Answer:
To reveal that the reason for sugar's low price was slavery.
To show how the desire for sugar led to slavery
.
Explanation:
When reading this passage, we must look further in order to understand the narrator's true intention.
Although the story about sugar might seem to be the main subject of this paragraph, it is only a means used to <em>highlight the cause and the effect</em> of this new craze it created.
A better look into the choice of information the narrator decides to provide us with is crucial so as to understand the message he is trying to send. He chooses (consciously or not) what he wants to say and that must be of some importance to him, and therefore, to us as readers.
In this excerpt we learn that Europeans showed interest in "a product made thousands of miles away" even though they had an alternative that was right before their eyes. It is <em>the price of sugar</em>, far less expensive compared to the price of honey, that awoke their interest.
And as readers, we ask ourselves, <em>why?</em> Why would a product from across the ocean, a product much needed in an everyday life, be more affordable than the one within a hand's reach?
And the narrator lets us know exactly why. The cause and the effect are inseparable here as we learn that the desire for sugar was made possible by millions of enslaved individuals forced to work for the profit of their merciless owners, <em>the few in search of their fortunes,</em> resulting in the terrifying <em>Triangular trade</em>, which operated transports of slaves and commercial goods, sugar included, for the Europeans across the ocean.
