A little history of sugar cane

The original sugar cane

Although there are several varieties, the one that interests us is Saccharum Officinarum , described by Linnaeus (Swedish naturalist who is at the base of the current classification of plants, animals and minerals) in 1753. It owes its name to the fact that it was, initially in the West, mainly used in pharmaceutical preparations .

This variety of sugar cane is originally from New Guinea, a large island in Oceania located just north of Australia.

It is estimated that its first strain began to be cultivated between 1500 and 1000 BC. People at that time consumed it in the simplest way, by chewing its stems to extract the sweet juice.

It began to spread, first in the neighboring islands of Indonesia , then it spread to the rest of Oceania and South Asia until the ^5th century BC. During this period, it was neighbors of other varieties born in the Himalayas or in the South of China. Hybridizations with these primitive species allowed it to gain in size and robustness. It is there that from "mouth cane" for food, Saccharum Officinarum became " noble cane ", that is to say suitable for sugar cultivation.

It was during the same century that it became known in the Middle East . The Persians spoke of "a reed that gives honey without the help of bees", and the Old Testament speaks of a "sweet reed imported from a distant country".

The West discovered sugar cane thanks to a lieutenant of Alexander the Great returning from an exploration in India in -327.

Sugarcane in the West

Sugarcane cultivation continued its progression towards the West, establishing itself all around the Mediterranean . It was a strain from India, heir to the crossbreeding of original species, which was selected and propagated. While the Persians had domesticated sugarcane and even developed the technique for extracting sugar from it , it was the Arabs who began to spread it. Large-scale cultivation and the manufacture of sugar began from 637, first in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia (which roughly corresponds today to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt), then in North Africa and Andalusia. This is what is called " the Arab sector ".

" The Christian sector ", a little later (XII^th and XIII^th century), was born from the meeting of the Crusaders and the Arabs in the Middle East. The Christians thus spread the culture of cane in their turn in the islands of the Mediterranean, first in Cyprus, then in Crete, Sicily and Spain. The rest of Europe discovers the sugar which was then worth a fortune, and the first Venetian refinery made a fortune.

During the ^15th century, trade between the great economic powers of the Genoese, the Florentines and the Spanish was disrupted by the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in the East and the retreat of the Arabs in the West. While the latter successfully concentrated their production in North Africa, the Christians devoted their possessions in Madeira , the Azores, the Canaries and Sao Tome entirely to cane and sugar.

Towards the new world

Christopher Columbus introduced the cane to Santo Domingo since 1493. In the new world, our Saccharum Officinarum becomes Creole Cane (Criolla Caña).

Sugar production began in 1509 and spread to the Antilles and America (Puerto Rico, Mexico, Brazil, Peru ) during the ^16th century. It was in Brazil that the first large sugar plantations were born. Very prolific, their yields aroused the covetousness and attacks of other colonizing countries. The Dutch took the leadership position from the Portuguese for a time and then found themselves driven out of Brazil. They then dispersed in the Antilles and applied their often radical and brutal methods. This is how the first sugar shipments from Martinique and Guadeloupe to the old continent began in the middle of the ^17th century.

In the rest of the world

While the cultivation of sugar cane in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and America is closely linked to a strain from India which will later be called " Creole Cane "; in the rest of the world it is the OTahiti cane ( Saccharum Violaceum ) which will change the landscape.

This variety was introduced by Bougainville has Mauritius Island and in Reunion where it took the name of Bourbon caneThe French sailor and explorer made the first official round-the-world voyage for France between 1766 and 1769, and it was in Polynesia that he discovered this species present in the wild. It then spread to the Antilles and Guyana at the end of the 18th century, and even reached the English colonies. From the Antilles, it passed to Louisiana, and from Guyana, to Brazil. It was thus the first variety cultivated in the world during the first half of the 19th century, before being gradually replaced by other more resistant and more profitable species.

Used in research and hybridization trials, it has nevertheless served to enrich the genes of today's Saccharum Officinarum , which itself has several varieties.

Sugarcane varieties

Hundreds of varieties of sugar cane have been created in different research and hybridization stations. By crossing and enriching these varieties, we seek to make them more resistant to diseases and bad weather, more productive, richer in sugar etc.

The varieties thus obtained then bear a barbaric name made up of an initial and a series of numbers. The initial corresponds to the hybridization station, and the numbers are a sort of reference, a serial number. It is only at the local level that the cane adopts a slightly more charming nickname. This is for example the case of the famous Blue Cane well known in the French Antilles, and whose code B.69-566 indicates that it was created in Barbados . In the same way, the Red Cane which bears the code R.579 comes from Reunion Island.

Even more than the variety of cane, it is above all its terroir that will have a great influence. We explain why in this article on the importance of cane and terroir .

From the golden age of plantations to today's sugar cane

Sugar cane has become a major world culture in the 17th century, with the development of sugar plantations fueling the infamous triangular trade and the terrible crime against humanity that slavery represented. It was also during this period that the candy rum as we know it today took off when its usefulness as a by-product of sugar production through molasses was understood. The sugar and rum continued to prosper throughout colonization and continued its expansion during the 18th century. Even with the competition from beetroot that appeared at the beginning of the 19th century and the various economic crises it experienced until the 20th century, it remains one of the most cultivated plants today, whether for sugar, rum or biofuels.

To learn how sugar cane becomes rum, we have also prepared an article on the production of rum and the different styles of rum . Enjoy reading!