SWEETNESS AND POWER by SIDNEY W. MINTZ

(BOOK REVIEW)

Sidney Wilfred Mintz, born November 16, 1922, is an anthropologist best known for his studies of Latin America and the Caribbean. He began his anthropological research in Jan 1948. His first place being Puerto Rico, he chose a south-coast municipality that cultivated sugar for the whole of North American market. After a brief stay in a town, he moved to a rural district where he was to stay with a young cane worker for over a year. The municipality where he stayed during his research on sugar was named Barrio Jauca, Santa Isabel, a vast alluvial plain, created by scouring of once-great rivers.

After reading the introduction given in the book by the author, we realize that five important themes have been discussed in the coming chapters. The first chapter discusses the ‘anthropology of food and eating’. The chapter merely examines sugar as a sweet substance and how the commodity could ‘make people firmly habituated to a large, regular, and depended supply of sweetness’. The second chapter takes into account the ‘production of sugar as the West began to consume more and more sugar’. Here we come to see how sugar drastically changed from being a rarity, to a luxury and finally to being a necessity. The third chapter deals with the consumption of sugar, not only as a sweetener, but as a medicine, spice, decorative item and preservative as well. The fourth chapter focuses on answering a few questions that arise in the author’s mind, as to why things happened the way they did, by formulating circumstances, conjecture, and causes. The fifth chapter points to a few suggestions about ‘where sugar and the study of sugar, in the modern scenario, may be going’.

The first kind of conflict we come to know about is between the employer and her/his slaves, on the issue of food intake and habitation facilities. The other conflict we notice is between the privileged ones and the not so privileged ones, on the issue of consumption of sugar. In the first case, we see a dispute between the two parties where the former player does not bother about her/his slaves and does not provide the required nutritive amount to them. She/he instead feeds them on alcohol and tobacco that deaden the hunger pangs. In order to cover up the calorie requirement, the slaves are forced to consume sugar and tea, which poses as pseudo meals, providing them with the missing calories. In the second case, there is a conflict as the privileged ones exercise their power through consumption of sugar, a commodity that is said to have been a sign of wealth and financial dignity. Thus sugar becomes a dividing line between the said parties. Later, however, with the increase in consumption of sugared tea (in the form of a complete meal in itself) the prices of sugar wavered, making it available to the poor as well. It now is no longer a symbol of power and wealth.

As far as my opinion is concerned, I believe that the chapter on Consumption is far more interesting as compared to the rest. The chapter brings out the rapidly changing food patterns: how sugar began to be used more frequently, and not only as a sweetener in coffee, tea and chocolate but as other essentials as well. It also discusses how different forms of sugar led to unequal stature of the people; how whiteness of the sugar crystal determined its price in the market. The chapter also tells us how and in what ways sugar replaced honey in the daily diet. However, despite sugar’s growing demand as a commodity beside sweetener, we realize that the special place of sugar in cakes and the likes during Christmas celebrations still remained intact. It is also important to note that the chapter brings to our notice the effect of sugar in the social strata. Sugar, as its demand grew, became a sign of wealth, power and financial prosperity. We are also made aware of the fact as to how sugar resulted in the growing demand for tea and coffee as well. According to the author, sugar and tea were ‘well suited to the needs of people whose calorie intake may actually be declining during the 18^th century, and for whom a hot, sweet beverage must have seemed especially welcome given their diet and England’s weather’. Through this chapter, we realize that the diet of the late 19^th century was in fact ‘unhealthy and uneconomical’. On one hand we have the growing demand of sugar having a positive effect on the rich and the wealthy, and on the other hand we have families from the lesser privileged where the woman and the children forgo their need for consumption of meat and consume sucrose instead. ‘We see that many a labourer, who has a wife and three or more children, is healthy and a good worker, although he earns only a pound a week. What we do not see is that in order to give him enough food, mother and children habitually go short, for the mother knows that all depends upon the wages of her husband’.  Lastly, through this chapter, we become conscious of the role of sugar in the building of a capitalist society. It is believed that ‘the provision of low-cost food substitute such as...tea and sugar...positively affected the worker’s energy output and productivity’. We also notice that perhaps, sweetened tea increased the worker’s willingness to work harder, thereby allowing more time for working wives and spending more income on cooking fuels.

The chapter ‘Power’ emphasises on the role of sucrose (sugar) in the economic and political front. It also focuses on the importance of slavery in the production of sugarcane. The author also makes differential points between “intensification” and “extensification”. According to Sidney W. Mintz, sugar was a trigger for colonialism and defined a society’s financial powers. ‘The English people began to view sugar as essential; supplying them with it became as a political as an economic obligation’. As control over production grew, the demand for sugar in the home market was also made to increase. For this, they made extensive use of hand-labour, recruiting as many slaves as possible. For the purpose of growing sugarcane, labour was taken from various parts of the world, particularly Africa. The author, however, had also met bonded labourers from Portugal, China and India. These were those who, like items bought with money, would remain with the employer, along with their successors, working as field hands in the plantations. The slaves were treated in an inhuman manner, not being given proper meals or habitation facilities. Instead of food that would make the worker toil harder, they were fed on tobacco that reduced their hunger pangs. However, with the rise in sugar demand, we see them consuming sugar that provided them the required calories. Here we notice a change in trend of consumption patterns. The main reason, according to the author, for the rise in demand for sugar was not because of likeness of sweetness, not because of imitation of the better privileged by the less privileged, not because people from wet, rainy and cold areas preferred sweetness, but because the diet of British workers was calorically and nutritively inadequate. After reading the book, we realize that the growing popularity of tea and sugar often posed as a meal in itself. Sugared tea often became a reason of respite from field work, which furthered the chances of communication and friendly bonding. The use of sugar also reveals to us the theory that came up in England, which claimed that a person could ‘become different by consuming differently’. This indirectly affected the economic status of England, as we see it fundamentally transforming from a hierarchical, status-based society to a capitalist and industrial society. Thus we notice the function of sugar in the coming up of a capitalist based society in England.    

After completing Sweetness and Power, we realize that similar themes have been discussed in the book as well in chapters, Displacing Indigenous Peoples and Confrontation of Cultures. Both the chapters take into account the dislocating of natives due to foreign settlements. We also find a similar topic being discussed in Sweetness and Power. We see the book talking about the Greater Antilles (from the chapter Confrontation of Cultures), how it was the first place where the Spanish brought sugarcanes, the methods used for the cultivation of crops, the technology used, enslaved labour, etc. However, ironically, even with so much of technologies used, with so much of support from the royal court, the Spanish failed to become rich planters. Thus after their attempt at farming and enslavement, they took to transporting precious metals. The ill treatment of the slaves has been given much importance and the author is able to bring out instances where boded labourers have been treated inhumanely. Examples would include lack of habitation facilities, poor food intake, and an overall ill treatment as well as intolerance towards native culture. We see a similar discussion in the two chapters mentioned earlier. Also, in order to establish plantations, the natives residing in that area were most probably either driven off or were captured and enslaved, who were now made to work on their own land, though under different circumstances.