How Sugar Enslaved the World

Published at : 23 Dec 2025

The first 100 people to use code PRESENTPAST at the link below will get 60% off of Incogni: https://incogni.com/presentpast

Sugar is everywhere around us. But just 500 years ago the value of sugar was measured in gold. What changed?

00:00 - 00:33 - Intro
00:33 - 01:45 - Sugar is everywhere
01:45 - 03:41 - Paying the bills with Incogni
03:41 - 05:14 - Origins
05:14 - 06:20 - Sugar becomes a thing in europe
06:20 - 07:47 - Spreading sugar over the world
07:47 - 09:01 - How do you make sugar actually
09:01 - 13:40 - Abolition and modern times
13:41 - 16:50 - How sugar got so big
16:50 - 17:30 - cApiTAlIsm
17:31 - 19:47 - its everywhere
19:47 - 20:55 - consumer actions right now

Sources:
Ulbe Bosma (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam) - The world of Sugar. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674279391
I couldn't have made this video without this epic overview of the history of sugar production. Theres so much I had to leave out, but check out this book if you want to know more.

Sidney W. Mintz - Sweetness and power https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/322123/sweetness-and-power-by-sidney-w-mintz/
An anthropologic view of sugar consumption. Very well written, that juicy english cuisine quote come from this book.

Michael Moss - Salt, Sugar and Fat https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/0812982193
Insightful book in how the food we eat is engineered to make us want more and more and more.

McCants, Anne E. C. “Poor Consumers as Global Consumers: The Diffusion of Tea and Coffee Drinking in the Eighteenth Century.” The Economic History Review 61, no. S1 (2008): 172–200. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40057651.
If you want to know how amazingly fast coffee and tea found their way into even the poorest households do check this out.

Noel Deer - The History of sugar https://books.google.si/books/about/The_History_of_Sugar.html?id=o1xFAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y
An older tome, but it has good statistics on the sugar trade.

Hi there, my name is Jochem Boodt. I make the show The Present Past, where I show how the present has been influenced by the past. History, but connected to the present and fun!

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