Sweet-Tooth Politics: African in the Caribbean - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 320

22. Sweet-Tooth Politics: African in the Caribbean
We do sugar o'er
The devil himself
— Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1, Page 3
Visitors to the Caribbean and the Atlantic Bahamas take their mostly black populations for
granted. In terms of race and much of their culture, the Caribbean is an outpost of Africa. To
ask why is to unravel a tangled web of greed, cruelty, national ambition, and humankind's
oldest addiction. At the center of this ancient web is sugar.
WHY SUGAR?
Sugar may well be humankind's oldest addiction. It is a complex carbohydrate whose
simplest and most familiar forms are fructose and glucose. In Biblical times, the chief source
of sugar was honey, transformed by the bee from sucrose into fructose and glucose. But
until the discovery of the Americas, sugar was always in short supply. Sugar's scarcity and
desirability before the Spanish came to America are reflected in the yearnings of the Book
of Exodus, which speaks of a Promised Land “flowing with milk and honey.” And scarcity
made it expensive. Unlike salt, a life-giving necessity for grain-eating societies and a preser-
vative for fish and meat, sugar was an indulgence, a luxury reserved for the wealthy. When
Henry VIII hosted a sumptuous banquet in 1526, the royal household had difficulty in find-
ing three pounds of sugar to serve to the king and his noble guests.
WHERE DID SUGAR ORIGINATE?
Legend and history state that sugarcane was first found growing on the banks of the Indus
River by soldiers of the Persian king Darius in 510 BCE. Genetic research traces the origins
of sugarcane to the island of New Guinea, from which it made its way to China and India.
The first written references to sugar describe it as Indian salt. Our English word for sugar is
even more telling: it derives from Sanskrit, sarkara . From the Far East, sugarcane traveled
west. An early scenario has Alexander the Great introducing sugarcane to the eastern Medi-
terranean, from which it spread to Cyprus, Sicily, and Andalusia.
Another scenario puts sugarcane aboard Arab dhows (sailboats), sailing the monsoon
and entering the Mediterranean by way of the Muslim Near East sometime around 800 CE.
This scenario helps account for the English word candy: the Oxford English Dictionary as-
serts that the word candy is Arabic in origin, quandx, associated with the practice of chew-
ing on pieces of sugarcane. A more intriguing derivation connects the word to Kandia , the
Arabic name for Heraklion in Crete. Perhaps Kandia derives from the Cretan hard candy
(boiled sweets) that is the forerunner to modern-day confections.