Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.Not only were Russian farms run on unfree labor, but they used very simple, old-fashioned methods of farming. Like the English back in the time of Henry III, all Russians aside from the very wealthy still lived in the Age of Honey—sugar was a luxury taken out only when special guests came to visit. Indeed, as late as 1894, when the average English person was eating close to ninety pounds of sugar a year, the average Russian used just eight pounds.
Read the passage from the All Men Are Created Equal section of Sugar Changed the World.To say that "all men are equal" in 1716, when slavery was flourishing in every corner of the world and most eastern Europeans themselves were farmers who could be sold along with the land they worked, was like announcing that there was a new sun in the sky. In the Age of Sugar, when slavery was more brutal than ever before, the idea that all humans are equal began to spread—toppling kings, overturning governments, transforming the entire world.Sugar was the connection, the tie, between slavery and freedom. In order to create sugar, Europeans and colonists in the Americas destroyed Africans, turned them into objects. Just at that very same moment, Europeans—at home and across the Atlantic—decided that they could no longer stand being objects themselves. They each needed to vote, to speak out, to challenge the rules of crowned kings and royal princes. How could that be? Why did people keep speaking of equality while profiting from slaves? In fact, the global hunger for slave-grown sugar led directly to the end of slavery. Following the strand of sugar and slavery leads directly into the tumult of the Age of Revolutions. For in North America, then England, France, Haiti, and once again North America, the Age of Sugar brought about the great, final clash between freedom and slavery.Read the passage from the Serfs and Sweetness section of Sugar Changed the World.In the 1800s, the Russian czars controlled the largest empire in the world, and yet their land was caught in a kind of time warp. While the English were building factories, drinking tea, and organizing against the slave trade, the vast majority of Russians were serfs. Serfs were in a position very similar to slaves’—they could not choose where to live, they could not choose their work, and the person who owned their land and labor was free to punish and abuse them as he saw fit. In Russia, serfdom only finally ended in 1861, two years before Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.Not only were Russian farms run on unfree labor, but they used very simple, old-fashioned methods of farming. Like the English back in the time of Henry III, all Russians aside from the very wealthy still lived in the Age of Honey—sugar was a luxury taken out only when special guests came to visit. Indeed, as late as 1894, when the average English person was eating close to ninety pounds of sugar a year, the average Russian used just eight pounds.In one part of Russia, though, the nobles who owned the land were interested in trying out new tools, new equipment, and new ideas about how to improve the soil. This area was in the northern Ukraine just crossing into the Russian regions of Voronigh and Hurst. When word of the breakthrough in making sugar reached the landowners in that one more advanced part of Russia, they knew just what to do: plant beets.Cane sugar had brought millions of Africans into slavery, then helped foster the movement to abolish the slave trade. In Cuba large-scale sugar planting began in the 1800s, brought by new owners interested in using modern technology. Some of these planters led the way in freeing Cuban slaves. Now beet sugar set an example of modern farming that helped convince Russian nobles that it was time to free their millions of serfs.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World. MARCIt was a typically hot, dry day in Jerusalem. Marina and I were sitting on a sun-warmed stone patio when I learned my family's sugar story. A cousin of mine was filling in a bit of our history that had always puzzled me.My father's family came from Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, where his father, Solomon, the grand rabbi of Kiev, was the latest in a long line of rabbis that stretched back to the 1300s. Solomon was a forward-thinking rabbi who helped make bridges between the Jewish community and the Christians. He knew that change was coming, and he committed himself to building what was to become the land of Israel. My grandfather moved his family to Tel Aviv, where he became one of the leaders of the Jewish community.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.I wanted to know more about the beguiling Nina, and my cousin had plenty of stories to share. He told me that her grandfather was a Russian serf—a farmer who could be bought and sold by the noble who owned his land. Family legend has it that this serf, a remarkable and intelligent man, helped to change the course of the history of sugar. In the early 1800s, the British controlled most of the sugar plantations of the Caribbean and the sea routes to Europe. As a result, their rivals were desperate to find a new way to create sugar. They turned to beets.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.In the 1100s, the richest Europeans slowly began to add more flavor to their food—because of a series of fairs and wars. A smart count in the Champagne region of France guaranteed the safety of any merchant coming to sell or trade at the markets in the lord's lands. Soon word spread, and the fairs flourished. Starting around 1150, the six Champagne fairs became the one place where Europeans could buy and sell products from the surrounding world—a first step in connecting them to the riches and tastes beyond. Fortress Europe was slowly opening up.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.When the prophet Muhammad began preaching in A.D. 610, he attracted only a few disciples. Yet by the time he died in 632, his faith had spread throughout Arabia. By 642, the armies of Muslim conquerors, along with the arguments of the Muslim faithful, took the religion all across Syria, Iraq, parts of Iran, and Egypt. From there, Islam spread through North Africa along the Mediterranean, across to the Iberian Peninsula, and over to France. Islam's march into Europe ended in 732, when the French defeated the Muslim armies at the battle of Poitiers. But that was not all. Muslim rulers took Alexander's old lands in Afghanistan and then, from there, swept through to conquer northern India. The pagan tribes of Central Asia chose Islam. By conversion or conquest, Islam, the religion of Muhammad, won over nearly all the lands of the ancient world: Egypt, Persia, India, and the Christian Mediterranean.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.Sugar is different from honey. It offers a stronger sweet flavor, and like steel or plastic, it had to be invented. In the Age of Sugar, Europeans bought a product made thousands of miles away that was less expensive than the honey from down the road. That was possible only because sugar set people in motion all across the world—millions of them as slaves, in chains; a few in search of their fortunes. A perfect taste made possible by the most brutal labor: That is the dark story of sugar.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.The traders who came up from Italy offered items they had bought [from] Muslims, which were not available in Europe: fruits such as oranges, apricots, and figs; dyes such as cochineal, which produces a rich red; rare fabrics such as cotton and raw silk. Many of the fabrics that we know of today came to Europe via the Muslims, and their names still show their origins: damask from Damascus, muslin from Mosul, gauzes from Gaza.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.Eventually, I visited Guyana to find out the fate of our house. As our car passed old sugar estates, and I saw the palm trees bending against the wide sky, the lush cane growing in thick, shiny rows, the villages, which were really parcels of land surrounding the important estates, I realized that sugar had been the entire reason for this country's existence. Every now and then an old boiling house—where the cane is processed into crystals, molasses, and rum—would show itself on the flat landscape, cropping up like a hulking ghost.
What is the purpose of the cause-and-effect structure of this passage? Select two options.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.B.C.8000–7000First planting of wild sugar cane, on the island of New Guinea6000Sugar cane reaches the Philippines1500–900Sugar cane used in Hindu ceremonies described in oral traditions that date from around this time515According to the Greek author Herodotus, the Persians had found what may be sugar cane in what is now India and Pakistan327Nearchus, friend of Alexander the Great, again mentions the reed that makes honey without bees, in India286First mention of sugar cane in China
Which historical events do the authors include to support the claim in this passage? Select two options.
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