Sugar

• Tasks
• Background
• Teachers' notes
• External links
• Connections to curriculum

 

This lesson shows us how we can use a range of historical sources from the early modern period to piece together the history of sugar, a foodstuff that is now a part of our daily life. It explores the time in history when sugar was beginning to become more easily available and affordable in England, due to the transatlantic slave trade, the growth of sugar plantations in the Americas, and the labour of enslaved peoples on these plantations. A large collection of documents that can tell us about the history of sugar can be found in a collection called HCA 30, a varied set of records from the High Court of Admiralty, which include piracy, prize-taking, colonialism, and overseas trade. 

Use this lesson to see what you can discover about the history of sugar from six different sources in collections at The National Archives.  

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Tasks

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Background

By the end of the sixteenth century, English sugar consumption amongst royalty and the wealthy was so common that it was often remarked upon by foreign travellers in their description of English society. The German traveller Paul Hentzner describes the damage that sugar had done to Elizabeth’s I health and appearance by the time she was 65 years old: “her Lips narrow and her Teeth black…a defect the English seem subject to, from their too great use of sugar”. Hentzner’s witty observation responds to an important shift in how sugar was being consumed in England. In the medieval period, it served as a spice like nutmeg or ginger, as a preservative to stop food rotting, and played an important role as a medicine. By the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, however, it was used as a delicious sweetener to be consumed in magnificent sugar feasts called banquets. It was also bought by some housewives in London, keen to copy the dining practices of the wealthy. English recipe books containing many recipes for sugary treats, such as Hugh Plat’s Delights for Ladies (1602), were very fashionable between 1575-1650, as sugar slowly became a foodstuff that more people could afford to enjoy and experiment with. 

First grown in New Guinea and India as far back as 8000 BCE, by the tenth century BCE sugarcane had spread to Persia and the Arab world. The Arab conquest of vast areas of the Mediterranean from the seventh century onwards introduced sugar cane to Sicily, Cyprus, Malta, the Barbary Coast, the Maghreb, and Spain, opening methods of cultivation and the art of sugar refining across conquered geographical areas. During the crusades of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when Christians captured Islamic land, the Europeans experienced their first taste of sugar. Christian Soldiers were supposed to have gnawed on sugarcane and survived on its sap. The Europeans did more than just consume sugar; they became involved in both its cultivation and production. By the fourteenth century, Cyprus and Sicily had become important Mediterranean producers of sugar for the Europeans. This success encouraged Europeans to expand the sugar industry to the Atlantic Islands, South America, and the Americas. By the time of Elizabeth I’s and James I’s rule, increasing amounts of sugar was brought from sugar plantations (engenhos) in Brazil. These engenhos demanded the enforced labour of indigenous peoples, and, increasingly, enslaved Africans, who would work in appalling conditions to crush the sugarcane, extract the juice, and boil this juice at a hot temperature to produce sugar molasses, which would be shipped to Europe in large barrels called hogsheads. The beginning of a global sugar industry is an important part of the history of the early transatlantic slave trade.  

The dark brown sugar molasses were brought to Lisbon, Antwerp, and Amsterdam, where they were further refined into coned sugar loaves, closely resembling the white granular sugar we are familiar with today. It was then transported to England to be purchased in grocers and apothecaries’ shops, and used in recipes for marmalades, sugar sculptures, marzipans, biscuits, and other sweet treats. It is in the sixteenth century that England developed its sweet tooth for which it is now so well known. The documents within this teaching resource provide snapshots of sugar’s history in the early modern period.

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Teachers' notes

This lesson introduces students to the history of sugar in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and sugar’s journey from plantations in the Americas to European metropoles, where it was often further refined before being sold for consumption. The lesson aims to help students reflect on to the importance of overseas trade, the transatlantic slave trade, and global exchange networks when thinking about the history of foodstuffs that are now part of our daily lives. The lesson is also designed to provoke questions around changing patterns of consumption in the sixteenth century, at a time where sugar was becoming slowly more available and affordable to people beyond the royalty and elite.   

Starter activity 

Teachers could use the illustration image as a starter activity for the lesson. Ask the students to take a look at this photograph. 

• What is this object made of? 
• Can they describe the design and shape? 
• What do they think it is used for? 
• When do they think it was made? 
• Does the photograph help us to date it? 
• Do we use similar objects today? 

