Unit Test Answers

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.The only way to make a lot of sugar is to engineer a system in which an army of workers swarms through the fields, cuts the cane, and hauls the pile to be crushed into a syrup that flows into the boiling room. There, laboring around the clock, workers cook and clean the bubbling liquid so that the sweetest syrup turns into the sweetest sugar. This is not farming the way men and women had done it for thousands of years in the Age of Honey. It is much more like a factory, where masses of people must do every step right, on time, together, or the whole system collapses.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.We all crave sweetness, now more than ever since there are so many ways to satisfy that need. And there are still sugar plantations where the work is brutal. In places like the Dominican Republic (Haiti's island neighbor), some sugar work is not very different from what it was for Marina's Indian ancestors in British Guiana: hard, poorly paid labor by people who are often mistreated. But for most of us, chemists have more to say about how we satisfy that taste than do overseers. When sugar is in the headlines, critics speak about how much of it we eat, not who picked the crop. Doctors warn that young people are gaining too much weight from eating sugary snacks; parents learn that kids who drink too many sweet sodas can cycle between manic sugar "highs" and grinding sugar "crashes." No one worries about where the sweetness comes from. Our diet was transformed by the Age of Sugar, but that era is over.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World. 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. And that is precisely where Marc's family story begins—with Nina's grandfather, the serf who bought his freedom from figuring out how to color beet sugar.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the 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 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.You could date a great change in the world to a visit one Madame Villeneuve made to France in 1714. That year, Pauline, an enslaved woman from the Caribbean, arrived in France as the personal servant of her mistress. When Madame Villeneuve set off from the coast to visit Paris, she left Pauline in a convent. The young woman spent her time studying with the nuns and went so far in her training that she asked to become a nun herself and remain in the convent. The nuns agreed, which enraged Madame Villeneuve. She rushed to a judge, demanding to have her property back. Was Pauline a free woman, a bride of Christ, or an item to be bought, sold, and warehoused when she was not in use?Twenty-three years earlier, King Louis XIV had issued a set of rules that defined slavery as legal in the French sugar islands. But when two slaves managed to reach France, he freed them—saying they became free "as soon as they [touched] the soil" of France. The judges sided with Pauline—she was real to them, human, not a piece of property. For Pauline's judges, as for King Louis, slavery far off across the seas was completely different from enslaved individuals in France.Slave owners fought back, arguing that owners should be able to list their slaves as property when they arrived in France and take them with them when they left. Though most parts of France agreed to this, law­makers in Paris hesitated. Pierre Lemerre the Younger made the case for the slaves. "All men are equal," he insisted in 1716—exactly sixty years before the Declaration of Independence.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.

Read the passage and study the image and caption from Sugar Changed the World.Caption: The first factories were places like this cotton mill in Manchester, England.All over England, in sooty cities such as Manchester and Liverpool, when the factory whistle blew, workers would set down their presses and file out to drink a quick cup of tea sweetened with sugar—usually dipping a piece of bread in the warm drink. Soon a smart manufacturer figured out that this break, and the need for a jolt of sweetness, was an opportunity. English workers were offered sugary cookies and candies—what we call today energy bars—that quick pick-me-up that helped workers to make it through their long shifts.Starting around 1800, sugar became the staple food that allowed the English factories—the most advanced economies in the world—to run. Sugar supplied the energy, the hint of nutrition, the sweet taste to go with the warmth of tea that even the poorest factory worker could look forward to. Sugar was a necessity.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.From the 1750s on, sugar transformed how Europeans ate. Chefs who served the wealthy began to divide meals up. Where sugar had previously been used either as a decoration (as in the wedding feast) or as a spice to flavor all courses, now it was removed from recipes for meat, fish, and vegetables and given its own place—in desserts. Dessert as the extremely sweet end to the meal was invented because so much sugar was available. But the wealthy were not the only ones whose meals were changing. Sugar became a food, a necessity, and the foundation of the diet for England's poorest workers.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.No one could have seen it at the time, but the invention of beet sugar was not just a challenge to cane. It was a hint—just a glimpse, like a twist that comes about two thirds of the way through a movie—that the end of the Age of Sugar was in sight. For beet sugar showed that in order to create that perfect sweetness you did not need slaves, you did not need plantations, in fact you did not even need cane. Beet sugar was a foreshadowing of what we have today: the Age of Science, in which sweetness is a product of chemistry, not whips.In 1854 only 11 percent of world sugar production came from beets. By 1899 the percentage had risen to about 65 percent. And beet sugar was just the first challenge to cane. By 1879 chemists discovered saccharine—a laboratory-created substance that is several hundred times sweeter than natural sugar. Today the sweeteners used in the foods you eat may come from corn (high-fructose corn syrup), from fruit (fructose), or directly from the lab (for example, aspartame, invented in 1965, or sucralose—Splenda—created in 1976). Brazil is the land that imported more Africans than any other to work on sugar plantations, and in Brazil the soil is still perfect for sugar. Cane grows in Brazil today, but not always for sugar. Instead, cane is often used to create ethanol, much as corn farmers in America now convert their harvest into fuel.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.Twenty-three years earlier, King Louis XIV had issued a set of rules that defined slavery as legal in the French sugar islands. But when two slaves managed to reach France, he freed them—saying they became free "as soon as they [touched] the soil" of France. The judges sided with Pauline—she was real to them, human, not a piece of property. For Pauline's judges, as for King Louis, slavery far off across the seas was completely different from enslaved individuals in France.

