Both Chapter 6 of the Atlantic World <\/em>and Sidney Mintz’s Sweetness and Power<\/em> make an interesting case about the power dynamics underpinning the slave trade and \u201csugar imperialism.\u201d Atlantic World<\/em> argues for the impact sugar plantations had on both political and economic developments in the Americas, whereas Sweetness and Power<\/em> denotes their effect on consumption patterns in Europe. Both readings reflect the interconnected nature of the Atlantic. This begs further comparison to Vieira’s \u201cThe Sugar Economy of Madeira and the Canaries,\u201d which discussed out how the sugar plantation model originated from Madeira and the Canary Islands and was exported to Portugese Brazil. Evidently, the trifecta of the Americas, Europe, and Africa were all linked by developments spurring from the emergence of the sugar plantation.<\/p>\n Egerton contends in Chapter 6 that the pull factor of labor demand for sugar plantations in Brazil and West Indies drew the core of the African slave trade from the interior of Africa to the African coast (Egerton, 192). Likewise, this shift of the core of the African slave trade galvanized demographic changes across the Atlantic. As my colleague Diana<\/a> states in her own blog post, \u201cthe sugar revolution made the transoceanic slave trade the largest forced movement of human beings in history and the largest intercontinental migration.\u201d This reflects a power dynamic touched upon in the previous chapter; European demand for labor in the Americas led to the wholesale migration or transplant of people to fulfill that demand.<\/p>\n Similarly, Mintz demonstrates the evolving symbolic meaning of sugar as it went from a luxury only attainable by British aristocrats to a common staple in the diet of commoners (Mintz, 152). This ensuing popularization of sugar among British laymen abetted the creation of wealth that came to be \u201cattached to the centers of power in English society at large\u201d (Mintz, 157). Concentration of wealth created by immensely profitable sugar in turn meant \u201cthe growing strength and solidity of the [British] empire and of the classes that dictated its policies\u201d (Mintz, 157). This reflects another power dynamic, that of a plutocrat government with mercantilist sympathies, where crown and capital are inseparably interwoven.<\/p>\n