A few important sub-species of the, rather bamboo-like plant, genus Saccharum are to be found in the fertile plains of the Ganges basin and the Gangetic deltaic lands.
One of these sub-species, known as Saccharum bengalense, even marks the fact that these plants, popularly known as sugar canes, are an endemic species in, especially, the north-eastern lands of the Indian subcontinent, much of which now comprise the lands of Bangladesh.
The popular name given to the very valuable and extensively consumed product of these plants is sugar; and it is no accident that this commonly used English name has its roots in Sanskrit. “Sarkara.” Sanskrit, of course, is a written language that, itself, developed in the second millennium BCE, in the north-east of the Indian subcontinent, very probably, not so much as a religious liturgical language which was usually spoken, but rather, for trading records.
We already know that trade developed early around the Ganges delta especially, one of the world’s earliest centres of international trade. And, as ever, there is no hiding the fact that those lands now lie at the heart of today’s Bangladesh.
In fact, there are those who trace the origins of some sugarcane to the Pacific islands of Polynesia, in the eighth millennium BCE, and, although it remains unclear whether that is the original source, if it could be confirmed it would certainly raise interesting questions about very early, prehistoric trade and would certainly underline a growing belief, based on DNA studies in northern Australia, of contact between Australia and the Indian subcontinent, many millennia BCE. The close relationship identified between the Australian Dingo, and the Indian dog, certainly enhances such suspicions.
The earliest documentary reference to sugar, however, is found in a Chinese manuscript of about the eighth century BCE, clearly referring to the origin of sugar as being in India. A reference that also reminds us of the view that there were, indeed, very ancient connections between India and China (and here we need to remind ourselves that the “India” referred to comprise, today, of both modern India and Pakistan, as well as, locationally more significantly, perhaps, Bangladesh).
Indeed, the first century BCE report made to the Han Emperor of the ancient trade routes between north-eastern India and China, that led to the “restoration” of those ancient trading routes, focused on riverine routes of which the major part was the Brahmaputra, known, by the Chinese, even today, as, “the Southern Silk Road;” probably the earliest of these iconic routes.
The natural cane crop remained, however, in trade terms, relatively unimportant until, it is believed, in the fifth century CE Gupta Dynasty of rulers, when the means of turning the raw juice from the canes into crystallised grains was discovered. This, of course, greatly facilitated transport, and was possibly developed by Buddhist monks.
It is believed that the Gupta Dynasty originated in the Rajshahi and Rangpur area of Bangladesh. The Guptas, of course, created what has become known as the, “Golden Age,” of historic India. Once again, in this respect, as in others, Bangladesh may well be considered the foundation stone of modern India.
It was, subsequently, much the same way that its wealth and natural riches attracted the various invaders from Afghanistan, Persia, and Europe. And, eventually, the same wealth once again provided the foundation of yet another empire, not only in India, but in a much wider world.
The “Golden Age of India,” under the imperial Guptas, saw innovation in such areas as technology, sciences, mathematics, astronomy, engineering, art and literature, amongst others, and probably laid the foundations for the further advancement in such learning as in the flowering of the famous Caliphates of Islam, especially the Abbasid Caliphate, from the eighth to the 13th century.
Then, of course, a century before their conversion to Islam, the Mongol hordes swept across Asia and much of Europe, destroying much of the sophistication of those Muslim peoples. The use of sugar became common across Asia and, at least, east Africa, in the six centuries leading up to the time of the crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries.
The famous traders of Venice, taking note of reports from returning crusaders of what they called, “sweet salt,” established a refining station near Tyre, in what is now Lebanon, and, for a while, developed a near monopoly on supply of what, across Europe, was slowly replacing honey as the sweetener of choice in noble cuisine.
It may well be, that like the other crop that was to become one of the great sources of wealth and trade from the Americas and West Indian islands from the 17th century, cotton, one variety of sugar was already to be found in the Americas. But it is believed that the most productive of the sugar canes arrived with Columbus late in the 15th century.
He is thought to have found it in the Canary Islands on his 1492 voyage westward, and was given cuttings of cane by the governess (note the female gender of the ruler of these vital trading links), Beatriz de Bobadilla y Ossorio.
However, there is also no doubt that the Portuguese took canes to Brazil, very possibly following the return of Da Gama from his first voyage to India. By 1540 there were literally thousands of sugar mills in Portuguese territories in South America; and when King Philip of Spain acquired the Portuguese throne, in the 1560s, the cross fertilisation of profitable trading vegetation evidently became commonplace.
By the early 1700s, sugar was becoming, not so much a luxury, but much more commonly used in the diet across Europe. There can be little doubt that the arrival of the East India Company in the sub-continent early in the 17th century contributed to a wider usage, and the profitable cargoes shipped home, together with such other mainstays as cotton and saltpetre for gunpowder.
The abundance of such a vital, indigenous resource is clearly central to the international fame acquired by the famous Bengal Sweets.
The influences on the variety unquestionably derive from many places, but have been, of course, the scale of location, the marine terminal of three of Asia’s great rivers, and the richness of the harvest of natures riches in the endless plains of fertile soil, as well as the millennia of international trade that have given birth to the tradition.
Bengal Sweets, of course, are a sufficiently important part of the rich heritage of today’s nation of Bangladesh to merit a consideration all of their own.
It was, however, no random chance that gave birth to the tradition, and although West Bengal, with its main city of Kolkata, has hijacked much of the heritage of Bengal in its entirety, it is worth recalling that, until the middle of the 17th century, Kolkata was merely a couple of small fishing villages, and it was only in the following century that the growing influence of the British created this civic alternative to the older great cities of the north-east of the Indian subcontinent, of which Dhaka was one of the greatest.
Influences on the recipes for these sweets can be traced, especially, along such ancient routes of trade as that from Yamuna to Ganges, underlining the fact that, in all probability, it was travellers, soldiers, emissaries, but, above all, wealthy and sophisticated merchants, who both gave birth to this sweet tradition, and gave it patronage.
But with such indigenous wealth as the ubiquitous sugarcane, there is no doubting one of the most significant foundations. It seems likely that the highly productive “canes” of the lands of Bangladesh comprised a part, at least, of the foundation of the sugar wealth of the West Indian islands. Certainly, the taste for sugar acquired in Britain, like the rest of Europe, laid the foundation of the fortunes of many British aristocrats, and merchants, many of whom became aristocrats through the wealth generated.
The West Indies were, of course, closer, and more accessible to the UK market; and there is no doubt that it was the saltpetre of the lands of northeast India, now, in large part, Bangladesh, that, transformed into gunpowder, protected that trade. Bangladesh is, truly one of the foundation stones, keystones even, of the trade and armaments that built the British Empire.