The rise of the sugar trade and sugar consumption in early British America, 1650–1720*

Abstract

Abstract This article draws on new archival sources to explore how sugar pervaded British North America much earlier that previous scholarly literature has suggested. Sugar arrived in North America with the very first colonists, and was widely available to a variety of consumers across the socio-economic spectrum. The product was foundational to the development of the North American economic world – in the creation of rum distilleries, grocers’ shops and through the use of commodity money. While sugar brought North American colonists closer to Britain through similar consumption patterns and a shared sense of taste, it also began to pull the two countries apart. By 1733, sugar had become a central source of tension between the colony and the metropole; it allowed colonists’ economic relationships to spread much further than Britain, and consequently, as America’s sweet tooth developed, its relationship with Britain began to decay.