Bittersweet (18 page)

In other words, work makes free, as a later economic rationalist once said. Carlyle was demonstrating a very feudal and European attitude to land—it was the property of the rich, the rulers; if others wanted to work the land, they could not do so freely, but must pay their betters for the privilege. The English and other Europeans came to the Caribbean as rulers, seized the land, and worked both the land and its occupants as hard as possible so that they could gain a huge profit, return ‘home' and buy land, for ‘home' landholdings would allow them to hold their heads high in the polite and genteel society of other landholders while grinding down their own agricultural poor.

Many British administrators saw the freed slaves as Carlyle did, when they thought of them at all, but not everybody took that view. The poet Matthew Arnold, for example, called Carlyle a ‘moral desperado'. Carlyle's friendship with John Stuart Mill had survived a disaster when Mill's maid mistakenly burnt the only manuscript copy of Carlyle's
The French Revolution
, after which Carlyle rewrote the entire draft from memory, but it did not survive the response that Mill made to Carlyle's pamphlet on the Negro question. Mill was in favour of social reform based on his utilitarian philosophy; he saw labour as a necessary evil, while Carlyle saw it as a virtue in itself, a duty that the black must attend to, forthwith, for the general good.

THE EYRE CASE

Mill and Carlyle were destined to clash again, as a result of a minor scuffle at Morant Bay in Jamaica in 1865. Reported to the Governor of Jamaica, one Edward John Eyre, as a ‘black uprising', it led him to act fast. Eyre was the English teenager we met earlier, sipping tea and rum in the Australian bush. He is still well known to Australians for his exploration of the continent between 1836 and 1841, and his name is found on the great salt pan, occasionally a body of water, called Lake Eyre.

After walking half across Australia, Eyre became Protector of the Aborigines, distinguishing himself mainly by his attempts to convert the Aboriginal people of South Australia into dark-skinned Britishers, asking them to give up their culture for that of the white man. In the process, he risked his own life many times to save others, intervening to stop fights between armed white stockmen and armed Aboriginals. By that time, white settlers were moving across Australia from Sydney to Adelaide, with large flocks and herds, fighting battles with the local people whose land they crossed. As usual, more blacks than whites died in these encounters.

Seeking to rise in the world, Eyre went off to New Zealand as Lieutenant-Governor. There, he was treated inhumanely by his superior, and is now recalled mainly for his obsession with gold braid, ceremonial matters and Sabbath observance. He then moved to the West Indies, becoming in turn Lieutenant-Governor of St Vincent, and then Antigua, before being appointed Governor of Jamaica in 1864.

When whites were killed at Morant Bay, Eyre acted as ruthlessly as the worst of the white herders and settlers he had tried to control in South Australia. He declared martial law and his forces hanged more than 400 blacks. While this firmness of resolve was applauded by the local white community—and even some of the black community—Eyre made one bad mistake: he hanged a prominent political opponent, a man of colour named George William Gordon, without a fair trial. To make it worse, the hanging took place outside the area declared under martial law. Eyre followed up this action by abolishing the Jamaican legislature and constitution.

There was uproar in Britain. Karl Marx reacted to the events by likening the beastliness of the ‘true Englishman' to that of the Russian. Eyre was recalled to London, and many famous Englishmen, including Mill, Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley and Herbert Spencer, called for him to be charged with murder. The conservative forces, led by Carlyle, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and John Ruskin, created the Eyre Testimonial and Defence Fund. In the end, Eyre was allowed to die peacefully in Devon in 1901, looking and behaving more like the gentle and humane Protector of Aborigines than the Hangman of Jamaica.

COMPETITION FROM SUGAR BEET

By the 1860s more and more countries were growing sugar cane, partly for their own use, but also for export, and that pushed prices down. Even more of a problem was the spread of sugar beet, which could be grown in temperate regions all over Europe, the biggest market. By now the art of getting fine sugar crystals from a sugary solution was common knowledge, because refining had always been reserved as a ‘home' industry.

