How sugar reached the Islamic world, Europe n the Caribbean.

• Sugar comes from sugarcane. It grows naturally in hot lands. At first, people chewed the cane to enjoy the sweet juice. Then, around AD350, people in India discovered that by crushing the cane, boiling the juice and drying it, they could make sugar crystals which could be added to other food.
• After the Prophet Muhammad died in AD632, the religion of Islam grew rapidly from its homeland in Arabia. AD750 - it had spread from Spain in the west to India in the east. In the past, people in the Islamic world used honey to sweeten their foods and drinks. Then contact with India gave them a new sweetener- sugar.
• From the eighth century, sugar cane farming spread west through the Islamic world. By the eleventh century, it was being grown in North Africa and in Spain. Farmers developed new methods of irrigation to water the sugar cane and built watermills to grind the sugar.
• Sugar cane will not grow in northern Europe because the climate is too cold. However, from 1100, Europe's trade with the Islamic world increased, so sugar began to appear in European markets. In particular, merchants from Genoa and Venice (in Italy) established strong trade links with Egypt. They sold woollen cloth made in Europe and brought back spices and sugar grown in Egypt.
• At this time, sugar was still an expensive luxury. The merchants charged high prices. Only rich people could afford it. No one would have thought of using sugar in baking. It was something they used to show off their wealth and status. 'Look, I am so rich I can afford sugar' - as someone might show off an electric car today.
• In the fifteenth century, as well as extravagant plates of meat, fish and vegetables, the centrepiece at royal feasts was a wonderful sugar sculpture known as a sotiltee. Sometimes this was eaten, but often it was made just for decoration or display.
• At the end of the fifteenth century, Portuguese and Spanish sailors began to explore beyond Europe. Some sailed south around the coast of West Africa. They discovered warm islands which had a perfect climate for growing sugar cane. They started sugar cane 'plantations' on Madeira, the Canary-Islands, Cape-Verde and São-Tomé.

  Many of these islands were uninhabited. Yet harvesting sugar cane and processing it into sugar crystals was hard physical work.