By the 1800s, it was clear that the Age of Sugar—that combination of enslavement, factories, and global trade—was replacing the
Age of Honey, when people ate local foods, lived on the land of their ancestors, and valued tradition over change. Sugar was the product of the slave and the addiction of the poor factory worker—the meeting place of the barbarism of overseers such as Thomas Thistlewood and the rigid new economy. And yet, for that very reason, sugar also became the lynchpin of the struggle for freedom.
When we talk about Atlantic slavery, we must describe sugar Hell; and yet that is only part of the story. Africans were at the heart of this great change in the economy, indeed in the lives of people throughout the world. Africans were the true global citizens—adjusting to a new land, a new religion, even to other Africans they would never have met in their homelands. Their labor made the Age of Sugar—the Industrial Age—possible. We should not see the enslaved people simply as victims, but rather as actors—as the heralds of the interconnected world in which we all live today. And indeed, it was when the enslaved Africans began to speak—in words and in actions—when Europeans began to see them as human, that the Age of Sugar also became the Age of Freedom.
Which text evidence best supports the authors' claim and purpose? "Sugar was the product of the slave and the addiction of the poor factory worker—the meeting place of the barbarism of overseers such as Thomas Thistlewood and the rigid new economy.” "When we talk about Atlantic slavery, we must describe sugar Hell; and yet that is only part of the story." "Africans were the true global citizens—adjusting to a new land, a new religion, even to other Africans they would never have met in their homelands." "And indeed, it was when the enslaved Africans began to speak—in words and in actions—when Europeans began to see them as human, that the Age of Sugar also became the Age of Freedom."
