Sugar as luxury, spice and weapon of empires: a brief history of the sweet stuff

Until a few thousand years ago, sugar was unknown in the Western world, and the sweetness was mostly associated with honey, writes author Seamus Higgins in The Conversation, recounting the dark history of "white gold".

That all changed with the domestication of sugar cane, a crop associated with New Guinea and its subsequent spread across Asia. The turning point was when the technology of evaporating cane juice and producing crystals was mastered: it was then that sugar was transformed from a 'chewy sweet' into a commodity.

One of the earliest known descriptions of sugar dates back to the time of the Persian king Darius I: while travelling to India, he allegedly saw "a cane that gives honey without bees". Later, knowledge of sugar production spread through Persia and the Islamic world, and reached Europe in the Middle Ages mainly through trade routes - a very expensive product used more as a spice than as an everyday sweetener.

The real "sugar revolution" began during the era of colonial expansion. Cane plantations in the Atlantic and Caribbean turned sugar into a super-profitable commodity - but the price was monstrous: production was closely linked to the slave trade and forced labour system. Historians cite sugar as one of the key products that helped reshape consumption in Europe and fuelled the growth of colonial economies.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, sugar was rapidly 'democratised': the growing popularity of tea and coffee cemented the habit of sweetening beverages, while the removal of high duties made the product more accessible to working families. In Britain, for example, the 34 per cent tax on sugar was abolished in 1874 - a milestone on the road to mass consumption.

Politics and war provided a separate twist: in the early 19th century, as cane sugar supplies came under pressure from conflicts and blockades, Europe accelerated the development of an alternative - sugar beet and its own processing. Today, beet sugar remains an important part of the European market.

Sugar quickly became not only an ingredient in home cooking, but also the "fuel" for a new food industry: sweet drinks, chocolate, jams and desserts became mass-produced products. And in parallel, the medical debate grew about whether fat or sugar was more dangerous in the diet. In the 1960s and 1970s, the sugar industry, as documents and analyses show, supported research and communications that shifted the focus of risk towards fat and cholesterol - a subject that has been extensively discussed in the scientific literature.

Today, sugar remains one of the symbols of the modern diet: its journey from a rare "overseas spice" to an everyday component has taken a historically short period of time - and there is now increasing attention on how excess sweetness is linked to the rise in chronic disease and the burden on health systems.