The World of Sugar – How the Sweet Stuff Transformed Our Politics, Health and Environment over 2,000 Years, by Ulbe Bosma.
“The World of Sugar” is what I can only describe as the definitive history of sugar. The book, published in May 2025, is not overly long at 464 pages, but it is dense. There is so much information packed closely together that it was tough going. Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I was glad when I finished it!
Having read the book, this reviewer on Goodreads summed up my thoughts exactly,
A mine of interesting information, especially in the evolution of sugar consumption and the different types of production. Like many modern writers, it is long on detailed research but short on cohesion. Well worth a read though.
Another reviewer summed up the book’s challenges and explained why she failed to finish it:
I really wanted to enjoy and digest this book, but it is dense and poorly written. Although the material is well-researched, it reads like a barrage of facts instead of a coherent message. I was looking forward to learning more about the history and influence of sugar in technical detail, but sadly, I will be returning this one without finishing.
I recommend anyone in the sugar business to buy this book, but I do not necessarily recommend that you read it, as I did, in one sitting.
Ulbe Bosna is a historian and has done an exceptionally scholarly job in documenting the story of sugar. The book has hundreds of references and a detailed index.
My recommendation is that you buy the book, place it on your office bookshelf and dip into it from time to time. I don’t suggest you make it compulsory reading for the young recruit on the sugar trading desk!
But what did I learn from the book? The answer is “a huge amount.” Here, almost at random, are a few things:
From a historical perspective, I learned that Amsterdam and Antwerp were among the earliest sugar-trading centres in Europe. Bosma writes,
Hundreds of ships transported sugar from Brazil to Portugal and then to other European ports, especially Antwerp. In fact, the Brazilian sugar frontier owed much of its momentum to the merchants of this city, who had secured the sugar monopoly for the Low Countries from the Portuguese crown and made their city the centre of sugar refining in northern Europe. These merchants supplied much of the capital for the plantations in Brazil and shipped half of the sugar produced there to Europe.
By around 1660, a fleet of 100 ships was transporting sugar to Amsterdam, and the sugar industry remained the largest sector of its economy.”
Bosma also emphasised to me the horrors of the slave trade. I already mentioned in The Sugar Casino that two-thirds of the 12.5 million Africans transported across the Atlantic worked on sugar plantations. Still, I hadn’t realised that:
What really slowed down the rising sugar output of the French Antilles was that there were not enough slave ships to meet the planters’ growing demand for enslaved workers.
He adds,
According to Reverend Robert Robertson, who was based on the island of Nevis in the early 18th century, about two-fifths of the enslaved Africans died within the first year. Many arrived in terrible condition. Quite a few committed suicide to free themselves from their terrible fate. A planter in late 18th-century Jamaica wrote, “Some indeed will dare the terrors of the boiling cauldron. Some attached themselves to the trees and doors. Some plunged into the rapid torrent, and some will end their desperate existence with a knife.”
Bosma reminded me that by the mid‑18th century, sugar was Europe’s most valuable import commodity. As it became cheaper, it enabled factory workers to have high-calorie tea breaks. It transformed working-class diets. (My father took seven teaspoons of sugar in his tea. He didn’t work in a factory, but on a farm. Even so, he cherished his morning and afternoon teabreaks.)
Sugar was not only an enabler of the Industrial Revolution but also a catalyst, as demand for mills, iron rollers, boilers, and, later, steam-powered crushers spurred the metalworking and engineering sectors central to it.
He also reminded me of one reason I liked the sugar business: it is a family affair. He writes:
The global sugar trade was strongly family-based, with members placed at the nodal points of sprawling commercial networks. This trend could be seen as early as the 14th century, the days of the Egyptian Karami and the German Ravensburger traders. This business model proved to be so resilient because it is conducive to preserving the most valued company secrets, including those that involve politically sensitive transactions. It facilitates fast decisions, and without external shareholders, profits are kept within the company, boosting growth.
I have two main takeaways from the book that are relevant to today’s market.
First, the world sugar market is structurally surplus, with occasional years when bad weather results in poor harvests and stock drawdowns. This makes sugar different from, say, cocoa or coffee.
I recently argued (or hoped?) that the War on Sugar would discourage governments and banks from supporting new sugar mills, thereby slowing production growth. However, this has not been the case. Sugar mills offer an effective means of creating jobs and raising incomes in rural areas, and this more than offsets the negative pressure from anti-sugar groups.
Unfortunately, the War on Sugar has had the opposite effect, slowing consumption growth to almost zero and worsening the structural surplus. I was mistaken on both points.
Second, corn is sugar’s biggest rival. The rise of HFCS undermined the US sugar industry from the 1970s onward. This is likely to remain the case, even if the current POTUS prefers sugar in his (ironically enough) Diet Coke.
Meanwhile, corn is proving to be a formidable competitor to sugarcane in ethanol production in the US, Brazil and India – and probably elsewhere. Around 44 per cent of the corn grown in the US goes into ethanol production.
Brazil now produces 7–8 billion litres of corn-based ethanol annually, and production continues to rise. It currently makes up roughly 20–25% of Brazil’s total ethanol output and is expected to reach nearly a third of national ethanol production within a couple of years.
Sugar in a structural surplus with a formidable competitor? Maybe you shouldn’t show this blog to that new recruit on the sugar trading desk.
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