The wonder of sugar beet is not so much that people found a way to grow sugar in temperate conditions, but that they took so long to adopt an ancient discovery. Theophrastus, who died in 327 BC, wrote that the white beet was richer in juice than the black, and cooks certainly knew it as a sweet-tasting root. Like sugar, the sugar beet was seen as having medicinal values. Avicenna (980–1037) recommended using the beet against nose and throat infections. Around 1575, Olivier de Serres (1539–1619) wrote that the cooked beet yielded a juice like sugar syrup, although he does not appear to have suggested using it as a source of solid sugar.

By the early eighteenth century, the development of the scientific tradition was well under way, and if there were yet few scientific journals to disseminate discoveries, at least there was an informative publication known as a magazine, and others would follow. This 1731 British invention took its name from the Arabic word
makhazan
, meaning ‘storehouse' or ‘warehouse', and magazines were seen as storehouses of information. For a century and a half, one such ‘storehouse', the
Gentleman's Magazine
, spread ideas and opinions, and provoked readers to think and inquire. It is a remarkable source of information on the sugar trade—and on beet sugar, though its reliability was occasionally a little off.

THE SUGAR BEET

In 1747 Andraeas Sigismond Marggraf (1709–1782) reported that the sugar in sugar beet is identical with that found in cane. Marggraf was an eminent chemist who made many other discoveries, but today he is recalled for showing that the sugar in the root of the beet was the same as cane sugar.

Of course, not everybody was prepared to allow him due credit. In 1752 the
Gentleman's Magazine
had recorded a plan to extract sugar from seaweed, and even though Marggraf had done his work five years earlier, the magazine claimed part credit in 1754, when they heard of it. Here it is, with original spelling and punctuation, from the
Gentleman's Magazine
, 1754, No. 24, page 9:

We are pleased to find, that the account we gave in our
Mag
. for
July
1752
, p. 324 of a method of extracting sugar from the broad-leav'd alga, a seaweed, has excited the curiosity of the Literati in foreign nations, to persue this discovery still farther; by examining more closely the essential properties of other plants. M. Marggraf, of the academy of Sciences at Berlin, has published the result of the experiments he has made on this subject, by which it appears that many common herbs contain large proportions of sugars.

Still, the magazine's proprietors had the full details for their readers. Here is Marggraf, in their translation, after he has explained how he showed that sugar could be dissolved in strong brandy, strained through a cloth, and then formed into crystals again:

Having prepared the way by this experiment, I took the roots of white beets, and having cut them into small slices, I laid them by the fire to dry, taking care not to burn them: I then reduced them to a coarse powder, and laid it to dry a second time, because it is very apt to contract moisture: Whilst this coarse powder was yet warm, I put eight ounces of it into a glass vessel, and pour'd upon it 16 ounces of brandy, so strong that it fired canon-powder.

After boiling, straining the mash through cloth and waiting, he obtained a small amount of sugar from this and other roots:

By this method . . . I obtained from the three roots . . . the following quantities of sugar.

1. From half a pound of the root of white beets, half an ounce of pure sugar.

2. From half a pound of skirrets, an ounce and a half of pure sugar.

3. From half a pound of red beets, one ounce and a quarter of pure sugar.

It is evident from these experiments that lime water is not at all necessary to dry and thicken the sugar, as some pretend, since the sugar chrystalizes without it.

Being thus assured that there was a real sugar in plants, I endeavoured to find out a less expensive manner of extracting it . . .

Now the interesting point here is that while we recognise Marggraf as the discoverer of beet sugar, his trials had pointed another way, to the water parsnip or skirret as the best source. Significantly, the common English name skirret comes from the Dutch
suikerwortel
, meaning ‘sugar root', so Marggraf was hardly making a major discovery here. Known to the botanists as
Sium sisarum
, but identified by Marggraf as
Sisarum dodonaei
, the skirret was introduced into Europe from China around 1548, and was soon hailed on all sides as ‘the sweetest of roots'. This was the plant he used.

I took a certain quantity of skirrets; I cut the roots, whilst fresh, and pounded them as small as possible in an iron mortar. I then put them into a linen bag and pressed out the juice . . . I poured water upon the roots remaining in the bag, and pressed them a second time. I . . . let it stand to settle in a cool place for 48 hours: In which time it became clear, and a mealy substance settled to the bottom . . .

