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The long history of sugar is interwoven with that of trade, religion, colonialism, capitalism, industry and technology. The labor-intensive nature of sugar cultivation and processing has meant that much of the history of the sugar industry has had associations with large-scale slavery.[1] The sugar pioneers of the early modern period mastered a process that has more in common with modern assembly lines than any other sort of farming carried in Europe at that time The people of New Guinea were probably the first to domesticate sugarcane, sometime around 8,000 BC; solid sugar is not mentioned in the historical record until AD 500, in India.[3] After domestication, its cultivation spread rapidly to southern China, Indochina and India, with Muslim traders and conquerors later exporting the cane plant and refining techniques to the Middle East and Europe.[3] By the sixth century AD, sugar cultivation and processing had reached Persia, whence they were carried into the Mediterranean by the Arab expansion.[4] Spanish and Portuguese exploration and conquest in the fifteenth century carried sugar south-west of Iberia. Henry the Navigator introduced cane to Sicily from Madeira in 1425, while the Spanish, having eventually subdued the Canary Islands, introduced sugar cane to them.[4] In 1493, on his second voyage, Christopher Columbus carried cane seedlings to the New World, in particular Hispaniola.

Through the medieval period, sugar was considered a "fine spice",[6] but from about 1500 onwards technological improvements and New World fuel-sources began turning it into a bulk commodity