Book Review: Sweetness And Power by Sidney W. Mintz
Sugar. So sweet that it caused empires to rise and fall, fortunes to be won and lost, and provided scarce calories in a pre-obesity world.
Sweetness And Power is a heady cocktail of food, culture, and economics.
Sidney Mintz (Yale; Johns Hopkins) takes a largely anthropological approach to the economic history of sugar — which should be of no surprise to those who know he founded the anthropology department at Johns Hopkins.
Quite a bit of ink is spilled on the production processes of growing and refining sugar, which is amazingly fascinating. In fact, it may appeal to a broader audience than the economic history portion of the book.
The history of tea is, of course, intimately intertwined with the history of sugar — especially for the British and their imperial subjects. Expect to learn a lot about how a bitter cup of leaf water became the national drink of choice.
As much anthropology as economics, the lay reader is likely to either love or hate this little book. But anyone who likes British or economic history is sure to find all or most of the book enjoyable. Its value as a reference book is somewhat limited by the reliance upon non-statistical sources in the early years (of course, there ARE no statistical sources from, say, 1100 AD), but offsets that with a robust set of epistemological citations through history.
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