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 Sugar Changed the World.The Muslims worked out a new form of farming to handle sugar, which came to be called the sugar plantation. A plantation was not a new technology but, rather, a new way of organizing planting, growing, cutting, and refining a crop. On a regular farm there may be cows, pigs, and chickens; fields of grain; orchards filled with fruit—many different kinds of foods to eat or sell. By contrast, the plantation had only one purpose: to create a single product that could be grown, ground, boiled, dried, and sold to distant markets. Since one cannot live on sugar, the crop grown on plantations could not even feed the people who harvested it. Never before in human history had farms been run this way, as machines designed to satisfy just one craving of buyers who could be thousands of miles away.On a plantation there were large groups of workers—between fifty and several hundred. The mill was right next to the crop, so that growing and grinding took place in the same spot.

How does this image support the claim that monarchs of the 1700s had wealth and influence? Select three options.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.Starting around 1800, sugar became the staple food that allowed the English factories—the most advanced economies in the world—to run. Sugar supplied the energy, the hint of nutrition, the sweet taste to go with the warmth of tea that even the poorest factory worker could look forward to. Sugar was a necessity.Why were the English the first to build factories to mill cloth? Because of the wealth they gained, the trade connections they made, and the banking systems they developed in the slave and sugar trade. Indeed, the cheap cloth from the factories was used to clothe the slaves. English factories, you might say, were built, run, and paid for by sugar.In 1800, when the English were consuming their eighteen pounds of sugar a year, around 250,000 tons of sugar was produced worldwide—almost all sent to Europe. A century later, in 1900, when sugar was used in jams, cakes, syrups, and tea, and every modern country was filled with factories, world production of sugar reached six million tons. By that time, the average person in England ate ninety pounds of sugar a year—and in the early twentieth century, that number kept rising. (Americans today eat only about 40 pounds of cane sugar a year, but that is because other forms of sweeteners, such as corn syrup, are now cheaper than cane sugar. If you consider all forms of sweetener, Americans eat an average of 140 pounds every year.)

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.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. And that is precisely where Marc's family story begins—with Nina's grandfather, the serf who bought his freedom from figuring out how to color beet sugar.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.For an African, whether you were sent to the Caribbean or South America, you were now part of the sugar machine. And it did not much matter where your ship landed. You could be working the fertile fields of Brazil or the hills of Jamaica; the brutal cycle of making sugar was much the same.If the terrain was not too rocky or hilly, you might be part of a group of slaves who drove teams of oxen to draw plows across the fields. On rougher ground, you were sent out to clear a space five inches deep and five feet square. Then you dug holes for the cane shoots in the cleared squares. You needed to work quickly and without stopping. Overseers watched closely to make sure of that, beating slaves who did not carve out at least twenty-eight holes an hour on one French island. The painstaking work had just one aim: to plant a crop that would end up taking the life of every worker who touched it. As Equiano explained, the sugar slaves could hardly rest even when their day was done.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.One of these early Hindu writings, the Atharva Veda, speaks of an archer's bow made of sugar cane. It tells of growing a circle of sugar cane as a kind of sweet protection for a lover, and it includes specific instructions on how to use sugar cane.

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.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.

Which text features would be most helpful to support the central idea of the passage? Select two options.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.The vast Muslim world was wonderful for the growth of knowledge. The Greeks had developed a level of practical experience and technical understanding a thousand years more advanced than anyone else nearby. The Muslims began to translate some of these ancient Greek texts. From India, Muslims learned of the zero, which allowed them to invent what we still call "Arabic” numerals. And because the Koran, the sacred book of Islam, is written in Arabic, scholars throughout the Muslim world learned to read Arabic and to share their knowledge. The Muslims swept past Jundi Shapur and learned the secrets of sugar. As they conquered lands around the Mediterranean Sea, they spread word of how to grow, mill, and refine the sweet reed.

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.THE WORLD’S FIRST TRUE UNIVERSITYToday, few people have heard of Jundi Shapur. But in its time, it was an exceptional university. Jundi Shapur was built in what is now Iran sometime between the 400s and mid-500s A.D. We can only guess the dates, but we do know more about the school. It was the meeting place of the world's great minds. In 529, Christians closed the school of Athens—the last link to the academies of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The remaining Greek scholars moved to Jundi Shapur. Jews joined them, as did a group of Christians called Nestorians, who had their own ancient and scholarly traditions. Persians added their voices, and one of their learned doctors set off for what is now India, to gather and translate the wisdom of the Hindus. The school created the very first teaching hospital in the world, a place where the sick were treated and young doctors learned their craft, as well as a fine observatory to track the heavens. At Jundi Shapur the best scholars west of China all gathered to think and study together. By the 600s, the doctors at the school were writing about a medicine from India named sharkara or, as the Persians called it, shaker—sugar. Indeed, scholars at Jundi Shapur invented new and better ways to refine cane into sugar. Since the school had links with many of the great civilizations of Asia, the Mediterranean, and Europe, word of sugar and the experience of tasting its special sweetness began to spread.

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.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.