Teachers can point out that this photograph was produced much later than the other sources used in this lesson, but it is also part of the history of sugar. The tea set was a common feature in homes during in the Victorian era and always included a sugar bowl, used with special tongs for sugar cubes, and a milk jug as part of afternoon tea. Afternoon tea is a dining practice enabled by Britain’s growing empire from the seventeenth century onwards, which meant that English people had access to exotic foodstuffs including sugar, tea, coffee, and spices. Sugar, imported from the West Indies, became gradually cheaper from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries due to the labour of the indentured and enslaved labourers. A sugarloaf was the usual form in which refined sugar was produced and sold until the late 19th century, when granulated and cube sugars were introduced.   

In this lesson students explore a range of different types of original documents including a coloured map, a recipe, an illustration, ‘Bill of lading’, inventory and a letter. It worth exploring how different sources can be used to help us understand the past. Discuss which source is the most useful, interesting, surprising, or accessible. Encourage your students to explain why/why not. 

It is also worth getting students to try and read the documents; however, transcripts and some simplified transcripts are provided. Students can work through the questions individually or in groups and report back to the whole class. Work on the topic could be extended through the following activities: 

• Watch the short video about the early history of sugar listed in the external links below. You can find out more about sugar’s story, and how royalty and the wealthy in England used sugar in dining rituals as a display of wealth and power.  
• Students could use the source as stimulus material for a piece of creative writing of a diary of a mariner or sailor at sea on board a ship carrying sugar as cargo, which has been captured by enemy sailors.  
• Create your own early modern recipe using sugar. 

Sources  

Illustration image: Sugar basin design 1852-1870, Catalogue ref: BT 43/61 (228782) 

Source 1: ‘Atlas maritimus or, the sea-atlas’, John Seller, 1675. Catalogue Ref: FO 925/4111 f.29.  

Source 2: ‘A recipe for marshmallow syrup’, Ship: Abraham of London (Master Andrew Hardie), 1633-1637. Catalogue Ref: HCA 30/636/7.  

Source 3: London and Middlesex. Civitas Londinium. Panoramic view of London’, Ralph Agas, 1633. Catalogue Ref: MPEE 1/25 

Source 4: Bill of lading for sugar for Thomas Crossing in the Mayflower of London (Master William Badeley), Oct 6. 1636. Catalogue Ref: HCA 30/840/79 f.189. 

Source 5: Inventory of the sugar and marmalade taken from the Neptune of Emden by Sir John Hawkins, 1590, Catalogue Ref: HCA 30/840/171 f.386-389. 

Source 6: A letter from Jerard Gore to Anthony Williams. Send a spaniel, sugar, pipes, tobacco, 5 September 1623. Catalogue Ref: SP 46/66 f.24.  

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External links

Syrups and ships: Early sugar consumption in England
A blog from The National Archives looking closer at the recipe in source 2.

BBC Studio video explores the early history of sugar and the creation of sugar sculptures in the early modern period. 

BBC Bitesize considers the early history of the transatlantic slave trade, and sugar’s role in establishing this trade. 

Indentured labour from South Asia (1834-1917) 
This website explores the meaning of indentured labour used to work on plantations for sugar and tobacco after the abolition of the slave trade.  

The British Museum explores the history of sugar in five key objects, exploring sugar’s connection with artistry, luxury, and the transatlantic slave trade. 

Rare Cooking has a number of old recipes dating from 1600 that you can recreate at home.  

The Prize Papers Project is working to digitize Prize Papers from the HCA records. These documents can tell us about the early modern naval practice of prize-taking. It also allows us to track the lives of people around the globe and onboard ships during a time of colonial expansion and a growth in overseas trade. Here are a collection of items that were found on board captured ships in the early modern period, which students can explore.  

Connections to curriculum

Key Stage 2:

‘Pupils should continue to develop a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of British, local and world history, establishing clear narratives within and across the periods they study. They should note connections, contrasts and trends over time and develop the appropriate use of historical terms. They should regularly address and sometimes devise historically valid questions about change, cause, similarity and difference, and significance. They should construct informed responses that involve thoughtful selection and organisation of relevant historical information. They should understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources.’ 

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