James Walvin's guest appearances

James Walvin

The C.O.W.S.

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James Walvin is professor emeritus in history at the University of York. He tells Times Evoke about the complex past that explains theremarkable expansion of sugar around the world:I am a historian and in the 1960s, I started studying the history of a sugar plantation in Jamaica which was founded in 1670. That grew into a broader study of the extraordinary impacts of sugar on demography — I’ve researched the huge movements of humans pushed into slavery and transported from Africa to produce sugar across the Atlantic. More recently, I have been working on the impacts of sugar on global health.Sugar is a very distinctive product since it moved very quickly from being considered a great luxury to becoming an extremely cheap everyday necessity. There are physiological factors underpinning this — scientists have conducted research where they have found that if you give an infant a bit of sugar, they like it, which is the opposite reaction they have to salt. It is as if we are hardwired towards sweetness. In recent times, and particularly since the Second World War onwards, the great global commercial empires of food and beverage manufacture have used this factor to promote their products. But the world should think more deeply about the history that underpins this desire.A STORY IN EVERY BITE: Sugar's journey from being a royal and special indulgence to a common everyday treat has an extraordinary antiquity. (Picture source: iStock)Western European powers moved more than twelve million Africans across the Atlantic to grow sugar, later expanding the use of slavery into tobacco and cotton cultivation. Then, after having constructed this brutal system, in the 19th century, the British started to get righteous and decided that slavery was wrong. They turned to another form of less than free labour — indentured labour. They introduced huge numbers of Indian indentured labour into the Caribbean and other locations to cultivate sugar. Initially, sugar was very expensive and people in the West used honey for sweetness. But once inexpensive labour in the form of slavery was linked to sugar, its price began to fall.What in the Middle Ages was a luxury only aristocrats and royalty could afford became the daily commodity of the common person. By 1750, the price of sugar had fallen dramatically even though it was still shipped across vast distances. Ordinary people across Western Europe and North America began to mix sugar daily into their food and beverages — the phrase ‘sweetened to taste’ became a part of the Western vernacular. Interestingly, sugar became a theme in the lives of working people in the West just as the need for cheap labour was expanding there. Sugar helped the physically demanding labour that was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution — for people whose lives were dominated by hard labour, sugar provided a form of energy at a low cost. The commercial manufacture of sugar-based common products began to intensify in the late 18th century with the mass production of candies, sweets and confectionary like biscuits and cakes. By the 1880s, the skylines of cities in Europe and the Americas were dominated by huge factories producing these goods.Sweetness started to get embedded into cheap diets which became a part of everyday life in the Western world — by export and migration, this way of eating spread. This worked so well that adding sugar to other products in the wider world of food production became common. While this practice began with beet sugar, in the 20th century, this grew to include many forms of chemical sweeteners in almost every consumable product. By the 1960s, scientists began releasing findings on the health impacts of the excessive consumption of sugar with dental science, for instance, finding deleterious effects on children’s teeth and physiologists observing marked rises in obesity. This was once thought to be a Western phenomenon but today, obesity is everywhere also because artificially sweetened food.

