Ulbe Bosma's The World of Sugar is a genuinely global history. Bosma discusses all the sugar- growing places of the world, beginning with Cuba and Java, the largest exporters of the early 20th century. But this is a history not just of cane sugar but also of beet sugar, an equally important form of traded sugar over the last hundred years. Beet sugar is grown mainly in Europe and the United States. It has also been massively subsidised and sold at artificially low prices on world markets, threatening the livelihood of producers of cane sugar.

乌尔贝·博斯马的《糖的世界》是一部真正意义上的全球性历史著作。博斯马从古巴和爪哇开始，探讨了20世纪初全球最大的蔗糖出口国所涉及的全部制糖地区。但这不仅是一部关于甘蔗糖的历史，也包括了甜菜糖的历史——在过去一百年中，甜菜糖同样是一种重要的贸易糖类。甜菜糖主要种植于欧洲和美国，长期以来还受到大量补贴，并以人为设定的极低价格在全球市场上销售，严重威胁着甘蔗糖生产者的生计。

Bosma's discussion of the sugar market in Britain gives a sense of the book's range.The sweet-toothed British first bought cane sugar from their own slavery-dependent colonial plantations. Following the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, cane sugar was imported to Britain from places which retained the practice, such as Cuba and Brazil. Towards the end of the 19th century, the British started to import beet sugar from continental Europe. Only in the 20th century was there a move to develop a national beet sugar industry.

博斯玛对英国糖业市场的论述，展现了本书的广度。最初，喜爱甜食的英国人从依赖奴隶制的殖民地种植园进口甘蔗糖。随着大英帝国废除奴隶制后，来自仍保留奴隶制的地区（如古巴和巴西）的甘蔗糖开始进入英国市场。到了19世纪末，英国开始从欧洲大陆进口甜菜糖。直到20世纪，才逐步发展出全国性的甜菜糖产业。

The book provides a global labour history, investigating the wide range of labour regimes associated with growing sugar. Contrary to popular belief, cane sugar production was never just restricted to large, dedicated plantations owned by rich men. For example, in Java, a huge exporter of sugar in the early 20th century, sugar cane was grown together with rice in an extraordinarily labour-intensive way by small farmers.

本书提供了全球性的劳工史研究，探讨了与糖业发展相关的各种劳工制度。与普遍看法相反，甘蔗的生产从未仅仅局限于富人拥有的大型专营种植园。例如，在20世纪初糖类出口量巨大的爪哇，小农户以极其劳动密集的方式同时种植甘蔗和水稻。

The World of Sugar is also a story of similarity and continuity in sugar cultivation. For example, imported labour has been used for much large-scale production. German beet fields employed Polish workers; Mexicans and many others, including Sicilians, were vital to US sugar production. Cane cutting, Bosma shows, remains a poorly paid and brutal business to this day in many places in the world. But as well as this, the book is about the continuity of the use of traditional methods on small farms. In the mid 20th-century, this type of sugar production dominated in South Asia and Latin America.

《糖的世界》也讲述了甘蔗种植中相似性与延续性的故事。例如，大量大规模生产依赖进口劳动力。德国的甜菜田雇佣了波兰工人；墨西哥人以及包括西西里人在内的许多其他移民，对美国的糖业生产起到了关键作用。博斯马指出，如今在世界许多地方，甘蔗收割仍是一项收入微薄且残酷的行业。但除此之外，这本书还探讨了传统方法在小农场中的延续。20世纪中期，这种类型的甘蔗生产曾主导南亚和拉丁美洲地区。

This is also a history of capitalists and sugar dynasties, as well as corporations that in some cases have remained influential over very long periods. Great firms and great interests have had profound influence on the policies of states. In many places - not just the British Caribbean but Cuba and the Philippines too - a powerful sugar bourgeoisie played a major role in politics and their interests were consequently protected by trade barriers and subsidies. In the battle for control of the industry, it was inevitably the poor countries which came off worse. All this is explored by Bosma with wonderful subtlety and control.

