not processed from sugar cane until around five-hundred years ago (Mintz 2016: 16). Once different culture and countries became aware of processed sugar, it was a way for them to use sugar as opposed to different sweeteners. Being able to use sugar as an alternative, required countries to start producing it. The labor force who would produce sugar, “would have to sell its labor to the owners