I share a lot of the same frustrations with Mintz that Ben had, namely the Consumption chapter's repetitiveness as well as the loss of focus on tea. At places Mintz seems to argue sugar is at the center, then he argues that sugar was critical because it sweetened tea, which would mean that tea was truly at the center. Another issue was that Mintz argues there was nothing "inevitable" about sugar's rise, yet then seems to argue that regardless of tea, coffee, or chocolate, sugar would have been as important as a sweetner.
I also agree with Ben that discussion of supply and demand was a little lacking, and it hurt Mintz's argument. Mintz's argument, simplified, is that as production expanded, sugar prices went down and made it more readily available for consumers of all classes to eat. As all classes could acquire it, it lost its exclusivity which made it less important for helping to define social positions which its consumption originally helped to display. The overall problem I have with this argument is the idea that expanding production and lower prices mean that a good will be adopted. Mintz does an admirable job in explaining that we cannot take a taste like sweetness for granted as innate, but it is rather culturally configured, however his supporting evidence is questionable. He suggest maybe the history of "sweet" alcoholic beverages created the British sweet tooth and he describes many upper class uses of sugar and its evolution from medicine to luxury, but it is very unconvincing in helping explain why the lower classes adopted sugar use. Just because something is in excess and cheap, does not mean that people will consume it(in fact many studies of food are often divided between the producer determines what people consumer or the consumer determines what is produced). I feel that Mintz may be right that a taste for "sweetness" developed in the lower classes, but I don't know if I buy his rationale. Mintz argued that the shift from mercantilism to free trade lowered the cost of sugar, and I wish he had developed this notion of "free trade" and how it effected not only price but perhaps even the meaning of sugar. He discusses how consumption of bread decreased as sugar increased. Was this price related on the bread side? Why didn't he give us the price of grain or bread? I ask this because maybe a desire for sweetness and lowering of sugar costs might not have been why consumption rose. Maybe bread prices went up and sugar came to substitute for bread since prices went up? Population pressures and bad harvests may have led the British to look elsewhere for calories that weren't perishable. I do think he could have also developed his ideas on women pushing the need for sugar(not because women "prefer" sweets). As women entered the workforce as wage earners, family incomes went up, but time went down. Thus sugar could be seen as the first "fast food" or "convenience food." Indeed, the development of modern fast foods, ready to cook dinners, and all sorts of convenient foods were spurred on by women leaving the home and entering the workforce.
I think Mintz is at his best in the chapter on production. He explains how the turning point of sugar in Britain was in 1627 when the British took Barbados, and that the main development was, "a steady extension of production rather than by sharp increases in yield per acre of land or ton of cane, or in productivity per worker."(36) For Mintz, extensive agriculture rather than intensive agriculture and expanding production/territorial acquisition allowed the market to enlarge. Most importantly, Mintz argues that these plantations were centers of capitalist enterprise or at least "capitalistic." This seems to be a very important point which is going against Wallerstein and others who saw a core/periphery in which Europe extracted raw goods from the peripheral colonies. I think Mintz is arguing that these plantations and colonies were in ways centers of industry and part of the industrialization of Europe, not just for the products they produced, but for the methods they employed. Mintz says, "What made the early plantation system agro-industrial was the combination of agriculture and processing under one authority: discipline was probably the first essential feature."(51) For Mintz, industrialization and capitalism are conflated, and thus the idea of "free labor" has too often come to define the way in which industrialization was achieved. Overall, the argument Mintz is making here is important because it says that these colonies were not backward regions simply sucked dry by the metropolis, but rather centers in their own right whose development directly influenced the metropolis. It gives the colonies power in shaping Europe, not just for resources, but for industrialization.
I also agree with Ben that discussion of supply and demand was a little lacking, and it hurt Mintz's argument. Mintz's argument, simplified, is that as production expanded, sugar prices went down and made it more readily available for consumers of all classes to eat. As all classes could acquire it, it lost its exclusivity which made it less important for helping to define social positions which its consumption originally helped to display. The overall problem I have with this argument is the idea that expanding production and lower prices mean that a good will be adopted. Mintz does an admirable job in explaining that we cannot take a taste like sweetness for granted as innate, but it is rather culturally configured, however his supporting evidence is questionable. He suggest maybe the history of "sweet" alcoholic beverages created the British sweet tooth and he describes many upper class uses of sugar and its evolution from medicine to luxury, but it is very unconvincing in helping explain why the lower classes adopted sugar use. Just because something is in excess and cheap, does not mean that people will consume it(in fact many studies of food are often divided between the producer determines what people consumer or the consumer determines what is produced). I feel that Mintz may be right that a taste for "sweetness" developed in the lower classes, but I don't know if I buy his rationale. Mintz argued that the shift from mercantilism to free trade lowered the cost of sugar, and I wish he had developed this notion of "free trade" and how it effected not only price but perhaps even the meaning of sugar. He discusses how consumption of bread decreased as sugar increased. Was this price related on the bread side? Why didn't he give us the price of grain or bread? I ask this because maybe a desire for sweetness and lowering of sugar costs might not have been why consumption rose. Maybe bread prices went up and sugar came to substitute for bread since prices went up? Population pressures and bad harvests may have led the British to look elsewhere for calories that weren't perishable. I do think he could have also developed his ideas on women pushing the need for sugar(not because women "prefer" sweets). As women entered the workforce as wage earners, family incomes went up, but time went down. Thus sugar could be seen as the first "fast food" or "convenience food." Indeed, the development of modern fast foods, ready to cook dinners, and all sorts of convenient foods were spurred on by women leaving the home and entering the workforce.
I think Mintz is at his best in the chapter on production. He explains how the turning point of sugar in Britain was in 1627 when the British took Barbados, and that the main development was, "a steady extension of production rather than by sharp increases in yield per acre of land or ton of cane, or in productivity per worker."(36) For Mintz, extensive agriculture rather than intensive agriculture and expanding production/territorial acquisition allowed the market to enlarge. Most importantly, Mintz argues that these plantations were centers of capitalist enterprise or at least "capitalistic." This seems to be a very important point which is going against Wallerstein and others who saw a core/periphery in which Europe extracted raw goods from the peripheral colonies. I think Mintz is arguing that these plantations and colonies were in ways centers of industry and part of the industrialization of Europe, not just for the products they produced, but for the methods they employed. Mintz says, "What made the early plantation system agro-industrial was the combination of agriculture and processing under one authority: discipline was probably the first essential feature."(51) For Mintz, industrialization and capitalism are conflated, and thus the idea of "free labor" has too often come to define the way in which industrialization was achieved. Overall, the argument Mintz is making here is important because it says that these colonies were not backward regions simply sucked dry by the metropolis, but rather centers in their own right whose development directly influenced the metropolis. It gives the colonies power in shaping Europe, not just for resources, but for industrialization.
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