Shaped

 

Fiji has been shaped by sugarcane. This has been a seriously mixed blessing. Even now sugar and sugarcane continue to impact Fijian lives in ways small and big. And this holds not just for Fiji but across the world.

From cakes to chocolate mousse....

To understand how, it helps if we start at the beginning of sugar itself and summarise the main milestones:

Sugarcane probably originated in New Guinea and was domesticated around 8,000-10,000 BCE. The Ancient Papuans are thought to have chewed the canes directly. It was also used as animal fodder.  The cane spread to other island nations in the Pacific, including Fiji, through the movement of seafarers, carried by Austronesian and Polynesian peoples. By 3500 BCE sugarcane had reached India, where it interbred with other varieties and became the sugarcane species that is cultivated today. 

It is thought that sugar remained a closely guarded secret of Asia for many centuries. However, sugar travelled west with Alexander's returning army to Greece and later, Pliny the Elder commented on the comparative merits of sugar obtained from the Arabs and India. Therefore, sugar was known to both Ancient Greece and Rome.

Sometime in the first centuries AD, crystalline sugar was made in India. From there it was carried west to Persia and the early Islamic nations by Arab traders. And Buddhist monk took the secrets of sugar to China. So that sugar diffused both east and west - it reached the Mediterranean where Sicily and Cyprus became major production hubs.  For all this time, it was considered a rare and exotic condiment, sometimes used as medicine, rather than an everyday sweetener. Only the most wealthy had access to it. 

The Europeans brought back sugar with them from the Crusades and it reached England in the 13th century. In 1390, a new sugarcane press was invented which increased juice yields from canes and this changed the sugar market dramatically. Madeira rose as a cultivation centre from where the canes were supplied to Belgium for processing and distribution. Thus there emerged a cheaper priced alternative for sugar in Europe compared to the existing sugar monopolies, Madeira  became the largest producer of sugarcane in Europe by the 15th century. 

Christopher Columbus introduced sugar to the New World in 1493. He took it to Hispaniola or modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic. Sugarcane was found eminently suitable for cultivation there, mills and refineries were soon set up and the islands became the largest producer in the New World by 1516. Sugar was also brought to Brazil at around the same time - the combined production grew so much that it exceeded the demand manifold. And because sugar was a hugely labour intensive crop, it created a sudden, massive spike in demand for cheap labour, thus laying the groundwork for the horrific trans-Atlantic slave trade. 

Between 1500 and 1860s, more than 12 million people were taken into slavery and transported in abysmal conditions to the sugarcane plantations in the Americas. Many thousands died during the long sea voyage, many perished at the destination due to overwork and poor conditions. Meanwhile, tea, coffee and cocoa were also imported into Europe creating an ever greater demand for sugar in turn  fuelling the demand for slaves. The forced mass migration of peoples in such huge numbers from Africa, and elsewhere in the world, continues to impact societies today nearly 200 years after the abolition of slavery. Read more here and here.

Sugarcane and Fiji

From coffee and tea to lemonade....we need sugar with a whole lot of things!

The importance of sugarcane to Fiji can be illustrated simply by the existence of the Ministry of Sugar. There was a time when raw sugar and sugar molasses were the top export earner of Fiji, accounting for 38-40% of export earnings. Even today, sugar remains among the top 5 items in the Fijian export basket, with a share of 4-5%. The sugar industry impacts and employs thousands of people - from the land owners, tenant farmers, cultivators, cane cutters and mill workers down to the transport/shipping staff. The production and export peaked in the late 90s, they have tapered and plateaued now due to a variety of factors including the end of trading agreements and climate vagaries. Have a shufti here for the trends. 

Sugarcane was found to grow in Fiji as an indigenous crop by the Europeans. The sugar industry in Fiji started formally in 1882, with Colonial Sugar Refining Co (CSR) setting up the first mill in Nausori. Within a year, cane cultivation had overtaken copra as the chief export crop. The plantations required  labour both plentiful and cheap, the solution to which was provided by shipping in indentured labourers, the Girmitiyas, from the traditional sugar growing regions in India. Most of them were put to work on sugar plantations forthwith, we've already seen their working and living conditions earlier in this series. Sugar thus quickly became the backbone of the Fijian economy. 

In 1972, Fiji Sugar Corporation (FSC) was created by an Act of Parliament and the operations of both CSR and the South Pacific Sugar Mills were consolidated under its umbrella. By this time Fiji had become independent, the indenture system had long been abandoned and many of the Girmitiyas were settled in Fiji, tenant farmers for sugarcane crops planted on leased farmlands. 

Three years later. a bill suggesting that the Girmitiyas and their descendants should be repatriated to India was tabled by a Fijian supremacist leader in the Parliament. It was defeated but it left the Indo-Fijian community (who had by then lost contacts with their country of origin completely) shaken and insecure about their place in Fiji and their rights as citizens. The same year that FSC was formed was also the year when Idi Amin of Uganda successfully expelled all Indians from Uganda at 90 days notice. Some people in Fiji clearly felt Fiji should take a leaf out of that book. In the decades following independence, the the tensions between the Indo-Fijians and iTaukei worsened and even spiralled into violence sometimes, the overarching cause for the four coups d'état and the attempts to bring in a supremacist constitution.  

Coupled with that is the land issue. Most of the sugarcane in Fiji is grown on land leased from the iTaukei owners. Decreasing yields, increasing costs of inputs and transportation, and most importantly, the non-renewal of the leases has led to a steady erosion of farmers' faith in the industry. This has in turn led to their migrations to urban centres and overseas for alternative livelihoods. Sugar export has been overtaken by other products - where it used to be the number one it is now the fourth/fifth. Read more here,  here and here.

All this month I'm writing about Aspects of Fiji, which is where I'm staying at the mo. And where the sum of its stunning parts is greater than the whole!

Did you know that Fiji has a sizeable amount of seafood in its export basket? The markets for Fijian seafood include USA, Australia, China, Japan, Vietnam and New Zealand. Some seafood is also exported to neighbouring Pacific Island nations. 

  

~ Thank you for reading ~

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2023