30 pages • 1 hour read
Sweetness and Power
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BetaChapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Power”
Increased English working-class consumption of sugar and other tropically sourced foods would not have been possible without sweeping economic and political changes that normalized new foods, activities, and routines in England. With the rise of the capitalist economy in England, working people learned to work harder and for longer hours in order to earn and consume more, which contributed to general changes in the eating habits of the English working class. The meanings associated with consuming these foods were “related to the will and intent of the nation’s rulers, and to the economic, social, and political destiny of the nation itself” (151). An individual’s freedom to eat what they like, including the various meanings they associate with eating, is a limited freedom constrained by options ultimately made possible by the structure of society.
The mercantilist arrangement with West Indian plantation owners ended contentiously in favor of a free-market solution that guaranteed a near-limitless supply of sucrose to British consumers. With the rise of factory capitalism in the United Kingdom in the 18th and 19th centuries, the patterns of working life, including the institution of the lunch break, changed what people ate and when. Easily accessible sugar-rich foods (with vendors often located in or beside the workplace itself) became a standard work break accompaniment.
The factory owning class benefited from increased proletarian sugar consumption that was intimately linked with the production process: “The facts suggest that early on production was actually undertaken with specific groups of consumers in mind—the national population of the United Kingdom, in fact” (180). Ruling class interest in this consumption is revealed when one considers, for example, that “sugar and other drug foods, by provisioning, sating—and indeed, drugging—farm and factory workers, sharply reduced the overall cost of creating and reproducing the metropolitan proletariat” (180).
Chapter 4 Analysis
The English working class’ sugar eating habits and the meanings they associate with its use are connected to and largely determined by large-scale economic and political changes and sugar’s meanings for the broader society, especially the governing class. One key change was that protectionist policies for colonial sugar producers were gradually eliminated in favor of the free market, maximizing sugar availability and affordability for an eager consuming public. This change arrived alongside changes in the rhythm of British working life; urbanization and factory work absorbed much of the rural population and rapidly became the most common English workplace.
When it comes to the uses and meaning of sugar, the small-scale perspective of the British factory worker and the large-scale perspective of the governing class intersect: “[P]roletarian work schedules were transformed by the structural changes in the national economy, and created for the laboring classes new tasting opportunities and new occasions for eating and drinking” (165). For example, the institutionalization of the “lunch break” that accompanied the rise of capitalism and factory work allowed workers to consume a comforting cup of tea and sugar. The drink’s stimulating effect made the day bearable for the worker, but it also benefited the business owner who could count on subsequently improved productivity. Individual members of the working class made their decisions within the confines of these new arrangements: “[T]he heightened consumption of goods like sucrose was the direct consequence of deep alterations in the lives of working people, which made new forms of foods and eating conceivable and ‘natural,’ like new schedules of work, new sorts of labor, and new conditions of daily life” (181).
The shift in the British economy toward free market principles certainly increased consumer freedom to choose more products at lower prices, but the context of this freedom, when it comes to sugar production and consumption, is a history of colonial forced labor: “[T]he enslaved Africans who produced the sugar were linked in clear economic relationships to the British laboring people who were learning to eat it” (175). Slavery was abolished in the United Kingdom in the 19th century, but in the history of sugar production, both enslaved and free workers “together powered the imperial economic system that kept the one supplied with manacles and the other with sugar and rum […] [N]either had more than minimal influence over it” (184).
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