这同样是一部关于资本家与糖业王朝，以及一些长期保持强大影响力的企业的历史。伟大的企业与重大利益集团对各国政策产生了深远影响。在许多地方——不仅限于英国加勒比地区，还包括古巴和菲律宾——强大的糖业资产阶级在政治中扮演了重要角色，他们的利益因此受到贸易壁垒和补贴的保护。在争夺行业控制权的竞争中，贫困国家往往承受更大的损失。博斯马以惊人的细腻与掌控力深入探讨了这一切。

But sugar production was never just a matter of agriculture. It also involved the extraction, close to the place of harvest, of sucrose from the sugar plant, a process which required machinery powered by humans, animals, wind or steam. Further processes involved boiling (from the 19th century, this often involved vacuum systems) and the separation of sugar from other materials in a process known as refinement. From very early on, sugar production was an energy-intensive industrial process, mostly taking place in the countryside and in refineries in centres of consumption, both small and large. The growth of the industry entailed a very rapid diffusion of ideas and techniques from one country to another. Cuba, for example, developed an extraordinarily dense system of railways to transport workers and cane, as well as steam-powered sugar factories. Particular varieties of cane sugar and beet sugar spread very rapidly across the world, in accordance with local needs and demands.

但糖的生产从来不只是农业问题。它还包括在收获地附近从甘蔗中提取蔗糖的过程，这一过程需要依靠人力、动物、风力或蒸汽驱动的机械。后续工序包括熬煮（自19世纪起，通常采用真空系统）以及将糖与其他物质分离的过程，即精炼。从很早开始，糖的生产就是一项高能耗的工业过程，主要在乡村以及消费中心的小型和大型精炼厂中进行。产业的发展促使各种理念和技术迅速从一个国家传播到另一个国家。例如，古巴发展出一套极为密集的铁路系统，用于运输工人和甘蔗，以及蒸汽动力的糖厂。根据当地的需求和市场需求，特定种类的甘蔗糖和甜菜糖迅速传播至世界各地。

Where once only tiny quantities of sugar could be produced, now new techniques, varieties, fertilisers, irrigation systems and much more have turned gleaming white sugar into a ubiquitous chemical. Over the same time, there has been a massive increase in consumption. Once regarded as a luxury, sugar came to be promoted as a valuable source of energy. But as the consumption of sugar has increased, so has the harm it does, whether to people's teeth or weight. In the face of appalling obstruction from the sugar industry to attempts to reduce consumption, some countries have been forced to tax sugar in order to bring that about. The sugar industry has a history of attacking its critics and, when it comes to obesity, of trying to blame fats, and lack of exercise and self-control. And the recent past has seen worrying new developments in mass sweetening. High-fructose corn syrup made from maize using an enzymatic process invented in Japan in the 1960s has a similar number of calories to table sugar but is far cheaper to produce. It is now widely consumed, having been adopted in the making of soft drinks and a large number of processed foods, and is regarded as a leading cause of obesity.

过去只能生产少量糖分，如今，新技术、新品种、肥料、灌溉系统以及更多因素使白砂糖成为一种无处不在的化学物质。与此同时，糖的消费量也大幅上升。曾经被视为奢侈品的糖，逐渐被宣传为一种宝贵的能量来源。然而，随着糖的消费增加，其对人们牙齿和体重造成的危害也随之加剧。面对糖业极力抵制减糖行为的阻挠，一些国家被迫对糖征收税款以实现目标。糖业历来有攻击批评者的历史，在肥胖问题上，更倾向于将责任归咎于脂肪摄入、缺乏运动和自我控制能力。近年来，大规模增甜剂的发展令人担忧。这种由玉米制成的高果糖玉米糖浆，采用1960年代日本发明的酶法工艺，热量与普通餐桌糖相近，但生产成本却低得多。如今，它已被广泛使用，大量用于软饮料和多种加工食品中，并被认为是导致肥胖的主要原因之一。

This is a wonderfully rich book, a model of global history, the history of production and the history of capitalism. Bosma avoids outbursts of emotion, celebratory or critical, even if they might have made his analysis of the multiple tragedies involving sugar all the more powerful. He shows that we could always have done without sugar and that today we have many alternative sources of sweetness. Yet many of the poorest people in the world still depend on it to make a living.

这是一本内容极为丰富、堪称全球史、生产史和资本主义史典范的著作。博斯马避免了情绪化的表达，无论是颂扬还是批判，尽管这些情感或许能更加强化他对糖业多重悲剧的分析。他指出，我们本可以完全不需要糖，如今已有许多替代性的甜味来源。然而，世界上仍有许多最贫困的人依靠糖来谋生。