James Walvin is professor emeritus in history at the University of York. He tells Times Evoke about the complex past that explains theremarkable expansion of sugar around the world:I am a historian and in the 1960s, I started studying the history of a sugar plantation in Jamaica which was founded in 1670. That grew into a broader study of the extraordinary impacts of sugar on demography — I’ve researched the huge movements of humans pushed into slavery and transported from Africa to produce sugar across the Atlantic. More recently, I have been working on the impacts of sugar on global health.Sugar is a very distinctive product since it moved very quickly from being considered a great luxury to becoming an extremely cheap everyday necessity. There are physiological factors underpinning this — scientists have conducted research where they have found that if you give an infant a bit of sugar, they like it, which is the opposite reaction they have to salt. It is as if we are hardwired towards sweetness. In recent times, and particularly since the Second World War onwards, the great global commercial empires of food and beverage manufacture have used this factor to promote their products. But the world should think more deeply about the history that underpins this desire.A STORY IN EVERY BITE: Sugar's journey from being a royal and special indulgence to a common everyday treat has an extraordinary antiquity. (Picture source: iStock)<br>Western European powers moved more than twelve million Africans across the Atlantic to grow sugar, later expanding the use of slavery into tobacco and cotton cultivation. Then, after having constructed this brutal system, in the 19th century, the British started to get righteous and decided that slavery was wrong. They turned to another form of less than free labour — indentured labour. They introduced huge numbers of Indian indentured labour into the Caribbean and other locations to cultivate sugar. Initially, sugar was very expensive and people in the West used honey for sweetness. But once inexpensive labour in the form of slavery was linked to sugar, its price began to fall.What in the Middle Ages was a luxury only aristocrats and royalty could afford became the daily commodity of the common person. By 1750, the price of sugar had fallen dramatically even though it was still shipped across vast distances. Ordinary people across Western Europe and North America began to mix sugar daily into their food and beverages — the phrase ‘sweetened to taste’ became a part of the Western vernacular. Interestingly, sugar became a theme in the lives of working people in the West just as the need for cheap labour was expanding there. Sugar helped the physically demanding labour that was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution — for people whose lives were dominated by hard labour, sugar provided a form of energy at a low cost. The commercial manufacture of sugar-based common products began to intensify in the late 18th century with the mass production of candies, sweets and confectionary like biscuits and cakes. By the 1880s, the skylines of cities in Europe and the Americas were dominated by huge factories producing these goods.Sweetness started to get embedded into cheap diets which became a part of everyday life in the Western world — by export and migration, this way of eating spread. This worked so well that adding sugar to other products in the wider world of food production became common. While this practice began with beet sugar, in the 20th century, this grew to include many forms of chemical sweeteners in almost every consumable product. By the 1960s, scientists began releasing findings on the health impacts of the excessive consumption of sugar with dental science, for instance, finding deleterious effects on children’s teeth and physiologists observing marked rises in obesity. This was once thought to be a Western phenomenon but today, obesity is everywhere also because artificially sweetened food.

From empire to industry,sugar impacted humans and ecology': James Walvin :TOI: History of Sugar

James Walvin visits The Context of White Supremacy. Mr. Walvin is a Professor of History Emeritus at University of York. He's written and edited thirty books, including Black Presence: A Documentary History of the Negro in England and Black and White: The Negro and English Society. We'll review his 2011 publication, The Zong: A Massacre, The Law &amp; The End Of Slavery. Gus learned about this book while reading Edward Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told. Walvin's text explores an 1781 slave ship financed by a Racist Liverpool consortium. The slave ship, the Zong, allegedly ran perilously low on water before reaching its destination in Jamaica. The Whites on board decided the best remedy would be to toss approximately 150 black people overboard to their death. This included children and females. There was nothing unusual or abnormal about this act. Slaughtering black people on the high seas was a predictable, standard procedure. What established this extermination as infamous was that the White financiers pursued compensation for their murdered negroes. The trial drew widespread attention and galvanized a movement that ended the British slave trade in less than thirty years. This obviously did not end White Supremacy or British "colonization" and "imperialism." We'll connect this incident with 21st century Racism where White Terrorists in Liverpool continue to assault black people, like football star Mario Balotelli. #AnswersForMiriamCarey INVEST in The COWS - http://paypal.me/GusTRenegade CALL IN NUMBER: 641.715.3640 CODE: 564943# The C.O.W.S. archives: http://tiny.cc/76f6p

James Walvin visits The Context of White Supremacy. Mr. Walvin is a Professor of History Emeritus at University of York. He's written and edited thirty books, including Black Presence: A Documentary History of the Negro in England and Black and White: The Negro and English Society. We'll review his 2011 publication, The Zong: A Massacre, The Law &amp; The End Of Slavery. Gus learned about this book while reading Edward Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told. Walvin's text explores an 1781 slave ship financed by a Racist Liverpool consortium. The slave ship, the Zong, allegedly ran perilously low on water before reaching its destination in Jamaica. The Whites on board decided the best remedy would be to toss approximately 150 black people overboard to their death. This included children and females. There was nothing unusual or abnormal about this act. Slaughtering black people on the high seas was a predictable, standard procedure. What established this extermination as infamous was that the White financiers pursued compensation for their murdered negroes. The trial drew widespread attention and galvanized a movement that ended the British slave trade in less than thirty years. This obviously did not end White Supremacy or British "colonization" and "imperialism." We'll connect this incident with 21st century Racism where White Terrorists in Liverpool continue to assault black people, like football star Mario Balotelli. #AnswersForMiriamCarey INVEST in The COWS - <a href="http://paypal.me/GusTRenegade" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://paypal.me/GusTRenegade</a> CALL IN NUMBER: 641.715.3640 CODE: 564943# The C.O.W.S. archives: <a href="http://tiny.cc/76f6p" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://tiny.cc/76f6p</a>

The C.O.W.S. w/ James Walvin: The Zong (UK)