Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History By Dr. Sidney W. Mintz

 Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History

By Dr. Sidney W. Mintz

Dr. Sidney W. Mintz was born on November 16, 1922, in Dover, New Jersey. His father Soloman Mintz was a New York tradesmen, while his mother Fanny was a garment industry organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), one of the first massive general union groups of North America and an organization known for its various ties to socialist, anarchist, and syndicalist movements. As you might have guessed, Dr. Mintz learned the basics of Marxist thought and theory pretty much from birth, but we'll get back to that. Dr. Mintz earned a B.A in psychology from Brooklyn College, graduating in 1943. Afterward, he promptly enlisted in the US Army Air Corps and served for the rest of World War II. Once honorably discharged, he enrolled in the doctoral program in anthropology at Columbia University under the supervision of Dr. Julian Steward and Ruth Benedict, two powerfully influential voices in modern anthropology. Dr. Steward was one of the fathers of Cultural Ecology, a theory that became a subdivision of Cultural Anthropology that argues that the way small-scale societies adapt to their environment had effects that echoed into post-industrial societies - For example how wealth, power, and prestige were divided. Dr. Ruth Benedict was seen as one of the direct successors of Franz Boas, who is considered the father of American Anthropology. Dr. Benedict was one of the anthropologists who blazed a path to Anthropology not just studying individual societies but grappling with those studies to create broader understandings of how cultures work. She's mostly known for her work with Margaret Mead and for books like Patterns of Cultures, The Chrysanthemum, And The Sword, as well as an early anti-racist work The Races of Mankind. 

We don't have the space to go into this too much, just know that Mintz was literally studying at the feet of masters of the discipline who are widely respected and honored even today. Dr. Mintz completed his dissertation on sugar cane plantation workers in Santa Isabel, Puerto Rico; this work would profoundly affect his later studies and career. He would focus on the Caribbean throughout his long academic career at Yale University running from 1951 to 1974 and his founding of the Anthropology Department at John Hopkins University, guest lecturer at M.I.T, the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and College de France. Dr. Mintz would bring into his works methods of Marxist thought (which means a focus on economic history and social class) and historical materialism (which among other things proposes that the development of human society can be traced through a series of stages based on economic production to put it really, really simply). I simply do not have the space to explain how this impacted Cultural Anthropology, not if we're going to discuss the book (also as a mercy to your audience {shush youself}). Nor do we have space for the legion of honors and awards that Dr. Mintz won, but he was pivotal in bringing about the idea that Anthropology should include a historical dimension and not just document the present-day situation and practices of existing cultures. In today's review, Sweetness and Power, Dr. Mintz set out to map the impact of Sugar on English society specifically as well as Anglo societies in general (One cannot neglect the anthropological significance of Timbits to post-war Canadian society).

Sweetness and Power was released in 1985 and frankly shows its age, not just in how it presents its arguments but in its word choices, construction, and who the arguments are aimed at (recently designated “geriatric millennial” in a ghoulish turn of phrase discharged into a Medium post about team-building at work). For example, the book is divided into 4 long and broad chapters where more modern writers would have preferred shorter, more focused chapters. Dr. Mintz prefers to use academic terms, including many which are no longer in use. This can slow down reading as you may have to stop to puzzle some things out. Make no mistake, this book is not aimed at the common person but is focused on people who have already received some training in Anthropology. This is because the book was written before “pop” history/social science books came into popularity so for most academics of Dr. Mintz's time the idea of writing for the masses wasn't really on the table (or, if it was, it was seen as disreputable - Carl Sagan received pushback from the scientific community early on for his popular works. Indeed, even today one can expect a bit of snobbery if you’re communicating via a medium without an impact factor). So the average person might feel a little lost in this book, especially the opening chapter. I'll try to translate a little but this should not be considered a comprehensive updating or modernization so if you try to pass your class just using this review, kids, you'll get the grade you deserve and no sympathy from me - I warned you (crap, now I’ll never graduate from High-fructose Corn University - Go Choco-diles!). That said, if you push through the opening chapter, the book opens up quite a bit and becomes more accessible as you get into it.

Sweetness and Power argue that Europeans and Americans have transformed sugar from a rare foreign luxury to a commonplace near-necessity of modern life. Dr. Mintz first presents the idea that once you moved past the hunter-gather stage, most societies organized their meals around a central carbohydrate: Bread, porridge, rice, etc. Other foodstuffs were organized around the central carbohydrate so to speak, - A modern example would be a plate of spaghetti with the noodles forming the central part with meat or vegetable sauces serving a supporting role (A carbohydrate concerto, in other words). He also argues that traditionally those meals are a social event, that humans are meant to eat together in a group from a common pot. Doing so helps reinforce social bonds and in a way reinforces how a society sees itself. Sugar would undermine this in Dr. Mintz's argument by making meals a much more individual event, having fat-heavy, sugar-rich foods increasingly push complex carbohydrates out of the central place of meals (“Down with Oreo’s revisionist wrecking! All hail Frito-Dorito-Tostito-Thought!” - Josip Broz Tostito). I'll admit I think he's onto something here, as people report both a decrease in sharing meals with others and an increasing amount of social alienation even before the lockdowns of COVID (I would be curious about whether the lack of shared meals is a causative factor in people’s increased sense of isolation, or if its a symptom of the ways we’ve arranged our lives around things like work - Or, if these things play off each other). That said, my own look at the US shows that our diet was very corn and meat-based (CORN!). At least before the industrial revolution and the first wave of urbanization for a lot of folks beef, pork, venison or game birds would take the center of the plate with vegetables or corn serving as a counterpoint. The urban poor, however, would have a carbohydrate-focused meal centered around bread or porridge, but they weren't a large group in the settler nations until we start towards the industrial revolution from what I can see (remember before 1820 the majority of Americans lived in rural settings).

