sugar it's bad for you it makes your teeth fall out and it's essential component of any gross western diet for centuries sugar drove the world economy it made old white men wealthy and powerful helped turn britain into a global colonial superpower and it made cities like bristol filthy rich empires of dirt a series about europeans getting rich at the expense of everyone else previously we found out how britain exported homophobia to the rest of the world and how britain got china hooked on oakland our love of the white stuff resulted in untold misery for african men women and children it's estimated that around 70 percent of the 12 million people who were kidnapped from africa and put on slave ships in the 17th and 18th centuries were destined for sugar colonies in america and the west indies all this heartache just so our tea could taste like cotton candy it seems incredible to think of now but before the 16th century sugar wasn't really that widespread in europe during the 14th and 15th centuries it was imported here from the middle east and mediterranean countries like cyprus only the elite ate sugar because it was so ridiculously expensive we're talking literal kings and queens and maybe the odd bishop here and there when portuguese settlers landed in brazil in the early 16th century they started growing sugarcane straight away sugar flooded into europe giving everyday consumers a taste for the sweet stuff britain quickly followed suit soon almost every island in the caribbean was covered in plantations these plantations produced 80 to 90 of all the sugar consumed in western europe during the 18th and 19th centuries europe went mad for sugar the average sugar consumption in england and wales went up 20 fold between 1663 and 1775. by the 18th century even the poorest worker took sugar in their tea because it was so popular by 1750 a fifth of all of europe's imports was sugar the average brit went from eating four pounds of sugar a year in 1700 to 20 pounds of sugar a year a century later the reason sugar was so expensive is because it's labor intensive to cultivate that is until european plantation owners realized that if you enslaved your workforce you wouldn't have to pay them so you could make sugar a lot more cheaply on caribbean sugar plantations in the 17th and 18th centuries enslaved african men women and children were forced to work in horrific conditions from dawn to dusk growing and harvesting sugarcane the younger and fitter enslaved people were made to plant and cut the crop while children and older people were forced to clean guard the crop and drive away birds working in the sugar mill wasn't any better people could be maimed or killed by the machinery the sugar boiling houses were horrifically hot especially in the sweltering caribbean summers during harvest time enslaved people worked 18-hour days a third of newly kidnapped people died within three years the plantation owners didn't care they just trafficked in new people to replace them as enslaved people toiled to pick and process sugarcane slave traders like bristol's very own edward costan grew rich coaston had business interests in the sugar producing island of sink kits these plantations made him rich and powerful so he did what rich and powerful people often do which is donate loads of money to charity to launder their reputation and build statues to honour themselves after they die by the 18th century bristol had become a center of the global sugar trade at one point bristol had 22 sugar houses refineries where you could store and process sugar like the one right here sugar merchants operated out of the city importing sugar and lending money to caribbean plantation owners sugar made these businessmen so rich they called it white gold if you walk around bristol today you can still see the enormous mansions they once owned the american revolution of 1775 and the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 marked the end of britain's dominance of the global sugar trade production shifted to america in particular the state of louisiana where surprise surprise it was grown by enslaved people today most of the world's sugar is grown in brazil although thankfully not by enslaved people slavery was abolished there in 1888 making brazil the last country in the western world to do it after they kidnapped and trafficked four million people trinidad closed its last sugar factory in 2007. and coastin despite his role in various companies kidnapping and trafficking enslaved people he died at home at the right board age of 84. his statue however met a more untimely end in june 2020 black lives matter protesters pulled it down and pushed it into bristol harbor right here it got fished out but around here colston's name is dirt you