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Beschreibung
A surprising look at how modern capitalism changed sugar from a natural food to a scientific commodity. Sugar is everywhere in the western diet, blamed for epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and other modern maladies. Our addiction to sweetness has a long and unsavory history. Over the past five hundred years, sugar has shaped empires, made fortunes for a few, and brought misery for millions of workers both enslaved and free. How did sugar become a defining modern food and an essential global commodity? In Unrefined, David Singerman recasts our thinking about this crucial substance in the history of capitalism. Before the nineteenth century, sugar's value depended on natural qualities: its color, its taste, where it was grown, and who had made it. But beginning around 1850, a combination of plantation owners, industrialists, and scientists set out to redefine sugar itself. Deploying the tools and rhetoric of science, they transformed not just how sugar was produced or traded but even how people thought about it. By changing sugar into a pure chemical object, these forces stripped power from workers and enabled--and obscured--new kinds of fraud, corruption, and monopoly. Taking us to unexplored spaces in the world of sugar, from laboratories and docks to refineries and the halls of Congress, Singerman illuminates dark intersections of the histories of corruption, science, and capitalism.
A surprising look at how modern capitalism changed sugar from a natural food to a scientific commodity. Sugar is everywhere in the western diet, blamed for epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and other modern maladies. Our addiction to sweetness has a long and unsavory history. Over the past five hundred years, sugar has shaped empires, made fortunes for a few, and brought misery for millions of workers both enslaved and free. How did sugar become a defining modern food and an essential global commodity? In Unrefined, David Singerman recasts our thinking about this crucial substance in the history of capitalism. Before the nineteenth century, sugar's value depended on natural qualities: its color, its taste, where it was grown, and who had made it. But beginning around 1850, a combination of plantation owners, industrialists, and scientists set out to redefine sugar itself. Deploying the tools and rhetoric of science, they transformed not just how sugar was produced or traded but even how people thought about it. By changing sugar into a pure chemical object, these forces stripped power from workers and enabled--and obscured--new kinds of fraud, corruption, and monopoly. Taking us to unexplored spaces in the world of sugar, from laboratories and docks to refineries and the halls of Congress, Singerman illuminates dark intersections of the histories of corruption, science, and capitalism.
Über den Autor
David Singerman is assistant professor of history and American studies at the University of Virginia.
Details
Erscheinungsjahr: 2025
Genre: Geschichte, Importe
Rubrik: Geisteswissenschaften
Medium: Buch
Reihe: Synthesis
Inhalt: Einband - fest (Hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9780226837376
ISBN-10: 0226837378
Sprache: Englisch
Einband: Gebunden
Autor: Singerman, David
Hersteller: The University of Chicago Press
Synthesis
Verantwortliche Person für die EU: Libri GmbH, Europaallee 1, D-36244 Bad Hersfeld, gpsr@libri.de
Maße: 236 x 163 x 27 mm
Von/Mit: David Singerman
Erscheinungsdatum: 04.09.2025
Gewicht: 0,58 kg
Artikel-ID: 133731278

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