Suchergebnisse

"This book describes the central role that these exotic luxuries - spices, scents and silks - played in the lives of the ancients, traces the development of the great international trade networks that delivered them, and explores how the demand for such luxuries shaped the world."

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of Figures and Table -- Preface -- Introduction: Role of plantation crops in world history -- 1 Sugar -- Beginnings -- Early spread -- The Muslim legacy: Mediterranean sugar industry -- Sugar use in Europe -- Expansion of sugar manufacturing by the Portuguese and Spanish -- Dirty necessity: slavery and the plantation system -- The tedium and toil of sugar production -- American expansions - Brazil and the Caribbean -- The boom of sugar use begins -- Conquest and slavery in the Americas -- Human cargo - the Middle Passage -- Unthinkable brutality and slave uprisings in the Caribbean -- Slavery in Brazil -- Sugar wars -- Sugar politics and North America -- Freeing the slaves in the British West Indies -- Slave independence in St. Dominique -- The sugar industry post-slavery -- Appearance of the sugar beet -- Modern sugar industry -- 2 Banana -- Beginnings -- Early spread of bananas -- Early movement of people and bananas in Oceania -- Spread of banana cultivation into Africa -- Banana to the New World -- First banana men -- The Central American expansions of Minor Cooper Keith -- The last great banana man - Samuel Zemurray -- Don't cross Sam -- Life of banana laborers -- Worker unrest and revolt -- Great White Fleet -- War between Cuyamel and United Fruit -- Don't underestimate Sam -- Banana marketing routes -- The banana republic -- The giant growls -- Ugly American takeover -- Demise of Big Mike -- Welcome Cavendish -- The difficult world of banana breeding -- Company flip-flops and subsequent tragedy -- Banana trade wars -- Banana industry today -- 3 Cotton -- The curious evolution of the cotton species -- Cotton domestication and evolutionary change -- Old cotton system in India -- Indian cotton becomes a global commodity -- Early spread of Old World cotton cultivation