Dr. Mintz also makes the argument that sugar was one of the vital fuels of the industrial revolution in England by providing calories to the English workforce of the 1800s and 1900s. This case is made through an examination of the history of sugar in Europe in general but is way more focused on the history of sugar in England and how England was first exposed to sugar via foreign trade. Now I should make it clear that when I say sugar in this review I specifically mean either sugar from sugar cane or beets; the book was written and released before the rise of artificial sweeteners and the dread arrival of corn syrup that has widely replaced sugar in a lot of ways in the United States. One of the big differences noted is that most of Europe got their sugar from Portuguese colonies in Brazil; England, however, seized several Caribbean islands through a combination of ruthless military action and colonial expansion and used those islands to provide sugar directly to England as part of the Atlantic triangle trade. This meant that England had a captive sugar supply that used captive slave labor to both keep the price down and the profit high for a small group of Englishmen. Even then, this might not have come to anything except the East India Company at the same time encountered tea and started converting large chunks of India into a tea plantation. The combination of tea and sugar created a hot substance that also supplied calories quickly, so you had a setup where mass consumption of sugar benefited plantation owners, factory owners, and everyone with stock in the East India Company (buy stock in the Yeast India Company - It’s always rising). Now Dr. Mintz isn't arguing for a conspiracy (nor a high-fructose cornspiracy) ; these groups and individuals acted independently and often against each other, but when the East India company argued for a tariff against coffee (for example), no one had any reason to argue against it and all understood that such a tariff would also benefit them. This helped lead to tea becoming a central part of the British diet, to the point that drinking tea is considered part of the British identity (the Welsh and Scottish also drink tea in massive amounts so this isn't only an English thing) despite the fact that no one on the islands would have tasted tea until the 1650s when it was ironically served as a novelty drink in the popular coffee houses of the day.

Dr. Mintz also leads us through the transformation of sugar from something primarily used as a medicine to treat sore throats and indigestion to primarily as a decoration on the tables of the wealthy, to a spice that was used on everything from ducks to Brussels sprouts, and finally to a mass-consumed commodity. This is a fairly interesting history in and of itself and how sugar is used seems to be attached to how easy it is to get a hold of. I was struck by some of the decorations though, where sugar is mixed with almonds to make a sweet paste and sculpted into different shapes and forms; at first strictly for decoration, but over time into edible overly-elaborate desserts until sugar just flat out took over over the dessert course. In doing this it pushed out honey and various savory foods as the human sweet tooth took its toll (it really do be like that sometimes).

Sweetness and Power is about 35 years old as of this review, so its use as a look at the modern diet is obsolete, to put it mildly. As a historical or academic work, it's still rather informative but I would recommend double-checking some information. This makes its usefulness limited but it is also a work that makes you think about how you're eating, where you're eating, what you're eating, and why you're eating it without trying to make you feel guilty about it. Indeed, I think we could do with less guilt in our food conversations and more open discussion; something to bring up at your next family meal, assuming your family has those (The Sugar Council kindly suggests ignoring this advice - Instead, guilt can be cured with more sugar!). Because of its drawbacks, I'm going to verge on heresy (delicious slaaneshi heresy) and refuse to give it an A. I feel that the obtuseness of some of the language choices, its age (the similarly-aged editor previously withheld commenting on this but - Not cool, Brobert Goddard, inventor of the not-cool rocket… not cool{I’m older than you and this book, I’ll comment as I please.}), and the very organization of information in the book work against it. However, it provides a wealth of information and is a great snapshot of how historical and academic books were written in the mid-80s (if a writer should ever wish to capture the frisson of submitting an article for journal review immediately before unwrapping a newly-purchased Tears for Fears cassette and crushing a can of Tab) and is a very strong and informative book in its own right. So I'm giving Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History by Dr. Sidney W. Mintz a B+ because the fact that after 35 years this book still manages to be relevant, provide information, and be an interesting read is a triumph all on its own.

So quick note, our normal editor Dr. Allen will be taking a leave of absence for the rest of the summer and we'll be having a number of guest editors in to sub for him.  He will return in September however!  While this book wasn't chosen by our ever wise patrons, the next book In God's Path was and if you would also like a vote in choosing what books come up in the review docket, considering joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads  A dollar a month gives you a vote on upcoming reviews and more!  Next week we step away from food history with  In God's Path by Robert G. Hoyland.  Until then stay safe and Keep Reading!

Purple text is our guest editor Mike

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders