History of Sugar Timeline

Spanish and Portuguese exploration in the fifteenth century carried sugar southwest of Iberia. Henry the Navigator introduced cane to Madeira in 1425, while the Spanish introduced sugar cane to the Canary Islands after subduing them.

Image source: Prince Henry the Navigator

By 1492, Madeira was producing over 1,400,000 kilograms (3,000,000 lb) of sugar annually, making it a major Atlantic sugar producer.

Image source: Madeira

In 1493, on his second voyage, Christopher Columbus carried sugarcane seedlings to the New World, in particular Hispaniola, beginning the history of sugar cultivation in the Americas.

Image source: Christopher Columbus

The first sugar harvest happened in Hispaniola in 1501; many sugar mills had been constructed in Cuba and Jamaica by the 1520s.

Image source: Hispaniola

By 1540, there were 800 cane sugar mills in Santa Catarina Island and another 2,000 on the north coast of Brazil, Demarara, and Surinam.

Image source: Santa Catarina Island

Approximately 3,000 small sugar mills built before 1550 in the New World created an unprecedented demand for cast iron gears, levers, axles and other implements, sparking technological development.

After 1625, sugarcane was introduced to the Caribbean islands from South America by the Dutch, transforming the region's economy.

Image source: Dutch West India Company

During the 18th century, sugar became enormously popular. Great Britain consumed five times as much sugar in 1770 as in 1710, and by the end of the century all levels of society had become common consumers of the former luxury product.

Image source: Great Britain

By 1750, sugar surpassed grain as 'the most valuable commodity in European trade', making up a fifth of all European imports. From the 1740s until the 1820s, sugar was Britain's most valuable import.

In 1747, German chemist Andreas Sigismund Marggraf announced the discovery of sugar in beets and devised a method using alcohol to extract it, founding the beet sugar industry.

Image source: Andreas Sigismund Marggraf

Beginning in the late 18th century, sugar production became increasingly mechanized. The steam engine first powered a sugar mill in Jamaica in 1768, and soon steam replaced direct firing as the source of process heat.

Image source: Jamaica

Marggraf's student, Franz Karl Achard, devised an economical industrial method to extract sugar in pure form in the late 18th century, and first produced beet sugar in 1783 in Kaulsdorf.

Image source: Franz Karl Achard

In 1801, under the patronage of King Frederick William III of Prussia, the world's first beet sugar production facility was established in Cunern, Silesia. Though never profitable, it operated until its destruction during the Napoleonic Wars.

Image source: Konary, Wołów County

Cut off from Caribbean imports by a British blockade, Napoleon banned imports of sugar in 1813 and ordered the planting of 32,000 hectares with beetroot, boosting French beet sugar production.

Image source: Napoleon

In 1813 the British chemist Edward Charles Howard invented a method of refining sugar involving boiling cane juice not in an open kettle, but in a closed vessel heated by steam and held under partial vacuum.

Image source: Edward Charles Howard

The United Kingdom Beetroot Sugar Association was established in 1832, but efforts to establish sugar beet in the UK were not very successful initially.

Image source: Sugar beet

Further gains in fuel-efficiency came from the multiple-effect evaporator, designed by American engineer Norbert Rillieux, perhaps as early as the 1820s, although the first working model dates from 1845.

Image source: Norbert Rillieux

The process of separating sugar from molasses received mechanical attention when David Weston first applied the centrifuge to this task in Hawaii in 1852.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, over 450,000 indentured labourers went from India to the British West Indies, while others went to Natal, Mauritius and Fiji, where they became a majority of the population.

Image source: Indian indenture system

By 1899, sugar beets provided approximately two-thirds of world sugar production, having transformed the global sugar industry since their invention in Germany.

The industrialization of the Colombian industry started in 1901 with the establishment of Manuelita, the first steam-powered sugar mill in South America, by Latvian Jewish immigrant James Martin Eder.

Image source: Manuelita (film)

The British Sugar Beet Society was set up in 1915, and by 1930 there were 17 factories in England and one in Scotland, supported by the British Sugar (Subsidy) Act 1925. By 1935 homegrown sugar was 27.6% of British consumption.

Image source: History of sugar

At the Agency of Industrial Science and Technology of Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Takasaki developed key technology between 1965 and 1970 that enabled industrial production of high-fructose corn syrup.

Image source: High-fructose corn syrup

Soft drink makers such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi use sugar in other nations, but switched to high-fructose corn syrup in the United States in 1984, reshaping American sweetener consumption.

The average American consumed approximately 37.8 lb (17.1 kg) of high-fructose corn syrup in 2008, versus 46.7 lb (21.2 kg) of sucrose, reflecting decades of shifting sweetener preferences.