Sugar Changed the World

Aronson and Budhos write about complexity as something historians and teachers should embrace. They criticize high schools for splitting topics like the Declaration of Independence, the French Revolution, and abolitionism in “completely separate units […] as if these crucial historical themes were not inextricably linked” (128).

This view heavily influences Sugar Changed the World. Aronson and Budhos describe the narrative of their book as a “much larger story about a remarkable substance […] a story of the movement of millions of people, of fortunes made and lost, of brutality and delight” (6). As such, this is very much a world history, focusing on Africa, the Americas, the Middle East, Europe, and India, but also touching on East Asia and Polynesia. For the story of sugar to be accurately told, Aronson and Budhos believe it must cover many different parts of the world and historical trends.

This view is not specific to Sugar Changed the World. Throughout the text, Aronson and Budhos call attention to how different societies and different historical trends acted upon each other. For example, they argue that the Crusades were not just a political and military event, but also a cultural one that introduced new information to Europe and transformed European life and thought (24-25).