the elegance of the men and their temperate-zone landscape of leisure is underwritten by labor in a brutal industry in the tropics. The business became famous as the triangle trade, in which British goods were traded for human beings from Africa who were taken to the Americas where sugar and rum were taken in. Asian trade goods were also part of the system, which was more circular than triangular and ugly at every stage. Brutality begot a luxury that was itself concentrated sweetness. Like cotton and tea and the ceramic dishware still called china, sugar was one of the new substances that the
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the elegance of the men and their temperate-zone landscape of leisure is underwritten by labor in a brutal industry in the tropics. The business became famous as the triangle trade, in which British goods were traded for human beings from Africa who were taken to the Americas where sugar and rum were taken in. Asian trade goods were also part of the system, which was more circular than triangular and ugly at every stage. Brutality begot a luxury that was itself concentrated sweetness. Like cotton and tea and the ceramic dishware still called china, sugar was one of the new substances that the colonial era brought to Britain, and it went from a rare luxury to a staple, and so that quintessentially English thing, a cup of tea, could be made with Indian tea and Caribbean sugar, served in Chinese porcelain.