The first clarification being thus made, I put some whites of eggs to the juice, and boiled it in a brass pan, scumming it continually, till no further impurities appeared upon the surface: I then passed it thro' a linen cloth, and the liquor was as transparent as the clearest wine.

After further boiling to condense it to a syrup, Marggraf let the syrup stand in a warm place, and after six months, he found crystals on the sides of the glass vessel. Collecting the crystals, he drained them of syrup, blotted them, dissolved them in water, and strained the solution through cloth. He then used methods we should recognise, for he:

. . . boil'd it to the consistence of a thick syrup; then put a little lime water to it, and boil'd it gently until it became ropy. I then took it off the fire, and stirr'd it about until it cool'd and thickened a little; after which I poured it into well-burnt earthen vessels in the form of a cone, closed at the small end with a wooden stopper, which vessels I put into others that were deeper, and set them in a temperate place.

THE NAPOLEON GAMBIT

So with Marggraf claiming in Germany to have produced best Muscovado sugar, far from the sugar islands, and setting out the details for others to follow, why did it take two more generations for beet sugar to be produced commercially? The answer appears to be in two parts. Sugar could still be bought more cheaply from the tropics because the existing beet varieties demanded too much effort for the amount of sugar that resulted.

It was clear that the beets varied, and Marggraf later identified white beet as giving the highest yield, followed by skirret and red beet, but he recommended the beet as a source of syrups for cooking, not as the basis of an industry. According to the usual account, that was as far as the sugar beet went until the supply of cane sugar to Europe by sea was stopped by the Napoleonic wars. In fact, work was continuing behind the scenes. Marggraf's former pupil and successor in his chair, Carl Franz Achard, began a systematic study of beet sugar in 1786 at Caulsdorf. Thus, by the time Napoleon's many wars caused sugar shortages, the technology to produce beet sugar was available.

In 1799 Achard presented Frederick William III of Prussia with a loaf of sugar prepared at a Berlin refinery from raw beet. With regal assistance, Achard set up a sugar works. Unfortunately it failed, mainly due to his lack of business acumen, although insufficient research and development may have played a part as well. Achard also told the Institute of France of his results; but because the French were investigating getting sugar from grapes, nothing came of it then. Soon, though, France needed to find a replacement for the 100 000 tons of sugar that had come from Haiti each year, where the former slaves were no longer willing to carry out the back-breaking work required.

A Königsaal refinery in Bohemia produced beet sugar in 1797, and another beet sugar factory opened at Horowitz in 1800. Achard was by no means alone in his discovery, but it was the French who now took over, crossing various strains of beet and carrying out systematic tests of the new plants. The factory of Freiherr Moritz von Koppy started production in 1806; his ‘White Silesian' beetroot has provided all of the modern strains of sugar beet. Achard also told the Tsar of his work, and a factory soon opened in Russia. By 1809 there were eight factories working there; three years later, there were eight factories around Magdeburg alone. Napoleon ordered an expansion of the French beet sugar enterprise, and by 1813 France had 334 factories producing close to 4000 tons of sugar.

Unfortunately, the bubble was about to burst. As Napoleon's armies retreated, Europe opened up again to English trade and to sugar from the English colonies. That started a long-lasting Gallic complaint of English sugar policy wiping out a delicate French industry, but the various tales of British attempts to kill off the sugar beet industry are at best dubious and at worst, total fabrications, probably having more to do with French domestic politics, and the need for a perfidious Britannic bogeyman, than to any planned English action.

If anything, the French sugar industry was doing better than the British. By 1815 France was at peace and subsidising her beet sugar industry, keeping beet sugar in competition with British cane sugar as prices plummeted. Having already lost most Caribbean sources of sugar, France also lost Mauritius in 1816, leaving little option but to develop beet sugar for domestic consumption. By 1826 some 1900 factories were making around 24 000 tons of sugar a year, and by 1833 consolidation into 400 factories had done no harm: production reached 40 000 tons of sugar annually, a third of the nation's needs. From there, it became a war of attrition between the two types of sugar.