Why Is Sugar Important To The Columbian Exchange

Tobacco - the leaves of the cured nicotine-rich plant used for smoking or chewing. This plant became the cornerstone of the colonial Virginia economy, heightened Great Britain’s ability to trade, and influenced the transatlantic slave trade.
Ottoman Empire - Turkish empire that was founded about 1300 by Osman and reached its greatest territorial extent under Suleiman in the 16th century. It became one of the largest, most powerful and longest-lasting empires in the history of the world. It was an empire inspired and sustained by Islam and replaced the Byzantine Empire as the major power in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Sugar – a “sweet spice” that changed the eating habits of many early Europeans. Led to consumption of tea, coffee, cocoa, processed foods, and other sweet victuals in much greater number. Transformed labor systems in the new world which began turning it into a much cheaper bulk commodity.
Barbados - Barbados

Since sugar cane had been introduced to West Indies, the techniques of sugar production, exploitation of labor, and economic organization developed on these islands were easily exported to the new world. Ultimately, the adoption of these production techniques and the system of colonial government from the Atlantic islands, with the institution of slavery, made sugar production the most profitable cultivation in the Americas. By the sixteenth century, both demand and prices had risen because refined sugar was replacing honey in most recipes and was increasingly used as a sweetener in jams, jellies and other popular food products across Europe. White Gold, as British colonists called it, was the engine of the slave trade that brought millions of Africans to the Americas beginning in the early sixteenth century. Profits from the sugar trade were so significant that it may have even helped America achieve independence from Great