Tea with your sugar, sugar with your tea
[ by Charles Cameron — who has moved on to caffe latte ]
.
Two things I read in quick succession.
Sugar:
The first deals with a moment in the history of slavery and abolition, and by extension, sugar:
When will Britain face up to its crimes against humanity?:
Shortly after Christmas 1831, an audacious rebellion broke out in Jamaica. Some 60,000 enslaved people went on strike. They burned the sugar cane in the fields and used their tools to smash up sugar mills. The rebels also showed remarkable discipline, imprisoning slave owners on their estates without physically harming them.
Tea:
The second just begs to be read alongside the first, especially if like so many Brits you like two cubes of sugar in your tea..
I saw a bumper sticker that said “Make tea, not war”, and what a wild ride they are in for when they learn literally any fact about tea.
— communicants (@c0mmunicants) March 27, 2018
**
The second leaves you hanging, yeah, needing to comb your memory for the back-story of tea.. which is why, in addition to the fact that I read it after I’d read the entry on sugar and the sugar riots, I have put it second here.
It requires mental work!
But then the first one — with the rebellious slaves treating their imprisoned previous slave-owners civilly..
May I find there an early precedent for the nonviolence of MLK and the civil rights movemnt — in Jamaica, 1831?
**
This is the sort of intellectual stimulation I live for!
Lattes for two, if you please. Do you take yours with Splenda?
