Nobody knows for sure where it came into the world. As it happens with lots of things, it is uncertain where fable and legend mix. One of the latest stories from the East, tells that a rajah named Sindbady, from Benares by the sacred river Ganges, was condemned for his crimes and low passions to the worst of the penalties in that region at the time. That was not to have any children.

In order to expiate his sins and make peace with God Iswara, he retired to one of the most remote places in the bank of the Ganges where he would only eat a sweet plant (sugar cane) that grew abundantly in the area. The cane, moved by the resignation of the sinner, made a son to be born from its seed, or Sindbady, whose generations still live and they are called Isvaaku or descendants from the sugar cane. Apart from the legend, the indisputable fact is that this wonderful plant is native from India, Conchinchina or the Indian archipelagoes, according to De Candolle in his famous book The Origin of Cultivated Plants. Although we cannot find its chronological appearance on Earth, some books written in the 2nd century A.C. read that from India the sugar cane passed to Catay (China). From Catay it got to Africa via Egypt and Ethiopia. Merchants of various nationalities transported it to these territories. Its advance towards the East continued. The Arabs took it to Sicily and from there to Spain where the sugar cultivation and industry became important. Don Enrique, Regent of Portugal, took it to Madera Island and in a short step it went to Canary Islands, where it found an ideal climate and soil for its growth. That’s the reason why during three hundred years this area became the sugar cane region of Europe. The theory that sugar cane is native from the far East is based on stories told by explorers reporting their fragile vessels anchored in the islands of the region where they found the cane growing splendidly in the wild. It came to the Caribbean in the year 1493, when Christopher Columbus made his second voyage to America. In the report provided by the Great Admiral to the King and Queen of Spain about this voyage, he stated that sugar cane grew splendidly in Hispaniola. Years later, Alonso de Zuaso would confirm this fact in a letter addressed to Emperor Carlos V where he referred that in that island: "There are amazing sugar cane plantations, canes as thick as a man’s wrist, and as long as two men of medium height..." It is precisely in Hispaniola (shared by Haiti and Santo Domingo at present) where the first sugar cane plantation was established in 1501 according to what is known on that region. It belonged to the Spaniard Don Pedro de Atienza. As the years went by, sugar cane became the main industry in Cuba and the pillar of the economy. It arrived in 1512 with Diego Velázquez. However, it’s not till the end of the 16th century when the sugar industry starts growing in Cuba after the slave trade was authorized as was the case in other islands of the Caribbean colonized by the English or the French. The slave labor force was not only essential for the tiring task of cutting canes but also for operating the first sugar wooden mills used to extract the sugar from the cane. Roughly refined since the Fourteenth century, it started to replace honey as a sweetener since the Middle Age. It has been impossible for us to find any reference on who set the first sugar mill to squeeze the cane and when the first mill was installed in the Caribbean. We do not know about the technical characteristics of the first apparatus used in America to squeeze the juice out of the cane by the mechanical pressure and send it to for crystallization. According to our references, the Indian cunyaya was the only machine used for this purpose between 1494 and 1515. It is still used in some regions for squeezing grapes and olives. It consists of a simple stick. One of its ends moves inside a hole in the trunk of a tree cut as a high stump while the other end moves downward as a lever crushing the peeled cane pieces, which can be inside a sack or not. The "guarapo" (sugar cane juice) leaks out of the sack by a duct to a pot. You should drink "guarapo" when is fresh or it can be cooked to evaporate the water and made molasses, or home-made sugar. With this simple apparatus of Indian technology, the Spaniards pressed the canes using human force for a while, before the rotating machines operated by ox or horses were used and then the water mills. Other Caribbean islands colonized by the French or the English such as Barbados, Haiti (part of Hispaniola), Guadeloupe, Martinique and smaller islands progressed faster with respect to the upgrading of their means of production. In Barbados and other British Antilles, they used windmills to crush the canes, a copy of the mills used in China and India for grinding wheat or extract water. Under the ruling of Luis XIV (1643 - 1715) in France, the French colonizers brought to Haiti mills with two cylinders that made possible to grind more canes in less time increasing the yield. In Brazil, the biggest world producer of the sweet at present, a mill operated with animals could grind about twenty-five and thirty carts a day, and produce about 840 pounds of sugar, according to a report of those days. However, a water mill could grind forty to fifty carts and obtained from 120,000 to 960,000 pounds of sugar. The highest development of the productive forces made the French and English colonies leaders in the sugar fabrication. However, the metropolises were only interested in receiving the crude and refine it in their country, which represented not only a source of employment, but they made a profit from the freight too. After the rebellion of the slaves in Haiti, the sugar industry in Cuba grew unexpectedly and the smuggling of the sweet products made rich most of the coastal populations of the Island, particularly the Southerner population. At the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century, exportation of the sweet brought such profits that with the arrival of only one out of three shipments to Europe (let’s take into account the wars at the time), the manufacturers obtained huge profits. Between 1700 and 1755, a transit had occurred from the English predominance in the sugar business to the French productive and commercial hegemony. Towards 1725, the small English colonies in the Caribbean, the Sugar Islands, started to see the reduction of their agricultural yields, except for Jamaica which lands had been submitted for a year to a brutal exploitation to produce sugar. Barbados was a typical case. After manufacturing around 13,000 tons in 1698, it was not able to surpass this figure again till 1816, Monserratte and Antigua had the same problem. The arrival of the steam machine transformed sugar industry, slavery became obsolete, there appeared new sugar mills and a modern transportation system: the locomotive.

INDUSTRIAL MACHINERY We have identified the sugar mill as the basic unit when the animal force was used and was relatively complex. It has similar characteristics as that of the old sugar mill that used nine or ten slaves, built in the first years of the sugar-cane exploitation, made up of a small mill operated by animal force and two or three sugar pans made of iron or copper whose manpower ranged between five or ten men. At present some of these mills are still used for the manufacture of dark pan sugar, operated with sugar pans of old sugar mills. They were being replaced by semi-mechanized sugar mills, differentiated from their predecessors in the use of steam machines rather than animals used as "engines". Production increases with it, but not the yield of cane-sugar. The following step was the appearance of the "mechanized sugar mill," a product of the industrial revolution that doubled the sugar yield and determined the definitive separation of the agricultural and mechanized sectors of this industry. It is important to point out that these three types of sugar mills, though they are followed one another in time, they are not replaced, but can coexist as in the 1800-1860 period.

Sugar Colonies

ENGLAND AND FRANCE colonies Between 1600 and 1700, sugar industry in the Caribbean was controlled by the English and the French who had a higher technological support and better means of transportation. This supremacy was based on: A powerful merchant marine, naval Interests searching for profits in a great volume of freights, metropolises were interested in receiving the crude to encourage the development of their refining industry. In order to manufacture a ton of sugar, it was necessary to import 2.5t of crude.

Spanish and Portuguese Colonies All through the 18th century, the international situation favored the expansionist tendency of the Cuban Sugar Manufacturing Industry. In 1701 sugar reached a top price that was not surpassed until 90 years later, after the rebellion of the slaves, which marked the beginning of the growth of this industry in Cuba. Situation that favors its development: An insufficient merchant marine. Navy Companies try to get big profits from a low freight at a high cost. Metropolis does not have refineries. The Cuban sugar pays the freight according to the weight.