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Matthew Greenia Dear Matthew, Re: Telling the tale of THE HAUNTED FOOD, Flagpole February 16, 1994, p8. Thank you, Thank you. I knew you could do it. The process for refining beet sugar was not invented by a Frenchman in the 19th Century as reported in the Flagpole. Beet sugar was discovered by that politically incorrect, ethnically deprived Prussian chemist Andreas Sigismund Marggraf in 1747. Marggraf also discovered small amounts of sugar in carrots. The first process for obtaining sugar from beets was developed by Berlin chemist Franz Karl Achard and published in 1793. By 1799 beets, which had been grown as garden vegetables for the greens since prehistoric times, were becoming an important crop and selective breeding efforts were undertaken to increase the 6 percent sugar content. Sugar content is currently 15 to 20 percent. The first sugar beet factory opened in Cunern, Silesia in 1801 and went into production in 1802. Franz Achard had presented Friedrich Wilhelm III with a loaf of beet sugar and persuaded him to donate some land at Cunern and to provide financial support for the cultivation of sugar beets. The factory was plagued by financial problems as was a second factory set up by a student of Achard at Krayn, Silesia. The student was successful in growing the White Silesian Beet which had a higher sugar content and became the basis of all future sugar beet strains. The British Orders in Council of January 7, 1807, and November 11, 1807, not only cut France off from sugar imports, among other things, stimulating a search for substitutes but also led to war between The United States and Great Britain on June 18, 1812. The British Orders in Council had been withdrawn on June 16, 1812, but Congress had already declared war before the news arrived and it seemed a shame to waste a perfectly good declaration of war so 2,260 young men gave their lives for God, Country and the honor of Congress. The ostensible reason for the war was the impressment of U.S. seamen but the United States was trounced so badly that it dropped its demand for an end to impressment and only asked for the status quo ante bellum. The British came charging in with all sorts of demands, including the establishment of an Indian State in the territory northwest of the Ohio, but news of British defeats at Lake Champlian and Baltimore convinced the British to drop their demands and accept the United States proposal. The Treaty of Ghent was signed on December 24, 1814, just in time to avert secession of the New England States. “Damn”, and we came so close. Good Old Andy Jackson failed to get the news and fought the Battle of New Orleans two weeks later on January 8, 1815. So it was a glorious victory after all. An article by Franz Karl Achard on beet sugar published in Moniteur in 1808 aroused French interest in domestic sugar production. French banker Benjamin Delessart set up beet sugar factories in Passy in 1810 to replace sugar supplies cut off by the Royal Navy blockade. These factories produced over 4 million kilos of beet sugar in the next 2 years. Delessart had set up France's first sugar factory in 1802 for which Napoleon made him a Baron of the Empire. Napoleon awarded Delessart the Legion d'Honneur in 1811 and informed the Paris Chamber of Commerce that “the English can throw into the Thames all the sugar and indigo which they formally sold on the Continent with high profit to themselves.” Napoleon ordered the allotment of 32,000 hectares to sugar beet cultivation. By the end of 1813 France had 334 sugar beet plantations and had processed 35,000 tons of beet sugar. The embargo came to an end with the treaty of Ghent and beet sugar production in France declined sharply as cane sugar reentered the market. Beet sugar, however, remained a contender and in 1842 France had 60 beet sugar factories producing 2 pounds of beet sugar per capita annually. The Grand Junction, Colorado sugar beet refinery was built in 1899 and the American Beet Sugar Company organized. In 1899 the American Sugar Refining Company trust had an almost 100 per cent monopoly in the U.S. sugar industry. The Holly Sugar Corporation built a beet sugar refinery at Holly, Colorado in 1905 and become the largest U.S. independent processor of sugar beets with nine refineries in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Texas and California. The production of cane sugar with slave labor is another story and will have to wait until next time. Suffice it to say, Europe's insatiable sweet tooth was being satisfied by slave produced sugar long before Columbus sailed. The only problem is that it was being produced by politically incorrect white slaves. I am sure the switch was made to black slaves because they did a better job. Richard E. Irby, Jr. |
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